I'm back into the diaspora

From the outside, it seems to me that you are beating yourself up over having understandable difficulties.  It would be like a doctor hating themselves because they weren't able to save a life.  Doctors lose patients all the time.  It's part of the job.  Yet, we don't sit around hating them with terms like "dysfunctional" when they try their best and fail.  Sometimes things are just unexpected, out of our control, or unresolveable.  We have to accept our failures as lessons, not shortcoming or moral deficiencies.  Like one of my favorite musicians said, "There were victims, and there were students."  Meaning, either you see yourself as a victim without control and give up to fate, or you learn from the experience and continue moving forward building your path.  Maybe if you were more open with your current difficulties on here, you could feel connected to others, receive helpful feedback, and gain insight to take the student path.  I know it can be hard.  I just took a 4 day vacation from everyone and everything because I was way to overwhelmed.  However, every time I reconnect with my support, I'm happy I did. 

In my case, I guess what I'm learning by sharing this is that I need to learn what is it the drives me away from it all, and figure out a way to better manage that pattern.  From what I can tell right now, it's something in the area of a sense of inadequacy, lack of purpose, confusion, fear of upsetting others, and fear of others themselves.

All My Friends Are Autistic said:

In my case, I guess what I'm learning by sharing this is that I need to learn what is it the drives me away from it all, and figure out a way to better manage that pattern.  From what I can tell right now, it's something in the area of a sense of inadequacy, lack of purpose, confusion, fear of upsetting others, and fear of others themselves.

Your case is my case.  For me love is a meaningless word.  I've created my interpretation of it as a mask. I'm not a calculating, manipulative, or deceitful type.  I do firmly believe in live and let live. My introspective persona is often misunderstood as being snobbish.  I really struggle in my socialising attempts which invariably fail.  My latest, and final attempt was recently made with volunteering my time --- a comodity I have an abundance of --- to a local steam museum.  I was declined. I felt sure my engineering background would fill their needs, but they were looking for a "people person" who could deal with the public---that's not me, as I stated earlier "your case is my case"  When you learn what is it that drives you away from it all  please let me know as I'm sure that reason may apply to myself. Perhaps it is fear.

I seriously wrote a long theoretical post in which I stated that the term, "I love you," has lost all meaning: https://community.autism.org.uk/f/miscellaneous-and-chat/31637/a-clash-of-cultures-why-nts-and-autistic-people-sometimes-have-difficulty-socializing

NAS86592 said:

When you learn what is it that drives you away from it all  please let me know as I'm sure that reason may apply to myself. Perhaps it is fear.

I have no comprehensive conclusion, but here is the best I have right now.  Fear is absolutely in it.  I have been bullied and abused enough to the point that I fear people.  I want to connect.  I want to drop my guard.  I want to trust.  And most of all, I want to love.  I can love so hard.  However, the pain of being emotionally abused for years by someone I thought loved me is truly excruciating to the point of seriously considering suicide.  Therefore, there is a lot of fear involved because I never want to be there again.  I am terrified of that place.  It is dark, colorless, pleasureless, and painful.

Another related matter is lack of trust in myself to navigate the social arena without protecting myself from the abuse.  So it's not that I'm only scared of others, but that I'm scared of myself not recognizing and protecting myself from it.  To me, this is the larger problem because I cannot change how others are, but I can learn where and how to engage with others.  This is something I'm actively working on.

The last thing is that I don't understand the limits of my body.  I tend to ignore my internal signs across the board: hunger, pain, exhaustion, frustration, etc.  I once went three days without eating because I forgot.  This puts me at risk for burning myself out, shutting down, and disappearing.  This causes others to feel neglected or that I am mad at them, when really I don't have the energy to even listen to 10 seconds of whatever they have to say.  I'm protecting them from myself because I will be even more rude if I do attempt to interact.  In the case where I cannot escape from someone that violates boundaries and is disrespectfully intrusive, I can verbally blow up by pointing out their behaviors with impeccable precision and no restraint.  Why should I if they aren't giving me the same respect?  However, this does not work with NTs because they find it extremely insulting despite the validity and that they are the ones committing the injustice while I'm defending myself.  Now, I'm the a**hole and they have all the material they need to gaslight me into convincing me I'm the offender, so I slowly lose myself and have a metaphysical death.  I made a painting about this process 2-3 months ago: https://imgur.com/SJ2DgCv

I seriously wrote a long theoretical post in which I stated that the term, "I love you," has lost all meaning: https://community.autism.org.uk/f/miscellaneous-and-chat/31637/a-clash-of-cultures-why-nts-and-autistic-people-sometimes-have-difficulty-socializing

NAS86592 said:

When you learn what is it that drives you away from it all  please let me know as I'm sure that reason may apply to myself. Perhaps it is fear.

I have no comprehensive conclusion, but here is the best I have right now.  Fear is absolutely in it.  I have been bullied and abused enough to the point that I fear people.  I want to connect.  I want to drop my guard.  I want to trust.  And most of all, I want to love.  I can love so hard.  However, the pain of being emotionally abused for years by someone I thought loved me is truly excruciating to the point of seriously considering suicide.  Therefore, there is a lot of fear involved because I never want to be there again.  I am terrified of that place.  It is dark, colorless, pleasureless, and painful.

Another related matter is lack of trust in myself to navigate the social arena without protecting myself from the abuse.  So it's not that I'm only scared of others, but that I'm scared of myself not recognizing and protecting myself from it.  To me, this is the larger problem because I cannot change how others are, but I can learn where and how to engage with others.  This is something I'm actively working on.

The last thing is that I don't understand the limits of my body.  I tend to ignore my internal signs across the board: hunger, pain, exhaustion, frustration, etc.  I once went three days without eating because I forgot.  This puts me at risk for burning myself out, shutting down, and disappearing.  This causes others to feel neglected or that I am mad at them, when really I don't have the energy to even listen to 10 seconds of whatever they have to say.  I'm protecting them from myself because I will be even more rude if I do attempt to interact.  In the case where I cannot escape from someone that violates boundaries and is disrespectfully intrusive, I can verbally blow up by pointing out their behaviors with impeccable precision and no restraint.  Why should I if they aren't giving me the same respect?  However, this does not work with NTs because they find it extremely insulting despite the validity and that they are the ones committing the injustice while I'm defending myself.  Now, I'm the a**hole and they have all the material they need to gaslight me into convincing me I'm the offender, so I slowly lose myself and have a metaphysical death.  I made a painting about this process 2-3 months ago: https://imgur.com/SJ2DgCv