Tired of expecting better when things will always be worse.

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Yeah. That looks incredibly negative from somebody who says they always expect better, but it's true.

I know I'll never find a significant other specifically because I still hold out hope that one day she'll just pop up in my life and everything will just happen. I can't officially hit that point where I "stop looking", so desperation bleeds out of me like pus from an oozing cyst.

I know my life isn't going to include owning my own home, having a family of my own, having a successful job, traveling out into the world, achieving any of my dreams, or involving any satisfaction whatsoever. But the hope won't die. And that just makes it worse because I get to be defeated every single time I fail.

This is a depression issue, of course. But the aspie aspects are old news now. I can't change how badly people react to me. I can't alter how bad I am at communicating with others. And I don't have the charisma to get those who could help to care enough to do so. I'm expected to help myself, to love myself, to care about my well being. But I don't. I've never held value in this world for anybody. I can't love something everybody else seems to hate. I'm so desperate for acceptance that I can't reject the world's opinion of me and love what they hate, because that would cause them to hate me. But they do anyway, so it doesn't matter what I do.

So basically, I'm a big sack of crazy.

I'm 30 years old, and I don't have a job, a job history, a car, or a place to live. I live with my sister only because me and my father were kicked out of the place where we used to live because the landlord wanted to charge more for rent in that apartment and couldn't legally kick my father out, and my father had a lease set from before that landlord took over that fixed his rent at a lower rate. ( The landlord found a loophole that involved flooding our apartment with sewage water. So we were chucked out onto the street. )

Despite this massive pile of failure, somewhere deep inside a glimmer of hope that things will improve still shines. And the only purpose it serves is to get my hopes up just so they can be smashed again and again.

I wish there was a way for me to lose hope and just accept defeat.

Sorry for the depressing thread.

The grass will continue to grow, with or without you. Same goes for all of us. What you are hoping for will eventually become boring. Look at all the people who have everything you say you want and who are just as depressed as you.

The lack of anything good happening to you is a blessing. All of your depression is being stored up in a bank, the currency of which you will one day recoup. The more depressed you feel, the more relief you will feel when you step out of it. But to recoup it you have to stop hoping for anything.

There is a way to lose hope, and that is to lose it. It is a simple decision. You will lose it, even if it takes you until you're on your deathbed to realize it, because when your life is about to end will you see that there is no point in hoping for anything.

Just imagine yourself in that situation, pretend like this is your last instant of life, and see that there is no point in hoping for anything. You can acquire nothing through hope, you cannot grasp something from the future and put it in the now.

There is no defeat from getting rid of hope. Defeat is looking for something to fix everything in an instant, without even trying to do anything about your situation. The good news is, you do not have to go to a workshop or read a self-help book or get a job or a girlfriend. All you have to do is lose hope, which you can do whenever you like, could be today, could be 10 years from now, could be on your deathbed. But why not do it now?

Sorry for sounding all spiritual.

I kept waiting and waiting for "Someday". Then I wondered if "Someday" had come and gone without my even noticing it. Then I finally realized that there is no such day as "Someday". There is only today.

A stone house is built one rock at a time. So is a life.

Or a new Life.

You can honestly blame some real handicaps on your condition, but you can't blame all obstacles to progress on it. Things like lack of motivation, lack of determination, lack of effort... things which all people, NT or AS share equal potential for. Depression and Inactivity have always been equal opportunity employers.

I don't know how much is external and how much is your own doing, only you do. But I think your self respect depends on knowing you are giving it your best shot. I also think others respect for you depends on that. Its not so much how far you get, as much as how hard you are trying.

There was a time, back when I was 30, when life was as bad as it could have gotten with me. It was my absolutely lowest point. I've since bounced back. Life isn't perfect now - and I won't achieve "normal average" things like house, family and mortgage. I'm not ready to throw in the towel, though, because I'm hoping the book I'm writing will be successful. I won't know till I go all the way with it. And I guess that's all I have left - hope.

groisht
Believe me, if I could force myself to lose hope I would. Right now it's like self-torture when I sit down and tell myself a thousand times, "You are not going to succeed. It is too late in your life. Give up.". And do it until I'm sick with misery and feel numb to everything else. And then in a week or so see that a place is hiring, and go dress myself up and head in for an application ( and get told to go to their **** website because nobody wants applicants inside their store any more. ) and sure enough I start thinking, "This time I'll get hired. I'll dig in my heels and tear myself out of this hole and make something of myself."

