Accepting what you missed in life

Post Reply New Topic

I think there is quite a 'fox and the grapes' attitude going on here, how do I deal with what I've missed out on in life which is essentially almost everything? By being miserable I guess, I haven't live a life worth living. If I were to die tomorrow probably only my immediate family would care or notice.

I've worked hard to try to change, to achieve a semblance of normalcy, I've made a lot of progress in the last year but it feels like a Sisyphean task where there is always this impending sense of doom that the whole charade will inevitably fail and that I'll be thrown back to square one. I can do these things that normal people do but I'll never be apart of the group, I'll never be happy, what's the point? Playing video games and wasting my time on the internet, is that all I have to look forward to for the next 70 years if I'm lucky? **** that.

You're still young, Jacoby. You have a long ways to go before all is said and done.

As difficult as it's been for me of late, I don't regret my whole life. You have a lot of time to change your stars, as some say. You also are young enough to benefit from the great science we are seeing everywhere these days. Even if nothing great happens improving the autistic experience, there will be many other things that could benefit all of us and others without autism. I guess that's part of why I've chosen to stick around, at least for the time being. It's never too late to make positive steps. Even if they fail, you can look back with pride that you tried and did your best...

Yeah, that's what I'm fretting about. It's hard to imagine a life that is different, I accept that nobody is going to tap me on the shoulder and save me. I've never been a lucky person, I don't expect anything good to ever happen just by chance. In the end I am the only agent of change in my life and I have disability that severely limits my ability to connect to outside world, I have no idea how functional of person I can be since I haven't been one up until this point. I know I have it in me to be self destructive, when you get pushed to that edge you stop caring about yourself + a lot of other things and you just want to escape and to feel better in that moment. That might be the only time I feel any sort of enjoyment.

Honestly, the more I think about my life the more it upsets me because even the good memories are corrupted. I had a pretty large extended family at one time, I thought they were loving and cared about me but I guess that went away once I became an adult. The last time I will probably ever see or speak to most of them again was at my grandmother's funeral a few years ago. Everybody good goes away or betrays you eventually. That has been the experience of my life and it doesn't predicate itself into getting better, just worse.

Things can be worse. I grew up in a broken home back when even mentally ill and alcoholic mothers always got custody. Guess what I got. Back then, autism wasn't recognized or diagnosed, so I had no clue what was wrong with me. I didn't get out of that terrible environment until I was 19 years old. When I did, I had few resources and no idea how to get better. I simply persevered. That's a big secret to getting through life, autistic or not. Another thing, there is no certainty to what happens after death. If it's nothingness as I believe, the suffering would be over. If I'm wrong and it's paradise, it will still be there whenever I die. If I choose to deal as best I can, I might make my life better. I figure either way it makes sense to keep trying as long as we can. We can never know what's just around the corner that has the power to change everything. We live in an astonishing age full of possible peril and great things as well. I believe those great things will win out in the end and things will be better...

One other thing, remember you are on a forum with thousands of people with many viewpoints. We all, however, have autism. We have far more in common than not, even those you, I, and others strongly disagree with. At the end of the day, we all have each others backs regarding autism. There are also always people here who will listen and help encourage us. We need to use that resource when necessary...

...I'm not young .

I'm 65...

I somehow very much doubt the average person in the west goes through something akin of being bullied to the point of contemplating suicide, being completely socially ostracised and being rejected and humiliated by peers through entire college. In the aftermath having bi-monthly recurring depression because of horrible childhood / teenage experiences completely messing up your mental development.

This is what a lot of people with autism go through, if you didn't you should consider yourself lucky.

For myself, what I've had the most pain over is the disconnection between myself and others. We are autistic but we are still human animals, and human animals need their tribe/pack/group-sense of belonging. It's physically painful to be disconnected, or treated like an outsider all the time, or not being welcomed as part of the group, etc. The things we've missed are often the things that mark our being part of the world around us.

Getting older sometimes it's easier to accept what I've missed. I realize what b.s. almost all of it is. But it still comes to me once in awhile, usually when my work place, neighborhood, or family has suddenly gone out of its way to point out how much I don't "fit", or how I "fit" only in a most superficial way, that this is still very painful. I don't imagine that that will ever really change.

