Friends

For me friendship is one of the hardest things ever.
 
If I consider you a friend then you will be my friend forever. But I dont do NT friend things, so I am not a typical friend I guess.
 
I dont keep in contact with people; basically because I dont really have much to say and I am not good at initiating conversations. I also dont like talking on phones so that makes it hard to keep a friendship going.
 
I'm not into shopping trips or having a coffee at a cafe...

I'd like to have friends that I could do those things with ...except the shopping bit ... but its hard to find friends who understand and it would be hard to organise ...
 
When I was younger I could only go to night clubs if I was already under the influence of alcohol because it was the only way I could deal with the stress of so many people.
 
The funny thing is that I dont really like to drink alcohol much.
 
When I was at school I never really had friends either. I liked a number of people at school, but I have no idea if any of them ever considered me a friend or just a class mate.
 
Most of my primary school days I spent alone up the back of the oval or somewhere away from the other kids where I could see them but was alone.
 
With high school I did one and a half years there and then left, so because I didnt finish all of the second year I can basically only say I have only gone as far as grade 8, and that I only have one year of high school learning. Which I sometimes find amusing because I know more about certain things than a lot of people who completed high school. ... I suck at Maths though...
 
I've never really had a best friend, until I met and married my husband and he is and always will be my best friend, even if we were to separate for any reason he would still be my best friend forever.
 
I've tried to have friends but it only seems to work for a little while. So obviously I am doing something wrong and that I feel is that I am not capable of being the type of friend that most people are used to.
 
I honestly dont know if any of the people I know in my life consider me a friend or just an aquaintence ? Are there different types of friendship that I dont know about, because I only know of Best Friends, Friends and Platonic Friends.. anything else is just an aquaintence right?
 
If people dont invite you to a party is that because they know you are not good around strangers and they dont want to put you on the spot of saying no or is it that they dont consider you a friend enough to invite you?
 
Growing up I only remember having 2 birthday parties, I think one was for my 10th and one for my 12th and both times the children who came were people from school, most of them had parents who knew my parents.
 
The only sleep over I ever had as a child was when my sister Cheryl was invited to a sleep over at her friends place and I was invited to go as well for some reason, I think there was only the 3 of us or maybe there was another girl as well, but it wasnt a problem for me as I can handle small groups better than I can handle large groups.
 
But here now at home, I have no one coming to visit me... I can not remember the last time I had anyone here for a visit, probably early 2011, so about 9 or 10 months ago.... and now I am at a stage where I dont really feel comfortable having anyone visit... probably because I've been alone so long.
 
I dont even get people texting me though... my mobile is rather quiet and is more used as a reminder for tv shows and thats about it.
 
I think most NT people dont realise just how lonely it can be for people with things like autism, especially when the autistic person is already a very quiet introverted type of person.
 
I add that about introverted because I have talked with some Autistic people who are extraverted and have no problem talking to anyone and no problem being part of things.
 
For me life is very lonely... I may not like to have very much contact with people but there are times when it would be nice to have people texting me and coming to visit (after giving me at least a few hours notice so I could prepare myself mentally for visitors)
 
:)
 
Just on a slightly different point ... I want to be a mother and I had someone ask me once how I would manage with a baby, because of having to go to doctors with the baby and so on... but for me a baby would in a way be helpful, because I would always be putting the baby ahead of myself and having the baby to think about rather than the people around me, would mean that I would be able to do so much more than I do now because my focus would be on the baby. I know because it was that way when I was 15 and would be out with my baby niece, I was always more fixated on her than on any issues I had.
 
Also when I was pregnant at 19, I was more fixated on the baby I was carrying than on anything else, but my pregnancy was ectopic and around 3 months into the pregnancy my fallopian tube burst and I lost my baby and have been infertile since then.