How many people end up being disappointed because they don’t get to serve on jury duty? Again I was not needed. To someone like me, getting a jury duty notice is like receiving an invitation to a party. I get excited, but as each night passes that I’m not chosen, I end up hoping that maybe tomorrow’s news will be different. My previous jury notice before this latest one at least got me into the court house, but all I could do was watch others get called for questioning as they selected their jurors. This time I never even made it into the court house. I know it’s nothing personal, but knowing this can’t change its effect when you’ve lived a lifetime of an excessive amount of personal rejections.
For people who hate jury duty, stop to think about how much more your vote counts there than it does if you’re a conservative living among liberals who have taken over your homeland, or if you’re an Aspie in a neurotypical dominated world. Most liberal neurotypicals probably can’t comprehend such things and probably don’t even care. Before someone wants to straighten me out on my seemingly socially incorrect attitude here, please realize it is okay for me to express what I personally experience many times over.
If I sound like I’ve got a bit of an unpleasant edge to the tone of my writing today, its most likely because I know I’m right back to where I was with my chronic insomnia. Just when I finally began to no longer feel that adrenaline produced anxiety (which commonly accompanies the type of insomnia where you’re too tired to ever feel sleepy), along comes one trigger¹ to throw all that cautious effort to regain sleep right out the window!
I think I probably experience no more than a couple of dozen days in the entire year when I know I’ve fully restored my sleep deprivation. That’s why I’ve learned to be content when I’ve managed enough sleep to be able to function fairly safe with somewhat intelligence.
I already mentioned some of the effects that sleep deprivation has on an adult Aspie in my Am I ready or not? post, but one effect I forgot to include has to do with emotions. Neurotypicals take it for granted that they’re able to maneuver their subtle expressions of emotions in increments. This is probably why social game playing is so much fun for them. Aspies, however, do not typically have an incremental scale for each emotion. It would be like comparing an on/off switch to a dimmer dial on a light fixture — neurotypicals have an emotional dimmer dial while Aspies are born with on/off switches.
When I’m rested, my level of niceness and anger function more appropriately. As I enter into the condition I’m now headed, my emotional switch becomes more volatile. When that happens, it becomes a vicious cycle because few people understand what’s going on. Many (especially women) react by having fun playing mind games with me. It’s empowering to them when they easily detect I have no dimmer switch I can control to match theirs. As I become more aware of this emotional scale discrepancy between myself and neurotypical people, it only irritates the situation all the more (especially when I get told that they’re covertly laughing as their egos are inflating at my expense). The reason someone might think this is an exaggeration or unwarranted suspicion on my part is because he or she would have no clue what its like to live this way for over half a century.
The more angry I feel, the harder I try to be nice. Why? Because I know that once I let my anger loose, it isn’t pretty. Even if it were possible to become angry in subtle increments, it doesn’t do an Aspie any good. Such things may work for NTs, but when a typical Aspie tries to copy this technique, it does not have that same effect. Most Aspies need to let their fuse blow before an NT will take us seriously. My guess is that this is a learned behavior early in life. I doubt this is something comprehendible for anyone to understand who never experiences this.
Yesterday was horrible for me because I was bombarded with situations where I repeatedly failed to accomplish tasks involving situations with NTs in control of things all cue to my lack of the neurotypical syndrome’s social skills for (let me phrase it as my husband and daughter put it), “They’re jerking your chain.” Maybe you can imagine somewhat when thinking about dealing with the customer service of a company who does not care about customer satisfaction (only profits). It might be a bit hard to comprehend that I still have not succeeded in getting the dentist office, which took x-rays of my mouth on Jan. 6th, still has not called me back with the results! If anything will tick me off, its repeatedly hearing, “We’ll (or I’ll) call you back,” but yet it doesn’t happen! Anyhow, I’ve noticed that when my husband takes over an issue like customer service toying with me, then results happen. All I have to do is remind him that its his money they’ve wasted and him they are ultimately screwing over… then he gets mad and acts like Clint Eastwood when he said, “Go ahead, make my day.“
¹No, the trigger in my case now had nothing to do with not getting to serve on jury duty.
