KuriGohan&Kamehameha
想死不能 - 想活不能
- Nov 23, 2020
- 1,744
We are social animals and thrive best when we have a sense of purpose and a connection to a tribe/community. Yet, what happens when you don't find your tribe? Besides the rare few who are naturally wired to prefer solitude, most people's brains are wired towards socialisation and finding a sense of belonging.
You don't have to be extroverted to long for a modicum of social interaction, we all need human contact on some level and total isolation will drive anyone mad. There is a reason why solitary confinement is used as a punishment and a method of torture for prisoners. It goes against our every instinct and sends our minds scrambling into a state of despair or fear as the faulty meat computers in our skulls helplessly fire off tons of electricity, trying to prompt us to act and find our human companions once more.
When you don't have connections with other people, life feels empty and meaningless. That isn't to say that we can't find purpose through other outlets, like learning skills, hobbies, exploring, working, etc, but social interaction is a large piece of the puzzle and most people who would surmise that their life is worth living probably do have a robust social circle that is providing them with fulfillment. Most activities do have a social component to them and it is nearly impossible to find a job where you are not working with people.
Being autistic makes it a herculean task to connect with people and form meaningful bonds with them. You are in an even worse position if you were neglected or bullied as a child due to your condition, as autism is a developmental disorder and the scientific community is not really interested in the outcomes of autistic adults. Childhood intervention is their priority, and that's where the heart of most research lies. You will rarely see studies where a researcher is keen to study adults who have autism, it is always children.
So what happens when an abused and disabled child grows up? That child is thrown to the wolves, even though they are no more ready to take on the world on the day the law arbitrarily decides they've reached adulthood, than they are during the weeks and months before it. I learned this the hard way, and I have been paying the price for it the past 5 years since I have became an adult.
I have always hated hearing the bullshit line that it gets better. My whole life, even during early childhood, I was told that opportunities and improvement were just around the corner. The reality was simply that no one cared. It was up to adults to give me those opportunities, and they failed in their duty of care. I know I have told my story many times, but it helps to get it out and air out the reasons why I want to leave this hell world. This is the only place where I can be candid and honest, spilling out the realities of what I've had to endure and why all of this has been my undoing.
Neither of my parents wanted me. My mother decided on the day that I was born that she could not love me and didn't want me, for she was severely mentally ill and had no emotions or motherly instinct whatsoever. After my father died when I was 10, his mother smirked triumphantly and told me that he NEVER wanted a child and I wasn't meant to be born.
As a toddler, I was prevented from receiving an autism diagnosis by this vile and abusive woman, because of her hatred towards disabled and "weird people." There were many documents stating that my grandmother was an abusive nutjob, as she has spent her whole life tormenting her family members and the people around her.
Yet, no one took this seriously, even though she had conspiratorial delusions and sincerely believed that everyone around her is evil and satanic, not giving her love when she perceives herself as a caring and loving figure.
Due to where I grew up, there was really no help available unless you were completely incapacitated or your family tried to kill you. Teachers were not trained about things like autism, and the area is so impoverished and rural that you had to drive hours to even access a doctor or most types of professional offices. You have to go to the one school in the area, everyone goes to the same church, you truly have no escape because everyone knows each other and cares more for reputation than sincerity. My family maintained a very well composed and likeable facade, and would do lots of posturing like buying me some new clothes or toys to look like they were good people.
Because I was forced to grow up in such an environment, I wasn't socialised properly and basically was left to fester with a very obvious and profound disability. I was dyspraxic and was the only one in my year who couldn't play a sport because of it. I endured what I believe to be CSA and could not verbalise to anyone why I did not want to go to the "well child physical exams" because I was afraid doctors were going to violate me again.
I have always had a speech impediment and at one point was pretty much mute because my family neglected me and locked me away when an older boy at my school whom I had a crush on started molesting me. I didn't know what sex was and I was very confused about what was happening to me. I grew up having no friends and being bullied heavily at school, I was always the weird girl, the prime target for people to pick on, trip in the hallway, ask on a date as a joke, and in some cases thrown into a fight and beaten up because my school was full of a bunch of delinquents who legally had to be in education.
Even the friends I eventually made treated me badly. The girl who became my first ever friend in school, at 12 years old, would beat the shit out of me during gym period, wrestling and punching me, and I would go home with bruises all over my body because of her, when I never wanted her to touch me. I believe she was autistic as well and also went undiagnosed, because her behavior was extremely bizzare.
Nonetheless, she was my only friend besides the girl whose parents would eventually foster me, and she was the only person who would accept a weirdo like me. She remained my only close friend for many years. I put up with a lot of maltreatment from her because I genuinely cared about her, appreciated her when she wasn't being mean, and found her funny, likeable, and interesting.
