It's difficult to survive

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I'm being forced to come to grips with the fact that I have so much anger, more than I can effectively manage, cope with or deal with. It's completely useless and destroying my spirit, or already has. I was especially not cut out for so much anger, or abuse, but who is? I'm not entirely equipped, cognitively, to manage it or likewise filter it out of my system due to the language barriers and cognitive challenges. And, there are just a lot of people who are very lucky I'm not the sort of person who will go out there and take everyone out with me when I go. I am able to survive with it, but only in a completely dissociated state. But there's always this other occurrance when the dissociative barrier breaks down and I find myself here in "reality" again. Anger and those sorts of emotions are so averse to me to begin with. And now I am stuck to live with, dissociate from or manage the unthinkable for whatever time is left. My experiences have all been so incredibly brutal. And they were people who did that. And here I have this handicap since the day I was born. While we have people who think anyone who doesn't measure up, in their perspective, is unworthy of life and really only eligible for destruction to their way of thinking. That's what they have basically told me up to this point. I don't know how I'm supposed to continue to work or deal with all of it. It would be too mindboggling to try and say.

There is so much value to my life yet no one has been able to see it. No one who would help me anyway. I guess needing any sort of help is the same as not being worthy, entitled or good enough. I'm hanging on for that value but there's nothing left really of the soul. And how am I supposed to walk around, cope or function without a soul. A soul that was finally killed. And it took a terrible lot to kill it, too. It's unimaginable, yet I have to go around with it forever more in my mind this way, completely unable to effectively give voice to it. It's too much all at once now and virtually impossible. As children we are resilient, but as the abuse continues into our adult life and there are no resources or assistance available, despite the fact that they appear to be, again and again, that's when resilience finally fades and if it keeps fading eventually there will be nothing left at all of the soul. I was unlucky and yet I'm lucky to be blessed with such a gift. I was just unlucky to be born into the brutality and cruelty I was, and no amount of effort in my adult life was effective enough to change that course, though I did everything in my power to try to. I have a few things to show for it but they are just that, "things". I am more blessed than many, in some ways. If my work can ever be a blessing to many, it will be to help those souls who are without a voice, be it animal or human.

I am so angry, and I don't want to live with that sort of thing. I don't know how to manage it or restore my own spirit or be able to believe that I can yet survive, accomplish and do what's in front of me, what I am somehow magically yet supposed to be able to do, given all I have come through. It's like a world more vast than I am sitting on my shoulders pushing me down.

I want all humans to stay away from me. I want all words to stay away from me. I'm tired of you. I have nothing left for you. You have taken all you're going to. And you have done all the destruction -to me- that you're going to.

What scares me is how much of all this I can relate to.

I also have a lot of anger. Read some of my early posts if you're interested. I've had thoughts, images, surges of anger of handling workplace injustices Tony Soprano-style! I would also like to have an uncle, say, who was a mobster and who would make the offer. He would get angry on my behalf and he would offer to take care of it for me. And then I could play Ghandhi. 'Thank you very much. Thank you for getting angry on my behalf. But . . . , I'm going to decline.'

I don't think there's much chance of me acting on the above. But, it is a burden to carry.

What I particularly don't like is people who play Ghandhi because is gives them some kind of warm feelings, or because it's oneupsmanship at my expense and they can feel then superior or something. People in such a mindset are not really engaging with my real situation at all.

I am currently living with my parents. Yes, at age 46 and it is a damn difficult situation. For economic reasons. And my parents blame me. Even at all too many low-paid jobs, the supervisors can be real doosies, can be bullies, thugs, liars, everything else. And someone who says, 'It can be this way in high paid jobs, too,' I'm not so sure. I think there might be an order of magnitude difference that such a person is not seeing. Someone at a high-paid job has considerably more choices, really.

A temporary, Christmas approx. 8 dollar an hour job at the local mall has not turned into a permanent job, even though I made an extra point to always get there on time and tried to look for constructive things to do. I think I tried too hard, and that made people uncomfortable. And a little bit, in a very low-key way, I drew other people into projects and I was comfortable speaking to the managers. I used to be a manager and I guess a little bit I fell into that role, which I suppose bothers some of the more authoritarian managers.


Okay, so what to do . . .

H&R Block cheats its customers by not fully disclosing its bank products; in particular, by not informing its clients of cross-collection.

Oh, I think I can say that. I've considering publishing this at some length at the "Work and finding a Job" section. And I've pretty much decided to go ahead and do it.

'Oh, no, you can't criticize a big company, they're not going to have equal response.' Well, since they have a multi-million dollar advertising budget, they have more than equal response. This is a struggle between David and Goliath, and I'm in the role of David!

And when I'm quoting the IRS Taxpayer Advocate, and court cases, and the former California Attorney General, people are going to have a hard time saying I'm not being accurate.

(sometimes I can transform anger into a sense of humor)


Another thing that helps is "library writing." Even though libraries are hostile place, esp public library with the staff having 1950s ideas about mental illness, both who is mentally ill and how they should be treated (if someone is skeptical of this, simply go into a local library one morning before you've taken a shower, spread a project over a table, that is, use it exactly like you'd use an university library, especially if you pace, just a little little bit while working on a project (and don't we all? both Aspies and Nonaspies) and you probably have about a one out of three chance of being treated as homeless and/or mentally ill. One out of three.). My point is that you don't have to work that hard at it. It's their mindset. It's the lenses through which they see their patrons.

