Cultural Depression?

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I wanted to bring this up just because, I don't think I've ever heard it talked about on here head on and I sometimes wonder just how much it really steers me in terms of what I seem to chase or want out of life.

I think for me I've always gravitated toward the upper eschalon of the alternative crowd - not really the stoners, hippies, or anything like that but more the rave, hip-hop, electronic club-oriented crowd; something that seems like taking what most aspies look at as NT but bring it even another level past what many seem to be comfortable with. When I think back to 3rd grade even, when I moved from a small town in Michigan to where I grew up for like 17 years of my life, I looked around the classroom and felt like there was almost no one I could relate to - mainly because I saw no gleaming personalities, like everyone was extremely bland inside or just hid themselves away. I think one of the reasons I was so weird back then was that I was trying to agitate people into actually getting out of themselves but, being that I wasn't like them and being that I also was a bit judgmental, I ended up more or less being the sort of kid who was just that anomoly - had no place at all.

Whether it was a cousin who was into some really wild alternative and metal at the time or other people in my life, I seemed to know who had it, who didn't, and I always tended to gravitate toward the people who were alternative but in a real guiled up and artful kind of way. I knew genuine pieces of work and narcissists from the people I actually wanted to associate with but also a huge part of me seemed to identify so much with them that I probably started trying to veer my own identity toward what they were. Back then it was the less scrubby and more preppy/hip hop dressed skater crowd; probably because to a large extent thats where my cousin was at, him and like 10 of his buddies would be out in the driveway doing ollies or kick flips over coolers, they'd have little concerts in the garage with like 20 kids sitting outside watching, that may have been what really started fueling me in that direction.

I did start playing guitar back in 5th grade, though it wasn't all about this as much as what I felt that I needed and really got out of being around that sort of crowd I felt like I could get it in extract from music. I remember being in 5th grade and hearing Metallica - Ride The Lightning, stuff like that was such an instant fix that if I didn't have a tape by someone like that yet and had heard something like it, I'd not only have it going through my head all day - I'd practically dream about it and in some way that seemed larger than life practically.

In my junior high and early highschool years I was back on a real dry spell again, surrounded by more of what I felt in 3rd grade, no one I really wanted that much to do with although I started making some good friends back in 9th grade who were heading back in that direction. When I went back to public school from a hiatus at catholic I started meeting a few more people and one of which was my best friend probably for at least 6 or 7 years. I think one of the reasons we got along so well is I was one of those few people who really got music the way he did, he kinda gravitated toward a different sound though with a different attitude but at the same time I really started to like the darker and more serious stuff - before then it had been Janes Addiction, Chili Peppers, Suicidal Tendencies; my preferences flipped more toward Tool, Skinny Puppy, PWEI, mostly in a sense that it hit a much deeper sort of resonant ambiance and something farther along in terms of a certain emotional intelligence that I wasn't finding in the same way in other stuff.

Around that time also that's when I started getting into the electronic. When I first heard jungle it was the real urban-style and concrete stuff - lots of distorted electronic basslines but they kept as much of a slippy hip-hop flare to the sound that it was everything I'd loved about metal but a lot more guiled up, a lot more slippy, and a lot more intelligent particularly when it got to the darker stuff that still grabbed at the break-dancing edge.

Why do I mention music in all this so much? Its sculpted me a lot I think - my emotional preferences, what I like to load into myself, and particularly the people I've liked to surround myself with vs. who I haven't wanted to.

Here's where the trouble comes in though; that whole bit seems to be something that starts to fade away and die by your early 30's or 40's. Its been one of the things actually that's made me always feel this overwhelming need to beat my AS - like I've always needed to rise up to the ideals of what I saw in the same people and give that energy back to others. Its like being it is the way it has to be, anything less - particularly the way my AS restrains my image, my appearance, my dating life, starting at 21 I felt like I was this high potent person trapped in a box created by my environment where I could kick, thrash, be as proactive as I wanted, and yet no one would see it and feed me the sort of emotional energy I needed to actually keep the momentum of being the person who I really loved inwardly and wanted to be. It really felt at that time like if I had enough borrowed energy I could have squashed the neurological problems and like I was inches away from clicking over that chemical threshold and being at least mostly happy ever after. That of course, as I know is like a lot of what our emotional instincts give us - its BS, just like I thought I'd be feeling high and mighty after getting my degree and getting a job in a professional industry.