And time and time again, no calls for an interview. And my hopes shatter.

The hope simply will not die. Somewhere inside of me is this uber peppy positive twit who refuses to admit total defeat. I want that part of me to expire and collapse in a heap, screaming in agony while throwing in the towel. That same twit is the reason I've never resorted to crime, drug use, alcohol, or anything morally wrong. And frankly, it's my worst personality trait.

Don't get me wrong, though. It's awesome on somebody who is physically attractive and has even the tiniest fleck of charisma buried inside their personality. But it's just cruelty when applied to somebody that is physically, mentally, and spiritually repulsive. Like an extremely affectionate dog with no skin, covered in pus, and suffering an odor so foul that it would drive away maggots.

CrazyStarlightRedux
I actually did go to the local unemployment office. And was promptly informed that they could not help me because I did not have reliable transportation. ( Which I don't. My sister doesn't have the money or time to step away from taking her kids to school and going on errands to stick to a schedule of driving me to work. And my mother is in the same boat. ) The career center basically told me to go apply for jobs online. Which drags out the transportation issue. And before it comes up, there is no public transportation that will come out this far into the country without wanting excessive amounts of money. Something I would not have without having a job first.

Mindsigh
That's my problem. "Someday" never goes away in the back of my mind. I try to live in the misery of the moment, and then I see a job posting, or a pretty girl who didn't immediately scowl when I looked at her, and boom. Hope springs eternal.

Toy_Soldier
I actually don't blame my condition for much of anything. I still hesitate to say I have AS simply because it would allow me to blame at least some little things on it. I do know that when I try to be friendly, people are cold and short with me. And that even the happy talkative people go silent and wary when I join in the conversation. Co-workers are always on edge and never show interest in anything I say. Managers are always quick to lay blame on me when things go badly at work. Customers are always "fed up with this" when they get to me with complaints. I consider that I may just be misinterpreting behavior through the negative filter created from a depression-fried mind. But then when I end up in fights with co-workers all the time despite the fact I am a pacifist and never push myself onto other people unless they specifically state they want my involvement, I have to wonder if there's a sphere of awareness I completely lack.

Or I could just be a complete and total jack***. I have no idea. I can't control the outcome no matter how I try to change or how friendly I try to be. ( And I have TRIED. ) So the end result is I am either broken, or I am worthless.

redrobin62
That's my problem. There's a part of me that absolutely loathes doing things halfway. I wanted to experience everything an average person has in their life. Going to college, getting a bad job and working it out until I can get a better one, having those awkward first dates and going through a few bad relationships until I eventually find that one person I want to spend my life with, having a couple of kids and stumbling through parenthood constantly obsessing over whether I was a good father or not, and getting into countless arguments with them when they get to being teenagers, but ultimately watching them ( hopefully ) grow into competent adults, and spending the rest of my life working with my wife to ensure that we can retire happy, and have some grandkids to spoil.

But that door is shut. I'm never going to college. I tried to go through that door and ended up being forced to drop out because I lost my transportation to the campus. And now I'm under a massive pile of student loan debt that will never go away and prevents me from going anywhere else until it gets paid because my credit is absolute rubbish. I'm never going to have a good job. I'm too old to get enough experience to reach a good position. I'm never going to have a wife. I have zero dating experience and I'm not attracted to women who have more experience than I do because being the "student" in a relationship is repulsive to me. And mentally stable women my age aren't going to be going on the same lack of experience that I have in dating. I will never have kids for obvious reasons. I'll never own my own home, especially with the tremendous cost of living making it so that even living in an apartment alone is impossible. I have failed at life, and I have another 20 years or so to stand on the docks watching my ship sail away.

However, I won't discourage other people from following their dreams if they can still reach them. So I do hope you have luck with publishing your book. (: Definitely don't give up until you've clawed and scraped your way as far as you can go, and your fingers are aching, your muscles are failing, and your breath is shallow. And even then still dig in and fight as hard as you can to make it happen.

