Possible phobia and why I can no longer live where I live

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So I've lived in Indiana all my life (mostly in Indianapolis) went to college up north. Well my AS has caused me a lot of s**t with other people and worse yet I had to transfer to different schools alot in the same city so I had to encounter a whole lot of people in my lifetime.

I made a whole bunch of different friends when I went to college but I dunno I guess my aspie self kicked in...I stopped talking to about 90% of the people I was friends with just because...I dunno...I just didn't have the energy or the will power in me to stay connected. I knew this would be trouble when I lost all contact with my best friend from high school. The other 10% were people I hung out with the most...a tight clique but also a very harsh one. We lived on insulting each other, drama, and other nasty s**t. All I can say is that there's a couple of people in this group that hurt me emotionally...among them whom I thought was my best friend from college. Perhaps she didn't mean to hurt me...most likely since I've haven't been the greatest friend to her either...but I couldn't help but feel hurt. Somehow I dont think these people I hung out with would ever give a rat's ass anyway if I felt hurt by them. But oh-ho I say one jokey thing about them and they go all offensive on me. Hypocrisy at its usual work.

At first. I had no problem with moving back with my parents (although living out on my own away from them during college will probably be the highlight of my life). My thought was okay everybody's probably gonna move out of state and go all over the place right? F**king Irony!! ! It seems that even NTs don't like to stray far from home...nearly everyone I knew from high school and college is staying in Indianapolis!

Now think about that? Every person that ever hurt me...every person that ever hated me...every person that is probably mad at me cause I lost contact with them...every person that will be mad at me sometime in the future....pretty much every person I ever pissed off...all in the same city you're living in. And Indy is not a big city...it's a rather small one. I already ran into some people I didn't think I would run into...the ex-boyfriend who decided to keep harrassing me long after he dumped me...my ex best friend who didn't stood up for me when I needed her to...(No I didn't talk to them...as soon as I spotted them I turned and fled before they could see me but I imagine that I cant be that lucky that they didnt spot me back). Now I just have to pray that my psychotic ex-boyfriend from high school is still in Iraq and plans to f**king stay there cause he's the last person I want to have an encounter with while trying to live an everyday life.

So what does this all add up to? Well pretty much, fear of me stepping out of my own house (though some of my enemies do know where I live )...fear of me going out into town or the city or other familiar places I've been accustomed to going to...malls, restaraunts....all out of fear of running into familiar people, and having to deal with not talking to them. Because most of the familiar people want to confront me...or I feel/fear they want to confront me. I'm that afraid of familiar people...I'm that afraid of my own friends. I'm afraid of running into a vast majority of the people on my facebook friends list for social paranoia reasons. Some I dont get along so well and some I know probably have some dislike towards me.

There are exceptions of course, my new best friend who also has AS and gets my paranoias but he's occupied with grad school up north and a couple of guys who surprisingly I continued to stay connected with (thanks to my barely used AIM) but they moved to Austin, TX. I got to visit them a couple of times and it was a comforting relief because although they were familiar they were in a new place away from familiar people.

So this is why I feel I NEED TO MOVE OUT OF INDY. I need to look for jobs or living elsewhere because of this unusual paranoia I have of running into familiar people. I have a lame metaphor for it but when you piss off all the ants in the ant farm you find you have very few holes left you can hide in, LOL.

My parents will never understand this paranoia/phobia I have. In fact I bet you more than anything they will LOL in my face, then tell me that's the biggest bunch of crap they've ever heard and then will tell me to stop being such a baby. I sure wont ever be getting their understanding about this. Never mind, that I had a serious hyperventilation attack when I had that near run-in with my former best friend and still have nightmares about running into my psychotic ex-boyfriend.

I dunno if such a phobia exists but do you think this kind of thing is possible? Is it understandable that I would want to get out the city at the very least and find a place to live where I wouldn't have to live with such phobia of going out into the town? I felt more comfortable on my out of state excursions...comfortable at college till I pissed off everyone there (so I cant go back to that town either)...I feel more comfortable being away from the familiar because confronting the familiar after the hurt and the pain that my AS most likely played a part in scares the living crap outta me. Your thoughts?

BTW sorry you've been RANTED!

I can see where you're coming from, but it's a matter of perspective. If the above is true, doesn't it also stand to reason (at least in theory) that the opposite is true as well? that every person that ever liked you, did right by you, every person that might be pumped to see you after a period of absence and broken contact, every person you ever made happy?

