Conversation 16

Articulating exactly how it is you feel is something that really is one of the most difficult and challenging aspects of life. 

You don’t like to worry those you love or people connected with you. The crippling self doubt doesn’t allow you to feel worth remembering or being upset about. The looks you get from peers or colleagues, the looks that make you feel so small, so different, so unwanted in the same universe. Then comes the battle between my thoughts and my logical brain, am I just paranoid? Am I really that self centred, that I think everyone is looking at me in a contemptuous manner ? Am I really that self obsessed and yet so self doubting? 

In the past few weeks upon returning from Barcelona I’ve never felt so alien and alone. I’ve spiralled into a depression that I haven’t felt for 16 months. I don’t like to talk openly about these things unless necessary, I don’t like to talk to people about it, I don’t like to try and feel as if my problems are any more different than the of any one else, we all have issues. 

I can however only speak from my personal experiences as a man in my mid twenties on the autism spectrum. I try and be as ‘normal’ as possible, whatever that means. I try to be outgoing and I try to be someone people can can trust and respect, I try and be there for people as much as possible. 

Following on from my last relationship, I suffered from severe depression and soon was unable to function properly. It wasn’t much longer later that I reached my lowest point, I felt as if whatever life force i had was in its dying embers, I felt as if whatever my spirit was fading away into darkness.

I’ve felt better since then but I will always have days where I feel low, that’s normal. What I continually struggle with is the feeling of total isolation within a modern and busy world. 

Barcelona was as expected incredible. Walking out and seeing the empty camp Nou for the first time, seeing Messi play and exploring las rambles. 

Upon returning, I was back at university, I was back to the world of young people all understanding one another, all with their own things going on. There were new lecturers, new possibilities, and yet I still felt as if something was eating away, gnawing away at me, why hadn’t I formed any connection of any kind with anyone ? Why am I even asking? It’s because I’m not worth getting know, all thoughts I have fleeting in my mind, passing through quickly.

A week before Valentine’s Day, my mood has dropped to a severe low. I feel as if my Asperger’s is no longer enough as a scapegoat, perhaps it is just me, me that poisons myself and everyone around me, my own negative thought process, I urge to belong, a yearning for a connection, something meaningful and deep, a great longing, I try and reach out to people, one tells me “man up, stop blaming your faults on everyone else and man the fuck up” another tells me I’m “weird” another tells me I’m sitting I’d rather not repeat. My self esteem has plunged to its lowest point, my mind tried to focus on anything else, I go to university on the Monday afternoon having missed 2 earlier lectures, it’s just me and the lecturer who questions me intensely about my absence, my enthusiasm or lack of it, whether I’m bothered, I give him the answers I think he wants whilst wishing I was anywhere else, he tells me there’s presentations in groups, that I should ask my “colleagues” to join one of the groups and to help in presenting. My mind totally elsewhere. 

I ask around to no avail, i assume everyone else has sorted their group presentation stuff for the seminar and thus I give up, I don’t turn up to the lecture. 

Thoughts that history will repeat itself start to circulate around my head, that perhaps I will ultimately fail, ultimately I will always fail, ultimately I will always be either in self imposed exile or forced exile from a group. That I will always be alone and better off alone. That other people would be better of without me, this is when the spiral starts, perhaps it started along time ago, perhaps I never had a chance. 

I begin to feel the tell tell signs that my mind is no longer coping with the pain and negativity, when around others I try and hide it, I try to be numb to avoid it, i feel the pain beginning to teach breaking point and I begin to feel an ease pass over me with thoughts of not being around. Whether that be dead or somewhere along way from my current place I don’t know.

The truth is I’m inherently lost. I don’t know what I really bring to anyone’s life. I certainly don’t think I bring much to my own life. Maybe that is the issue, I try to be more outgoing and I get burned, made to feel different or belittled, maybe I should “man-up”? Maybe I should not be sensitive and perhaps I should just not be me, maybe I am just not capable of life. 

I guess I’ll just hope something happens for the better.