Please write to my son

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Hi,

I'm writing in the desperate hope of finding someone preferably female around my 25-year-old ASD son’s age group, in the UK who will write to and befriend him. He is very depressed (and desperately feels alone). I am writing because he’s finding it increasingly difficult to find someone to write to who shares some of his interests and conditions. He has tried many penfriend and autistic forums, and set up a forum himself. Unfortunately, without success.


I had my son when I was 40. I am now 65 and a pensioner. I believe I am on the spectrum too and have great difficulties with anxiety, which impacts on my son being able to socialise as he relies on me.


My son has ASD, SPD, OCD and PTSD, and severe anxiety most especially social anxiety. However; he has a great talent in nature and abstract photography, received a distinction grade award for it. He sells his work online at deviantART and a Tictail online store. He enjoys gardening and bird watching in the garden. He loves to write too, and has his own blog on WordPress. He loves anime and video games and all things Japanese. He’s learnt the histories of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era of China and the Sengoku period of Japan from video games. He is reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novels and watching a Chinese TV series about it.


I really hope I can find someone who will be happy to write to my son.

I like anime and I'm within age. Generally people over the age of 18 that like anime are very hard to come by.

Wait a minute here. Are you trying to hook-up your son on a public online forum?

Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is to your average 25 year old full grown man?

(Are you Indian? I was just watching a documentary on Indian marriage costums, and they are very differerent than our's. But they still involve the consent of both adult-children. So maybe what I'm saying here is culturally insensitive. Maybe it should be just a look at how a "westernized" young adult is going to see things.)

If he has the ability to write, presumably he has the ability to come online... well, here for example. He can come here and talk about his interests to his hearts content. There are plenty of women on these boards who share them. And you can coach him on how to broach the idea of going off forum if he finds someone he would like to connect with on a more personal level.

That's how these things work. If you try to force the situation by pimping him out to the first woman who agrees to talk with him, you're more likely to make him pull away from socializing more.

From what you are telling me about your son's interests, I'm guessing he's a really great guy. Bird Watching is a sport for gentle people. And art is indicative of a good soul. I do think it's true that a lot of people on the spectrum do better dating wise, when they date other people on the spectrum. We just get one another better. But it would be better to help coach him in coming here himself and working on relationships himself than to try to do it for him.

There's also the issue of whether he even wants friendships/a relationship. Some of us don't. Some of us are perfectly happy with our art and our reference books for the whole of our lives. There's nothing wrong with that.

**"hook-up" is American for the creation of a romantic or casual-sexual partnership.

Her location given is United Kingdom

There are a lot of people in Britain who are of East Indian decent who like to follow their traditions.

Specifying that a correspondent should be female rings alarm bells with me.

Hi Somanyspoons

Thank you for replying, but you completely misunderstand what I am doing. I'm trying to help my son not pimp him off. No I am not of Indian descent, I'm an ordinary English woman/mother of an autistic son, who is so very depressed and feels very alone. Believe me he is capable of writing himself and has done on many forums only to be hurled with abuse. Maybe I should have put more detail into my message. My son suffers as I've said from PTSD and anything that hurts through triggers massively paralyse's him. He was diagnosed late at 14 with ASD and OCD (but it is most definitely SPD) as a result of a massive breakdown in the main school system here in the UK. This led to him being eventually taught at home by home in hospital tutors, but because he had been bullied for so many years in the school system, not only from his peer group but also teaches he could no longer cope with authority figures. He was off school for six months during the breakdown, and when school started again for him, as I say he was taught at home by H and H tutors. My son has always found it difficult to have eye to eye contact and the final incident at school, made him shut himself or physically and mentally by closing his bedroom door. For the next 5 1/2 years he was taught from behind his bedroom door. You have no idea the battles I had with the school system and authorities to get help and understanding for him, but no one would understand an autistic boy who was totally afraid of the outside world. Lost confidence completely in all authority figures. It's an extremely complicated story, I have said that we had suffered as a family with wrong doing by authorities (social services to be precise). This wrong doing was not only to my son due to his breakdown and autism, but as a family being totally wrongly split apart.

