Autism has destroyed my life ever since I was a child and it doesn’t seem like a cure is anywhere in the near future. My whole life I’ve had great hopes and dreams, to become a historian and travel the world. On the outside I am living that dream. I just graduated from ASU summa cum laude with a 4.o, prestigious universities are offering me scholarships for grad school, and now I am living in Bulgaria, one of the countries I’ve always loved studying and next month I will be travelling to Serbia, another country of interest. It all sounds so great, but I’ve had a problem even basically communicating with others my whole life because I can’t read body language, I can’t form the right words (no matter what I say it’s always the wrong thing and people are really cruel when it comes to correcting me). I could barely even keep a minimum wage job through school because simple fucking questions that anyone else in the world could answer without hesitation confuse my worthless retarded shriveled piece of shit brain.
My #1 coping mechanism has been to punch myself in the mouth as hard as I can possibly stand every time I say something even remotely wrong, especially if people are mean to me about it. I fucking hate when people ask me questions. I get so confused and my head hurts, even if it’s an easy question to answer, to the point I get hostile until people stop asking me things, which isn’t fair to them. I’ve hit my jaw so much that it’s dislodged and my right ear is permanently damaged; if I even touch it it makes a loud roaring sound and my hearing has decreased noticeably. I’ve chipped teeth and have developed TMJ, which only makes life more pleasant. This is because I’m such a retard I thought it’d have less permanently effects than cutting.
I’m too stupid too communicate with anyone here in Bulgaria and have severe panic attacks whenever I try. I’m too stupid to talk to people in English, so I don’t know what delusion overcame me to think I could possibly contact anyone here in Bulgarian. I’m too stupid to figure out how public transportation works so I can’t really visit anything outside of Sofia. I can hardly even visit anything within Sofia because I am too stupid to follow basic directions and people keep making fun of me for it instead of helping me when I ask. My host has been nice, but he has a whole life outside of me. I feel like I came here for nothing and my dreams are dying around me.
I’m living proof that great grades has nothing to do with intelligence. I’d give anything to at least be average intelligence with average grades. All my grades prove is that I don’t have a life and have plenty of time to memorize shit and edit essays. That’s literally all it says about me. Yet people see my accolades and over-estimate my intelligence constantly and I am fucking SICK of it!!! They keep telling me “you just don’t believe in yourself” when I have REAL disabilities that make it difficult for me to complete daily tasks. I guess I’m just too “”high functioning”” for them to see that.
I’m a girl and every support group I see regarding depression and self-harm has to do with self image. I truly feel for women who have these issues, I really do, but I don’t care what I look like and don’t need support to improve my body image. I need support to improve my image about my mind, but no one seems to acknowledge that girls who hate themselves because of their brains exist.
I’m due to come home from Serbia on October 27, 2016. I would love to stay and teach English and study the country, but I’m obviously not intelligent enough to live my dreams. I’m too stupid to have kids too which I very much want. Besides, I don’t want them to inherit this life destroying disease… So in short, on October 27, I’m going to finally end my life. I won’t have anything to look forward to after that. I know my parents won’t like it but I quite frankly don’t care because they’ve told me I am not allowed to move back in despite the fact I’m too stupid to keep even a basic job. If I don’t kill myself I’ll end up homeless. I’d rather be dead.
10 comments
You are intelligent but you just don’t realize it. You wrote a long post describing perfectly your situation. Just relax and be yourself, you are very young and everything will come to you on their own. I have visited Bulgaria and Serbia and i had communication problems as well just because they don’t speak English. I used my hands like a mute to make them understand what i wanted. When you visit Serbia, go to Belgrade, take a cruse on the Danube, visit the castle, take a look on the bombed buildings and check out the nightlife.
I read your entire post. I wish you well.
I admit that I understand very little about autism, but based on the descriptions that I’ve seen (such as in posts like this) I imagine a lot of geniuses and artistic people from the past would have been diagnosed as autistic.
Good grades, natural intelligence, and mental disabilities are indeed three separate things. You do come across as naturally intelligent, though. You’ve done an excellent job with English grammar and spelling in this post, and that’s something schools definitely don’t require so you must have done it on your own. That demonstrates an ability to communicate.
The sad thing about this is all of the problems you are having are related to meeting the expectations of others. I’ve noticed a tremendous amount of hypocrisy in society when it comes to intelligence. Children are told they need to get good grades and be smart and they’re praised for it, but when somebody has really high intelligence, which is often accompanied by social awkwardness, they are rejected. If a historical personage was considered different people think it’s cool, but if someone they know personally is different they think it’s uncool. Society loses so much creativity and so many great ideas because people are too insecure to handle anyone who is different.
There might be a type of counseling or coaching that could assist you with this. I don’t know, but perhaps it’s worth a try to look for it.
But, you DO have a self image problem.
I’d say more, but for some reason SP text field hates my comment.
Autism is rough to deal with. I hope you come to grips with it and are able to learn to get along.
Try not to be afraid of it. But seek help in dealing with it.
Many people with autism are very high functioning and have fairly normal lives.
Good luck
Hello 🙂
I am diagnosed with aspergers which makes me authist too. I kinda know what you are talking about. What helped me is to know and chat with other people like us. At least is good to know that other people has to deal with same things and know how they do it.
The most difficult thing for me is unable to handle nonverbal language and feel alone in the midle if a lot of people even family or kind people that realy try to be my friends.
Hello, while I do not suffer from Autism, I certainly know something about an inability to function in the real world, despite having the grades to indicate that I am “smart”. I guess that I grew up as being way too sheltered from making mistakes. I never really did anything myself growing up; I simply watched someone do something enough times that I could feel comfortable doing it myself (but then, only with someone there to make sure that I was not screwing it up). I have always been an observer rather than a doer, so I did well in my classes. I observed the process, grasped it, and then reproduced it, allowing me to graduate summa cum laude as an undergraduate in engineering. Now I am off at an elite school for grad school and am drowning. I am realizing that my undergrad was a lot more hand holding that I expected, whereas at my current school, I am having to operate in real-world like conditions, where I just have no experience and don’t know how to function. Because I have never known failure, I never learned how to fail, and I never learned how to deal with a problem that I didn’t know how to start to solve. Now, I am feeling like I am in exactly your same situation; like I am completely incapable of existing in this real world. I actually feel like I am some sort of cosmic error, one that should not exist because were it not for the exactly right or wrong conditions in my history, the universe would have done away with me long ago. I don’t know if talking with someone who has a similar, but distinct, perspective from your own would be helpful or not. But if it would, you can email me at sacrificial_shaun @ yahoo.com (without the spaces).
Know you’re situation somewhat . I hope your still alive and fighting , I also have aspergers (male) though . I go through the same issues of not knowing how to be in many conversations , crippling anxiety ect . The only reason it’s been better for me is having a gf by my side and raising a kid . Which gives me the motivation to keep on living . I know you can’t see it now but I hope you’re able to find some clarity in life and perhaps find that motivation or goal you want to achieve . Having aspergers is hard as hell …. just waking up and sometimes people treating you like a kid or retard at least that’s how I always viewed people on their outlook on me . All I can recommend for you is self-help and probably Skype groups ? I used to go on one for anxiety (social) and there was a group of 5-6 of us and we usually talked every weekend and that helped a lot . Can either do that or find some groups in your area . Keep fighting the fight .