I stopped going to school shortly after I was molested, because the police didn't provide me with any protection and pretty much no one at school, children or teachers, believed my story. Up until the day I graduated, I had to be taught by several teachers who were friends with the boy who groped and molested me, and they despised me for "trying to ruin a good, hard working religious man's reputation". Other teenagers threatened to brutally kill or assault me. My family decided I could not be trusted at school after I begged to be somewhere else, and they locked me away, paying for some dodgy homeschooling software which wasn't actually educational and was just religious brainwashing.
For two years, I had to endure so much abuse from my aunt and my father's horrible mother. They would both take turns screaming at me and verbally degrading me almost daily, then would scold the other for being abusive, rinse and repeat. My aunt was a violent person, much like my drunkard father was, and despite her being disabled and terminally ill would smash and bust glass everywhere when she had an episode, throw a chair at my door and bust a hole on it, or take my things and throw them outside threatening to make me homeless as a 14 year old child. She attempted ctb in front of me many times and would get sent to wards for weeks at a time.
I had no one, no friends, no one to rescue me, and not even a single social outlet besides the Internet. My family chastised me so badly about being weird and retarted that I could not verbally speak much, and as a result I could never join online games or anything requiring voice chat. I think my record was going 6 months without leaving the house at a crucial period where children were meant to socialise and experience those pivotal kodak moments which they can look back on fondly.
During this time, I cycled through 4 different therapists and not a single one of them cared about how abused and isolated I was. They either referred me back to psychiatry to get on pills, or told me to write gratitude journals and do hobbies to distract myself from my nightmarish life. To them, I was mentally ill and not resilient enough, when in no universe should a child be considered mentally ill to deflect blame from familial abuse.
My other grandparents who actually cared about me took me to counselling, but they couldn't do much because they were forced to raise more children popped out by our deadbeat parents. During this time, I was threatened by my aunt and grandmother that if I kept "tattletailing" on them that they were going to blackmail me and get my grandparents to disown me, because they were devoutly religious and hate gay people.
My aunt found out that I liked girls and constantly used that wave that fact in my face to keep me in line, because being gay was social suicide where I grew up and it was not uncommon for people to be estranged from their families because of their "sinful lifestyle."
Despite all this going on, the therapists would cheerily tell me that it was going to get better as I aged, that hope was just on the horizon. I have always hated bullshit platitudes like this because they are not productive and offer no path forward, they are simply well intentioned words that serve no purpose but to piss in the wind and make the other party feel better about themselves.
Even though these "professionals" were meant to report abuse, they could not do anything unless my family started directly hitting me and leaving marks, and all of my relatives had stopped beating me with belts and whipping me when I was around 10 years old. I had to watch life passing me by from a window from the ages of 14 to almost 16. Eventually I was in contact with my other friend from school, and her parents just happened to be working in the social care system. They got me out, legally fostered me, and put me back in school.
Perhaps, you might think that this was Matilda finding her Miss Honey, and that there was a storybook ending to this tale. I wish that was the case. Even though there were some improvements, life continued to spiral downwards. My best friend in school, the girl, confessed she liked me, but was afraid of other people finding out she was gay as well.
Not having any experience at all with proper relationships or dating, I tried to coax her into kissing and exploring being romantic in private where no one could see us, and kept it secret. This was the biggest mistake of my life because she used it to manipulate people into thinking something bad went on behind closed doors.
Eventually an argument broke out between her and my sister in the foster home, and she wanted revenge, because my sister had lied and placed the blame on me for what started their quarrelling. So my closest friend went around our very small high school telling everyone that I raped her. Of course this never happened, but who were they going to believe? An outgoing, athletic, successful girl, or the weirdo autist who was already being slung through the mud because no one believed she'd been a victim of molestation and was pitiful enough to be living in foster care?
Thus, my school life was just two more years of torture. My sister did not defend me, even when our mother scolded her and told her off for orchestrating all of this. My life in the foster home was unstable due to arguments with my sister, and not getting enough to eat, but it was still better than constant abuse. Things did get worse and worse though and eventually, I ran away after almost two years, because my parents let our pets die right in front of us and I had had enough of not even getting half a plate to eat while our parents had steaks.
At this point, I lived with whoever would let me through their door. Teachers at school gave up on me and thought I was lazy and a lost cause, when the reality was that I was beginning to get physically ill and had no stable home. At first it was another teenage girl and her mother from the internet who kicked me out for being autistic and not being social 100% of the time, then back to my abusers, then I got groomed by a 26/27 year old man who had similar nerdy interests as me and had no qualms about hanging out with and flirting with a 17 year old.
Because I was a developmentally stunted child who knew no better and had never had a proper romantic relationship, I sincerely thought that this man had good intentions and loved me. Though I should have realized it sooner, as his first encounter with me alone was nudging me into doing sex acts which I'd never done before. I became dependent on him, and graduated high school with a 27 year old man and two abusive family members being the only ones sitting in the audience.
