I have a disorder that causes me to process information slower. So a small conversation could feel like a satisfying one. And a fast one takes time for me to process everything that's said. So if someone is looking for a quick response after they finish speaking for longer than 30 seconds I will need to take some time to process the information which was spoken to me. This causes me to not really be a fun person to talk to. I can't really train my social skills past my mental illness so being witty is almost virtually impossible. Now that we got that out of the way, let's get to my story.


We met in December. In the beginning, we could talk for hours. You see, I've taken every single social skill advice in the book. Ask questions, emotional responses, pay attention to what the other person was saying. My auditory processing disorder made that hard sometimes but I managed since the environment was mostly quiet. So my first impression was of someone who can handle themselves well in a conversation. All thanks to the advice of the internet. Thanks, internet. 

Now there's one piece of information the internet left out...That this advice is meant to grow you as a person in terms of social skills. Now, most of my social skills problems were caused by my mental illness. Stuff like "asking questions", "looking at people in their eyes", was stuff I could actually work on. But that advice is just meant as a starting point to jump off at to become a good conversationalist. Here's the problem, I have a mental illness that causes me not to get there. Right now I would say I am as good as I ever can be social. I'm confident enough to walk up to a random stranger and ask them a question just like how I'm confident enough to ask someone out on a date. My problem is, after someone knows me for a while, it's almost like this "confident" side of me fades into obscurity as they start to jumpstart quick-witted conversations with me that I can't process in time to make a good response back. Even deeper conversations can be complicated when I don't have time to respond to everything a person says. And sadly, this goes for texting too. Because I process information a lot slower than others I can be fully satisfied by a 2-minute texting conversation when compared to others who can text for hours. And when I'm in a group chat, I get extremely left behind by how many text bubbles are coming out of nowhere.

So me and that person I was talking about earlier, how the friendship ended a few days ago. And I don't know why. They're just not talking to me anymore. They have no interest in me anymore. The reason I don't know, but what I can say is after we talked that night I become a more quiet and closed-off person. Not because I want to, but because I just ran out of things to say. I'm not able to process what I want to say fast enough to make a sufficient response.