Autism seems to me , to be so like depression, I always feel like ive done something wrong!

I've had the suicidal ideation pretty much most days since some time before my teens. Sometimes fleeting (ooh, a big lorry, what if I step out right now?), sometimes planned with military precision to while away an hour or two of insomnia. I made a couple of ludicrously incompetent attempts during my very late teens, and made a fair stab at drinking myself to death for a fair portion of the decade after that. I still absent mindedly note places where a rope could be tied as I walk across old railway viaducts, promising looking branches of trees, etc.; though in practice dealing with the suicidal ideation is little more than a routine chore most of the time, like emptying an ashtray or putting the bins out.

I don't recall ever having had the slightest fear of death; just the automatic reflexes beyond my conscious control. Nor do I look forward to waking up tomorrow when I go to bed (though, of course, I will fret like crazy if there's something stressful or non-routine about tomorrow). I get told that if I give up smoking, sort my diet out, and get more excercise, I might add a decade or two to my life, but the motivational intent is completely lost me; it's nothing more than a biology trivia fact. Religious faith or spirituality are not things that I've ever experienced (in truth, I'm a little jealous of believers, though none have ever been able to convey to me what it is that they experience).

I'm pretty fixed in my mind that no-one is putting me in the budget care home that I might end up in if I live long enough, and I'd have to be in a coma before I'd accept being kept alive by machines in a hospital bed - when the time feels right, and so long as I have the strength, I'll find myself a nice tree to sit under atop a hill somewhere and let the elements take me if I have any choice in the matter.

So complete indifference as to whether I live or die most of the time. There is a bit of a warm glow here and there - a kind response in forum post thanking me for my time and effort, being out in beautiful scenery, making someone laugh with me rather than at me for change. But they're pretty fleeting, and unless I'm explicitly reminding myself of them, as here, they soon disappear into the general ennui and alexithymic fog.

Is it autism that does that?

To some extent I think. Presumably because of my alexithymia and aphantasia, my autobiographical memory is about as vivid as a shopping list and seemingly has no "remenisce" function - it took me a long time to figure out what people meant by "reliving" memories. If someone alleges that they saw me "having fun", I have had to learn not to blurt out; "oh, was I?". I don't bother with holidays much because by the time I get home, I may as well have just read a  Wikipedia article about the place I visited, for all the difference it would make. And it's kind of hard to feel that you really connect with people who's faces and voices you can't recall when they're not present, and when memories aren't tagged with emotional responses. I feel a little ashamed to admit it, but I have cried far more over things which people have written on these forums (including writing my own posts) than over any relative who passed away - words are often more "real" to me than "reality" somehow (I had definite hyperlexic traits as a child)

On the other hand...

A lot of it isn't autism directly. It's living in a world which won't accept my autism. A world which has spent the majority of my life convincing me not to be me, because that's inappropriate or sub-standard. A world where I got bullied. A world where every attemp to stand on my own two feet financially ended in a "nervous breakdown" (autistic burnout, as I now know). A world where I always have to be a cardboard cutout "normal" human who, even on my most "masky" days, is a visitor from the uncanny valley - still never fully accepted even when I do bust a gut to "behave myself". I often ask myself; "Why would I want to live in a world which doesn't really seem to want me around?". That lot would be enough to depress anybody, I should think.

To end on a positive note. That is part of the reason I love forums like this (even though they too burn me out sometimes and I have to have a break). Written words are the medium in which I can best express myself; the connections between people, however fleeting or "virtual" are made more real for me by seeing them written down - or maybe it's just that because most of us here are autistic, I can empathise more easily, and get something of a respite from my usual feeling of disconnection from people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTAU7lLDZYU&list=PLMEZyDHJojxMdKKwt9AiZ767uktEGxecf&index=2

The ending says it all.!

All the best and thanks for your insights!

You're welcome. I don't really get out and "do much" with my life, and I've always felt a bit like I fit the old joke about "exisiting to serve as an example of what not do to" - so scribbling down my thoughts in public is about the only thing in my life that I could vaguely describe as a "purpose". It's always uplifting to hear that it's been appreciated (I just wish that such moments would stick in my memory rather better).

Thanks for the video. I've always had a soft-spot for Thom Yorke and Radiohead. I have no idea whether he's on the spectrum or not, but there's something about my way of living and thinking that he conveys so well. The way that the video expresses wanderingly aimlessly like a ghost through a series of disconnected scenes really chimes with me, and that ending is so close to my own fantasies of just stepping out of it and finding a hidey-hole to escape into.

Having been a musician, songwriter, and chronic depressive myself, I couldn't agree with Thom more there. Even if it's only for the recognition of not being "the only one" who suffers, finding artists who express those experiences can be a powerful, cathartic experience for so many people.

Having been a musician, songwriter, and chronic depressive myself, I couldn't agree with Thom more there. Even if it's only for the recognition of not being "the only one" who suffers, finding artists who express those experiences can be a powerful, cathartic experience for so many people.