Feeling lost

There's nothing to feel embarrassed about Tom. I know that feeling after posting something but, as someone said to me on here, it's these deeply honest posts that probably go on to help the most people because so many others can identify with them. You were just brave enough to be the one to post it - not attention-seeking, not overindulgent, but brave enough to actually reach out and share how you feel. I'm not often as brave as that but I admire you for it.  

Thank you all for your kind and generous comments.  I'm sorry not to have responded properly before, but I've tended to avoid this thread.  I often feel that way after saying something like this because it feels so self-indulgent and attention-seeking, and it makes me embarrassed.  But thank you, anyway.

I've not done very much at all this week so far - mainly just spend my days on the computer, making silly memes, commenting on social media, and posting on here.  I was going to do some more work on the book I'm writing about growing up as an Aspie - but it's been pretty hit and miss.  I feel guilty for neglecting it and getting distracted onto other things, but that's the story of my life in another way!  Distractions are so easy.  When I think what I could have achieved if only I'd kept my focus on things that could actually have made a difference to me!  However, there are some special circumstances this week, so maybe it's as well that I just relax and be a bit lazy.  I've also drunk a fair bit of wine.  A bit of emotional anaesthetic!  I'm okay with it, though.  I'm in control.

Part of my reason for writing the book was to try to demystify, through examples and analogies, the Aspie mindset for an NT audience.  But do you know what?  I don't think I can be bothered with that any more.  Even among switched-on people, such as my colleagues at the autism day centre, there's a gap of understanding that seems unbridgeable.  I still get asked what my special talent is.  I still get asked to do things at a moment's notice, even though they know I need notice for change.  Just the other day, I was having lunch and preparing for my afternoon activities with one service user when I was asked if I could instead scrub that and take some other service users out on a bus to horseriding.  The staff member who was supposed to take them had been likewise switched to another duty because of an emergency.  Not wanting to let anyone down, I nevertheless had to rush because it was already late.  I think my anxiety was picked up by my new service users, because one of them had a meltdown in the bus and we had to turn back.

No... I think the book will just be for people like us.  Perhaps it'll help fellow Aspies to understand that they're not alone with some of the issues we have to face, and some of the problems we've suffered in our lives.  In some ways now, that feels like a much more worthwhile objective.

@Endymion and @Martian Tom , you both write so beautifully and eloquently; you've inspired me to go do some writing of my own

That's beautiful Tom. That's exactly the kind of thing that I admire about good writers such as yourself: something that takes me a hundred words to describe or explain, you can say so much more clearly in ten! I'm going to keep a copy of that (I hope that's alright?). 

Tom i am no good at writing but I do often feel this way. You explain it so well, and this is another of your great pieces of writing so you have been able to write today. 

You have enriched my life. The best I can do is say thank you.

If it makes you feel better about not starting uni till later, I started in university when I was 16, worked all my way through 5 degrees including a PhD in science, and then held postdoctoral positions in my subject, but then when it came time to getting a permanent academic position, it seems that other people can't stand having me around for more than a couple of years, so I was bullied and harassed at two different places and my work was stolen. Now, my career has ended before it even really began, and I have to try to build another professional career, because nobody's going to hire someone with 5 degrees and difficulty with social interaction to be a store clerk (not that I'd particularly want to be a store clerk anyway). I'd be better off if I hadn't bothered going to uni at all, except that I never did so well in my life as when I was a university student. I'm not saying I didn't have any problems as a student, but somehow I always felt that I belonged, because I'm a pretty good student and really good at learning new things. It's what happens after graduation that I can't handle. So it all comes to the same in the end.

Perfectly and eloquently put, Endymion.  Thank you.  It very much tallies with my own perspective on life.  Yes, those tiny parts of life.  As Jim Jarmusch, my favourite film-maker, puts it: 'The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events.'

These are the things that the poets and fiction-writers notice.  Sadly (or maybe not!) I haven't been able to write poetry for some time.  But here's one I did a few years ago...

