I haven't posted on here for some time. About a month, at least, I think.
I've been in a mental health hospital for over the past two weeks. I became too much for my aging parents to worry over and opted, after being given the choice, to hospitalise myself. So I'm voluntary, not sectioned, and can go out. I still consider myself to be suicidal but I am hoping that my hospital stay (as yet of unknown duration) and my sharing of my testimony on here can be of some benefit. If not, nevermind.
The psychiatrist seems quite sure that I have Asperger's Syndrome (Level 1 ASD) and the common comorbidities of depression and anxiety are hopefully being accounted for when it comes to working out my medication ('drug cocktail'). Access to occupational therapy here is useful and I am treated well by staff and even try to socialise with other patients on my ward and those I meet in therapy. Pathetic yet charming, I imagine it must seem.
I don't know where it's all leading. My dream of becoming a teacher crashed and burned as I have now officially been withdrawn from my training course. No wrongdoing on my part (beyond honesty that I need help) but I'm really not in a good place to appeal. The way I was hung out, left high and dry, broke me and is partly why I'm now in hospital, a broken man. I'm haunted by this rejection as much as my failure in being a husband, a father, a son and a brother. So I'm homeless, jobless, dreams and ambitions are over. And, for all I know, I could be discharged from here with no medication, awaiting the excruciatingly long autism diagnosis all the time. They'll likely try to get me into a council flat and make sure my benefits support me but it's small fry when I know I've just had enough of it all.
If this is autism, it has broken me as much as it has defined me. The rawness of defeat haunts me. My past haunts me. My present terrifies me. My future is laughable in its negligibility.
A middle-aged, autistic man. Burnt out, rejected, lost. Suicide is logic to me, not just an emotional release. I can't stand it anymore. But I keep going. Alive but unwell.
Please note my experience of living with despair. Autistics are more likely than others to take their lives. The cold logic of not being sure that the massive overdose I was planning would be enough brought me here in the end. Now I get checked on every so often, with a regular 'privacy window' check that I haven't somehow succeeded in strangling myself with my bare hands in this 'safe' environment.
And the sobering thought is that it does and can get much, much worse than this.
Is this really worth living? Apparently you have to reply in the affirmative, or else.
A