Psychologists and psychiatrists were not prepared to come to the home to help him, and no matter how much I tried I couldn't persuade my son to go to their clinics. Before he was taught at home, I attended a tribunal for a statement of special educational needs for my son. The support I had from a very competent educational group in the UK called IPSEA, who provided money for a very detailed educational psychologists report, as well as an occupational therapist report. Both these reports were supplied to the tribunal of judges. The support/advocate I had from IPSEA to present my sons case to this tribunal wanted to call a psychiatrist that my son in the beginning had faced. She wanted to call him to explain how difficult his education would be behind his bedroom door. He had already had one H and H tutor teaching him that way. But the psychiatrist refused to come, and therefore we never had the evidence of what the difficulties would be for him during his education and also afterwards as well socialising. When his statement ended in July 2010, he had managed to pass a few exams and wanted to continue with further education which he had every right to. But everyone disappeared from the SEN'S Department who knew him. I spent months, years trying to get further education for him in the same way that he could cope with it, (behind his bedroom door). But no one understood or cared, it was very difficult to get her lawyer on legal aid (legal aid is funds given to people on low income benefits) just at that time legal aid was being cut by our government and there is no legal aid now in this country, and most especially for disabled children and learning difficulties. There is also no funding for these autistic people to get further education, especially with complex cases like my sons.

He has been hurt so many times on forums, so as I said he tried to set his own forum up to make friends, and advertised it on Twitter. He also wrote blogs on WordPress telling about his difficulties. But he got no one to come to the forum. Slowly slowly he has completely lost heart and his extremely depressed, he can't even go to our local GP (another who does not understand autism, many don't in the UK). I think I mentioned in my message that I believe I'm on the spectrum to, I suffer with extreme anxiety and have had difficulty getting help with that. A story is so complicated know one would believe. All I was doing was hoping someone preferably a female, as yes if he is able to build a good relationship with this person he would hope to meet them in the future. He uses his computer all the time. He is a very gentle kind young man, who has been extremely bullied and torn apart by the schooling system and let down by many professionals in the UK. Who promise help but never gave it, I am witnesses to that as I went to these meetings and have recordings. Plus made complaints, they could not care less.

If I manage to get my son to write on this forum which I will try to do but I am terrified he will be hurt. I know the moderators would not want that, but his triggers are so many. I hope I have now explained perhaps a little better than my last message about the help and support I'm trying to give to my son.

Have you tried Aspie Village? Since your son has so many triggers, it might be gentler for him as it's a small forum, and it's UK based.

Hi Green0star,

Thank you very much for your reply. Thank you for explaining you are within the age group and like anime, equally informing me that it is very difficult to find people who are within that age group who like anime. My son is very particular about the Japanese animation he likes, Final Fantasy is one of his favourites, and must have a real story base. Naruto and Bleach are another two he likes, but there are many more.

I will show my son your reply, and hopefully you have seen the response I made to Somanysponns, and you will see the reasons why I am writing on behalf of my son at the moment. Thank you again.

Hi everyone

Thank you for responding to my mother, .

green0star, when it comes to anime. What anime do you like to watch, ? What are your other interests? I can understand what you mean, but I can’t help the interests I have. Despite my age, of 25, I find it too difficult to attempt to like something I don’t just to fit in with my age group, . Besides, I don’t feel anime is childish, it can be quite interesting when consider certain anime like Mushishi since it’s artistic and old oriental folklore based, and Naruto since the characters grow with you, and develop as they grow older. In the beginning, I could relate to how alienated Naruto felt in the early episodes, as I felt the same when I was at school, apart from the jokey side.

Pieplup, I want to send my deviantART address, but it says as a new user I can't add the link, . I will try to include my deviantART address in a following post, but if that doesn't work, my mother will post it afterwards. Sorry about this, . It’s not that I don’t wish to write to males, it’s just I find it very difficult to get to know females, that’s all, . What are your interests?

To everyone, I’m writing since I was worried I would be misunderstood when my mother started this thread, .

It’s getting harder going over the same instances, the same pains, reliving my emotional pain every time I try to explain and express, but I have to if I’m ever going to find a way through it, .

I’ve written on ASD forums in the UK, and I started my own, but no one came to my forum, and I found no answers on the UK forum either. I began writing to people on an ASD UK forum, but I was noticing how the conversations started to become abusive, particularly in private messages. In one instance, I was called a ‘child’. He didn’t understand the traumas I went through and the way they affected me. He told me that he liked my messages on the forum, but thought I was being childish in my messages to him in private messages.

I’ve tried writing on forums, Facebook, Twitter, pen pal websites and magazines, I’ve even written on dating websites (not that I wish to go dating, I need time to get to know someone writing before I could even cope with meeting).

For moment, I’m going to focusing on the emotional bulling that happened to me since it cut me so deeply. It was just one of the chain of events that happened to me.

The reason why I asked my mother to write on the forum is because of several reasons. One of those reasons is due to my PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It leaves me with triggers, painful triggers that remind me of the emotional pain I’ve experienced when I was younger. You see, I was bullied badly during my education years. When I was 10 years old in primary school, completely alone and alienated, someone took advantage of me, a bully of mine asked me to tell them who I liked in the class, he told the person, and I was called a ‘creep’. It hurt me so badly, like I was hit with a sledgehammer, like my heart was just pulled out of my chest and spat on. I felt dead inside, like a piece of myself died at that moment, and there was no one in my peer group I could turn to. I was too embarrassed to tell my mother. Needless to say, this really tore me apart inside. I was left with an empty shell. It doesn’t end there either. It goes on into secondary school.