I spent years getting abused yet again, lured in by sweet promises and saccharine lies. It always starts out so loving, fun, and wonderful, until the abuser sinks their talons into you and never lets go, unmasking their true sordid nature. Out of all my abusers, I think he was the worst one. He degraded me and would yank my wrists or grab me in public, yelling in my face that I acted like a stupid child and a baby when I'd become nonverbal or show other autistic behaviours like being unable to make eye contact. He took loads of naked photos of me and sent them to all of his friends, even sometimes posting them publically.
I had became ill around this time and like everyone else my ex would gaslight me and tell me that I was mentally ill and lazy. My main complaint for many years had been relentless fatigue, despite this I was never given any blood tests or proper investigations besides being poked by a doctor while severely uncomfortable, laughed at, and told that I needed SSRIs and therapy for my supposed depressed malaise.
It turns out that likely as a result of malnourishment that I had serious vitamin deficiencies, but nothing improved once this was corrected. Once again, was informed smugly that I am depressed and unmotivated. My ex went around telling everyone that I didn't want to work and how I was a lazy leech, despite the fact that I quit my first try at university and was working full time in a physically demanding job.
I was told that you get used to the pain, but I never did. Work made me want to cry, I was always in constant physical pain and it was not taken seriously. I was told that being uncomfortable is a part of life and I needed to suck it up and deal with it. When I would get home, in great suffering and physical pain because every inch of my body was burning and sore, my ex would make me sit in one corner of the room and I wasn't allowed to speak to him while he was watching TV.
He treated me worse and worse. One time I got a skin infection, and he screamed in my face and told me that I was such a spoiled complaining little brat and that he wanted to make me homeless, even though I'd gotten the infection from being in the hospital with my grandfather as he was DYING. This scumbag forced us to live in a shed of a house with no heat and rotting floors because he spent all of his money on luxuries, then threw a tantrum when he had to replace a bedsheet because my sores had touched it.
Around this time, his best friend raped me and despite having visible injuries, I was not believed because I did not feel comfortable dealing with the incompetence of the police again. Later on my ex told people that I was bruised and swollen because I was a whore who wanted to cheat and have rough sex with another man, not because I was raped until I was bleeding.
My ex also became a criminal and developed a compulsion for stealing. He would go to small businesses and figure out how to bypass their security systems, stealing thousands of dollars of books, games, and anime merchandise. I did not want to be involved in this whatsoever, and when I attempted to tell our mutual friends about it, they didn't believe me and thought I was trying to slander him. My ex was very outgoing, charming and funny, and throughout all of the abuse I was never believed because all he had to do was play the "mentally ill crazy suicidal woman" card and I was instantly disenfranchised and silenced.
When I reached out to people online and tried to escape this, I was accused of being a cheating whore because the only person who offered to help me get out of that living situation, an online friend, was a man who didn't have the purest intentions himself. My ex told me to kill myself, adding that I should do it because I am a worthless whore. He would harass people who tried to defend me when I came out and admitted what was happening. When I had enough of this, I tried to take the phone from him and he punched me so hard it knocked the wind out of me.
To this day, most of the people I knew during that time, all through my ex and our community of shared interests, do not believe me even though I have so much evidence of his abhorrent behavior, including messages, proof that he was posting nude photos of me online, conversations with his friends where he discussed manipulating me and wanting to film a sex tape so he could use it to blackmail me, proof of his thievery, etc. In the end my ex stole probably 1000$ worth of things from me including game consoles that I'd had since childhood, and he posts photos of them online, yet I am the liar, huh?
All of this taught me that I must be inherently defective due to my disabilities and my trauma history, because somehow I am seen as far less credible simply because I am not charismatic and confident. My health problems were framed as a moral failure, a sign of laziness and weakness, and it took many years and worsening symptoms for me to stop invalidating myself and realise that I did have physical diseases and these people were using the term mental illness as a weapon.
I went through another abusive relationship after that, though it was mostly happy and the abuse was sexually coercive rather than emotional. All the while, my health deteriorated and I was so far behind everyone else my age due to this checkered past. I did not get an autism diagnosis until I was 17, so I was told that there was nothing that could be done. Multiple tests could not pin down my illnesses or what is causing them.
Due to being locked away and out of education during my youth, I was lagging behind academically and didn't have the foundations to succeed in any degree program. I have no support system and have had to meander through life without a single person believing in me or holding my hand, a 180 to most people my age who have been nurtured by their parents, teachers, or peers and were primed for success.
