Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi
I won't bore you with tales from half a centuries worth of mostly disaster. My bet is, if were here, no real explanation is required.
I gained an inkling about 3 years ago that I might be on the spectrum. Everything I read about Asperger's, I was pretty much reading about myself and my own personality. I received the "official" diagnoses about 6 months ago. Relief, I'm not mad or bad, just different.
Now here is my problem (or is it one?). I really don't like being around people. For 30 odd years I've worked at the pointy end of IT support, at the level 'if I can't fix it, it can't be fixed'. Of course this means you are constantly in demand. Until recently I did not realise just how much stress and anxiety this was causing me. Pretending to be like everybody else, when I knew inside that I wasn't.
I did have a serious meltdown just over a year ago. Walked away from my career, have very limited contact with the few people I know and trust, no family that means anything to me, and for this last year I think I've made a hermit look extrovert. Thing is, I feel perfectly happy and at peace for probably the fist time in my life. I do feel vaguely guilty sometime, perhaps I should make more of an effort?
Anybodies/Everybody's thoughts and opinions would be very welcome, because I'm just lost
Bumholio said:have very limited contact with the few people I know and trust, no family that means anything to me, and for this last year I think I've made a hermit look extrovert. Thing is, I feel perfectly happy and at peace for probably the fist time in my life.
Hi Bumholio (great name!),
Sounds very much like how I am. I'm 58 now. After my dear mother passed away last year, I drifted away from my brother and his wife - my closest family, bloodwise, after mum. But our relationship had been a pretence for years. We only maintained it for mum's sake. Now, I have nothing to do with any of them and little to do with the rest of my family. I have no friends, and no one I really interact with outside of work. I'm a support worker with low-functioning autistic people. I tend to prefer the company of our service users than my colleagues. I live alone (with a cat), have a disconnected doorbell and a telephone which, more often than not, is unplugged.
And, like you... I feel perfectly happy and at peace for probably the first time in my life!
Do I feel guilty for not making more of an effort? Not really. That's a two-way thing, anyway. Once I got my diagnosis 3 years ago, I told my brother all about it in the hope that we could use it as the basis for some dialogue. If anything, though, it distanced him even more. He doesn't understand it - to him, it smacks too much of the dreaded 'mental health', like it's a blot on the family escutcheon - and often people are afraid of what they don't understand. We live in enlightened times - yet still many are standing in the shade!
With your level of skill and expertise in IT, is it possible that you could work from home in some way? If not in 'hands on' maintenance, then in some related activity? I freelanced for a while, working from home for a London-based IT recruiter specialising in Microsoft Dynamics products. It was commission-only, but I made enough to scrape through each month - and the only contact I had with anyone was via the phone or Skype. Many of the contracts the company managed, too, were for home-based IT professionals. Just a thought.
Anyway... welcome to happy hermitude!
Tom