The absurdity of it all...

[MindChains]

I'm not really sure why I'm bothering to post here, perhaps it's sheer desperation. Beware, venting in progress:

I am a 21-year-old autistic male (Asperger's Syndrome, to be precise), about 40 lbs. underweight, "socially retarded," severe acne, uber-geeky/nerdy, unemployed, marginally and "hanging by a thread" Christian, TERRIBLY depressed, suicidal, tortured by social anxiety, wracked with OCD, and frankly just trying to survive untill I make it out of college. Don't get me wrong, I'm doing fine academically. I have almost a 4.0. What does that mean though? Does that matter when I have absolutely no sense of direction for a career, no social connections, and no money? Does it matter when when I have NO way to utilize the few talents I actually do posess in any kind of occupation? Oh, and some have said, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"? Well, my ugliness could poke the beholder's @%$%&^@ eye out.

Do you know what it's like to have everyone think you're retarded when they meet you? I can debate professors in philosophy and reason critically on a higher level than I have seen any of my classmates reach, but I can't even finish a sentence without slurring my words and stuttering! For God's sake, I can't even tie my shoes right! Just having people around me makes me tremble and sweat in nervousness; even being able to eat in public without vomiting has never been something I could take for granted.

I started receiving counseling around the age of sixteen and have sinced hopped from one advisor to the next. Half-a-dozen anti-depressants have only DEEPENED my depression. After I wake up, only three hours pass before I start drifting off into exhausted stupor once again. I've tried to live a "good" life -- I've never touched drugs or even a drop of alcohol, never gotten so much as a speeding ticket, but where has it gotten me? Nowhere, other than pain, misery, and endless torture.

Everyday I see people treating other people in the most repugnant manner, everyday I see another thousand examples of greed and barbarity. And yet, in spite of all this, those in the greatest position to improve things are oblivious to it all. I haven't spent more than $10 on myself in a year, and yet I'll turn on the TV and see a rockstar, couched comfortably in the luxuries that millions of dollars afford and praised by the media as a beacon of hope, urging me to give generously to the poor. While thousands enjoy decadence in otherworldly measure, millions starve to death or are murdered with no so much as a whisper heard in the ears of the powerful. And yet we sit silent. No, we do not merely endure it, we worship it! We idolize them as gods and goddesses. What do we care about those thousand dead Asian children or those ten thousand dead African infants? Britney Spears has shaved her hair! I'm so glad we have our priorities set straight.

Can you offer any solace? Hope? Advice? Is it worth your time? Am I worth your time? Doubtful. I know...you want to type in "Yes, we care about you!" Do you really? How can you care about someone you don't even know? How can you believe so blindly in your precious "love"? To me, love is for the beautiful, the rich, and the socially adept.

How can you say, "Hang on! It'll get better"? How can you say, "Just have faith"? Hang on how? Have faith in what? Faith...what a useless concept! Faith is for the fortunate, the naive, and the ignorant. Hang on for what? There is no cure for Asperger's, nor does there seem to be any for my depression. As the years pass, the depression only intensifies in its crushing pain. As I read over this post, guilt chokes me, too. Besides my futile rant on the state of the world, all I see is whining and prideful boasting about the only redeeming quality I *might* have, my intelligence. Even that, if I am indeed intelligent, gets me nowhere if I have no chance to use it. People bring me no happiness, only sorrow. I so want to help people, yet people are also my greatest fear. What am I compared to Einstein? Da Vinci? Newton? Tesla? A tiny blot of insignificance.

Give me logical reasons why I should not end my life? Because life will get better? I've already gone over that. Because it will hurt my family's feelings? My own depression has already pushed them to the point where they have had to seek counsel for depression! My mother has tried her best to help calm things, but she has often had to stop me and say, "No more, this [talking about my depression] is depressing me more than I can handle right now." My brother has had to stop me suddenly and say, "Enough, please! I love you but I have to go." I do love them, I really do...but I am to SUFFER THIS HELL FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE so they can have the satisfaction of two living sons instead of just one? Is my own life so worthless that its only value is in the emotional well-being that I bring to these three people? Am I to strive on in this struggle for the purpose of avoiding the eternal punishment of an angry God that presumedly made me this way in the first place?? Or, as some believe (and I have certainly not excluded this possibility, it is as logical as any other view I have encountered...), there is no God and thus there is no overriding purpose outside of a materially-driven existence. All attempts to search for an answer have led to the same conclusion: unless some earth-shattering event occurs, death is the the only merciful option.

 

[Beret]

Wow hun, im so sorry youre suffering so much. Things will get better, as well as i believe there are going to be other posts to make you feel better. Just stay strong. Youre in my heart, thoughts and prayers,
Love Beret xxx :hug:

 

[FoundAndLost1]

I cannot say that I know your pain, only that I am terribly familiar with the depth of my own. But I hear your voice. And that was a terribly powerful expression of your agony.