It's kinda f*cked up how it works sometimes, that oftentimes these people are one and the same, and you never know how they will respond. Sometimes it can be quite positive, of course it can be negative as well; I find most of the time it's shallow and neutral-to-positive, which, while not exactly fulfilling, is certainly not something to worry about. FYI I live in a city that I think is larger than Indy, but not by a whole lot, and I run into people I knew growing up fairly regularly.

Obviously I don't know the subtleties and details of the issues involved with your friends or ex-friends or whatever, and maybe the dynamics are somewhat different for me because I am a dude (I am assuming from this you are female, if I am wrong I apologize )... BUT the reason I responded to this in the first place, and thought I might have something to relate is this:



Reading that whole passage gave me chills it was so eerily similar to my group of college friends, the part in bold especially, and it's also quite similar to my group of friends from high school (who at this point I am actually closer to for the most part than my college crew)... And, at least in my experience, as we grow up, people tend to get nicer, more mature, even if they grow apart both in interests and contact. Most people stop dwelling on bullsh*t from the past, and often welcome the opportunity to start fresh (God, of all the people who ever did me wrong in college and high school combined, there's only one that if I saw him on the street to this day I might take a swing at him).

So I guess I'm starting to rant too, and in the end I don't have really any concrete advice, just thought I'd give you my experience with at least somewhat similar circumstances.

I can also say that despite my experience, I really want to get out anyway, and I have ever since I came back; and in fact I am finally doing so, and it feels SO good to be moving forward. There's no real reason to stay regardless of social circumstances if you're unhappy and have better prospects elsewhere.

I also live in the Indianapolis area and I know exactly what you're saying. People can either be really nice or they can give you hell. There's very, very few people inbetween. I'm originally from Houston, Texas and people down south really are much nicer than Hoosiers... I also plan on moving to Florida in a year or two.

I wish I could say more, but honestly, I'm horrible with the whole advice thing. But I do want to say that I wish you the best of luck in the future and good luck leaving all these Hoosiers behind!

This is something else you are going through that I can relate to. It feels like, in Edinburgh, the familiarisation is just as difficult for me as it is in your situation. And it's smaller than Indianapolis. I have not even been here all my life, but certainly I've met a lot of people here and can never, ever get away from bumping into people at any time. It's very constraining, when I want to get my own space I just cannot much of the time.

The town where I went to high school would have been a lot worse, if I was still there, because it was smaller and I made social mistakes there in a way that I haven't made here.

And I see that even in a city as big and dispersed as Indianapolis you can't escape people you know. Maybe it will be good for you to get away though, like I did from my high school town, the way you feel might suggest a change is needed and might be good.

Actually I'm intrigued about Indiana, because when I used to chat online a lot I had online girlfriends and close friends (as long as they lasted) online - something I don't like to admit to. Indiana seemed to be a hotspot for such people to come from, in particular, in the rural north-west, particularly the areas around Lafayette. I suppose this was due to the lack of social opportunity for people in tiny towns in what is a flat, sparsely populated corner of the country. But why this area, I wonder, and not other sparsely populated flat areas?

I kind of know how you feel. The city I grew up in I went to 7 different schools in 12 years, so I met alot of people as well I didn't care for. I always thought my problems were the city, since my mother always griped about what a horrible place it was we had to live. We moved after graduation to a smaller community and although I did make some friends, I was never close to anyone.

After we moved, my mother said she loved the old city and never wanted to leave, and hated the new one. I did OK, but I ended up moving back to the old city again after graduating and was very unhappy, seeing all the familiar places reminded me of the miserable childhood I had there, and my parents ended up moving back there too, so it was as it was before. I seldom ran into people I had known before thank goodness, but hated the idea of being stuck there the rest of my life. I actually did run into a couple of my old tormentors and they acted as if I was a long lost friend. One was working the customer service desk in a supermarket and felt a little down when I told him about the government job I had. The other was working as a manager at a pizza place.

After spending all of my time depressed, not finding anywhere I could fit in, I eventually became ill with a life threatening condition and realized I needed a new place to go. After I got well, I applied for a few jobs in a nearby city, about 70 miles away, and managed to land one. I immediately got an apartment in my new town and started feeling happier in my new town, spent time memorizing the map and exploring this totally new place. I joined a PC usergroup, a ham radio club, and found them to be friendlier than in my old city, and some things, but not everything, got better.

Of course, my parents then moved to my town, then moved back to where they were before when I decided to get married, but that's another story.

Moving can solve some problems, but not all.

Good luck.