jtab7800
Member
I recently realized that I haven't posted anything on Autism Forums since September. Things haven’t really gotten any better. So far, I’ve done two threads since I joined this forum over a year ago -- this one and this one. I’ve elaborated on some things in each of those two threads. And things have since gotten worse than what some might’ve read in those two threads.
I feel like, after everything I've been through in what's been a life of suffering, I'm not in a good place. I feel like I'm in a place in my mind where I'm feeling hopelessness, despair, and enough pain inside of me to make me wonder if life ever is bearable. And now it's taking a toll on my physical health, leading me to wonder of I have an ulcer that hasn't yet become a bleeding ulcer.
My mother has definitely gotten even more temperamental this year, if that’s even possible. Shortly before I was diagnosed with what used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome, at age 27, things got better with my Father and I, after he had a triple bypass done because of his heart problem. A few days after the surgery, when my brother and I were reunited with him in the hospital, he broke down in tears, and said he loved us.
When I was diagnosed, Dad started understanding me a lot more, and we got along great. And then 7 years later, he passed away at age 60, and that took away someone important to me. These days, I wish I could talk to him about some things. I still have moments where I break down some because I miss him.
It was a bigger loss to me than my mother sometimes acts like she thinks it is. I know that it happened 15 years ago, but I was told that there’s not a strict timetable on grief, and that while things might get better, how you feel about the loss doesn’t go away. But she acts like I should’ve moved on as soon as possible. She has actually said “When your Dad died, you died.”
At least twice during arguments over the past few years, she has actually said “You wish I was the one who died instead of your Dad!” That’s how nasty she can truly get when she’s angry.
For me, things flat-out refuse to get better. I’ll be 50 in November — almost 50 years of a life of suffering so far — and I have never reached any of the common milestones that adults reach so often. I have never been given the chance to learn how to drive. My mother doesn’t seem to have much trust in the idea that I can concentrate enough, but my concentration level is better than she gives it credit for.
Some of us on the autism spectrum can have a memory that some people might find amazing. My long-term memory is like a vault with a 3-foot thick door. When I was 3-years-old, I witnessed our home burn down, and for a time afterwards, I had nightmares about fires. I almost lost my right eye when a lawn mower threw a piece of gravel into it when I was 4-years-old, and the recovery took several months where I knew pain more than anything else -- we even have a picture of me wearing a patch taped over my eye on my 5th birthday.
The trauma didn’t stop there. I was the constant target of bullying during my school years, and treated like garbage in various other ways, even by some of the teachers and principals that I had.
When I was 17, only one girl ever even thought about giving me a chance, and it wasn’t much of a chance to begin with -- she ended up moving in with another guy, without any goodbye, and without ever giving me any heads-up whatsoever. When I tried to call the girl, I learned about it from her mother. I'm not afraid to admit that I ended up breaking down in my mother’s arms that day because of that girl’s heartless cruelty. But heartless cruelty is what’s been inflicted on me the most in my life.
Over the years, after I got diagnosed, I’ve felt like women probably think that me having ASD is an instant deal breaker, which is why I feel reluctant to mention it. I might be well-spoken most of the time, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to look down on anyone, and act like I think that I’m better than anyone. I know for a fact that I’m not perfect, and I don’t hide that fact.
I wish they could find it in their hearts to take the time to find out that people like me can be loving people, but, not to offend anyone, I get the impression that so many of them seem so superficial that it’s like they’re judging a book by its cover, instead of stopping to look inside.
They’ve made me wonder if they think I’m an ugly gross-out who is not attractive enough. And people tell me that I look a bit younger than I really am.
Also, I haven’t had very many friends in my life, but I have a couple of friends that I’ve known for more than 20 years. They’re not on the autism spectrum, but they’re understanding.
My, mother, my brother, and I moved to the eastern part of the Florida panhandle a couple of years ago, and I haven’t had hardly any luck making friends there, and I’ve had zero luck in meeting women. I don’t intend to offend anyone, but Florida doesn’t seem to be a good state for a person on the autism spectrum, or with any other disability, to be in. It’s like there’s hardly anything there for people like us.
I have never had a girlfriend before. What I’d love to have is someone in my life who I can love deeply -- someone who is willing to put her arms around me, make me a believer in love, and lift away the empty shadow across my heart as I hold her in my arms and tell her that I'm thankful to her that I no longer have to feel the pain of that shadow of loneliness. But I get the impression that no woman one this Earth would ever even think about ever giving me a chance, even if I was the only man left on Earth. I can’t think of anyone my age who has never dated before.
I feel like women never notice that I exist -- or are they pretending that I don’t exist? Sometimes, I wonder if women would breathe a deep sigh of relief of relief if I actually ceased to exist. I would love for them to realize that people on the autism spectrum are human beings, just like they are.
