Anxiety about Anxiety
How deep down the rabbit hole can we go.
I have anxiety that I will never be accepted by anyone. With good reason- I am rarely accepted.
I stay at home other than to get groceries or get the mail. My social skills are not all that great and yet I keep thinking I am not a bad person. My heart is good! I never want to hurt anyone.
I get very confused between literal language and non literal. Last night my husband told me he would give me his ear. I am learning he didn’t really mean give me his ear BUT my brain still was designed to picture him chopping off his ear and handing it to me. Even Malchus in the Bible didn’t chop off his own ear.
But truly Autistic Adults are the forgotten people. I read a report this morning, you can find it here
http://www.autismsocietycanada.ca/images/dox/KeyReports/ForgottenReportAutismOntario.pdf
if you are interested. It was a lot of information and probably not something I should have tried to deeply understand.
The forgotten people, that’s what sticks out in my head so much. I just hope to meet someone on the Autistic Spectrum that is an adult one day. So we can talk. There is a lot of support for parents of autistics (usually children) but very little support for the Autistic Adult.
The real point is- I am just trying to survive this harsh world. I don’t see the potential for me to be a victim and yet time and time again I get blind sided by the lack of moral compass some people in this world have and become shocked at how many times I am a victim.
In one of my favorite tv shows Once Upon a Time right now in the series the Evil Queen is looking for the writer of the fairy tale book. She wants to convince to writer to give her a Happy Ending. She is visibly upset that she is always written in the story as the villain.
I know if my grandmother were alive she would tell me to be happy my creator chose to write me in the story of life at all. But my heart aches for the day I am not written in the story as the victim because I don’t like that story.
It is not a tragedy that I am Autistic. Learning to love myself through the anxiety I have about being so misunderstood is the best thing I can do for myself. I don’t want to see myself as a victim.
Many Autistic people are unable to use words to describe their experience.
I will continue to try to use words to describe the emotional impact this has on me. I do not want to totally withdrawal from the world although that does seem like a likely result.
(i have quoted the below from another website)
While people with Autism CAN live an average lifespan of 70 to 90 years, 80% of all Autistics commit suicide between the age of 25 and 50. Most people with Autism are bullied so bad, that 70% of all Autistic adult commit suicide before the age of 35. It is very rare to see an Autistic adult over the age of 35 for that reason. ( I am 41 years old- From these statistics I see I am very very lucky- I fight to stay alive every day. I think OH NO NO!! Suicide was not written in my story, not yet in-spite feelings so very isolated and alone.)
The #1 cause of death in Autistic adults is suicide. Autistics commit suicide because they feel alone, and in spite of the stereotypes, they HATE being alone.
I will close today with this quote from Temple Grandin below
Autism is a spectrum
disorder and people with autism are a diverse culture. As with any culture, we have social norms, unwritten rules and a thought perspective all our own. That people with autism have to exist within a different culture on a day to day basis in order to survive—one that often blindly insists on conformity rather than respecting our cultural diversity—makes functioning in the world around us exceedingly difficult, often depressing and continually anxiety–laden.
– Temple Grandin & Sean Barron(Grandin & Barron, 2005)
