My feelings on my Autism have varied from feeling like it's a superpower that lets me see the world from a heightened perspective to feeling like I'm an unfixable, broken, bad person that should kill himself. As a young kid, I was bullied, even by my mother, always calling me names like "silly" and "stupid", but she also told me that other kids bullied me because they were jealous that I was a smart kid from a rich family. The peak of my bullying was in Fourth Grade from my locker mate who would physically push me and once smacked me in the head with a math book (the largest of our textbooks). Around Sixth Grade, I had a growth spurt, and the physical bullying stopped. It was the time when kids were starting to be separated into normal, remedial, and AP Classes. I was in all the AP classes, so I had most of my classes with the "smart kids". At this point, I wasn't even aware of my Autism. I knew I was weird, but I didn't know I had an actual condition (besides anxiety and depression). During Middle School, I had begun my experimentation phase with sex and drugs and became known as one of "the bad kids". In Eighth grade alone, I had received 18 write-ups. One was for tobacco use, but most were from me just being a 14 year old potty mouth. It was bad enough were the High School teachers were warned about me. Despite being in all the advanced placement classes, I never studied or did homework. I was more concerned with getting high and trying to get laid. My AP History teacher referred to me as one of the "accidentally smart kids" because of my complete lack of interest in schooling while still making straight A's and taking AP classes. Unfortunately, all the "smart kids" also tended to be the "good kids", and Kentucky was an Abstinence-only Sex Ed state, so there was no sexual potential in most of my classes, so I had to try electives to find potential girlfriends. It was also at this age where I came out about my bisexuality (which I now recognize as pansexuality), and to my surprise, my friends (the goths and Metalheads) were very tolerant of it. Regardless, I was young, horny, and socially awkward, so girls at school were never interested in me. So I found my space in gaming. I was big into Wii and RuneScape. This was where I was able to chat with girls that liked me. One was a girl named Mikayla who became my first internet girlfriend with whom I was able to explore my sexuality and another girl who was older (21) and groomed me into a toxic relationship. By the time High School rolls around, I actually became one of the popular kids. I was still unaware of my Autism, but my quirks manifested as the cool, funny class clown who could outwit the teachers and raise all kinds of hell rather than the anxious recluse. I wanted all the attention, and I knew how to get it. Remember that this is a very Conservative area, so the adult teachers weren't the most open minded. I liked to cross dress, and the girls loved dressing me in makeup and straightening my hair to piss off our Conservative teachers. My social disability had ironically became my biggest strength for social acceptance. I always landed the lead male role in the school plays. The Valedictorian referred to me as "brilliant" and said that my mind was the greatest she had ever known (She went to Harvard, btw.). I was even voted Class Clown, Most Memorable, and Teacher's Worst Nightmare in our Senior Yearbook.
But 18 was my peak. Life was much more difficult after always being the center of attention. I became diagnosed with anxiety, depression, panic disorder, and OCD. Due to local laws, I had to stop use of all drugs except tobacco and alcohol to receive my antipsychotics. This led to me growing a dependence on alcohol. And believe me, alcohol is one of the worst drugs. I had gotten to a point where I admitted myself into a psychiatric ward because I would literally wake up to a panic attack nightly and couldn't sleep because my brain kept generating obtrusive thoughts. I stayed for ten days. This was when I was told that I had Autism, and my past began to make much more sense. I was also diagnosed with alcoholism and later, through therpy, with PTSD from child abuse. The worst was when I overheard my mother telling my father that she wanted me dead. Although my stay at the hospital led to me getting properly medicated, I hated the experience. In my head, it was my last resort, and my last resort failed. After being released, I reached out to one of my old friends who had dumped me, and she took me back claiming that she had a soft spot for those with mental illness. We eventually became close, and even a long distance couple. I even opened up my heart to marriage. I had always been against the idea of marriage, being young and not ready to settle down. But she wanted a man to marry her, and I loved her enough to offer it to her. This was the start of our romantic relationship. But eventually, she left me for her other friend, whom she had known longer. This devastated me. Never more had I loved a person enough to want to marry them. I cried every day for about two months, and it took me about a year to finally accept that she was gone. To this day, I never "stopped" loving her, nor anyone from my past; I just learned to accept