I often wonder something -- if there truly is a God, why does he think my life should be filled with suffering? Am I being punished because God thinks it was a mistake for me to be born?
Years ago, I came to the realization that it’s turned me into the kind of person who shows compassion, a person whose heart can’t bear to watch other people suffer without feeling like doing something to stop the suffering. But I feel helpless to.
I even feel helpless to stop my own suffering. And I feel like my mother, possibly without meaning to sometimes, keeps throwing obstacles in front of me.
I’ve long been out of my childhood, and she makes me feel like she never wants to let go, let me out of my childhood, and show her what kind of adult I can be. My mother seemingly comes across not wanting to see me as one. She tells me that she's trying to protect me, but does that mean not allowing me to have an adult life?
I’ve reached a point where I feel like it’s time to give up, after this many years, and just say that the rest of the world has won, and I've lost, as usual. I feel like the world's biggest loser, and I'm not talking about the similarly-named TV show about people losing weight, although I have been trying to lose weight in hopes of being more attractive, and I've dropped 15 pounds so far. Giving up on something is not what I’m normally known for, so that shows how much everything I’ve been through has pushed me.
I feel like I know when I’ve lost, and when there’s no chance of overcoming everything that’s been in my way. My entire life has been loneliness, and there’s no indication that it’s going to ever be anything other than that.
And being alone in the world is one of my biggest fears in life, especially since my mother and brother are both having health problems — my mother with her COPD, and my brother with his kidney problems, which have had him on dialysis for 10 years. He uses a wheelchair because he has Spina bifida, a birth defect in the spinal area. For his entire life, he's been paralyzed from the waist down.
The last time he was in the hospital, I had a nightmare that I ended up alone in the world, and the nightmare ended with me in tears. Maybe that’s how my life is supposed to end. I don’t know. I just hope it’s not. I truly hope that I’m meant to finally find happiness in my life, after so long without it.
Like I said before, even my health is starting to become slightly suspect, after all of the stress my life has caused me. One of the things I hate the most is to have an anxiety attack — I don’t like how that feels. If things get better, and the stress level gets lower, then maybe those problems would diminish.
As for now, I’m not really holding out much hope. Every time I do feel any hope, something, or someone, jerks it away. I always wish for hope that can be sustained, and can lead to something good. I feel like it’s time for all of the misery and all of the bad things to end, and give way to good things.
I’m sorry that this post is so long, but I feel like I got some things off my chest that I couldn't say to my mother. Anyone who reads this, thank you so much for listening. I do appreciate it.
I feel like, after everything I've been through in what's been a life of suffering, I'm not in a good place. I feel like I'm in a place in my mind where I'm feeling hopelessness, despair, and enough pain inside of me to make me wonder if life ever is bearable. And now it's taking a toll on my physical health, leading me to wonder of I have an ulcer that hasn't yet become a bleeding ulcer.
My mother has definitely gotten even more temperamental this year, if that’s even possible. Shortly before I was diagnosed with what used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome, at age 27, things got better with my Father and I, after he had a triple bypass done because of his heart problem. A few days after the surgery, when my brother and I were reunited with him in the hospital, he broke down in tears, and said he loved us.
When I was diagnosed, Dad started understanding me a lot more, and we got along great. And then 7 years later, he passed away at age 60, and that took away someone important to me. These days, I wish I could talk to him about some things. I still have moments where I break down some because I miss him.
It was a bigger loss to me than my mother sometimes acts like she thinks it is. I know that it happened 15 years ago, but I was told that there’s not a strict timetable on grief, and that while things might get better, how you feel about the loss doesn’t go away. But she acts like I should’ve moved on as soon as possible. She has actually said “When your Dad died, you died.”
At least twice during arguments over the past few years, she has actually said “You wish I was the one who died instead of your Dad!” That’s how nasty she can truly get when she’s angry.
For me, things flat-out refuse to get better. I’ll be 50 in November — almost 50 years of a life of suffering so far — and I have never reached any of the common milestones that adults reach so often. I have never been given the chance to learn how to drive. My mother doesn’t seem to have much trust in the idea that I can concentrate enough, but my concentration level is better than she gives it credit for.
Some of us on the autism spectrum can have a memory that some people might find amazing. My long-term memory is like a vault with a 3-foot thick door. When I was 3-years-old, I witnessed our home burn down, and for a time afterwards, I had nightmares about fires. I almost lost my right eye when a lawn mower threw a piece of gravel into it when I was 4-years-old, and the recovery took several months where I knew pain more than anything else -- we even have a picture of me wearing a patch taped over my eye on my 5th birthday.
The trauma didn’t stop there. I was the constant target of bullying during my school years, and treated like garbage in various other ways, even by some of the teachers and principals that I had.