Incidentally, this line comes from the part of me that I wish would stop trying to motivate my own goals.

I feel like that all the time. I'm almost 24 and have jack to show for it. Meanwhile, everybody I know who's like 17 or 18 already has everything, despite not working hard to get it.

I feel like I'm cursed. Technically I'm supposed to be dead right now. I was given a 5% chance of life. I wish that 5% hadn't happened now, TBH. I don't have a place in this world except to be crapped on. And even though I'm alive, I have to live with my deafness, my speech impediment, my depression, anxiety, Marfan syndrome (which made me disfigured), and like 7 other things that make it difficult for me to get up in the morning.

So over the years, I've stopped hoping for anything. So I know exactly how you feel.

groisht
The issue is the fact that I have been fighting it for almost 20 years. I started losing hope when I was 13. Failed at what I attempted and got locked up for three months with pills being thrown at me. I got out and the pills just made me worse.

Knew there was no hope when I hit 18. I hadn't had anything normal guys are supposed to have by then. No dates, no girlfriends, no friends, no job, no car, no prospects. I had failed. That was it. My life was going to suck.

But the hope didn't die. I was desperate to end that positive streak clawing at my thoughts every damn day I woke up and realized my life was over. No social skills and I'm supposed to be an adult. NOTHING LEFT. Stupid brain won't accept it. This world runs on social ability. I wasn't going to magically have it.

Hit 25 and I was absolutely insane with desire to kill all hope that things would improve. One quarter of a century old. No friends, no relationships. No jobs. No money. I had failed completely and entirely. Nowhere to go, damnit. And yet STILL in the back of my head "Things will get better. They have to. It always gets better eventually!". NO. It does not. Die, hope, die. But it stuck.

30 years old. I'm middle-aged. Nothing. Nothing. Stop hoping. The only thing that can save me is a mentally stable pretty girl who hasn't been married before or dated a lot of guys and isn't currently dating anybody who WANTS a nutcase with massive social, mental, physical, and psychological issues. And wants ME and not the countless other shut-in cases who would be clamoring for her attention. And a decent paying job that ignores a decade of unemployment, requires nothing more than a high school education, offers transportation to work, is okay with a lack of desire to deal with the general public, fine with an intense problem with authority, and wants an employee with the mental accuracy of a brain-damaged house fly.

There is no hope. Period. The end. Game over. Mission Failed. Do not pass Go. Do not collect any income. Go directly to the grave.

But no. The hope doesn't die.

( I'll reply to you other guys later on. My sister is on the warpath and I have to get off the internet. )

OP I know how you feel nearly on every point you have discussed.
I'm 27, no job, no partner, few friends, no prospects, no real qualifications, no quantifiable skills but still there is the hope that is drilled into me from a society which says you can do whatever you want and be whomever you want to be. I'm not American but it's the American dream adage that springs to mind.
It's got to the point now where I just don't care. I don't care about myself and I have convinced myself that I deserve nothing but misery. I am too afraid to do anything, I'm a wimp and as a result I clearly deserve all the bad s**t that comes my way.
The way I see it is that everyone needs 'that' person in their life that is pathetic by comparison. So in a way I feel like my pathetic life makes people feel better, because if anyone else is sad I tell them to compare their lives to mine and voilà, instant smile.
All this coupled with apathy and borderline nihilism.
Still I don't feel like I want to die so much, I just feel so pissed off that I'm here in the first place. I've been given a cruel life, a life of absolute misery, and the chances of it getting any better are slim to none. But all this being said I only have myself to blame (and my parents for thinking it was a good idea to have me), hence my self loathing and the conviction that I am worthless.

DialAForAwesome

Yeah. I have the same feeling when I see kids ten years younger than me with a job, a house of their own, and a family. Originally I thought this sort of thing was default for everybody. Life just leads you there. But it didn't happen for me. So I had to fight to accept that it only happens if you fight for it to happen. But then everyone else seemed to walk right into it. So in the end it still looks like default, I just got rejected.