SEEING

I wish I could explain to you

how it is that when I see

a sunrise

on a shattered landscape

an empty shoe

washed up on a beach

a blackbird

pecking the bones of a cat

an old man

laughing in spite of the fear

a child

playing games with a stopped clock

a flower

blooming from a crack in the road -

I wish I could explain to you

how it is that when I see

these things

I also see

a poem.

Sounds like a good way to be.  I think I, too, overindulged.  I didn't get to uni until I was 28 and didn't get in through the normal route of school qualifications - just a one-year access course, which wasn't really adequate preparation.  I struggled academically and had to work very hard, so I missed out on a lot of the other aspects of uni life.  Afterwards, instead of feeling 'educated', I felt even more conscious of the huge gaps in my knowledge.  I had no idea what I wanted to do.  I wanted to catch up on everything - history, philosophy, science... all things I knew very little about.  So I just dived into reading.  30 years later, my head is still pretty much a scrapbook.  I think that, if I could apply myself to learning properly, I could actually make some headway.  But my concentration levels (it could be ADD) always let me down.  I can't focus on anything for long.

Thanks, DragonCat.  I feel a bit better this morning.  I've got an appointment to see my doctor about something else, but I may bring it up.  I think it is a combination of both delayed grief and anxiety about the impending anniversary.  Sorry if I made you feel that way, too. 

I'm going to try to do some writing today.

I've felt that disconnected feeling. Fleetingly and, on some occasions, longer. I'm not sure what causes it most of the times it's happened but I do remember feeling like that for a longer period after my father died many years ago. I think it's natural to feel like this after losing a loved one because that's certainly a time when we question everything about life. Question what is important and, against such a huge loss, realise that all of the things we fill our lives with are not as important as we thought they were. 

I too remember listening to people talking about their 'problems', parents yelling at their children, seeing others shopping or rushing about their business and thinking ... For what? What is the point of all of this? Why can no-one see that all of these things are just pointless time-wasting, time-filling, irrelevancies? Set against the loss of someone we love, all of these things are indeed irrelevant! 

I think what helped me at that time, after losing my father, was thinking about the joy he had from similar 'irrelevancies' though. He used to enjoy tinkering with things, mostly cars and engines and anything mechanical. They didn't always result in finished, working articles but he gained an enormous amount of satisfaction from taking things apart, exploring them, enjoying them for what they were to him. Enjoying them in the moment. Enjoying the process itself. It's one of the things I think of when I remember him, one of the things that defined him, and I often picture him working away at some rusting, oily piece of metal and I smile. I'm sure your Mum had her passions too, things that gave her joy or comfort or a purpose. These perhaps, as my father's love of mechanics did to me, seemed fairly mundane at the time but feel keenly lost now that the person is gone. 

Our own likes, loves, passions and everyday joys are exactly as mundane, yes, but also exactly as important. Every small thing that defines you was a wonderful part of what she knew of and loved about you. Perhaps the way you settled down to read in the evenings, perhaps the radio station you chose, a million little irrelevancies that weren't at all irrelevant to her. Grief and loss don't have a time limit but gradually I saw that all of these things weren't irrelevant at all. They're all tiny parts of life, minute atoms of joy or sorrow that might not mean much on their own but, taken all together, they make up a minute, a day, a life of experiences. They're not irrelevant. The meaning in them is simply that we are here to experience them and that's worth just as much as all of the little 'irrelevancies' we remember about them and which are so much more important now. A tiny part of them lives on in us, that deserves to be nurtured and enjoyed.       

Well if I didn't feel that way before, now I do. There must be an answer to it, but I'm not sure what it is.

Sorry for the loss of your mother.

You say that you tried all day to do some writing, but your post is a pretty good piece of writing. Maybe you could use your presently  low feeling to fuel some more writing of a dark nature, and then you'll start to feel better. It works for me sometimes.