I have a contact problem. No one seems to want to speak to me. I used to love talking to friends on the phone. At times it has literally been my life line.
my friends screen my calls. Some have even admitted it. One even asked me to stop calling because it was causing them anxiety. Even my texts are routinely ignored.
It’s so hard to hold onto people. There was maybe 1 or 2 friends in my degree I felt I could really talk to. After 2 or 3 years after graduating I couldn’t get them to pick up the phone most of the time. My PhD years, made a lot more friends but only a few I felt I could really open upto about personal stuff. Most of them I’m no longer in regular contact with and the few I am still screen my calls.
Since my mother died I can’t even speak to her anymore, that makes such a difference. I leaned on her so often when I was anxious depressed or frustrated and needed support or advice. I talk to my brother but he just can’t be that support, he needs support himself and he just can’t process or get his head around the way I feel about things.
even the friends from the martial arts club I used to go to who were there for me so much when mum died don’t take my calls now.
there are a handful of people from my past who worry over me from time to time when I get depressed and post something negative on Facebook but most of them are people struggling with really serious issues themselves I feel awkward unloading especially when we don’t talk so often. Others I don’t talk to because I know they’d just give me a lecture, tell me to pull myself together or to eat healthy and go for an early morning jog. My dads probably in that category.
All my life I’ve found myself being kicked out and haemorrhaging friends. Infact I didn’t know it at the time but I was even kicked out of Sunday school as a kid. Only found that out reading my dads interview section of my autism assessment.
the only real group thing I have left is the Monday night church house group with 5 regulars (including me and my brother) one of whom hasn’t attended in months and another is skipping it regularly.
im dealing with so much stuff. A few different minor (non life threatening) health issues. Stress over my job and career. Issues with family. And just full on crippling loneliness and a feeling of being disconnected from myself. My life is not like I thought it was going to be, how it should be, and too many days it feels like it never can be.
and I’m going through it all on my own. And sometimes people say to me well you’re autistic have you thought about going to some ‘for autistic people’ style event or group and please don’t take this the wrong way, but the contact I have had with that kind of thing has felt very much like the people there couldn’t even comprehend the issues in my life. I’ve so little in common with them.
i don’t know how not to be alone. I don’t know how to keep going on my own.