In secondary school, I came across an unexpected event. Three females came up to me, and one of them told me one of them liked me. I looked at the female they were talking about and she was shyly smiling at me. It was like a twist on what happened to me before. I didn’t know if they were genuine or not, and I was too worried about trusting them, I was hurt before, I felt I couldn’t take the chance.

Following my breakdown at school, when I was 14, I was diagnosed with ASD, but by that time I was hurt so badly, I couldn’t trust what school *cough* prison, did to me. Following the shear bullying I was receiving from students which escalated to the teachers as I was interrogated over two classes due to a broken paving stone. Anyway, after that breakdown, a long story goes on to how my mother fought for me to have a Statement of Special Educational Needs. I was eventually taught at home by two home and hospital tutors, but not in the conventional sense. I needed to protect myself from those that betrayed me, and I was taught from behind my bedroom door, for five and a half years. This helped me greatly, I was able to sit and pass my exams at home, and I achieved a distinction in photography and a merit in web designing, this was until my Statement of Special Educational Needs ended when I turned 19. I was left with nothing, and everyone walked away.

Through all this time, I had this emotional pain bottled up inside. I was embarrassed and ashamed at being called a ‘creep’. When those three females came up to me in secondary school, I couldn’t believe it was real. I thought it was all a dream, that was until I came across her two more times since then.

The first time I met this female from secondary school, she was working as a bank clerk. I was there with my mother who had no idea of what happened back then. I couldn’t recognise this female for a while, until I noticed she was smiling me with the same shy smile I remembered from the ‘dream’ I thought I had. There she was, right in front of me, and I didn’t know what to say. I was stunned. She told us her name, but it just glossed over my mind. I was just too shocked to see her. I waved goodbye to her. My mother and I came back out of the building society. My mother then noticed that the bank clerk made a mistake with the money, the same female that may have liked me. I was immediately struck by this and thought, “Oh God, don’t tell me, did she really like me?!?”. I felt my world crashing down around me, I new I didn’t have the strength to talk to her, and certainly not in a stressful and anxiety ridden building society. When my mother went back to sort out the problem, I was too nervous to look at the female that liked me. It didn’t end there either. I saw her again at my local arts centre some time after that. I was sitting with my back to her, eating a meal outside a café/pub built into the arts centre. I was sitting with my mother and some of my other relatives. As I was sitting with my back to her, I didn’t notice her, that was until my relatives opposite me saw her waving in my direction. I turned around, saw her, smiling at me and waving. I just smiled and waved back to her. She was surrounded by a lot of people herself, and I was too anxious to go up to her. I had to walk away, I couldn’t cope with it, even though every fibre of my being wanted to go up to her! It cut me so deeply, the emotional pain began building up inside.

The fire inside of me was growing and growing, the pain I was feeling grew stronger. I was left with a gaping hole inside. Every day, every week, every year, that emptiness has been growing and growing. I was left in complete despair.

My mother suggested writing to someone on Facebook I spoke incredibly briefly to at school, before my breakdown and before I was diagnosed. I felt she was the only person in primary school I could actually talk to, even if it was only just one or two words. She agreed to write to me on Facebook. All was going well for a time, except for the fact that she was writing on a mobile phone and I was writing on my computer. My longer messages were harder for my Facebook friend to respond to. I could see that, but I couldn’t help it. I felt the more interested I was in writing, the more I would say. Anyway, we were in communication over Facebook private messages, she was responding with barely two paragraphs to a mountain of writing, . Everything was going well, that was until I faced a message across Facebook. My friend and a bully connected to emotional bullying I went through, went on a trip with herself, my bully and her brother.

At the witness of that message, it was stored away in my mind, as a puzzle piece, an analytical puzzle piece. The flame inside started to grow stronger. I immediately experienced a meltdown, a meltdown of the realisation of how cruel the twist of fate can be, that there was always something standing between my attempts of socialising.