When I was 17, only one girl ever even thought about giving me a chance, and it wasn’t much of a chance to begin with -- she ended up moving in with another guy, without any goodbye, and without ever giving me any heads-up whatsoever. When I tried to call the girl, I learned about it from her mother. I'm not afraid to admit that I ended up breaking down in my mother’s arms that day because of that girl’s heartless cruelty. But heartless cruelty is what’s been inflicted on me the most in my life.
Over the years, after I got diagnosed, I’ve felt like women probably think that me having ASD is an instant deal breaker, which is why I feel reluctant to mention it. I might be well-spoken most of the time, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to look down on anyone, and act like I think that I’m better than anyone. I know for a fact that I’m not perfect, and I don’t hide that fact.
I wish they could find it in their hearts to take the time to find out that people like me can be loving people, but, not to offend anyone, I get the impression that so many of them seem so superficial that it’s like they’re judging a book by its cover, instead of stopping to look inside.
They’ve made me wonder if they think I’m an ugly gross-out who is not attractive enough. And people tell me that I look a bit younger than I really am.
Also, I haven’t had very many friends in my life, but I have a couple of friends that I’ve known for more than 20 years. They’re not on the autism spectrum, but they’re understanding.
My, mother, my brother, and I moved to the eastern part of the Florida panhandle a couple of years ago, and I haven’t had hardly any luck making friends there, and I’ve had zero luck in meeting women. I don’t intend to offend anyone, but Florida doesn’t seem to be a good state for a person on the autism spectrum, or with any other disability, to be in. It’s like there’s hardly anything there for people like us.
I have never had a girlfriend before. What I’d love to have is someone in my life who I can love deeply -- someone who is willing to put her arms around me, make me a believer in love, and lift away the empty shadow across my heart as I hold her in my arms and tell her that I'm thankful to her that I no longer have to feel the pain of that shadow of loneliness. But I get the impression that no woman one this Earth would ever even think about ever giving me a chance, even if I was the only man left on Earth. I can’t think of anyone my age who has never dated before.
I feel like women never notice that I exist -- or are they pretending that I don’t exist? Sometimes, I wonder if women would breathe a deep sigh of relief of relief if I actually ceased to exist. I would love for them to realize that people on the autism spectrum are human beings, just like they are.
I often wonder something -- if there truly is a God, why does he think my life should be filled with suffering? Am I being punished because God thinks it was a mistake for me to be born?
Years ago, I came to the realization that it’s turned me into the kind of person who shows compassion, a person whose heart can’t bear to watch other people suffer without feeling like doing something to stop the suffering. But I feel helpless to.
I even feel helpless to stop my own suffering. And I feel like my mother, possibly without meaning to sometimes, keeps throwing obstacles in front of me.
I’ve long been out of my childhood, and she makes me feel like she never wants to let go, let me out of my childhood, and show her what kind of adult I can be. My mother seemingly comes across not wanting to see me as one. She tells me that she's trying to protect me, but does that mean not allowing me to have an adult life?
I’ve reached a point where I feel like it’s time to give up, after this many years, and just say that the rest of the world has won, and I've lost, as usual. I feel like the world's biggest loser, and I'm not talking about the similarly-named TV show about people losing weight, although I have been trying to lose weight in hopes of being more attractive, and I've dropped 15 pounds so far. Giving up on something is not what I’m normally known for, so that shows how much everything I’ve been through has pushed me.
I feel like I know when I’ve lost, and when there’s no chance of overcoming everything that’s been in my way. My entire life has been loneliness, and there’s no indication that it’s going to ever be anything other than that.
And being alone in the world is one of my biggest fears in life, especially since my mother and brother are both having health problems — my mother with her COPD, and my brother with his kidney problems, which have had him on dialysis for 10 years. He uses a wheelchair because he has Spina bifida, a birth defect in the spinal area. For his entire life, he's been paralyzed from the waist down.
The last time he was in the hospital, I had a nightmare that I ended up alone in the world, and the nightmare ended with me in tears. Maybe that’s how my life is supposed to end. I don’t know. I just hope it’s not. I truly hope that I’m meant to finally find happiness in my life, after so long without it.
Like I said before, even my health is starting to become slightly suspect, after all of the stress my life has caused me. One of the things I hate the most is to have an anxiety attack — I don’t like how that feels. If things get better, and the stress level gets lower, then maybe those problems would diminish.
As for now, I’m not really holding out much hope. Every time I do feel any hope, something, or someone, jerks it away. I always wish for hope that can be sustained, and can lead to something good. I feel like it’s time for all of the misery and all of the bad things to end, and give way to good things.
I’m sorry that this post is so long, but I feel like I got some things off my chest that I couldn't say to my mother. Anyone who reads this, thank you so much for listening. I do appreciate it.