All this time, I have consrantly been told that I am making excuses and that I am an adult now who needs to take responsibility for my own happiness and wellbeing. The prevelance of this attitude has made me severely jaded, because it has made it crystalline that there is no actual help out there. It's either motivational speeches for people who need nothing more than a little push, or individualistic self help nonsense which is like a bandaid on a festering bullet wound. One needs to already have a lot of basal needs met before they could even begin to contemplate individualistic solutions.
All I have ever needed in my life is love, care, respect, community, stability, security and my health problems taken seriously. Apparently, this is too monumental of an ask. Ever since I found out that I have CFS, and PTSD, and autism, and IBS, and a myriad of other problems, I am understandably castigated and outcast because I am objectively a drain, providing no benefit to greater society or other people on a microscale.
I have tried many times to make myself more likeable and desirable, developing a unique fashion sense, growing my hair out, learning how to become more invested in socialising by asking people questions and showing interest in their answers, but fundamentally I cannot connect with anyone because I don't do anything fun, I am often mute and have nothing to say, my life is nothing like most people's, and my sense of humor is very weird and heavily influenced by proto shitposting online culture. It is a futile effort.
I don't have the configuration of autism that gives you hyperfocus and creativity. Besides having aphantasia, chronic fatigue siphoned away any ability I had to be creative, imaginative, or spontaneous. My cognitive abilities, especially learning and memory, processing, etc are impaired, and I have permanently blurred vision and brainfog. I have only survived my third attempt at university only because I gave up my dream of doing computing and am doing Neurosciences instead, which is something I already had a great deal of knowledge about and don't have to actively learn too much in my course.
Being alone just seems like the outcome fate has always had in store for me, and that is not the life that I want to live. I already struggling so much to survive, depending on a boyfriend who resents me and is only with me because he has autism himself and cannot find anyone else who will accept him. If he did, he would be gone in a heartbeat. He constantly threatens to leave me on my own because he knows that I have no close friends, no family, no support, and no hope. He knows that all of my chronic illnesses make it nearly impossible for me to work or function.
I have put myself through so much to try and improve my life, and it never pans out. Despite my ptsd which goes into hyper drive around medical staff, I forced myself to have more scans, a 4th round of blood tests, and to see an optometrist. Like everyone else they did not listen to a word I said and didn't really believe me that I am having drastic vision issues because "my glasses prescription doesn't change".
It makes me sick to have to consrantly see people's full, happy lives where they are surrounded by family, friends, and success. Since I don't really have any interest or hobbies anymore, I don't have any way to benefit people or connect with them. I cannot relate to the vast majority of people my age who are in good health and didn't experience years of trauma. I have heard a lot of nonsense about finding a chosen family, but I think this is only possible if you are not greatly impaired and are healthy enough to do loads of activities, have no social deficits, and so many other caveats.
I have come to accept that no one is ever going to let me into their family. I am never going to sit around a dinner table with people who love me, engrossed in conversation and laughter. I am never going to have lovely memories of adolescence or young adulthood, no crazy adventures during university, no aspirations or achievements. I will never be able to feel healthy, functional, or whole.
It really sunk in for me, when I tried one last time to do an internship and immediately got ill the first day because my immune system fails me, that it is over for me. There's no one to call when I'm on my knees and have nowhere to go. Most of my family is dead now and I was disowned by the grandmother who abused me and her husband when I ceased contact and wouldn't tolerate her spamming vitriolic messages at me anymore.
Normal people don't fall asleep 5 times trying to work an 8 hour day. Normal people don't have to mask and hide every detail of their lives to avoid making other people uncomfortable. Normal people don't have their illnesses invalidated and told that they aren't real and all in their head. Normal people don't have burning pain all over their body and crash from trying to sit at a desk.
I hate being told that as I age, things will improve. I have been invalidated so many times, even by people on this website, and been told that I am "only 23" and there is so much hope and time for things to change, but I don't want to put in the work or whatever nonsense cope is convenient for their argument at that point and time.
Sure, there may be hope for some people, but when you are unhealthy, autistic, alone, and suffered a lifetime of abuse, you cannot simply trudge through life alone. You need tangible help from other people to survive, and that help doesn't exist. Every intervention is designed to blame YOU for your problems, and ascertain that any failure to overcome them is faulty psychology. My mind is empty and foggy, yet people will always peg it on the convenient scapegoat of depression. I am not depressed, in fact I would consider myself quite motivated and happy when something goes right, but I have neurological issues that make it impossible to concentrate, socialise, focus, and immerse myself which makes it hard to enjoy anything. People just don't want to admit that illnesses like this exist where there is currently no cure or treatment.
I don't think people understand that in my situation, there is no option but to kill myself. There is no magical hope on the horizon, it has been getting worse for years and years, and I am sick of being forced to sit in my bed, alone, suffering every day. Keeping me alive is cruel when there are never any positive changes. I will not be one of those people with mourning family members, with tributes plastered all over social media, I am part of the dregs of society and many people won't even admit to themselves quietly that they view truly hopeless people like myself in this manner.