So here's where its at now. At 28 my friends for the most part are winding down. There's less to do. We once in a while go down to some glitsy clubs downtown but that's it and half the time no matter how drunk I get I can just feel all the red tape built by the reticence and by-the-rules nature of my social self but just by the fact that people in general, while friendly and polite, aren't particularly opened most of the time to strike out and gain new ground or meet new friends. I do have a friend or two who are great at doing that, its a gift I've maybe been able to recreate on my own off of understanding that sort of energy and how it works, but never with the crowds of the caliber that they do.

To take a momentary shift to now I just got home from work, was feeling a bit depressed just from the weather, from getting out at 5:30 after the sun had already set, and when I got home our neighbor was over talking about how her and her fiance want to move to North Carolina. My roommate's talked about all kinds of things as well - wanting to move to Florida with his uncle, wanting to move to Oregon, wanting to move to Washington, and he's even thinkind a little about NC. When I look at the map however I just cringe. I think about all the places I've been and I realize one thing - for me to be happy I need to find that sort of emotional fuel in a place that I was talking about before.

Been to mid-sized towns where there was maybe one or two top 40 and dance type bars; its a lot less depressing than the places where you walk in the door and wonder how you got past the bouncer without your AARP card but still, being in a place like that I'd practically want to shoot myself. Even in a larger city that's just real quaint and old fashion but dry of night life and my kind of culture - I'd starve, I'd hate it. On the dating sphere, one of the reasons I'd also have a very hard time I think finding a girl with AS who I'd want to date is I'd need someone who has as much of the same internal needs and drive as I do and even a lot of alternative girls I meet seem to not have it structured the same way. I'm addicted to that feeling when I walk into a place and dark electronic is playing with a bunch of trendy well dressed high-polish alternative kids are hanging out. I'm addicted to the memories I have of walking around tripping or rolling at a couple of the three day parties I went to years and years ago (which I don't do anymore but it left a sort of emotional imprint and its funny, I almost always partied sober just because I loved the event and the feel of everything so much - I didn't even need it).

So, looking toward 30 and beyong I see traditionalism trying to pull me in. The way I'm dressing more now, just my genetic look and style, its like everything I am inside isn't making it out there as much and the fact that I never really was able to find that perfect place like I had when I was 20 and had like 10 or 15 kids chilling over my basement and drinking like 3 or 4 nights a week during the summer - I found something a little bit like that last and the year before that but overall its been hard in the sense that when all that starts to fade away a heavy sort of depression starts to creep in and especially as our friend start being more and more traditional types of people.

I don't feel like I'm better than all these other people, I don't feel like they're lives are devoid, but my emotional needs just are what they are. It feels like the only way I can really fight this is almost denying reality a bit, trying to refortify myself, and effect my surroundings - ie. work so hard to build a critical mass of that energy within myself that I get other people to react to me and pull them in my direction rather than bending in theirs. Its one of those things about myself that I've never fully understood. Its the same thing that kept me from being a tradition aspie, hanging out with the AD&D crowd, the book club, the chess club, hanging out in libraries (speaking in reference to a conversation I had recently), those kinds of things would leave me morbidly depressed and then some. I don't fully get it but this is just part of how I'm wired, its how I operate.

