No rejections.

Many years ago, my therapist (after 10 years of seeing her), told me "If you care about someone you better not reject them."

I didn't really understand that some of the things I said to people were pushing them away. These were things people I loved said to me all my life. Criticisms, complaints, nagging. Being autistic makes understanding this social stuff harder.

I had to ask her to spell it out to me, and I had to think about it for a long, long time. Watch it happen over and over until it sunk in. And I still catch myself doing it wrong. The coworker who asks me out to lunch when I brought mine -- say yes, not no. My kids who wanted me to play with them instead of reading. Say yes, not no. My mother, wanting me to pick up the phone.

There are nuances to this: people who invite you to something but don't mean it, really. People who ask to come along to some event but don't really intend to. Apparently you're supposed to say yes here too, and then just deal with it. This is complicated.

There are keywords-- come by "sometime", let's go for drinks "next month," "call me next time you're in town."  I imagine some people say this and mean it, and are disappointed when I don't follow through. I assume what most of them mean is "I don't dislike you and I don't want you to dislike me, but."

But they really don't know how to deal with my oddness, or my inability to read them, or anyone. Cues are wasted on me. It's their way of not-rejecting me. Sometimes I get it. Sometimes I've even used this method of protecting my distance. I like being alone because I don't have to ride the people roller coaster.

Back then, I was probably talking about my partner, back when I was the kind of person who got upset about how the dishwasher was stacked or who dusted the bookshelves last (it was always me, unless I nagged him). It took us oh, a couple of decades to reach a stalemate on things like that.

Truth is, we both get angry when we're stressed. We both let things build up. Because of my health, there's less i can do now, and he has had to take up the slack. So I try not to be that person. Still, when the frustration bubbles up from him, I feel indignant, rejected, alone. Only now I tell myself, this is how it feels for them if I don't keep my own house in order.

Regarding bad options

Once I got lost on hike deep in the Sangre de Cristos mountains, on a stretch where the slopes were overgrown with brush and trees. The trail had disappeared under my feet, and it was getting late. I stumbled into an abandoned campsite that seemed haunted -- why just walk away and leave all your stuff? Did they make the mistakes I did, and never make it back?

The sun had begun to sink below the next ridge, but I could see the bright sky and the last sunlight still lit the eastern slope. Ahead of me was a river of boulders that had cascaded down from above. No water, just boulders bigger than me, piling up to the top of the ridge. I'd have to hop from one to the next, hundreds of feet up, to get high enough to hope to get a glimpse of my campsite, or the trail. If I slipped on the moss, I'd break my leg at the very least, and no one would ever find me. Worse was what might live there. It would take me hours to climb that.

The only other option was to hike down the overgrown slope through dense brush I knew hid rattlesnakes, bear and elk, toward the foot of the ridge, to try to follow the river back to camp. I knew both options could end with me dying alone in the middle of nowhere. But at least the river had water, and it knew where it came from.