Freak chic.

[sarasvati]

torachan makes an excellent point that I can agree with so very much.

For me, text-based communication is so much easier than talking face-to-face. Why? Because of the whole "talking" and "face-to-face" problems. Both of those come less easily for me than for most, and it's actually been only relatively recently that I've learnt that actual terms apply to me other than "lazy" and "someone who just doesn't want to try hard enough."

I'm shy. I've always been shy, right from the get-go. I suspect that being made fun of extensively through my youth played a part in that, but I also think that issues other than the social played a larger part. I suffer from an anxiety disorder, possibly other disorders too. (I fit a large number of symptoms for HFA -- high-functioning autism -- though I've never had a definitive diagnosis.) Being around people is difficult for me. Meeting new people is difficult for me. Hell, sometimes going outside is difficult for me. I can get by, for the most part, and even engage in some awesome activities like stage acting (it's easier when I'm pretending not to be me), but a lot of day-to-day stuff remains difficult.

I think perhaps things like acting are easier to do than some people expect because I have to psych myself up, and people understand that. Few people understand or let me take the time to psych myself up to answer the door to receive a package, or ask a store's clerk where the canned soup is.

On a good day, I'm able to make eye contact with people I know well, and even some people I don't know. If this is trouble, I can usually get around it to some extent by looking at their nose or forehead, close enough to their eyes that few people notice. On a bad day, I can't even make eye contact with my friends.

Body language? Body language doesn't mean much when I can't even look in your direction.

And that's discounting my hearing and speech problems. Again, something I've only recently learned that terms even exist for. I used to say that somewhere between my ears and my brain, the sounds I hear stop connecting to any actual meaning. Now I know it's called APD, or auditory processing disorder. It's not a terribly bad one, but it does mean that I ask people to repeat themselves a lot. It means that sometimes I can't tell you're talking to me if I'm not looking right at you, because I can't distinguish your voice as something that needs attention from all the background noise that doesn't need attention. Sometimes there's a delay in me figuring out what you said, which results in my staring at you blankly for a moment, not wanting to ask you to repeat yourself because I might actually figure it out soon.

But I also might not.

Speech problems? Like a good number of people, I stumble a lot when I'm nervous. I'm nervous a lot when I talk to people, because of social and hearing problems. Yeah, it's not pretty. I think I form concepts clearly when I try to talk, but I have it on good authory that I often don't. I think I'm being clear, but much like how my ears and brain don't communicate well, sometimes my brain doesn't transfer things to my mouth as well as I'd like. Maybe I use the wrong words. Maybe I leave out a concept that I think should be obvious, but it isn't, because I said it wrong when I tried initially to establish it. It's frustrating for all parties.

I communicate much more smoothly online than anywhere else. Here, I can make sure I use the right words, reread what I write before anyone else gets a chance to see it, articulate how I'm feeling without wanting to turn into a quivering pile or jelly at the mere thought or trying to articulate how I'm feeling. I don't have to rely on my ears and mouth, but on my eyes. My eyes and brain communicate much more easily than anything else on my head!

Oh, and let's not forget the Tourette syndrome. Yes, I have verbal ticks. Yes, they're embarassing in public. Around close friends, I can laugh it off when I bark or squeak. In a crowded but quiet bus, however, when everyone turns to look at the person who just shouted a sharp, "Bark!" it isn't quite so easy to laugh off. Then I get nervous and agitated, and my head starts to twitch more, which earns me even more stares, and makes me want to lock myself inside and never go out again because it's too hard to be around normal people.

Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes even my hearing problems are funny, because I 'hear' people say strange things a lot. Know how sometimes you get some funny things out of misheard lyrics? It's like that, only with talking. Rei saying, "Vending machines hate me," became "Venetians hit me," and a joke was born. When I'm with people who understand, I can laugh.

Most people don't understand.

Online, I don't twitch. I don't make weird noises. I don't mishear. I don't have to open my mouth. I don't have to look anyone in the eye. I can interact within my comfort zone, and I can make friends where otherwise I might be completely alone.

Most of my fleshy friends are not neurotypical. They may not have the same issues as I do, but they understand what it's like to be screwed up, and make allowances for my own screw-ups. Rei has OCD as bad as I do. Mary's bipolar and has told me frank stories about how she acted when she wasn't receiving treatment, and has implied that climbing the walls of buildings is certainly no worse than occasionally making animal sounds or twitching in public. Cass doesn't make much allowance for anybody's problems, even her own, but at least is usually good enough to ignore outbursts and tolerate times where I don't want to be around others or interact much.

These things are a part of me and I don't try, online, to pretend that I'm somebody or something that I'm not. I don't try to handwave my problems. But online, they're not a bother, or at least not as much of one, and so I can experience the joy of meeting people and talking to them without the worry that they're going to get freaked out and go away, or that I'll mess up too badly and not be able to talk at all some day. I can bypass all that crap and just get to doing what I want to do.

And I wouldn't give that up for anything. Communicating online has given me freedom from worry, freedom from expectations that couldn't possibly be met in a non-face-to-face environment. It's given me the freedom to be me without having to fight through a morass of problems in order to get there first.

Denounce online communication all you want. But it's been a sanity-saver for some people, a connection they may not otherwise have had, a form of expression that come more easily than others.

Just because your brain works normally... I don't expect everyone to go around expecting everyone to not be neurotypical. It's neurotypical for a reason; the majority of people are that way. But some understanding is nice, when it's revealed that my brain, his brain, her brain doesn't work normally.