I feel out of place here...

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Are there any other people here on the spectrum who ever struggle with writing? I feel like it takes me way too long to write posts and I don't have the large vocabulary or eloquence that most people here have. In general I feel like my writing ability sucks and I'm unable to express myself adequately. I also feel like I'm the most boring person on here. I have nothing interesting to say anymore. Everything has already been discussed to death.

I don't know. I'm now beginning to doubt that autism is the only thing that's wrong with me. I feel like there's something else in addition but I'm unable to express what it is. I feel like I'm trapped inside my head, unable to communicate something, but I can't even identify what it is. I feel like I've gotten stuck. I spend many hours of the day here on WP, mostly just reading, and I've gotten so bored with it. Yet I can't make myself do anything else. Every time I go on the web I go to the same sights over and over again and then I get more and more depressed when nothing interests me. I have such a drab uninteresting life compared to other people here. It's like I'm stuck in a shell. I barely talk to people these days and I don't find people humorous or entertaining like they find each other. I notice when others interact they're always smiling, gesturing, laughing, animating their face, etc. I'm completely flat and stiff. I rarely have anything to say, anything to laugh or joke about. I'm just bored out of my mind. It's gotten so bad. I often wonder if the only way I can alleviate all this is to end my life.

Many people on the spectrum struggle with writing. Those who don't are going to post more often -- is just logical.


The rest of your post sounds less like an issue with writing and more like you may want to seek out some kind of help. It definitely sounds like you are suffering from depression, and suicidal thoughts - even if it's something along the lines of "Life is too boring to live" are serious, and something that no one here is really going to be able to help you with. That's an internal problem that you're going to have to work out, but I really urge you to consider working it out.

Yes, I feel similar. As I've been on WP for nearly 4 years now, everything really *has* been discussed to death! Maybe some of us do not project our selves in writing? If I look back on some stuff I wrote a while ago, it usually seems way too stiff and formal. It doesn't seem like me.


Now that's a really interesting point - and the most interesting thing I've seen here for a while. So you *do* have something interesting to say! And yes, I feel strongly that autism isn't the only thing wrong with me. The abusive Catholic schooling, bullying, continual mixup up of crazy life-denying messages from the media and our direct environment etc etc, could cause a sensitive introvert to withdraw from social functioning without the need for any 'hard-wired neurological' factors. Either way, it seems I've been given several life times worth of problems to solve. Can't afford to waste too much time here, then.....


You obviously very depressed. I'd love to be able to tell you what the cure is, but as yet, I haven't found it myself If it's really bad, anti-depressants will help get you through, but they are no long-term solution. For that, my current belief is that it does require a change of circumstances and these days I see depression not as a negative state to be masked with drugs, but as a warning signal that there's some aspect of my life that needs changing. Just thinking 'happy thoughts' while leaving everything else unchanged, doesn't work. Reality catches up.

Sounds mostly like your depressed but the stuck in your head thing I also have. I just assumed its an aspie thing. Have you ever watched men in black? I tried to describe the living in your head thing to NT's by saying it was like the alien thing in that film. It was controlling the mechanical body by operating it from inside the head. Thats how I feel. Its like I'm just in this body looking through the eyes like windows but not really being a part of what I'm seeing. Not sure if that makes any sense as what I'm thinking tends not to be what comes out whether I'm talking or writing. Hope you can get some help for the depression and then maybe you'd feel up to trying to understand your aspergers either by writing more on here, even if it doesn't make much sense you'll still get responses, or just reading books or whatever about the subject.

I never thought you were boring or not eloquent. You sound like you have a type of mild depression called dysthymia. I spent most of my life under it's evil spell. I know what it feels like to avoid people because you don't want to have the burden of making conversation. You feel like you can't think straight and everything is exhausting. The way I describe it to non sufferers is I ask them if they have ever had a mild hangover or been mildly sick and you felt on edge and you didn't want to talk to anybody and all you wanted to do was climb under the covers and hide. Most people can relate to that. Then I say-Imagine a day like that that lasts for weeks or months or years. Every day it's a huge struggle just to get through the day. Their eyes get wide and they say Oh!
Anyway, sometimes small changes in routine can help. If you can find a quiet place to sit in nature, maybe by a running stream of water, I think that helps. I have been here long enough to see the same topics come up, but there are always new members who are eager to find out more. I know that stuck in your head feeling very well. I know my writing is disjointed but what the hell. Otherwise I'd be up all night sweating the proverbial blood.

