Is there any hope for me? Disgusted.

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I have so much anxiety (and other mental issues) along with Aspergers that I'm lucky to have one semi-peaceful day. It is so rare it almost never happens. There is always something that disrupts my peace, sending me into an endless worry cycle.

Anyway, I was just going about my day, and then a friend called and said she needed help with something. It was a really important issue personal to her. So I dialed her phone. It was busy. Sent her an email. No response. Knocked on her door (she lives about 2.5 miles away). No answer. The problem she was having had something to do with a friend of hers having cancer and she was totally freaking out about it (her distraught voice was on my voicemail).

I was so frustrated that she'd left the voicemail and then fallen off the face of the earth (so it seemed). I started having paranoid thoughts after a while, wondering WTF would she say she was freaking out and then disappear. Turned out, she had left a 2nd message on my VM but somehow I skipped over it. So I was freaking over something nonexistent. She had tried to call again. It was my fault that I missed her 2nd voicemail.

So by the time I actually reached her, I was MAD. I was mad that I wasted all this time, worrying with her disappearing. So instead of comforting her about her friend being ill, I railed on and on about her making me worry. "Why the hell didn't you answer my call!?!" I nearly yelled. My tone of voice was annoyed and upset, not an iota of comfort about her or her friend with the cancer. It was all about me. I was MAD. (At the time, I thought she was just messin with my head....) Yet, it was only ONE DAY that this all happened. Why was I so impatient and miffed anyhow?! !!

(Really, you should have seen the whole conversation to know what a jerk I really was. It was all in tone of voice.) Not once did I extend any words of comfort.

Only later, did I try. But now, I fear it was too late.

I am thoroughly disgusted with myself. Disgusted that I could be so paranoid and think a friend was playing some sick mind**** by conveying acute distress and then disappearing. Disgusted that I was only thinking of a relatively calm day disrupted. I was just mad because I didn't know what the hell was going on.

Why didn't I once consider that the reason she seemed to "disappear" was because she was distressed??! ! I thought she was purposely ignoring me. I felt like a sucker, to be all concerned and then for her to go *poof*

The truth is, I missed her 2nd call. So she really had followed up on her initial distress call.

The thing that makes me feel really awful is the fact that I worked so hard to build this friendship. Up to this point, I've tended to the friendship as best as I could.

Yet, I feel like I destroyed it all by letting my anxiety take hold. My anxiety and extreme impatience with the smallest disruption are my "true colors"......I can be quite an irritable person. Things have to be 'just so' or I can be really upset. Perhaps this relates to the autism spectrum somehow.

At any rate, will all of my friendships fail in this way? I feel as though I may do OK for a while, then some small misunderstanding or incident like this will topple the house of cards. I will alienate everybody eventually and end up all alone.

That is my fear.

I'm not sure that people are so forgiving if they perceive some sort of surprise *TEMPER* like the one I displayed today.

How bad was my mistake do you think? Please tell me the honest truth.......

if it is any cold comfort to you, it was no worse than anything i might do even now. that is why i remain a hermit away from people.

I have absolutely done that countless times and felt the exact same disgust. I also suffer from anxiety and have since I was a little kid and I think my anxiety is probably the root cause of my frustration, but perhaps (a big perhaps, because I really have no idea), Asperger's is the reason for my inability to 'get over it' or react rationally. It's almost like I'm incapable of expressing the relief I feel when I finally find out that someone I was desperately worried about is all right...I always end up, like you, fuming that they hadn't done something, anything, different even if it's pretty obvious that there was nothing they could do (like no cell service). Also, as you said, even if my anxiety was a gross overreaction, I still endured the fear/worry and thus, my rage continues, unhindered. Within about five minutes of hanging up the phone after these conversations, I feel incredibly remorseful for how I reacted and call to apologize. It's a vicious cycle and I know my ex-girlfriend endured it on repeat for several years. One of my primary problems is that I have excessively high expectations for everyone else. I feel that, since I call exactly when I say I'll call, show up exactly when I said I'd show up and do everything I say I'll do, I'm always legitimately shocked when I realize that other people don't hold to these standards. Like, I'm not sitting on my high horse thinking 'I'm perfect, why can't you be?!' It's more like, I can't project anything but my understanding of myself onto everyone else. This leads to situations, like yours, where I can't even begin to imagine why that person wouldn't have answered their door or EVEN IF they'd left a second, unnoticed message, why they hadn't called once they'd seen the missed call; what could they have possibly been doing that was so distracting, it nullified their seemingly desperate need to talk to me?