The secret to surviving those times is to simply get through today and let tomorrow take care of itself. If the next day is the same, start with step 1 again and keep doing so until things change...

Whenever I try to tell my story, I usually get the "everybody gets bullied". When I was three years looking for work, I was repeatedly told "everyone goes through that". Ugh. The worst is when I hear people say "(s)he wasn't suicidal, she was just trying to get attention. Right.... that's why and most others told literally nobody growing up. College wasn't bad but there is a difference between being teased lightly and having half the class cheer (and the other half remain silent enablers) when someone says they wished you would drop dead.... before you even open your mouth in the first week of school.

Sticks and stones may break bones but at least bones heal. Being verbally tortured destroys your entire sense of self-worth.

Like a lot of older aspie's who didn't get diagnosed till later in life, I went through hell growing up and never understood why. And now that I know? Well let's see. First there was the relief. There is an explanation and I'm not just that weird crazy guy. And then comes the anger. Why me? Why did I have to be born before science realized that just because I could talk normally (if a bit monotone) as a kid and had a high IQ didn't mean I wasn't struggling to deal with life in the NT world. And for me, the anger lasted for a while. But then I read these forums and I realize that yes, I had a horrible childhood and adolescence. Yes, I went many years as a functional addict, using drugs to self medicate. Yes, I have schizophrenia which also wasn't recognized till later in life. Yes, I had to constantly rebuild my life after each psychotic break which came every 3-7 years. Yes, I have been homeless for months at a time while I rebuilt my sanity and life.

But despite all that, I have been very lucky. I could mostly control the schizophrenia using my aspie logic (although I didn't realize that's what I was doing at the time). Each time I recovered from the attacks, I had an extremely in demand skill set (software developer) and rarely was I without a good paying job. I have had long term relationships in the good years and one that survived 15 years (he was an addict too and didn't realize the boom and bust nature of our lives wasn't normal). And then a hemorrhagic stroke (hypertension induced a ruptured aneurysm) a few years ago lead me to get all sorts of neurological testing and suddenly I was no longer the crazy weird guy. Medication soon followed (which was no fun to find the right ones let me tell you) and today I am the head of my companies IT department. And I have a partner who understands me and my needs.

So yes, I have accepted that I don't and never had a so called normal life. But I live independently, I have love (what I think love is anyway). I have solitude when I need it, and companionship when I don't. And that puts me ahead, not just for an Autistic, but for most of the NT's out there. I can't think that my life would have been any better without my aspie strengths, and in fact could have been a lot worse. I think about how lucky I was to have the logical thinking to combat the schizophrenia and lessen it's impact on my life. How lucky I was to have the intelligence to teach myself how to program. And the shear stubbornness (it seems to be a common aspie trait too ) to pick myself up after each fall.

What I don't accept is the lack of funding in way too many school systems to provide for autistic programs. What I don't accept is the sheer lack of knowledge about and the all too common misconceptions about us. Who would have the cruelty to ask a man with no legs to crawl up the stairs? Yet we are constantly asked to do just that (I know, i'm preaching to the choir).

Hmm, this post got a bit longer then I intended, so I'll stop now.

I think we all can get carried away with anger about the present state of affairs regarding autism. That's what this forum is for. It's also probably healthy getting it out... If you don't mind me asking, how did you teach yourself programming?

I have my parents to thank for that. There really weren't any computer classes in middle school or high school back then. Only large colleges could afford to put in mainframes. And then when I was 12 the pc revolution was just starting. So my parents bought me a Color Computer from Radio Shack for Christmas. I think it was in desperation more then anything since the previous Christmas's I got a chemistry set (supposedly you couldn't do anything dangerous with it) which did not end well when I proved the manufacturer wrong while testing exothermic reactions. And then there was the electronics kit which again was supposedly safe till I discovered you can make capacitors explode by overloading them. So they figured that a computer would distract me from other more dangerous hobby's. Well they were right. I loved that hunk of plastic. I figured out how to upgrade the memory (soldiering iron no less) and how to bypass the bios by copying it to ram. And once I figured out that the processor in it actually had a professional OS with a compiler available for free from the manufacturer, I pestered mom for books, books, and more books. I still have some mild focuses with the physical and theoretical sciences, but my major one for the last 38 years has been computers.

I've been doing that for 54 years now. Same old, same old.