My words are so few in this moment, so aburdly irrevelevent compared to your suffering, nor a remedy for it - but I offer them nonetheless - no platitudes included therein - because I utterly despise platitudes myself.

Sometimes, that's all there is - so I humbly offer you my little piece of nothing...
as an echo to some of your torment...
because I have my own.

Because being human in the condition we are in is death-defying work...

FAL1

 

[theleastofthese]

I can love you without having to "know" you, simply because I have many of the same feelings as you do. I too deplore the insensitivity and greed of so many of our wealthy citizens. I burst into tears just reading a story in our local newspaper about some creep who let puppies freeze to death in a box outside.:sad: I get depressed over "road kill".:sad: I get depressed just knowing that our pets are cared for and loved better than so many children.:sad:

I believe sincerely that I AM my brother's keeper and that all mankind is my family, even tho so many of my 'relatives' are hateful horrid people who give human beings a bad name.

I feel guilty for getting so worked up about my 'problems', real as they are, when I know that most of the world's people have it far worse than I.

I can empathize with your pain as I have my own and know how it torments me. I can offer my friendship in the hope that it will lessen your loneliness even a little.

least:hug:

 

[letdown]

I also share many of the feelings you express here.

And yes, I do think there is hope. I am honest; I don't claim to love you but I empathise with you for reasons I won't go into now. There may be no known "cure" for conditions like AS and depression but there are compassionate people who will be interested in knowing you and developing relationships and not cementing your feelings of being a "social retard." There are people out there interested in you as a human being. I know that this is hard to keep in mind when you look at how people treat others so appallingly in the world.

The loneliness is awful and terrible, and I know what it's like to be very promising in certain areas of life and feeling so despondent at the social side of things- and questioning how much that "promise" is and how much is it worth anything?

I so want to help people, yet people are also my greatest fear.

You summed up what I feel. It is frightening. It is frustrating. I'm going to try and jump in the deep end because at this point, I have very little to lose.

Maybe the counselling you've been hopping to and from has not provided you with the approach that suits you. It's only been in the past year that I found someone that I have clicked with and that has helped. Maybe you could explore this.

There are options that are out there. They may seem closed off and hopeless at this moment but they are available. And there are people out there that aren't like the ones you describe in your post. It takes a long while to find them.

 

[bumper]

I’m not going to lie to you like most others will. I can understand what you’re going through and the fact is things probably won’t get better. Obviously I can’t say that with any certainty because I really don’t know. But from my perspective and based on my life experiences, I can honestly say hope and optimism will only make things worse.
But you already know that.
It’s a common problem. You are simply too smart to fall for any of the crap people try to feed you. You look at your life from an intelligent and logical perspective.

I’m the same way. I can’t be hopeful because it simply doesn’t make sense. Therapy and things like “keep your chin up” are for the ignorant. The blissfully ignorant! That only works if you honestly think it CAN work. But rational thought and reasoning says otherwise.

And that’s also why you are questioning your religion. You’re too smart.
There is no god. There will be no “judgement day” or any of that nonsense.
Don’t ignore your senses or your life experiences. As I’m sure you are aware, being religious is only going to make you feel worse in the long run. It’s the same as therapy and medication. Just a temporary fix to solve the problems on the surface.

 

[Not Now]

I'm sorry, it hurts my hands to type long posts. Don't think I'm being rude or blunt by my short posts.

I think you might do really well joining the Peace Corps or another organization that helps people. I know you say that your fears make it impossible for you to relax around people, but honestly, desesitizing yourself to it may help.

While I can't know what you're experiencing, I can read. It sounds like your a thoughtful caring person who would love to help others. You should do it.

 

[worlds edge]

All attempts to search for an answer have led to the same conclusion: unless some earth-shattering event occurs, death is the the only merciful option.

I doubt anyone here is going to offer you anything "earth-shattering," but I'm curious what you'd consider as meeting a definition of the term.

 

[TheoDork]

Death is the only merciful option?

For what has your faith in Christ given you, but hope itself? Death is not a solution, death is not a means of peace, death is a transition for which destinations no one can be completely sure.

Counting all of your problems one-by-one and weighing them in comparison to the next man is a completely destructive idea. You can see immorality, you can see lascivious, greedy, and barbaric people everywhere and yet you seem to be attributing your problems on yourself. This world is broken, and we won't be able to fix it, however, by recognizing its need for some sort of Healer is essential to understanding your own personal faith.

Everybody in the world has problems, but the worst thing we can do is give up because of them. I know things seem bleak, otherwise you wouldn't be writing to us, but please know that with Christ, your problems, sins, and blemishes are forgotten. Live for Him, and never be satisfied with making yourself more like Him.

