All Autistic people are different. There is certainly a pool of traits that many of us pull from. But one of the seemingly almost universal is a very tight relationship with the truth. Although if I am being honest, what really confuses me is why neurotypicals have a more loose position with the truth (I am not implying that neurotypicals are all craven liars just it seems that a lot of the social niceties involve, well, lying). While I am fairly confident stating that most Autistic people have that relationship with the truth, I can only speak to details of how the truth and I get along.
I love and hate the truth. It is the greatest thing and a cause of consternation. Or to pull out the cliché satchel, it is both a blessing and a curse. I love the truth because it is the truth. Why would anyone ever want to play loose with the truth, much less deliberately mislead? I know people do it, but I cannot fathom any reason to justify it. I only want to speak the truth, and more importantly, I want to hear the truth. Hearing the truth is, I believe, the foundation for all the lying in social niceties. People lie to themselves so they cannot abide hearing the truth.
I do not lie to myself. Yes, I did lie to myself in self-masking, and I hate myself for that. But, in regards to other issues, I do not lie to myself. If I have a weakness, I freely admit it. For example, I do not believe I am at all attractive and that is fine with me. Partly it is my fault for choices I make and partly it is out of my control. However, I also believe that for some there are other aspects of a person that overcome that. But I do not need anyone to lie to me about how I look. When people do so, in general, not just in my case, they do so because they are trying to be “nice” but “nice” means nothing to me. Since I know that many, many people lie in those situations, I cannot distinguish who is telling the truth and who is not. So, anyone’s specific opinion does not mean anything to me. How could it? Odds are it is a lie. A lie that contradicts what I see as fact anyway, so it all is so very pointless.
But it is not just about not contradicting someone’s internal lies, it can be about giving too much information. When someone asks how I am doing, they do not want to know. How I am cannot be boiled down into any succinct, socially acceptable answer. The worst thing is that most of the lies that I am forced to tell are around the “how are you” milieu. When I do have to lie, even seemingly minor ones like that, it causes me distress. I hate that the truth is too complicated for people to care about. Because for me, the “how are you” lie is not a minor one. A lie is a lie; how does one distinguish a minor lie from a lie that is not qualified by “minor” or “white” or some such adjective? I do understand that the impact on you may be minor because of my lie, but the lie itself is not minor.
That inability to be able to be honest with most people is, I believe, the biggest driver in keeping me isolated from people. It is unpleasant and exhausting having to lie or withhold information, so I avoid. I became fairly adept at finding that line and twisting things so that what I revealed was not technically a lie. That is no better though. Using a truth to be deceptive feels almost as bad. There are only two possible choices that satisfy my need for the truth: the truth and saying I do not want to answer the question. I do not feel it necessary to reveal everything to everyone, but either I refuse to answer, or I reveal everything.
I wish that the world were just honest, but it seems to be getting so much worse. It is kind of ironic that one of the rare acknowledgements of my being different as a child was when my grandmother would use “sensitive” to describe me. She did not mean it negatively and she was mostly not wrong. But when it comes to social interactions, I am not at all sensitive but everyone else is. People even feel the need to curb their opinions on subjective matters, like my art. I love the images I am able to capture with my photography, but the only opinions that matter are mine and those that truly agree with me. But seriously, if someone does not like an image, I actually want to know that. I want to know why. Maybe there was something I missed that I could work on. Or maybe, we just disagree on it. But if you keep your true opinion to yourself, I will never get the opportunity of possibly learning something or adjusting.
I just do not understand why I am supposed to find it insulting because someone disagrees with me. Of course, the reverse is often the cause of people not wanting me around. I will state my opinion as it is. Beating around the bush, sugarcoating things, walking on eggshells are all clichés, which, to me, means that people not only know, they blatantly acknowledge they very often do not share the direct truth. I hate that. The truth is a fact. Why are people upset about facts? Has anyone ever gone home crying because they were told that water is wet? So why do they if I say their turkey was dry?