Whooa, there are many things I relate in your post.

Same here, I'm quite bored latelly.


I disovered a few days ago that I got ADD (ADHD inatentive type). It sudenly explain a lot of things. Before that I knew that I had something else with my asperger. Because even though asperger explain a lot of my difficulties, I could feel they was something missing, like some critical pieces for the jigsaw puzzle of my weird and confusing mind. Maybe you can check if you got ADHD, it could be a start. It's from part of this book that I learned it, if it can help you:
http://www.findtoyou.com/ebook/download-second.php?id=aHR0cDovL3d3dy40c2hhcmVkLmNvbS9maWxlLzEwMDIyMDc4Ni9kMDYzN2Y4MC9EaWZmZXJlbnRfTWluZHNfR2lmdGVkX0NoaWxkcmUuaHRtbD9zPTE=&name=Different%20Minds%20Gifted%20Children%20With%20ADHD,%20Asperger%20Syndrome,%20and%20Other%20Learning%20Deficits

I have Inattentive ADD and looking back I can see how it majorly impacted my life. I am one of the many girls who were missed because we didn't cause trouble. Who knows what I could have accomplished if I had been diagnosed and treated in childhood? It sucks. Now it feels like my brain will always be stuck in first gear.

That "stuck in the head/in a shell, alienated/disconnected from the world,
bored/flat/dreary, dead" feeling; I used to have that before I cut out gluten.

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Part of depression is losing interest in things that you once found interest in or losing interest all together. I think most, if not everybody on here has struggled with depression at one time or another. Also people change, no one is exempt, there is also a chance that you are struggling with letting go of the old (since a big part of AS is routine) and letting in the new.

I struggle with writing a lot. There are times it takes me upwards of 30 minutes just to answer a single question with one paragraph. I frequently feel like I dont have the word capacity for the thoughts in my head and even if I find the words I cant get them out the way I want to.

I also really relate to the MIB reference.

I always have trouble knowing what to say and how to say things, my posts are always short and to a point, see what I mean.
this is the stage when I don't know what else to type!

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Here is a placement topic

I enjoy your posts, Marsh. You often have the words I do not write. A recent example is one of Greentea's threads--how to handle a situation. I was using logic but she did not catch on. But you explained it and she was happy again--in fact she did exactly as you wrote!!

If you get a chance, please watch Alex Plank's Autism Reality You Tube Video. It was very moving, although my computer is autistic and the video feed was out of sync with the audio portion. But I figured it out!! Actually this malfunction added to the dramatic effect. I had to concentrate harder!

Yeah I do. I often lose my thoughts and I have to stop and think of what to write. I don't think you are boring.

It also takes me a while to make long posts or even a few minutes to make a short one. Right now I have no idea how long I have had this page open making this reply as I watch Clifford the Big Red dog. I am looking at it and then coming back to this post and I am eating candy with my husband. I am not sure what else to say right now so I will hit the button because I want to get this over with.


EDIT:



And ironically I have managed to make over 9,000 posts in two years since I have been posting under this name since November 2007.

marshall, we haven't spoken much in the past, yet I recognise much of what you write in your first paragraph.

Me, I sometimes take a whole hour to write a single (lengthy) post, simply because I keep re-editing my words over and over and over. Eloquence? Vocab? Even if English is not my first language, you'd expect that someone who's been exposed to it for 20 years and communicating in it online for 5, wouldn't make the malapropisms and grammar mistakes I make. Not to mention I am less knowledgeable on most topics than others.

On a comic book forum I visit, while I am a fan of Transformers and the X-Men character Rachel Summers, I am a layman compared to some posters there who don't even like either of them that much. I often find that I don't know what to say in the Rachel Summers thread I started, and I was recently told in another thread that I "don't know who Gladiator is", despite having known him for 14 years.

I remember talking to the other posters in several random discussion chat threads. Most people would speak about their hobbies, or their jobs, or their friends and families, their vacations, their ambitions, art, science, or the news... I'd post song lyrics or youtube vids. Or I'd talk about my cat, or do the standard "how are you?, good" exchange. The most dreaded question for me, whether online or offline, was 'What are your hobbies?', because I found I no longer had any. Someone at work asked me recently, and I had to admit that I still had no true hobby to speak of.

