How hard has your life been?

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How hard has your life been?

and

How hard does everyone perceive your life has been? Those around you.


People around me have no idea what I have been through... none. Hasn't been easy. But getting there I suppose...

My life has been pretty hard, the worst of it being when I was a teenager and later as an adult I've had problems keeping jobs and with relationships.

Now people realise I haven't had things easy, but when I was growing up I wasn't very communicative, and internalised everything. I had a lot of problems socialising and with depression. I was very moody and everyone put it down to going through puberty, no one seemed to know what was going on with me. As an adult people now realise I have problems.

<--- Years and years of homelessness. Years and years of poverty. Years and years of depression.

Wow... that scares me. Do u have a home now? How did u get out of poverty?

pretty hard

years of special ed, ended up homeless for about a year, got married young to a recently diagnosed Narcissist. Have two special needs kids one that had 13 allergies at one point all 3 of us had immunodeficiency.........they now don't but I still do. Got kicked out of graduate school and had to fight the school on getting a refund which I got........no job, rocky marriage and lots of anxiety and depression

Damn hard

But other people either aren't interested or insist on dismissing what I say or act as if I'm exaggerating

Either way it's been made clear to me that any problems I have are mine alone and I will need to continue dealing with them alone!

Very hard, I feel nothing else but hatred towards my relatives, I can't stand to live with my family, It annoys me so much that I wanna blow my head off.

For me,
Difficulty having or keeping relationships, I have had very few my whole life. I am divorcing now because she treats me like I'm a child and was taking financial advantage of my credit, then ruined that by not paying it. I had entered the Army in 1988 to try to become a better person. Plus the "$30,000 for College" was an incentive at the time. So, I get out in 1992 and I'm ready to go get that degree. Come to find out later, that the "College Money" was actually a treasury check for $800.00 a month from the VA. My college looked at my tuition which was $2,400 (or more) a trimester and looked at that check and said "Well, you need to get student loans". So, the check made for a good way to cover rent.
Well, it was either that, or work 2 or 3 jobs to pay for college. Being an aspie (unknown at the time), working multiple jobs was anxiety hell even to think about. And, I reasoned that after I graduate and become a super networking guru etc., I would be making enough to pay it all back. Well, let's just say that to this day, I have not quite been able to repay the loans, because I have not been able to quite attain a high enough salary to pay those AND living expenses.
When I made the mistake of getting married to the wrong woman who could care less about helping me getting these paid off, that made it worse. So, Hopefully I will find a way to become successful and get rid of my debts before i'm too old to do so.

Coming from a middle-class neighbourhood I've watched my peers grow up having fun and being successful while I've had a more colourful life. I can't really complain though. I've nearly always had a roof over my head and food to eat. If it wasn't for my girlfriend and her family I would probably be a homeless drop-out.

To answer the OP:
I think that my day-to-day life operating in society is more difficult that the average person. I don't think that's very obvious to people. I've experienced quite a high number of 'traumatic' events. Those stand out far more to people than my everyday life. Strangely, I'm not that bothered by them.

It has been difficult.

Starting at school, I was bullied horrendously, an utter outcast, no friends, and no-one cared and helped me. Academically, I was years ahead of the other kids but was kept in lower sets as I was slow.

I thought 6th Form College would be a new start but I found it awful. Again I struggled socially, and the environment gave much more freedom than school and I couldn't cope well. I nearly got kicked out and my parents threatened to kick me out of home if I left college or was thrown out.

Uni - finally a place where I fitted in and made friends. Unfortunately I was seeing a boyfriend who turned emotionally abusive and it was during my second year my depression kicked in badly. I was too naive to see what was going on and he was obviously an experienced emotional bully. Then he left me in an incredibly cruel way and I really didn't get over any of it for years. It was in the next few years that I became more depressed, all my confidence had been knocked out of me and I felt suicidal. I did get my degree but barely scraped through. Nowhere near the mark I'd been predicted.

That was 9 years ago. Since then my story is sadly similar to a lot that I read on here. No close friends to speak of and I attract more users and bullies than I can count. Although a great relationship with my family, which is a real positive. I can't get or hold down a permanent job, I get bullied out of jobs, long periods of unemployment which makes me poor, bored and socially isolated, and I have temped for the last 5 years which has been okay, I don't go for too long without work and companies always hire me back. However I am always underemployed and despair of ever having a job at my experience and skills level. I have paid back about £5 of my £20,000 student loan so far and my credit rating is destroyed due to me needing to take out credit to pay the bills, all the time looking for a better job, which never appeared and then I lost the job I had. No love life at all. After the abuser came two short flings with lying cheats and for seven years now I have been 100% celibate, haven't even had a date. I doubt by now it is ever going to happen to me.

