Planning your life without people

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Hello

I was in a group the other day, we were asked what our plans were for our lives.

I said mine which involved moving abroad and the others said theirs, which involved more about meeting new friends around the normal stuff like jobs etc.

I got asked why mine did not have people in it.

I think that other than my dad, who has always been around, when I think about life, it is like people are in my peripheral vision. I like helping people and do support work as a job but even then I have this distance to my students, probably because they are my students and there has to be.

Its very weird. Is this an aspie thing?

I wasn't into planning as such when I was younger, but looking back, I notice that all my fantasies involved being in a very nice, quiet place with no-one around. As I recovered from abuse, they started to involve someone nice in the next room, and later, there were other people I knew dimly present in the very same space as me. If I fantasise now, the people I reimagine definitely don't talk much, but they are close

I guess I am saying the aloneness wasn't from my neurology but my psychology. Not that I had any idea of either, to start out with.

I want to be around people, but I'm not good at forming friendships or even acquaintances. And then when I do succeed, I feel freaked out and want to push them away, except for the very few I have become very close to, like my ex-boyfriends.

I can't plan my life without people. Well I can't plan my life, but anyway. The reason being, that I am so heavily dependent on people for various things that most people are not dependent on people for, that if I planned for life without planning for people, it would be suicidal.

I wouldn't mind having the life of Robinson Crusoe upon my very own island, so long as my wife is with me I don't think I would care about the rest of the world.

When I was little I wanted to have a wife and kids. Then when I was around 10 I thought maybe living by myself wouldn't be such a bad thing, but I still wanted to have a wife and kids. I have now come to the conclusion that I really do not want kids. They're loud, annoying, and a lot of work. I can't really say that I want to have someone nagging me all my life either. Maybe I'll change my mind when I move out and get lonely (if that ever happens), but at least for now I do not care about any of that. My plans are, in this order: get a car, finish high school, get at least a bachelors degree in engineering, and then get a job in the engineering field and move out of my parents house. The first two are very close to completion.

I was talking to a psychologist a fw days ago and he asked me about my support network... the people I turn to for support. I looked at him blankly and said 'I don't have people.'

I would have paid for the look on his face.

Parents? - dead
brothers or sisters? - only child
family? - abandoned me when my mother died
friends? - LOL, I stopped trying for those 20 years ago
your husband? - bipolar and too wrapped up in his own world to even think of handling mine

Some by choice, some not but yes - there are people in this world that are alone.

"Not all those who wander are lost." JRR Tolkien

You know, when I was younger, I think I wrote something nearly identical to what you posted. But anyhow, I would suggest selecting your college very carefully and not taking student loans if you can avoid them. Personally, you can learn all of the mathematics on your own, as well as the theoretical knowledge necessary for use in engineering. I would suggest learning as much as you can on your own prior to immersing yourself into the arbitrary deadlines and format valued over essence which is otherwise known as college.

My father got an associate's degree in... something or other, he was trained as an electronics technician. But because of all the extra work he put in over the decades, he eventually got hired to be an engineer without any degree in engineering at all, and he could outperform people with very advanced degrees in electronics engineering. So it's possible to go that route as well.

Great quote, fits me pretty well. My long range planning mostly revolves around places and things, not people. My plans involving other people are usually more short term.

As early as age 10 the idea occurred to me that I may never get married.

I can completely relate to this - "I don't have people."

Even when one does have parents and siblings and "friends" that mean well, the support is just not there. Maybe they think they are being supportive, but I know I don't feel supported. At this point, I've lost track of whether it's me or them who is "the problem." It is hard to convey to others that I don't have a support network that works, and I have little reason to believe I will ever have one.

I can completely relate to this - "I don't have people."

What really brings it home to you that you are alone in the world, is the Emergency Contact issue. Where I work, they are very big on Emergency Contacts and they bother me about it every year. Its not only a job, but if you go to school, have a medical procedure, join a tour or a residential facility, they will ask you for an Emergency Contact. So long as my parents were alive, I put them down, but then I didn;t have anyone at all What is one to do? Don't put down a distant relative, the last thing you want is to make one of your evil cousins your emergency contact.I finally ddecided on a neighbor,. he might not care two hoots about me either, but at least if he knows I'm in the hospital he might feel obligated to feed the cats.