Belonging nowhere

Post Reply New Topic

I love absurdism.
With absurdism i dont need more than the 1 kilo of brains in my skull.
Absurdism is a place in the city called 'Nowhere'
Nowhere a big town, where i feel ultimate freedom.
Its a town where the streets have no name.
And 1 of the streets is called 'Nirgendwo' in the German language.
The sign tells that for going to Nirgendwo you have to travel to the right side.
In my view to going to Nirgendwo you can travel in every possible direction.
Middle in the centre of Nowhere i find Everywhere.

A phrase I've used and related to for many years...



Belonging nowhere is something I feel deeply, and I relate it to R.D. Laing's idea of the double bind. The double bind is a situation in which a person is given choices but any choice they make will be "wrong" in some way. For example, one can mask, which is "wrong" in that it causes stress and hurts you; or, they cannot mask, which is "wrong" in that they will be ostracized or ridiculed for being autistic. The individual is undermined in that they cannot authentically be themselves, and are rewarded for self-invalidation.

I think, diagnosed or undiagnosed, many of us here go through this. And since most of the language and ideas around ASD are made by those who are definitely not on the spectrum, you have one group of people telling another what that second group thinks and feels, and what their motivations are. This can only mess with one's sense of identity, creating a feeling of belonging nowhere.

I don't feel like I really belong anywhere. I feel like an outcast or a reject pretty much everywhere I go. The best luck I've had with feeling like I belong and am somewhat understood is with people online that I meet that share my interests and while that helps, I even have moments there where I feel unwanted. Honestly, I feel like my only real safe haven and place where I can be 100% myself is in my bedroom inn my own little world I've created where I feel like I am accepted and loved.

I wouldn't say I feel like I belong but that isn't to say I don't think others at least partially accept me. However I do often feel frustrated/upset because I realise how I think and experience the world is so different to others and in any ways I will never truly feel like I gel/fit in. I don't mind it as much sometimes but when my mental health isn't so great it ruins everything.

Autism and isolation.
Even when your mind is only in your own head its still somewhere.

Kinda really have nowhere too. I've worked with others, sometimes, but I was always off the side looking inwards. I always chose the path of the loner even within a group, because I just didn't, don't belong. I'd go and be forgotten, because that's how it goes. Been mostly a hermit for over 20 years now. There's no real tribe for me. My family was, and is, even if just two of us now, nowhere.

Nowhere, nobody, and nothing. Rarely somewhere, once somebody, and sometimes something.

I wanna able to go 'nowhere'.

But I'm 'stuck here'. They didn't knew nor they had meant to trap me.

There will be the day I'd wrestle myself out in 'here' though.
Maybe once my mom dies or something, then I wouldn't have a 'reason' to be stuck at the same places.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

I feel like I fit in really nowhere, because of the conundrum of passing for normal on the outside while being autistic on the inside. It's not even all masking, it's just... I've worked a really long time to have the social skills I have, and the self-awareness I have.

It was less painful when I was younger because I was less self-aware and just was not aware of how much I stood out. Now I don't stand out at all, but I am very self-aware about why I am not fitting into social situations and while I have many high effort workarounds for this, I am also *very* aware of the exact moments where it's obvious that it's just a neuro glitch/an actual disability that I can't work around. So there is a perpetual feeling of low grade humiliation/shame in my interactions with NTs. I am very aware that I have this difference when I move out in the world, that makes it harder to interact with people around me on a meaningful level, and that I have to work harder to integrate into their world to get what I need from it (such as an income, roof over my head etc).

I also feel exhausted by all the years (decades) I spent studying people, because I don't *really* feel like it got me *that* far. It got me only a little further than I already was. It seemed to have mainly accomplished the task of giving people false expectations about me. It already doesn't help that people didn't believe I was autistic, let alone learning disabled, because of how freaking articulate and poised I can come off. But actually I am even more disabled by my autism *after the fact* (I did not experience mutism episodes until my late 30s/early 40s).

However, because of all of the self-awareness I gained, and all of the work I've done on myself, and the social gains I *have* made, I don't really feel like I fit in with a lot of other autistics, either. And people who see me next to them, think I'm not autistic at all. One of them (an ex) even convinced me I wasn't.