If I'm not working, I barely leave the house. Can't afford to go out and I'm scared of people now. I get stared at and shunned wherever I go. And every six months or so I have a full-on meltdown where for about a week, all I do is cry and can barely get out of bed. It's as if dealing with the world is just too much for me.

I've had a very difficult childhood full of abuse, neglect and emotional trauma, yet somehow, like you shyengineer, I feel distanced from it, not as bothered maybe? For me it was probably because I had a breakdown in 2006 from everything.

I've just never found my place in this world. I sit atop a mountain of failed work attempts, school attempts, relationship attempts, past regrets, unresolved trauma, missing identity, etc. I'm very fortunate to have been adopted by truly generous and caring people and to have the love of my life still in my life. If it weren't for these people, who are as trying to me as they are a blessing, I would have offed myself a long time ago.

I just simply can't cope with the demands of a "normal" life. I can't work full-time and will never meet my intellectual capacity to do more even though my championing ego insists "I can do anything I want!" haha, oh such lies. Reality is facing that which you cannot change and learning to live with it.

Loneliness is one of the worst feelings ever. It's used as the most severe form of punishment by high security prisons. I don't feel that deep seated loneliness anymore but it was hard dealing with it growing up.

I had a very hard life too...growing up not knowing what was wrong with me!
I could not and still to this day interact with people..got kicked punched and head down the toilet stuff ..no friends at school..after leaving school i still had the same problems..never could get work as i found it difficult to be around people..also had nothing to offer anyone.who wants to give a job to someone with no skills and can't interact with people..so left on the scrap heap for yrs

I was diagnosed with AS when i was 24yrs old..after yrs of suffering and not knowing what was wrong with me!..i feel that getting diagnosed with AS has given me an answer to what was wrong with me..but still there is no help out there for people like us in the UK..to try and help us to move forward in life..sadly i think i will always be just a lonely guy with a lot of issues..but hope one day that might change.

I can understand how everyone feels that has had to go through the same s**t in their life..let's hope things get better for all of us out there that go through this hell on a daily basis.

When I was a little kid I didn't know how to play with other kids,and I was lonely and scared of lots of things.
Later,when I was a teen I got bullied a lot.
My family felt I was a "difficult"child,and they didn't understand I wasn't moody on purpose,life was just very hard for me.
I got depressed and had so many anxiety attacks I went to a clinic where I stayed for half a year to have all kinds of therapies to learn to deal with all my problems,but nothing really worked.
After that I was still the same ofcourse,and every time I tried to hold on to a job I failed,because I got anxiety ,and people expected more of me then I could handle.
I never knew what the problem was,so I felt it was all my fault,and that I just should try harder.
Luckily my boyfriend(now husband)and I moved in together,and we agreed I would stay home,because it was so hard on me to have a job,and deal with other people all the time.
We married,had kids,and found out one of our boys has asperger's.

Not long after that I got my diagnosis too,and now here I am on wrong planet.

Life is still hard sometimes,dealing with autism,but I could have been a lot worse.
I have a loving family,a nice roof over my head,and I like some of my autistic traits,like being more playful then most adults,and noticing beautiful things others don't see.

This rang true with me too Kirayng. I have no status in society. Not a worker with a title, not a wife, not a mum, not a friend, nothing but a drain on the taxpayer. I'm a number, a statistic, not a person. And it is horrible.

And the missing identity thing is so true for me. I'm 31 and have no idea of who I am. I've spent all my life trying to pass for normal and never really succeeding, but over the last 5 years the mask has become harder to wear. The cracks are showing. I can't look normal any more and I have no idea of what's behind my mask. What I like and what I have been told to like, or what I think I like because everyone else does and it makes me fit in.

I can truly say I have never had a day's peace in my own body and my own mind. Although the torment is lessening since I started learning about AS and started talking to people on here. I'm coming closer to acceptance of what I (probably) am. And realising that there are others like me and I'm not as alone as I always thought. And that there are words to describe how I think, feel and behave. It feels amazing after a lifetime of thinking I was the only one and no-one else ever understood me.

I hate questions like this as it tends to promote a "I'm harder off than you" mindset. The hardness of one's life is based solely on perception. Two people can go through the exact same experiences in life and come out very differently.

That being said, I'll say that while my early life was hard, my adult life hasn't been that bad, and comparatively to some previous posters, my life has been a cakewalk.

Those around me have each had their own share of trials and tribulations, so I doubt very much that they even consider my own trials and tribulations in their minds, and if they did, it wouldn't be in a "Oh, her life has been so easy." manner as that is not something I've ever flaunted. I typically go through my issues alone without much fanfare or public knowledge of my circumstances.