You don't have to be extroverted to long for a modicum of social interaction, we all need human contact on some level and total isolation will drive anyone mad. There is a reason why solitary confinement is used as a punishment and a method of torture for prisoners. It goes against our every instinct and sends our minds scrambling into a state of despair or fear as the faulty meat computers in our skulls helplessly fire off tons of electricity, trying to prompt us to act and find our human companions once more.
When you don't have connections with other people, life feels empty and meaningless. That isn't to say that we can't find purpose through other outlets, like learning skills, hobbies, exploring, working, etc, but social interaction is a large piece of the puzzle and most people who would surmise that their life is worth living probably do have a robust social circle that is providing them with fulfillment. Most activities do have a social component to them and it is nearly impossible to find a job where you are not working with people.
Being autistic makes it a herculean task to connect with people and form meaningful bonds with them. You are in an even worse position if you were neglected or bullied as a child due to your condition, as autism is a developmental disorder and the scientific community is not really interested in the outcomes of autistic adults. Childhood intervention is their priority, and that's where the heart of most research lies. You will rarely see studies where a researcher is keen to study adults who have autism, it is always children.
So what happens when an abused and disabled child grows up? That child is thrown to the wolves, even though they are no more ready to take on the world on the day the law arbitrarily decides they've reached adulthood, than they are during the weeks and months before it. I learned this the hard way, and I have been paying the price for it the past 5 years since I have became an adult.
I have always hated hearing the bullshit line that it gets better. My whole life, even during early childhood, I was told that opportunities and improvement were just around the corner. The reality was simply that no one cared. It was up to adults to give me those opportunities, and they failed in their duty of care. I know I have told my story many times, but it helps to get it out and air out the reasons why I want to leave this hell world. This is the only place where I can be candid and honest, spilling out the realities of what I've had to endure and why all of this has been my undoing.
Neither of my parents wanted me. My mother decided on the day that I was born that she could not love me and didn't want me, for she was severely mentally ill and had no emotions or motherly instinct whatsoever. After my father died when I was 10, his mother smirked triumphantly and told me that he NEVER wanted a child and I wasn't meant to be born.
As a toddler, I was prevented from receiving an autism diagnosis by this vile and abusive woman, because of her hatred towards disabled and "weird people." There were many documents stating that my grandmother was an abusive nutjob, as she has spent her whole life tormenting her family members and the people around her.
Yet, no one took this seriously, even though she had conspiratorial delusions and sincerely believed that everyone around her is evil and satanic, not giving her love when she perceives herself as a caring and loving figure.
Due to where I grew up, there was really no help available unless you were completely incapacitated or your family tried to kill you. Teachers were not trained about things like autism, and the area is so impoverished and rural that you had to drive hours to even access a doctor or most types of professional offices. You have to go to the one school in the area, everyone goes to the same church, you truly have no escape because everyone knows each other and cares more for reputation than sincerity. My family maintained a very well composed and likeable facade, and would do lots of posturing like buying me some new clothes or toys to look like they were good people.
Because I was forced to grow up in such an environment, I wasn't socialised properly and basically was left to fester with a very obvious and profound disability. I was dyspraxic and was the only one in my year who couldn't play a sport because of it. I endured what I believe to be CSA and could not verbalise to anyone why I did not want to go to the "well child physical exams" because I was afraid doctors were going to violate me again.
I have always had a speech impediment and at one point was pretty much mute because my family neglected me and locked me away when an older boy at my school whom I had a crush on started molesting me. I didn't know what sex was and I was very confused about what was happening to me. I grew up having no friends and being bullied heavily at school, I was always the weird girl, the prime target for people to pick on, trip in the hallway, ask on a date as a joke, and in some cases thrown into a fight and beaten up because my school was full of a bunch of delinquents who legally had to be in education.
Even the friends I eventually made treated me badly. The girl who became my first ever friend in school, at 12 years old, would beat the shit out of me during gym period, wrestling and punching me, and I would go home with bruises all over my body because of her, when I never wanted her to touch me. I believe she was autistic as well and also went undiagnosed, because her behavior was extremely bizzare.
Nonetheless, she was my only friend besides the girl whose parents would eventually foster me, and she was the only person who would accept a weirdo like me. She remained my only close friend for many years. I put up with a lot of maltreatment from her because I genuinely cared about her, appreciated her when she wasn't being mean, and found her funny, likeable, and interesting.
I stopped going to school shortly after I was molested, because the police didn't provide me with any protection and pretty much no one at school, children or teachers, believed my story. Up until the day I graduated, I had to be taught by several teachers who were friends with the boy who groped and molested me, and they despised me for "trying to ruin a good, hard working religious man's reputation". Other teenagers threatened to brutally kill or assault me. My family decided I could not be trusted at school after I begged to be somewhere else, and they locked me away, paying for some dodgy homeschooling software which wasn't actually educational and was just religious brainwashing.
