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The original was posted on /r/aspergers by /u/OnlyTheVoidRemains on 2023-08-11 10:19:41.

I have had a diagnosis from a major ivy league institution since I was 7 years old. I was retested at 17 and then again at 25.

I am now 36 and I have crossed into some seriously dark territory. In the past year I have suffered the loss of some extraordinary relationships, including a girlfriend of 4 years, a business which was my passion and fixation, and now I am dealing with a DUI charge/cop encounter which has been eating at my sanity for months because I am under threat of possibly 6 months of jail time. Just a few days ago, a girl I had been seeing for the last 6 months (who I was reluctant to open up to for a few months based on my past long term girlfriend) ripped what was left of my heart out of my chest and then, to add insult to injury, decided to say that I used my ASD “as a crutch” to try and manipulate the world around me for my benefit.

Considering all of this in the last year, also realize that in the last three years I have suffered watching not one, not two, but three former band mates take their lives after succumbing to either depression, addiction or both.

This is all only a synopsis of the last three years. If I went further back in time and gave you all a rundown of the last 20 you all would be overwhelmed and sick to your stomachs.

My friends, I am tired. I am weathered, battered, beaten, bruised, and bleeding from my soul and there is very little left to feel at this point that is positive. The amount of trauma I have endured from my professional and social lives to my romantic and sexual exploits continues to pile up at a record pace. Every negative thing that happens is now cementing itself in my mind and embedding in my subconscious in a way it hasn’t previously and it is devastating. The most recent break up scenario was a serious dam breaking event in my life–the person I will get over, but the elements have been released in a cascading wave of misery, agony and pain where I fear there is no going back.

I feel like Odysseus. I have been through so many battles and all I want is to go home and find peace in my life. I want to be able to feel and love and not always be on guard with people, worrying if they will exploit my vulnerabilities or abandon me in future hours of need. I want to be able to just be me and not constantly mask, but I know what that will yield. I feel this ever encroaching darkness that I am always running from, yet I feel it drawing closer as I retreat from each subsequent battle.

I am hurting. I worry that my fighting days are coming to a close. I am in intensive therapy with the 35th therapist I have had in my life. I don’t even know if that works anymore. But I do so hoping to survive.

Every day, from the moment I get up, I experience intense emotional pain that I didn’t even think was possible.

Every day, I get further away from my humanity and I feel I don’t know who I am anymore. My experiences are morphing me into someone I am not. And I feel like I can’t stop it.

I am well aware life is not all sunshine and rainbows–no one understands this more than me. But there is no possible fucking way people are engineered to live in this sort of misery on the daily.

Lend me your strength, friends, I beg of you.

I just want to end this by saying I love you all.