Even with all this, I have gotten a lot out of writing honest, communicative essays---often about things that have happened in my life, I tell the narrative---and leaving it in books in university libraries. Wow. It feels powerful. There's a real chance of at least one human being reading my work. And I can write a second, third, fourth draft where I get better and better at telling this story. And the beauty is that the first drafts are not wasted. I am careful not to damage the books (I still do it discretely). And I fold the essays inward so that it is the reader's choice to open them, I feel he or she will be more engaged that way.


And I am open to meeting people like me in some regards. But frankly, activist-types like me are pretty rare.

I love the way you spread your work so respectfully, leaving the potential reader with full choice.

Writing it out a little, helps a little.
Vacuuming cat hair off an oriental rug, on hands and knees, helps a little more.

I'm angry that I can't find the words to voice my outrage. I'm angry for all the injustice in the world. I'm angry that people are the one's who are perpetrating these injustices. I'm angry to be a feeble, helpless person in the sceme of things. I'm angry for having been a victim. I'm angry that I have to know anger. I'm angry that I'm not strong enough to live side by side with other more capable people. I'm angry that I have to continue breathing air. I don't want to be a part of the human race. I'm angry that I have no choice but to. I'm angry at the parents who destroyed me. There is no justice, in heaven or on earth.

...Honestly, I would have made my own thread, but it seems that you've said almost everything I would have said, everything I felt. I feel, all at once, depressed, understood and ridiculously relieved.

Thanking heavens for both that relief returns.

First off, you are a capable person. You do have a lot to contribute.

It's just a shame that the typically corporate work environment, even after the recent excesses when you think they would have learned their lesson, still mainly rewards insincerity and short-sightedness.

To a considerable extent, we must build our own ethical jobs. (or look for the 20% that are)

My father can say incredibly hurtful things in anger. And then he becomes a "be righter." He has to be right about what he said in anger, and he'll argue toward it long after the fact, and in various tricky ways.

It sounds like you're identifying my post with some hard things you're dealing with. I'm sending good vibes your way in hopes you get some peace and resolve. Thank you for your support and understanding.

I hope that things improve for you, soon.

Meadow (and CockneyRebel, too!),

You are very welcome for my support and solidarity. And thank you very much for the good vibes and positive thoughts!

I have an old door in the back garden that I stab up with a knife when I'm feeling that angry. I also vent by getting smash happy with glas jars outside too. Sometimes I dance it out and have a good scream at the same time. It helps t take the edge off a little.

CockneyRebel, AardvarkGoodSwimmer , Jak

Thanking each of you for being here. It means a lot to me.

It's hard to be gifted, autistic and the worst sort of abuse survivor, all at once. I'm afraid to say anything about myself because of the latter for fear of being judged or looked down upon. My gift has saved my life, autism has challenged, limited and held me back, and abuse has threatened my faith, trust and hope in humanity. I know that I have to be alone with it. There isn't anything that anyone can say.

I've been disabled, technically or legally, since I was nineteen, but in actuality since I was born. I don't really have the words yet for what my family did to me, my mother in particular and my father too for abandoning me to her after what he put me through, as well, and when he also knew she was unfit and abusive. It's just a terrible lot that I need to be able to keep to myself, but there's so much and it has unfortunately also formed who I am to a greater degree. But on the outside it isn't visible. No one would ever know. My life is beautiful in appearance. I am visual and know how to do that. I do it for myself just so I can survive, in contrast.

I will be attending university in the near future. I'm excited but also wondering how I'm ever going to pull it off. I have developed a pretty severe case of agoraphobia, mostly because of the challenges of autism. It has been a lifelong dream to go to school and finally get my education which I have coveted and yearned for since I was a child. Life's challenges and people mostly have stood in my way up to now. I am still struggling for my own survival and independence. To survive and win and not to become a tragedy or statistic. With my talents it shouldn't have happened in the first place. I can do it. I'm here now, only a block away.

I'm just tired of not belonging anywhere. I need to not try to fit in or be one of them, because I'm not. I have to be me but all it ever gets me is alone and isolated. I have to find peace with it. I have been able to in the past so I should be able to again. I am happy and contented when I wake up to now and stop living the ongoing flashback of all that has gone before, up to this moment. It's hard to do. Snaps fingers to wake up. See how beautiful the environment is, my comforts are abundant. In the present tense I have nothing to complain about, if I can just stay awake and remember it, see it. Or when I can forget that I'm afraid of the world outside and it's fast moving pace and fast moving people who expect fast responses, or the continual sense of failure when you never measure up. I've been made to feel ashamed of my disability, because it's more or less invisible. They only say, you have two arms and two legs so get with the program, snap snap, what's your problem? And I couldn't so much as say but even if I could they wouldn't hear it. I didn't have a diagnosis to lean on or parents to support or protect me, only the contrary. And "the system" tortured and abused me too.

I am half a century old. I'm close to the end of my life yet still at the beginning. It's hard to be at the beginning when you're becoming more and more old and feeble. I could die at any time. Having a fragile nervous system takes its tole daily. It has done nothing but destroy my health up to now. I have a sound mind but in a way only makes things harder.