"Yet, I feel like I destroyed it all by letting my anxiety take hold. My anxiety and extreme impatience with the smallest disruption are my "true colors"......I can be quite an irritable person. Things have to be 'just so' or I can be really upset. Perhaps this relates to the autism spectrum somehow."

I can completely relate to every facet of that statement. The worst thing is, the people that only know me in passing or as an acquaintance, typically, never see that side of me...it's only those that I've grown close to or who are important to me that realize just how anal I can be about things. Anyway, I've been there man, many times! I can't offer advice because my mind functions on the same wavelength so I'm open to suggestions as well .

I hate it when I don't whats happening and it also makes me anxious. Most of the time I'm by myself and I'm happy with that. Not that I'm not social, its just other people annoy the hell out of me.

I don't think all hope is lost OP. You made a small mistake but I feel you showed a genuine care for the other person and it will suck if the other person doesn't see it that way. However, this is how I see your example.

I don't see this as an autism thing, but it definitely is an anxiety thing. You allowed your ego to take control in this situation and your ego wanted you to feel bad about being ignored and express this pain to your friend in a very uncomfortable way. She didn't see the real you. She saw the illusion of what she thinks is you and her feelings and how she felt is going to treat this behaviour as unacceptable.
However, you have acknowledged in here that you are responsible for your actions. This is the hope you have of recovering your friendship with this person and be patient with her understanding of you. Let her know that you are taking responsibility for your actions and acknowledge the fact that you forgot to listen to the second voicemail at the time it happened and that maybe you should have if you were more responsibile with your own feelings. Don't be so hard on yourself and don't be hard on others either. Being hard on yourself is making you miserable and this is what your fear and your ego is doing to you. Imagine how others feel when you are hard on them too. It's a smalll mistake and you will learn from it.

Sometimes stuff happens.. People are human and our lives really aren't conditioned to expect that kind of thing.

Have you tried to apologize? I mean.. wasn't like the act was 100% selfish, you were concerned and anxious.

I would say you screwed the pooch on that one. You didn't show yourself as a real friend but as egocentric and prone to flying off the handle over some confusion. I wouldn't be surprised if they avoid you in future.

And you ask will you always be this way ?

None of us can answer that. It was and always will be your own choice. You must either be master over your anxieties or they will be master over you.

Well I have seen plenty of perfectly normal people do the same thing. And I married one of them!

Doesn't sound like an autism thing to me either, except to the extent that friends are so valuable you go crazy with worry over them and to the extent you have a hard time getting yourself settled down.

Try to remember that they're independent people and will do things that worry you and most of the time it's OK.

If they're not forgiving, they're not that great of friends. There are acquaintances-- people you hang around with for pleasant times-- and they come and go with the sunshine. Then there are friends-- they forgive you and help you figure out where you went wrong, and they tend to stick through the storms.

You should write your friend a letter/email explaining all the things you said here and just how genuinly remorseful you are. This happens sometimes but true friends can move past these things.

Hello

Just to say that your post made me think about my own behavior.

I like to think I'm not egocentric, but I can relate to this:

"So by the time I actually reached her, I was MAD. I was mad that I wasted all this time, worrying with her disappearing. So instead of comforting her about her friend being ill, I railed on and on about her making me worry. "Why the hell didn't you answer my call!?!" I nearly yelled. My tone of voice was annoyed and upset, not an iota of comfort about her or her friend with the cancer. It was all about me. I was MAD. (At the time, I thought she was just messin with my head....) Yet, it was only ONE DAY that this all happened. Why was I so impatient and miffed anyhow?! !"

My God, that's me!