their absence. I had had many jobs on and off from age 18 to even now. My record for longest job was about six months, which was as a pizza chef right before my psychotic breakdowns that landed me in the hospital. This, funnily enough, is also my record for longest romantic relationship. Between this, my bad experience with mental health, my failure at romance, the knowledge that I was Autistic, and the fact that I'm only getting older and less desirable, I began seeing myself as a failure and slipped into a deep depression. It still attacks in waves to this day. But around age 21, I was still into edgy teenager humor, and this led me into some very toxic online groups. One was Smogon, a competitive Pokémon site with a very reactionary staff and userbase. They didn't like me. They even sent a catfish to DM me and catch me in some technicalities to justify banning me. The DMs weren't even on the site; they were on Discord. This led to me retiring from the competitive Pokémon scene, which I was actually pretty good at. Even getting very high on the OU ladder. So my next group was a Discord server for a popular YouTuber who once had over a million subscribers. I won't mention his name, but I was sucked in to his toxic community where I was made fun of for my Autism daily, being called "sperg" (an anti-Autistic slur) multiple times daily. I had assumed it was all in good, edgy fun, but everything came to a head when one of the mods leaked my private video. I told the admins about it, and they banned ME for complaining. Now being banned and part of the outgroup, many of the people I once thought were my friends showed me screenshots of their DMs ****talking me. The YouTuber himself even called me a spergy ******, which my former friends thought was appropriate to taunt me with. This led to me seeking out new social spaces and always eventually being kicked out. This even happened at my local college campus where I played Smash 4 with my friends. I learned about social hierarchies, even in friend groups. You can be liked by almost everyone, but it only takes one person above you on the social ladder to dislike you. They complain enough about you that even though the others don't mind you, they'll choose the person higher up in the group over you. One person (whose sexual advancements I had **** down) even got her friends to send written complaints to the college to get me forcibly removed. They told me that they even sent complaints on days that I wasn't even physically there, so the dean knew it was bull****, but they eventually gave me a yearlong suspension simply because of the relentlessness of one honor student, her friend, and a dude simping for her. They told my friend who defended me that those three people had sent over 90 complaints between them, so their hands were tied. I stopped going there even after my suspension. To this day, I feel distant from people, assuming they don't like me, and I expect to eventually be kicked out of any social group. How much of this is due to my Autism and the awkwardness that comes with it? I don't know. But I keep myself to a strict moral code. I always do what I think is right and try to fix any situations I **** up. But be it a family, social group, or workspace, I always find myself ostracized and left behind. And yes, I do feel that even SmashBoards will abandon me eventually. But as I tell my therapist, marbles.
Eventually, the depression and alcoholism had gotten so bad that I developed suicidal tendencies. I had gotten to a point where I cried everyday, often unprovoked. So I admitted myself into another psychiatric ward. This brings me to just mere months ago, in January actually. A girl I really, really liked dumped me suddenly, I had gotten laid off, and my family still hated me. I felt completely alone. The connections I felt with other people seemed weakened. I became extremely reliant on alcohol, even secretly hoping to go into cardiac arrest and die peacefully while too drunk to care. The day, just before my 26th birthday, that the girl I cared about dumped me, I cried like a water fountain and became manic. I remember pacing outside at 2AM in my underwear crying and mumbling incoherently. I came inside fully intent on killing myself, but I went into the garage, and I had no rope. At the time, I was pissed and upset, so I drank myself to sleep hoping to die inebriated in bed. Luckily, the girl did eventually un-dump me. I hesitated to say anything, as I feel that it is immoral to use your own emotional turmoil to manipulate the feelings of others, but I pride myself on my honesty, so I told her how I felt, and she agreed to let me back into her life and said that she understood my battles with mental health.
So that brings me to today. I still struggle to fit in socially. I still am extremely emotional, holding anyone that gives me any attention at all very closely. I still cry knowing that I want to get married and have a family, but I am at a disadvantage with my quirks. I still struggle with alcohol. I still am the black sheep of my family. I still feel like an alien among humans. I still self harm. I still form parasocial relationships. I still often look at myself as a failure.
But I'm still kicking. It hasn't killed me yet.
