Feeling like you have no origins/connections

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I always thought everyone was like me, just doing it badly. Later I learned it was me, advanced Scorpio Biker Syndrome.

I lived in NYC for five years, but on the night shift.

My connection with anything is doubful.

Family are enemies who think they have an advantage.

I'm not at home on this planet, nor am I with my own kind.

I do feel homesick, but there's no home for me here. It's that aspie thing of waiting for the spaceship to land to take us all home.

A while ago I moved to a foreign country and, to my surprise, didn't feel homesick at all. I don't have any special feelings for the house I grew up in either.

Same goes for the family - never understood why you should put up with somebody's antics because "she is your aunt". Things change radically when it comes to my friends or the family members that I actually like.

Until I read this thread I never realized this is an unusual attitude.

Yes, I absolutely feel this way. I don't feel any loyalty to my family, race, state, or nation. I was pleased to learn there was a term for it when I studied anthropology--"cultural alienation".

However, I don't avoid membership in all groups or clubs. I feel much greater loyalty to groups based on affinity, which is much more meaningful to me--people with the same interests, religious ideals, or even just other Aspies.

I definitely agree that I lack connection to people - I am always the outsider, wherever I go. (I find it helpful in my job, because I tend to look for solutions from a different perspective to everyone else.) And I am simply not close to my family - I respect them as people & if they were in trouble I would be loyal to them and support them - but I don't feel the familial "love" that I have heard described by others.

I can't decide whether or not I feel strong connection to things (I know, it's supposed to be an Aspie trait...) - I don't decorate my workspace (or even my apartment - aside from some decorations that others have given me as gifts) - and I can't think of anything I would be heartbroken about if it was lost. But I have had things in the past that I was strongly attached to - toys, etc.

There are some places that I feel a connection to - Manhattan is one & my neighborhood in Minneapolis is another - I actually like the feeling I get in big cities, because I know that no one even realizes I am around - so they sort of "disappear" to me, too. (But I do avoid really big crowds - so I only go out at certain times of day.)

I don't feel connection to places in the way most people do.

I guess it's because other people seem to be more settled in their lives. Certainly compared to me they are. A settled life is something I have not had. And it doesn't help you have a connection to any place in the way most people seem able to have.

That said, I feel very much a connection to Edinburgh, though funnily enough that's mainly because of the interest and involvement I have come to have in the Aspie scene here.

You cannot go home again topic

Here is the first time in my life I have felt a 'connection' to others--in an internet forum.

Mostly, though, I feel only connected to my belongings that have significance to me.

There is no homeland, as other marginalized people often talk about, no eye on the prize.

I have lived in so many places and no where has it ever felt like home. My extended family, save for my children, are strangers to me. At one point in my life I felt more connected to long dead ancestors, even going to far as to having the illusion that I had a sort of connection to them in a sort of otherworldly way. This is more for literature than for reality, though.

Exactly How Bad is NYC? Do you live in Manhattan?



There's an "Aspie scene" in Edinburgh??

What's really interesting about these responses is that not only do a lot of people here share my lack of connection, but I'm surprised at how many of you feel, as I do, that you just stepped out of a time machine from the past, and are somewhat confused and/or overwhelmed by modern society. Again, this is something I thought was probably an individual quirk, but when I give it some thought, it makes sense that it might be an Aspie thing as well.

Re: connections based on interest/situation....I agree with those who said that they feel more connected to others in Aspergers or other special interest groups than they ever could in pre-set groups like ethnicities, races, or families. The ONLY places I have ever felt even vaguely connected to people have been either Aspergers, eating disorders, or cancer survivors groups, and a few select special-interest clubs I've joined, like the Dorothy Parker Society. But it makes sense.....we actually have something REAL in common with these people.

Re: feeling 'reincarnated' from another time....same here. I sometimes feel like I remember things I couldn't have possibly remembered, since I only existed years after they occurred.

Re: connection to deceased relations that doesn't exist with living ones....for whatever reason, I feel the same way. I'm actually 'close' to quite a few dead relatives (if that makes sense), but not at ALL with any of my living ones. The last of my family I felt any special bond with were my grandparents....and that bond is still very much there, even years after they've been gone.

Oh my God, that is SO how I feel! It´s like I´m observing these odd people, who seem to feel comfortable in this society, in this time period. I don´t get it.

Somebody on this thread also mentioned that they had lived in many places, but never found a place that seemed like "home". This is also how I feel.

I feel this disconnection that you feel...though maybe a little differently. I do have some family members that I get along with, but I feel close to them mostly because I know them and happen to get along with them, not because they are "family"...(and we often go long periods of time not being in contact, but that´s another story). There are other family members who I don´t feel close to at all...in fact, I feel like I don´t even know them...and, once again, I don´t feel anything special, or any compulsion like I have to get to know them better just because they are "family". I also never really felt a great connection or identity with my "roots";"family" doesn´t hold the same meaning to me, I think, that it does to other people. I feel no particular sense of belonging to country, or to any group either- (though I can get caught up in a particular idea, and become somewhat of an activist). I notice that ideas, subject matter and special interests are what connect me most to other people. I don´t think this is such a bad thing; in this case, one is able to see through things, be more objective, and also see people in a more egalitarian fashion. I used to think that my lack of strong emotional connections was due to the fact that I was on a high spiritual plane, and therefore saw everybody in a "true" way, not being colored by false hierarchies or superstitions. (ha!)

Another connection I just don´t get is romantic love, and (supposedly) finding that one person who is particularly special to me. Never felt it...don´t get it. I continually have the feeling that I must be missing something...

Though I do have friends and feel connected to them at times, there´s still something separating us...I don´t even think I can pinpoint what it is, or put it in words. Unless it´s just that I feel like I´m another species of human, so there´s always going to be THAT cutting in between us.

This is actually what I meant when I said 'no connections to family'....I have some cousins and uncles close to my own age who are wicked people, and my mother and I actually seem to be becoming friends after all these years (now that we're living so far apart, and we've actually got some things in common....seems this happened in a large part when she developed breast cancer....as I said, I feel a distinct connection to other cancer survivors)

However, when it comes to the others in my family who are far too different to me to even get along with for short periods, I see NO sense whatsoever to us forcing ourselves on each other. I mean, would they be that desperate to 'hang out' with people NOT in their families with NOTHING important in common?