It's funny looking back on people who I've met who have loudly declared, "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU THINK!" They clearly do. Someone who genuinely didn't care wouldn't even feel the need to shout about it. They would just ignore you.

It's interesting to compare this to some autistic people, who often aren't even aware of something to even consider whether they care about it. I think of my uncle, who has never been diagnosed but seems to be more autistic than me. He genuinely doesn't seem to care about other people. But it's not that he's aware of other people but actively not caring. He's not even aware that he needs to consider other people. There's a very real blind spot there.

For example, he has no children, so my brother and I are his only younger family members. But a while back he announced that he isn't going to be leaving us anything in his will. Normally, you would only leave family members out of your will if you'd had a big falling out and hated them, right? But he genuinely doesn't even think it's necessary in the first place. It's not that we've fallen out. It's that there's never even been a bond there in the first place. It's like he's just some random bloke who happens to be my mum's brother.

A few years ago, when his aunt was terminally ill with cancer, he never visted her once. She lived in the same county, about 30 minutes drive away, and he was retired, with no shortage of money for petrol.

He'd never had a falling-out with his aunt, as far as I was aware. It's just that he never considered it necessary to visit her, even when she was dying. He turned up to the funeral, though, because there was food there.