For two years, I had to endure so much abuse from my aunt and my father's horrible mother. They would both take turns screaming at me and verbally degrading me almost daily, then would scold the other for being abusive, rinse and repeat. My aunt was a violent person, much like my drunkard father was, and despite her being disabled and terminally ill would smash and bust glass everywhere when she had an episode, throw a chair at my door and bust a hole on it, or take my things and throw them outside threatening to make me homeless as a 14 year old child. She attempted ctb in front of me many times and would get sent to wards for weeks at a time.
I had no one, no friends, no one to rescue me, and not even a single social outlet besides the Internet. My family chastised me so badly about being weird and retarted that I could not verbally speak much, and as a result I could never join online games or anything requiring voice chat. I think my record was going 6 months without leaving the house at a crucial period where children were meant to socialise and experience those pivotal kodak moments which they can look back on fondly.
During this time, I cycled through 4 different therapists and not a single one of them cared about how abused and isolated I was. They either referred me back to psychiatry to get on pills, or told me to write gratitude journals and do hobbies to distract myself from my nightmarish life. To them, I was mentally ill and not resilient enough, when in no universe should a child be considered mentally ill to deflect blame from familial abuse.
My other grandparents who actually cared about me took me to counselling, but they couldn't do much because they were forced to raise more children popped out by our deadbeat parents. During this time, I was threatened by my aunt and grandmother that if I kept "tattletailing" on them that they were going to blackmail me and get my grandparents to disown me, because they were devoutly religious and hate gay people.
My aunt found out that I liked girls and constantly used that wave that fact in my face to keep me in line, because being gay was social suicide where I grew up and it was not uncommon for people to be estranged from their families because of their "sinful lifestyle."
Despite all this going on, the therapists would cheerily tell me that it was going to get better as I aged, that hope was just on the horizon. I have always hated bullshit platitudes like this because they are not productive and offer no path forward, they are simply well intentioned words that serve no purpose but to piss in the wind and make the other party feel better about themselves.
Even though these "professionals" were meant to report abuse, they could not do anything unless my family started directly hitting me and leaving marks, and all of my relatives had stopped beating me with belts and whipping me when I was around 10 years old. I had to watch life passing me by from a window from the ages of 14 to almost 16. Eventually I was in contact with my other friend from school, and her parents just happened to be working in the social care system. They got me out, legally fostered me, and put me back in school.
Perhaps, you might think that this was Matilda finding her Miss Honey, and that there was a storybook ending to this tale. I wish that was the case. Even though there were some improvements, life continued to spiral downwards. My best friend in school, the girl, confessed she liked me, but was afraid of other people finding out she was gay as well.
Not having any experience at all with proper relationships or dating, I tried to coax her into kissing and exploring being romantic in private where no one could see us, and kept it secret. This was the biggest mistake of my life because she used it to manipulate people into thinking something bad went on behind closed doors.
Eventually an argument broke out between her and my sister in the foster home, and she wanted revenge, because my sister had lied and placed the blame on me for what started their quarrelling. So my closest friend went around our very small high school telling everyone that I raped her. Of course this never happened, but who were they going to believe? An outgoing, athletic, successful girl, or the weirdo autist who was already being slung through the mud because no one believed she'd been a victim of molestation and was pitiful enough to be living in foster care?
Thus, my school life was just two more years of torture. My sister did not defend me, even when our mother scolded her and told her off for orchestrating all of this. My life in the foster home was unstable due to arguments with my sister, and not getting enough to eat, but it was still better than constant abuse. Things did get worse and worse though and eventually, I ran away after almost two years, because my parents let our pets die right in front of us and I had had enough of not even getting half a plate to eat while our parents had steaks.
At this point, I lived with whoever would let me through their door. Teachers at school gave up on me and thought I was lazy and a lost cause, when the reality was that I was beginning to get physically ill and had no stable home. At first it was another teenage girl and her mother from the internet who kicked me out for being autistic and not being social 100% of the time, then back to my abusers, then I got groomed by a 26/27 year old man who had similar nerdy interests as me and had no qualms about hanging out with and flirting with a 17 year old.
Because I was a developmentally stunted child who knew no better and had never had a proper romantic relationship, I sincerely thought that this man had good intentions and loved me. Though I should have realized it sooner, as his first encounter with me alone was nudging me into doing sex acts which I'd never done before. I became dependent on him, and graduated high school with a 27 year old man and two abusive family members being the only ones sitting in the audience.
