Since diagnosis, I am much more attuned with the needs of passing as a neurotypical.  Only by realizing how I was different, could I appreciate the efforts needed to blend in with the crowd.  By understanding that I possessed a lack of affective empathy, I could make “corrections” in order to convince others that I was like them.  By realizing that others did not tend to react so violently and angrily to the slightest triggers, I could begin to rein in my own irritable behavior around others.  As rigid as the hate toward the transgender is by society, tolerance does not exist for those believed to fall on the right-end of the good/evil binary that is foolishly believed in.  Such a binary does not exist and most probably fall closer to the middle than they would like to admit, but that does not make the witch-hunt any less vicious.  It is in my best interest to hide my sociopathy, even though I would much rather be open and unmasked, if only out of convenience.

Passing may be required in order to thrive and survive, but I certainly receive help from the neurotypical on this front.  Most people are incredibly naive or delusional.  My hypothesis, based on observation, is that many will not admit any possibility that they associate with anyone so fundamentally different than them.  There are exceptions, of course, but many would rather close their eyes, cover their eyers, and sew their mouths shut than openly admit that they are in the presence of a sociopath.  The same holds true for the transgender condition.

When I, six months after diagnosis, confided to my aunt, the woman most responsible for raising me, that I was a sociopath, she gave a most interesting reaction.  I explained to her that there was a name for my constant lying, manipulation, parasitism, lack of empathy, and so on.  That name was ‘sociopath’.  She stared as me like a deer into headlights.  So I said that the equivalent diagnosis was the much more highly charged word, psychopathy.  Once again, deer in headlights.  Either she had never heard the words ‘sociopath’ and ‘psychopath’ or she was trying to reconcile my behavior with her vision of me.  I refuse to believe that she could not see such traits in me.  What I believe is that she simply chose to bury her head in the sand than admit that I was so vastly different.  We have only talked briefly about the diagnosis since.