That absolutely sucks that you got so many hurdles thrown in your way. And people never seem to understand that those sorts of things aren't a choice. But people are shallow and in general stupid. So otherwise good and intelligent people get driven into self-hatred because they think the things out of their control are their fault. This is cruelty. And by no means am I saying my problems stack up equally to the stuff you are dealing with. You're a lot stronger than I am. I can't handle things as it is, and I'm just unpopular and socially inept.

Toy_Soldier

Something that has been drilled into my skull for years is that I shouldn't worry about what other people think. And while I do believe this to be sound advice, I can't apply it to everyone. This is an argument I had with my mother recently. Well, actually, this is an unending argument that I've had with my mother since I was thirteen.

The world around a person is defined by the people inside of it. Ignore the cannibals and sun bathe with that new honey roasted turkey scented tanning oil and you'll wake up missing a few toes. Unfortunately this lack of being able to ignore has driven me down into being absolutely fixated on everything that can create a potential negative influence in my life. That includes co-workers, bosses, repeat customers, landlords, and anyone else who has control over my quality of life.

The big slap in the face comes when passing interaction with those influential entities ends in a negative or otherwise awkward way. I am no longer "new". I am "that weird guy" or "that guy who made that unfunny joke". And then I am trapped in watching how they react to me from that point on. Which has, so far, always been progressively more negative until conflict arises and they take the opposing side regardless of who is right.

You are right in that I tend to feel better when I've been around people who have been in similar situations. Despite my descriptive capability being somewhat adequate, my ability to explain the way I feel, or how I see things, is absolute rubbish. I either describe things in such a complicated way that it sounds like I'm trying to use big words to look elitist, or in such a crude manner that it sounds like I am faking it to get attention. Only people who have felt the way I do too can usually see through the fog and catch my meaning. Which has admittedly gained me a few friends through mutual suffering.

At least until they hit that mysteriously appearing and very inevitable "Oh" point and begin to avoid me, too. My best guess is that my lack of social skills starts to outweigh my value as an understanding friend after so long. It's better that way, though. Hanging around guys is awkward for me because I end up hearing about their girlfriends, and get more depressed. And hanging out with girls always ends with me getting too attached, causing the understandable forced rejection to shatter my confidence and drive me to loathe myself for being so stupid and clingy, and disappear from their life entirely.

Luckily only six people in the world have had to suffer through that garbage with me. And four of those didn't really call me a friend in the first place.

I'm pretty realistic these days, though. So folks here won't have to worry about me bothering them outside of my own threads. I can barely stay sane with the garbage I am dealing with from my sister without going into the stress-fest that is trying not to offend people I want to keep as friends online. Of course that doesn't mean I won't offer advice or at least shared feelings on a subject if it comes up. I don't think I'd be a very good member of the boards if I never tried to help anybody else feel better.

Paulie_C

This will sound weird coming from me, but I actually don't think anybody is worthless. We've all got our own talents and strengths. Each person has some capacity in which they can be a valuable asset to the world. It's all a matter of finding it and digging in deep.

However.

People run this world. And if those people don't like a person, walls are thrown up. Required money is laid in the way and insane amounts of required likability stand as a massive roadblock to people who don't have the key we're all supposed to have by default. Social skills.

I'm good at drawing certain things. I'd almost say above average. But that means jack squat because I don't know the right people, I don't have the confidence to show what I have to anybody, and I'm not likable enough for somebody who did like my work to really give that extra push into the field if they had the power to do so. ( My own aunt, for example. ) Without that baseline social ability, I am essentially a wasted life. All my ability in art, music, sculpting, programming, all of it is rubbish because I'm simply not likable enough to go anywhere with it. I don't blame the world for my failure, but my self image didn't plummet until I started getting my ass kicked in elementary school and had people throwing every insult they could at me simply because I wasn't like everyone else.

Does this make me worthless? No. It does not. But that's why I get so angry. I FEEL like I am worthless. I hate who I am. And that's because I am so eager to please the twits who slapped me down my entire life that I think if I hate what they hate, that they will like me. They won't. But I still hope they will.

Yeah. Hope.

Sweet Pea hugs