I spent years getting abused yet again, lured in by sweet promises and saccharine lies. It always starts out so loving, fun, and wonderful, until the abuser sinks their talons into you and never lets go, unmasking their true sordid nature. Out of all my abusers, I think he was the worst one. He degraded me and would yank my wrists or grab me in public, yelling in my face that I acted like a stupid child and a baby when I'd become nonverbal or show other autistic behaviours like being unable to make eye contact. He took loads of naked photos of me and sent them to all of his friends, even sometimes posting them publically.
I had became ill around this time and like everyone else my ex would gaslight me and tell me that I was mentally ill and lazy. My main complaint for many years had been relentless fatigue, despite this I was never given any blood tests or proper investigations besides being poked by a doctor while severely uncomfortable, laughed at, and told that I needed SSRIs and therapy for my supposed depressed malaise.
It turns out that likely as a result of malnourishment that I had serious vitamin deficiencies, but nothing improved once this was corrected. Once again, was informed smugly that I am depressed and unmotivated. My ex went around telling everyone that I didn't want to work and how I was a lazy leech, despite the fact that I quit my first try at university and was working full time in a physically demanding job.
I was told that you get used to the pain, but I never did. Work made me want to cry, I was always in constant physical pain and it was not taken seriously. I was told that being uncomfortable is a part of life and I needed to suck it up and deal with it. When I would get home, in great suffering and physical pain because every inch of my body was burning and sore, my ex would make me sit in one corner of the room and I wasn't allowed to speak to him while he was watching TV.
He treated me worse and worse. One time I got a skin infection, and he screamed in my face and told me that I was such a spoiled complaining little brat and that he wanted to make me homeless, even though I'd gotten the infection from being in the hospital with my grandfather as he was DYING. This scumbag forced us to live in a shed of a house with no heat and rotting floors because he spent all of his money on luxuries, then threw a tantrum when he had to replace a bedsheet because my sores had touched it.
Around this time, his best friend raped me and despite having visible injuries, I was not believed because I did not feel comfortable dealing with the incompetence of the police again. Later on my ex told people that I was bruised and swollen because I was a whore who wanted to cheat and have rough sex with another man, not because I was raped until I was bleeding.
My ex also became a criminal and developed a compulsion for stealing. He would go to small businesses and figure out how to bypass their security systems, stealing thousands of dollars of books, games, and anime merchandise. I did not want to be involved in this whatsoever, and when I attempted to tell our mutual friends about it, they didn't believe me and thought I was trying to slander him. My ex was very outgoing, charming and funny, and throughout all of the abuse I was never believed because all he had to do was play the "mentally ill crazy suicidal woman" card and I was instantly disenfranchised and silenced.
When I reached out to people online and tried to escape this, I was accused of being a cheating whore because the only person who offered to help me get out of that living situation, an online friend, was a man who didn't have the purest intentions himself. My ex told me to kill myself, adding that I should do it because I am a worthless whore. He would harass people who tried to defend me when I came out and admitted what was happening. When I had enough of this, I tried to take the phone from him and he punched me so hard it knocked the wind out of me.
To this day, most of the people I knew during that time, all through my ex and our community of shared interests, do not believe me even though I have so much evidence of his abhorrent behavior, including messages, proof that he was posting nude photos of me online, conversations with his friends where he discussed manipulating me and wanting to film a sex tape so he could use it to blackmail me, proof of his thievery, etc. In the end my ex stole probably 1000$ worth of things from me including game consoles that I'd had since childhood, and he posts photos of them online, yet I am the liar, huh?
All of this taught me that I must be inherently defective due to my disabilities and my trauma history, because somehow I am seen as far less credible simply because I am not charismatic and confident. My health problems were framed as a moral failure, a sign of laziness and weakness, and it took many years and worsening symptoms for me to stop invalidating myself and realise that I did have physical diseases and these people were using the term mental illness as a weapon.
I went through another abusive relationship after that, though it was mostly happy and the abuse was sexually coercive rather than emotional. All the while, my health deteriorated and I was so far behind everyone else my age due to this checkered past. I did not get an autism diagnosis until I was 17, so I was told that there was nothing that could be done. Multiple tests could not pin down my illnesses or what is causing them.
Due to being locked away and out of education during my youth, I was lagging behind academically and didn't have the foundations to succeed in any degree program. I have no support system and have had to meander through life without a single person believing in me or holding my hand, a 180 to most people my age who have been nurtured by their parents, teachers, or peers and were primed for success.
All this time, I have consrantly been told that I am making excuses and that I am an adult now who needs to take responsibility for my own happiness and wellbeing. The prevelance of this attitude has made me severely jaded, because it has made it crystalline that there is no actual help out there. It's either motivational speeches for people who need nothing more than a little push, or individualistic self help nonsense which is like a bandaid on a festering bullet wound. One needs to already have a lot of basal needs met before they could even begin to contemplate individualistic solutions.