I know I could ask the typical question I always love to ask - how many people can relate to this, but I really have no idea and if its none I almost don't want to know just because it makes me feel that much more miserably lonely in my internal view and way of feeling life (particularly factoring the AS in). I guess it would be nice if some people could kind of shoot their own thoughts into this in terms of what they've maybe felt in their own lives that seemed as intense or eccentric and how they handled it and if you can relate, seriously, I'd love to hear it from someone. I've just had so many people, mainly aspies on here, where it felt like between their words they were saying "Its a shame you can't accept yourself for who you are" or enough NT girls who were real traditional, liked me, but I couldn't get into them just because of the gaping difference of internal needs and wants - while I don't accuse the world around me it still all feels so strange. I've always just assumed that what seemed to emotionally fill me the most was what I was - that's what I've been operating under and its pulled me in a bit of an eccentric direction in general, but its what I've felt I had to do in order to make myself feel like life was worth living. Now, as the sort of things that can really fuel me or the things I feel appropriate with as my life moves on wear off, I know that I'm left in a bit of a weird and precarious place just because that internal need is still there, still needs to be fed, and its like I have fewer and fewer places to turn to.

I know I'll have to figure out the answers on my own to this because it is seemingly all so unusual, complex and bizarre (or at least I seem to feel that impression lent so often) but I'd love to hear something I haven't, maybe have a completely different way of looking at things or thinking about it click over, but then again I know that's a bit unrealistic. I guess the second best thing is to vent a little, so, that's where I'll leave it.

bump.

I'm not trying to get 'quantity over quality' replies here but still, my OP has only been up a couple of hours and due to folder activity its already halfway down the list. I'd at least like to see it catch enough surface to where it can get a thoughtful response or two.

As you grow older, you may find that you go through paradigm shifts. You throw off one set of priorities and pick up another set - not just once, as you near your 30s and 40s, but many times throughout your adult life. It is tempting to look back at your younger self and think, "It was so much better then. More interesting. Less confining. What on earth am I doing with myself now?"

With Asperger, one tends to be out on the fringes, out near the edge, by default. This is true no matter what age we are, or what we look like on the surface.

Stay cool on the inside, always.

Dude!! !!

you have got to condense your post or else you're not going to get many replies.

I can understand where you are coming from with changes and looking back to the road you once travelled on to discover from the very start it was a very long and winding road that took a new turn.

Don't worry, you have time. Others do their own thing. Don't force yourself to do something that may not work out for you because it works for others but motivation comes in strange ways.

So you liked second gear. Not a lot said about early childhood, but you caught the acceleration of teen to thirty, and now the gear windes out.

Most are going to find a nice little rut and stay there, and if you hang with them, all of your energy will be zapped.

They are fewer, but there is new life starting at thirty, for some. They have ideas and are moving on them. You sound like you have that, "Oh no, it's not ending, it's starting," view.

It is if you are. There is something that calls for your drive and more, a business, managing a band, writing, something that the world about does not see, but it is free form now, you place yourself in a world only you can see, for now, they will later.

There are all kinds who say, I want to be an owner, a doer, and fill empty places with self development.

I start backroom businesses that grow, I have to learn constantly, but after a few years, it works, and little things have bought some much better machines to work with. I have learned me.

A puttering hobby, now an income stream. Investments keep getting larger, plans quicker and more fun, income goes up, and I am being me.

Then the wonders of the tax code, tax dollars can be spent on fun things.

School is a loop, and you are out, work is a loop, then they bury you, business is doers, those who look to the future.

You need to grow in a new direction, keep your mind filled, and expand to fill your need to be doing something.

You cannot go back, hanging with those around goes nowhere, but there is always room at the top.

It keeps happening, if you are lucky, turn an idea to a business, and when you get bored, someone will buy it, and you start again. Keeping up with yourself is the only good measure.

Once you open your eyes, you will see others are doing the same, your new world, and at forty, some of them will settle down, others continue, reinventing their lives to bring in the new stuff.

My inventions are made by processes, and with materials, that did not exist when I came up with the invention. My printing hobby became my new business when New Orleans flooded taking all of my IT customers. It is a much better business, for the last was how do I fit in to their world, this is how they fit into mine.

When you apply your knowledge, labor, money, and tax savings, to developing yourself, no telling what you can become.

I cannot tell the future, only what I am good at, it keeps working, I am better at a lot, because I have worked at it, slowly, over years, but it does add up.

Once you are slightly established, it just keeps growing on it's own. More Tax money and Universal Energy, has a place to go. It is not a bad problem to have.