No one wants to understand

Depression is a prison you have made for yourself. You're the prisoner and you're the prison guard. You're the only one who has the keys to open the cell door.  

I understand as I've had to get myself through life without much support, and its difficult, but you are hoping for someone else to put the work in to fix you and that's very unlikely to happen.

Change has to come from within.  I struggle to change, most people do, and its harder for autistic people as we can be more rigid - but its better to work on it than give up.  Try not to dwell on the past and feelings of despair and abandonment, that will keep you locked there - switch to better/positive thoughts and feelings, and do things that take your mind of thoughts/feelings.  When you have bad feelings, say to yourself "i choose not to suffer" and engage in better thoughts/activities.  Try mindfulness, its not for everyone but it helps me have a break from unwanted thoughts.  Try self-help books, they can help you start to think/feel better.  Try and immerse yourself into a hobby/interest when you can, even if its hard work.

Make a list of positive things about yourself, and leave it somewhere you can see it each day.

You have to build a new, positive, belief system and that will take time,  You may be abandoned, but start by believing in yourself, that you can cope by yourself - you will gain strength that way, and that's appealing to others rather than being clingy/needy/hopeless which is off-putting.

Instead of hoping for death each day, hope for a better future, hope for the things that you would like in your life.

You are a ship lost at sea, but that just means you need to take the controls and head someone good.

I am so sorry to hear how you feel

I dont know if this will help but here goes.

I know a few people who have been through childhood abuse and trauma and while they never fully get over it they can lead lives that make them comfortbale, they can find love and they can find a form of contentment. 

You might never fully get over your trauma but it does not have to control the rest of your life. Even with biological depresson which I have had my whole life.
Its like a disability almost, you might not be cured but you can have a life despite it. 

All Im saying is there is hope, I promise you. Please dont give up. This whole community is here for you

I had a f**ked up childhood; too. But, then, I realised that I can't allow my past to shape my future.

You may have been shifted from pillar to post, but you've got us.

I'm thinking about what you've said, it doesn't seem to fully align with what my actual reality is. But I am taking it into consideration.

So you are alone, despite working 9-5. Then you are more or less the same as me, rejected by people, except you have enough strength to work which is good. 

Yes, the thing is a duck is a duck no matter what it wants to be. Sylvia Plath was depressed constantly. It's biological. But people would rather talk about kittens.

I've had a housing association flat twice, I also have been in four psychiatric hospitals, and several times been in different community mental health teams. I've tried everything I could think of. I did volunteering five times, college as a mature student many times. Whatever I did, I could never find acceptance. People who have not been through it struggle to understand. Abuse in your childhood can break you. 

Roswell, have you ever considered that it could be you're own thinking that is the problem, and not other people?

Do you understand other people?  I don't think you do, nor do I think you've ever tried. If you did, or if you had, you would know that people don't want to spend a lot of time around depressed people, nor do they want to be an audience for someone's stories of woe and sorrow. Not normal people, anyway.

It's not the world's job to give you a reason to want to stay alive, it's yours. It's something we all do on a daily basis. For many people, it's their love of their children, family, careers or hobbies that motivate them to stay alive. 

Why not spend some time visiting or volunteering at your local hospice and sit and talk with people who are dying?

Depression is selfish. Depressed people are extremely self-absorbed. Their thinking has become focused exclusively on themselves——but the problem is that they are focussed on negative thoughts about their perceived troubles, traumas and sorrows.  If you ever want to truly overcome your depression, you're going to have to stop wallowing in your personal stories of trauma (and expecting everyone else to listen to them) and start seeing the goodness in your life and wanting to tell people about that.

It's going to take a shift in consciousness on your part. And change is scary. When you've lived as a depressed persona for so long, and after you have invested so much time and energy into crafting and living that persona, and even when it weighs so heavily on you that you want to stop living, living without it can feel just just as scary. 

You can start small by taking the negative thing you say about yourself and others and flipping them round to the opposite. Spending some time doing this can give you a glimpse of life beyond the depressive curtain.

I hope you can do it yourself. And if you can't do it on your own, I hope something or someone comes along to give you the short, sharp, shock you need to snap you out of your depressive mindset. 

Beyond the darkness, behind the blame, underneath the self-pity, and resentment you feel, is a bright light, an indescribable joy and sense of contentedness and connectedness—it just takes you to identify the thoughts you're believing, the ones running in your brain that are causing all the sadness and depression, and then putting them though some honest and genuine enquiry. 

Been here, own several editions of the tshirt from multiple years of attendance but I think I might have cracked it.

My solution was simple too, get rid of the normals and go solo. I realised there was simply no way I could engage on their terms, much like a fish who was depressed at his lack of ability to climb trees, I too was depressed at all the stuff going wrong in my life on account of not being able to integrate with normals.

So yeah, I roll these days with a motto of "F*** 'em", if someone wants to be a part of my life then they have to meet my standards and abide by my social rules and if thats not good enough then its me that cuts them off, not the other way about. It sounds brutal I know but taking control is a near sure fire way to attack despair and hopelessness and with those out of the way you will finally be free to start carving out your own little world.

These days my life is the 9-5 at work where I get enough social contact to keep me somewhat sane and outwith work its just me and my cat and I wont ever let anyone near my life again unless they pass a long process of evaluation, I'll probably die alone but it'll at least be on my terms and of my choosing, I can live with that...

So yeah, when the time comes (and it will) just get off your ***, brush yourself down and start living on your own terms, dont be afraid of losing people either, in my experience normals are rarely worth keeping around anyway.

Well, what do you want people to understand about you? Are there certain expectations, like things you're hoping that they'll do, that your're not getting from them? 

I'm sure that people did a lot of things that you didn't want them to do though. And those people you should stay far away from.

I've realized that depression makes people avoid me like the plague. I mean if a child cries they are comforted by their parents. But if an adult is depressed, it's hard to find anyone who would comfort and understand you. I mean people can handle someone's depression temporarily, but if it extends to months or years that's tough for them, so they'll just leave that person alone, hoping for the best, because they realized that nothing they have said or done has changed that person's depression.

I've had trauma from abuse as well. Even after leaving, there were bad memories that plagued my mind. I wanted understanding as well. It is common for everyone to think to go to friends and family for support, but I don't look for them to support because they tell me to stay with someone harmful just to keep face and avoid conflict and questioning. 

To have a non-biased opinion, I went to forums that centered around abuse and recovery, and I shared my story with them, and I got a 3rd person perspective from people, and they validated that it was indeed abuse that I went through. People who patiently read through the story of what happened to you, will understand your hardships. But if you just shared something face-to-face with someone, they'll interrupt you with a thought of theirs, and the conversation goes somewhere else. They'll won't understand the gravity of your situation.

And I think that I've briefly mentioned about my abuse on this forum before, but it might have been removed. I'm not sure why, but it might have been too scary. And yet silencing these kinds of trouble would further silence the voices of victims. But I guess it's nicer to talk about kittens or something else.

This breaks my heart to read, but well done for reaching out. You obviously need support and help. What services have you tried to access before?