All I have ever needed in my life is love, care, respect, community, stability, security and my health problems taken seriously. Apparently, this is too monumental of an ask. Ever since I found out that I have CFS, and PTSD, and autism, and IBS, and a myriad of other problems, I am understandably castigated and outcast because I am objectively a drain, providing no benefit to greater society or other people on a microscale.
I have tried many times to make myself more likeable and desirable, developing a unique fashion sense, growing my hair out, learning how to become more invested in socialising by asking people questions and showing interest in their answers, but fundamentally I cannot connect with anyone because I don't do anything fun, I am often mute and have nothing to say, my life is nothing like most people's, and my sense of humor is very weird and heavily influenced by proto shitposting online culture. It is a futile effort.
I don't have the configuration of autism that gives you hyperfocus and creativity. Besides having aphantasia, chronic fatigue siphoned away any ability I had to be creative, imaginative, or spontaneous. My cognitive abilities, especially learning and memory, processing, etc are impaired, and I have permanently blurred vision and brainfog. I have only survived my third attempt at university only because I gave up my dream of doing computing and am doing Neurosciences instead, which is something I already had a great deal of knowledge about and don't have to actively learn too much in my course.
Being alone just seems like the outcome fate has always had in store for me, and that is not the life that I want to live. I already struggling so much to survive, depending on a boyfriend who resents me and is only with me because he has autism himself and cannot find anyone else who will accept him. If he did, he would be gone in a heartbeat. He constantly threatens to leave me on my own because he knows that I have no close friends, no family, no support, and no hope. He knows that all of my chronic illnesses make it nearly impossible for me to work or function.
I have put myself through so much to try and improve my life, and it never pans out. Despite my ptsd which goes into hyper drive around medical staff, I forced myself to have more scans, a 4th round of blood tests, and to see an optometrist. Like everyone else they did not listen to a word I said and didn't really believe me that I am having drastic vision issues because "my glasses prescription doesn't change".
It makes me sick to have to consrantly see people's full, happy lives where they are surrounded by family, friends, and success. Since I don't really have any interest or hobbies anymore, I don't have any way to benefit people or connect with them. I cannot relate to the vast majority of people my age who are in good health and didn't experience years of trauma. I have heard a lot of nonsense about finding a chosen family, but I think this is only possible if you are not greatly impaired and are healthy enough to do loads of activities, have no social deficits, and so many other caveats.
I have come to accept that no one is ever going to let me into their family. I am never going to sit around a dinner table with people who love me, engrossed in conversation and laughter. I am never going to have lovely memories of adolescence or young adulthood, no crazy adventures during university, no aspirations or achievements. I will never be able to feel healthy, functional, or whole.
It really sunk in for me, when I tried one last time to do an internship and immediately got ill the first day because my immune system fails me, that it is over for me. There's no one to call when I'm on my knees and have nowhere to go. Most of my family is dead now and I was disowned by the grandmother who abused me and her husband when I ceased contact and wouldn't tolerate her spamming vitriolic messages at me anymore.
Normal people don't fall asleep 5 times trying to work an 8 hour day. Normal people don't have to mask and hide every detail of their lives to avoid making other people uncomfortable. Normal people don't have their illnesses invalidated and told that they aren't real and all in their head. Normal people don't have burning pain all over their body and crash from trying to sit at a desk.
I hate being told that as I age, things will improve. I have been invalidated so many times, even by people on this website, and been told that I am "only 23" and there is so much hope and time for things to change, but I don't want to put in the work or whatever nonsense cope is convenient for their argument at that point and time.
Sure, there may be hope for some people, but when you are unhealthy, autistic, alone, and suffered a lifetime of abuse, you cannot simply trudge through life alone. You need tangible help from other people to survive, and that help doesn't exist. Every intervention is designed to blame YOU for your problems, and ascertain that any failure to overcome them is faulty psychology. My mind is empty and foggy, yet people will always peg it on the convenient scapegoat of depression. I am not depressed, in fact I would consider myself quite motivated and happy when something goes right, but I have neurological issues that make it impossible to concentrate, socialise, focus, and immerse myself which makes it hard to enjoy anything. People just don't want to admit that illnesses like this exist where there is currently no cure or treatment.
I don't think people understand that in my situation, there is no option but to kill myself. There is no magical hope on the horizon, it has been getting worse for years and years, and I am sick of being forced to sit in my bed, alone, suffering every day. Keeping me alive is cruel when there are never any positive changes. I will not be one of those people with mourning family members, with tributes plastered all over social media, I am part of the dregs of society and many people won't even admit to themselves quietly that they view truly hopeless people like myself in this manner.
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I'm also a vaccine injured but to a lesser degree. I have ADD and learning disability and mostly just survived in life. I had a hard time holding a normal job for very long. I was also sexually abused as a child at age 10. I'm age 45 now and out of options, wanting to exit life.
