People will tell you that all you need is to be confident and good things will happen. Your plans will turn out the way you plan them. Your prayers will be answered. You'll ace your job interviews. You'll pass your test. You'll win the game. Others will like you and hang out with you instead of the other way around.
I'm a manic depressant and an Aspie.
I thought that being secure with myself was some grant life principle, the secret to all success. Especially when it comes to any and all social relations. People would think I was cool if I liked myself. People would want to hang around with me.
So I stopped putting up a censor. I decided to be comfortable in my own skin. I stopped hiding who I was and I let things go naturally, and I was in tune with my own internal beat.
A few hours ago I decided to say "Hello" to someone I considered a friend, or at least a cool acquaintance. She's a self-proclaimed weirdo, which is cool. I like people who are weird and not ashamed of it. Whenever I saw her, I would make sure to hang out, say whatever was on my mind, and not care if I was too energetic. I was, to some extent, myself. So all I was going to do was tell her "Hello."
And she told me to get away from her.
Apparently, I was a stalker because whenever I saw her I made a straight B-line to talk to her. And to my surprise, she did not appreciate that I freely talked about the weirdest things.
She didn't appreciate at all that I thought she was cool? Does she not know how good she has it? It's not like she's popular or anything, but does she know what it's like to not be valued by anyone? Does she know what it's like when no one in the world wants you? Does she know what it's like when no one even likes you? Does she know what it's like when no one cares?
You know, I can chalk it all up to my Asperger's. I can. I decided to be myself, and I became too extroverted for my own good. I'm always eager to show people that I think something of them. Perhaps I shouldn't do that, but I'm sick of thinking that way. I've tried so hard to change, to be the person the world wants me to be and to act just right. But then people reject me. And I find out that they talk behind my back, form gossip circles over intimate things going on in my life. It's sick and it's wrong.
Then a friend renounced all friendship ties with me a few days after he told me that a true Christian would never feel depression. he tried to make me feel ashamed of myself. I fell in love with a woman, and while she didn't play the shame game she told me that God would provide. I prayed that He would provide for me by giving her understanding of how I felt. She never did.
If you're so righteous, why don't you try to understand just for a moment how it feels to be me? And don't just tell me to stop being that person. The ex-friend told me exactly that. It's cowardly and hypocritical. He feels good about himself? Good for him. But every moment he lives without caring that I'm trapped in a cage is a moment spent actively sinning and doing evil against me, and all who share in my struggles. I would go so far as to call it a crime against the whole world. You know what his righteous way of dealing with this was? He commanded me to "stop being that person."
So yeah, I deal with the Asperger's Syndrome and the depression. It causes problems, so I guess I can't fully be myself, or at least not all the time. I just have to be careful about when I'm truly honest with people. One day I will have actual friends that I can be myself around, the type of people who truly like me for who I am. I'm dealing with it -- I'm bearing my own cross here and I've tried to change as much as possible. But I'm sick of being ashamed of myself. I'm sick of being the only one who has to change. Let everyone else change! It's the world's problem now.
If only people knew when talking with me that I'm really a person who has nothing. I hardly even have myself. Whatever happened to the noble times when people saw others in need and had compassion? Am I not a precious human being, too? It's not enough that I can tell myself that I'm cool because I need to hear it from other people. I don't need to hear it in words, just in deeds. Instead, I get people trivializing my problems, and then creating new problems for me. What message do they send me? You're not wanted; you're not even needed.
Before you think I'm being oversensitive, tell that to Spink. And before you tell me that my situation is nothing compared to Spink's, you can show yourself the way out the door. That's more or less what the ex-friend said. He said that I had no right to be sad, not just because it went against his religion, but also because he could name someone who had it worse than me. He said that without even knowing what I was going through. And it was something he could never truly understand because it was genuinely beyond his comprehension, so all I wanted for him was to at least respect my pain. I don't want pity, because even if they don't seem big to you, my problems are really big for me. If anything, I want reverence. And I want people to care. I want to be loved.
As it currently stands, I honestly don't expect that to happen. The world is a terrible place, and the people in it are terrible people.
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