But though my situation is still not ideal, and I continue to be lazy and slacking when I'm supposed to be studying, there are times when I find myself doing what I enjoy, and these can be various things. I'm taking brief ganders at my Nature Lover's Field Guides again (carefully re-sparking my interest in taxonomy/physiology/ecology), I'm familiarising myself with Indonesian pop music, and sometimes Indonesian grammar as well, and having my Mom help teach me Indonesian cuisine. I sometimes even read a book!

The social aspect is difficult, and something I've yet to fully discover for myself (as I haven't a social life currently), but it really depends on whether it hurts you that you're not properly socialising with anyone, or if you prefer to go it alone. It takes significant strength of character to be able to enjoy yourself by yourself all the time, but it's admirable if you can. You won't be able to do that if you grow dissatisfied and bored with yourself, as you express in your post. It's a cliché, but embracing yourself is the first step toward anything.

About contemplating ending your life; I have done the same often. I may do so in the future, I don't know, I can't predict those things. But whenever I do, I keep coming back to the conclusion that if nothing else matters anyway and I might as well end it all, I might as well not. I figure if I truly don't have anything to lose, there's very little risk in taking another swing at life and see where it takes me.

I have had long periods of boredom and even depression. I was no longer interested in the things I was interested in as a child, which were animals+plants, and drawing. I'm still not, not entirely. But I keep both in the back of my mind as the lifeline of sorts connecting me to the world. Like, when I'm really bored with everything, I could be walking outside, and just stop and watch a grey heron or a cormorant for barely two minutes, and have a sense of awe. Not that I'll sit down and write a detailed description of their behaviour and then make a nice sketch of them, but there are still things in the world that make me think 'Yeah... that's worth going for'.

I think it's important to stop and think about where you're coming from, and what it is you like to do ('who you are', essentially). I think the key here, for everyone, is that one should be able to put themselves in perspective. It may sound weird, but you actually shouldn't place too much gravity and importance on your own existence, and paradoxically this will increase how much you value yourself.

Lastly, obviously, your posts are appreciated on the forum. I wondered whether I was pulling my weight on CBR... last month, after a little absence on one of its sub-forums, I noticed 3 posters had left me messages elsewhere, asking how I was doing. That made me feel quite good, and more eager to continue posting there

Marshall, I recently expressed to two other friends from WP that I seem to be having yet another existential crisis that is tainted with depression...just to make matters even more drab.
I can relate to what you are experiencing. Since my dx i have watched my life come apart at the seams, as if i have been stitched up by illusion for 47 years, and the reality of Asperger's and the co-morbids of depression and anxiety make it unbearable at times.

Life can be very hard for us at times. I personally watch the world go by as if i am behind a glass screen - unable to ever fully participate. My problem is also that I can and do "touch people" emotionally, but i cannot feel it from them, and so I feel very sealed off from connected exchange. at times this is really horrible to live with. Throw in my sensory issues ( I do not like too much physical contact with others) and it leaves me feeling very alone.

I hope I am not too full of doom and gloom...but sometimes it is good to speak frankly about how bad it can be, rather than trying to maintain some kind of pretense that things are better than they are.

One thing i have learned however....ALL things and all states of being pass...eventually. I hang onto that.

I might also make a suggestion.
It sounds as if your daily routine has lost it purpose and validity. if that is the case, consider making a new one by way of a clearly defined daily list of things to do. This is what I do when I flounder and it does help, as does exercise and eating well. The simple clarity of a new written daily routine can really help. make sure there is so time for structured enjoyment.

good luck

dont feel out of place, it usually takes me a couple days to write a post or answer a post, or a couple hours, most of the time i put up notepad and leave it up to add more as the day goes by, it takes me literally a week to get my thoughts together for my own post, so ur def not alone. writing out anything is hard, speaking is hard, and even sometimes signing is hard, but signing is my best form of communication, dont give up hope, and dont ever feel out of place, although i do feel out of place soemtimes here too, cuz im so self injurious, and my social skills are of a typical 1 year olds, and how im cognitively affected sometimes i feel like everybody here is evne above me, but then i make a post and have everybody feel in the same boat, and if eel once again reuinited on here. so i know what u mean but ur def not alone hehe.

I use Word Pad on the computer. Any typing program works.