I put the idea to the back of my mind, and began writing on a ASD UK forum to seek advice, but I was still bottling my pain inside as it was so difficult to open up about it at the time. I was trying to write my difficulties expressing how my mind and heart are on a constant battleground, neither having superiority over the other. My mind wanted to face the truth, but my heart felt if it knew, it would be hurt very badly. They were in constant conflict, and I was stuck in the middle. In the end, the responses I received didn’t help me, and I was back to square one. I was trying to explain to my Facebook friend what happened to me at school and the bullying I received. I wanted to try to make my way through to express how badly they hurt me. With the help of my mother’s I met my friend on Facebook three times, it was very difficult, but I really wanted to build our friendship and grow it stronger. Then around Christmas, I noticed a change in her writing to me. She got an iPad for Christmas and began to open up to me through it, like the ‘mask’ she was wearing at the time was cracking and she was showing her true self. It felt invigorating, it felt like I was finally starting to make some progress trying to socialise. That’s when I discovered something very cruel on Facebook. My bully cooked my friend a meal, and she was praising him. Through my analysing, my mind took that puzzle piece, that piece of information inside, and it began to analyse, scrutinise. Before I could speak, the puzzle piece, along with the previous about the holiday, began to tell a story. No matter how I put the two together, I came across a very hurtful conclusion. That’s when the flame inside me was at hellfire level, and I felt like I could burst. I couldn’t hold back anymore, I felt I had to tell her about the pain I went through. It was so intense, expressing my emotional pain, and I made spelling mistakes. Of course, it didn’t go down well, but she didn’t write to me. Instead she wrote to my mother. She was saying how I was taking the bullying too seriously due to my autism. I was stunned when I read those words, I thought, hang on a minute. She was telling me how she didn’t judge others on their disabilities, and then she accuses my autism. What a hypocrite! I felt she was lying to herself, and I couldn’t cope with it anymore. I did try to send her an e-card on her birthday explaining my actions, but she never responded.

I experienced another meltdown, however; this time it was far more intense. This time, it was far stronger. It was like my heart was being ripped from my chest, and run over by a stampede of elephants. It cut me in two, and the emptiness I felt inside grew bigger. I, not only lost a friend, I lost a good friend. It hurt me so badly.

I know I need to find a way through this pain, and I know that finding someone genuine, understanding, open-minded and caring, is going a long way to healing this pain and growing stronger for it. To find a way to grow past my pain and make far better, lighter, happier memories to replace all the pain I’ve been through. I just want to find a way past all this pain, and I know by healing the heart I’ll be able to find true recovery. I really want to get to know someone better as I know that it’s the only solution that will truly work.

I’ve had experiences when I thought I was so close to finding a solution and then it’s taken away, like someone’s playing a trick on me. Showing me the solution, but having it snapped out of my grasp before I’ve had the chance.

I’ve written pen pal adverts, I’ve written on forums, I’ve written on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, I’ve even written on dating websites (I didn’t like them as I didn’t want to simply go on a date, I wanted to get to know someone across the internet, writing to them before I even comprehended such actions as meeting). I tried all of them, and even though people started writing to me, the cruel twist of fate kicks in and I’m left with nothing. I’ve faced people who couldn’t cope with the volume of my writing since they were in college and they couldn’t process all my writing. I find it very difficult to condense my writing particularly if it involves something I find interesting or meaningful. I’ve written to people from abroad, and though that was interesting and insightful, it didn’t help my emotional pain. I could not meet them, not with the shear amount of difficulties my ASD, SPD, OCD and PTSD cause me. I’ve written to people that, without their knowledge have caused triggers that take me back to the realisation of the difficulties I have and how many paths are cut off from me, like locked doors, and try as I might, I can never find the right keys to unlock those doors. You see, I need my spirit to be boosted, and I’ve already witnessed the hope that can come from almost reaching my goal, but having it pulled away. I just wish that when I get there it’s permanent and not taken away from me. It gave me real strength when I was almost there, so it gave me a taster of what true salvation would bring me. If I can breakthrough to find emotional strength and stability, I just know I will be a different person. I know I would be inspired which would help me immensely.

I find it too difficult to go to clubs or groups as my anxiety is so powerful I wouldn’t feel comfortable to open up and talk like I can on the internet, as I am now. When it comes to interests. Well, my interests have become my coping mechanism. You see, my interests have been ways to try to shut out the pain circling my mind. My mind analyses the first chance that it gets, so I spend most of my time, drowning my mind with Japanese music, playing video games, watching anime, taking nature photographs, watching the birds in the garden, and gardening, all in attempts to placate my mind. I am writing this with the help of my Japanese music as it’s the only way I can focus my mind on writing without breaking down.

I’ve expressed all of this so many times, it really cuts me deeply. I find it so difficult to keep myself going. I just need to find the solution, and I know it exists, but it’s reaching that goal that I find is nigh-on impossible considering my difficulties, and that I find a lot of people wear what I like to call ‘masks’. What I mean is that behind these ‘masks’ is the true person. I really wish I could work out what lies behind each ‘mask’ before I interact as it can take a long time to work out what a person is truly like. I have no idea if they’ll truly understand where I’m coming from and my difficulties and are really interested in writing to me.

I hope you can understand where I’m coming from, and thank you for reading my writing, .

Best wishes
ToshiroHitsugaya