I can't offer you hope, I can't offer you faith, but I know someone who can, and I pray you can look to Him for those answers. God bless you.

 

[MindChains]

Thank you all for the responses.

Not Now, I appreciate your suggestion but I think I owe you honesty in my response -- the Peace Corps, humanitarian organizations, etc. aren't realistic options for me. It's difficult to verbalize my reasoning here, but I simply do not experience the same kind of emotional satisfaction that others seem to when they are actively assisting others through volunteer work. I have tried that approach before and the end result was creating more problems than solutions. Frankly, that part of my brain seems "broken." I cannot recollect any time in my life when I cried out of sadness, only out of anger. I said the things I did in my previous post ("helping people") not out of an emotional impulse. It was generated, at least as far as I can judge, out of abstract principles of fairness, justice, and so on. The closest thing that I have experienced in this world that others describe as "happiness" is when confronting and condemning injustice, lies, deception, and hypocrisy. Whether all this is out a perfectionistic drive to rid the world of such problems and contradictions or some internal prodding of "conscience," I cannot say.

Letdown, your optimism is laudable but I am forced to reply, "I'll believe it when I see it." I see so many deeds supposedly all out of benevolence when self-interest is really the common denominator. Any conception of truth or motive apart from self-interest seems to be irrelevant in all people I have observed; all "progress" that is ultimately found to be good for the general welfare is not the outcome of pure and noble intention, but rather the opportune circumstance when self-interest and beneficence happen to align.

For example, I had to ask myself a number of years ago why no girls paid even the slightest bit of attention to me. I am not merely referring to a romantic interest. The truth is that I do not have any meaningful relationships with a female, period. As I thought it through, the answer became clear: I have nothing to offer them that appeals to their self-interest. I cannot offer them the physical or social gains that attractiveness brings, nor do I posess the social skills to impress them, their friends, or their peers. I have little money, so any financial incentives are absent. I rarely if ever display my emotions in public, so they do not have positive emotional reactions to me and don't see any likelihood of an emotional relationship in the future. Fame or recognition is alien to me, so they have no reason to connect with me due to that. Intelligence could entice them and stimulate their curiousity, but I explained the difficulties in that area in original post. Other than relatives, the female I was closest to (though far from being a "girlfriend") stopped talking to me after her goal was fulfilled -- having a male around to drop emotions on without feeling the fear that she could be attracted to that male and thus reopen her painful relational wounds that remained from her break-up with her former boyfriend. You might think, "Well, she wasn't a very nice person obviously!" But that's just it -- in terms of kindness, she was certainly above-average. I am convinced that she meant no harm whatsoever by what she did, it was what came naturally to her. It was unconscious rather than intended. I am not saying that I KNOW these observations about self-interest are 100% applicable to all people everywhere, but my experiences seem to uniformly reaffirm such a conclusion.

Theleastofthese, thank you for sharing your opinions on some of the problems that plague me. Yet again, however, I am troubled after reading what you wrote. I must admit that I would probably not feel prolonged sadness at the newspaper story you mention. My mind immediately critiques the motives of the newspaper. What if this is an attempt at emotional manipulation in order to sell more papers? Why is the public hearing this specific story and not others that are quite possibly of greater consequence to humanity? Are all the facts being told, or are some being purposely omitted to heighten the emotional impact of the story?

I could not help but notice the line in your profile "USA: bearer of ballistic hubristic 'democracy' :-(" It reminds me of how often we like to soothe our discomfort resulting from observing deception at high levels in society, business, government, etc. by creating enemies to condemn wholesale and put the blame on with few reservations and little attempt at objectivity. I am not saying you do this and I think that this is not the time or the place to debate politics, but this polarization of America is another issue troubling me. As a person whose personality is naturally expressed best through the written word, I have inevitably been caught in political and social debates over the internet and with people at my college. The situation between liberals, conservatives, independents, libertarians -- whatever major allegiances people fall into -- has disturbed me greatly and I find myself in a position where I desperately want to have some sort of influence on national/global issues but I will not and cannot compromise my objectivity by supporting one side or the other...every one of them has their biases and agendas that make their cumulative influence negative, not positive. At the end of the day, no problems are solved, yet millions more are created.

I'm sorry that I cannot respond to the others that have written here. I am too tired at the moment to consider them fairly and respond meaningfully, so the post must end here. My post might seem coldhearted to many of you, but I'm doing my best to be honest here. If I am to have any chance of breaking out of this prison of depression and alienation, I think openness is key...I'd like to talk with one or more of you personally if I could (private messages or whatever you think is appropriate). I don't really have anyone I can share my thoughts and feelings with on a one-on-one level otherwise.