horrible experience after 4+ years out in the world

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I lived with my parents until the age of 24, before finding the courage to move into society with my then girlfriend of 5 years. We managed to get a house, and I began to renovate, as well as maintain employment at a job that was at least bearable. (April, 2007.)

After about 18 months of this independent living with my significant other I was fired from this job because of my easily being a pushover to customer's unreasonable requests. At the firing (October 16, 2008) I was chewed out quite thoroughly, it was rather shocking the lines they were drawing to other suspicions, as well as how vocal they were about feeling 'deceived' by my paradoxical swinging between competence and oblivious naivete. Luckily I had access to some unemployment for the next year and was able to keep ends together.

Nobody would hire me, though, so I started my own company (Jan, 2009). Thankfully this investment panned out OK over the next 2 years, but it was stressful to attempt during this point in time.

In June of 2009, my pacemaker ran out of batteries, and I was brought to surgery. Since I was unaware I had junk insurance coverage, the doctor didn't bother programming it properly, so after surgery my heart was functioning badly - I began to feel really crappy and this went on for 6 months. The doctor diagnosed my new condition as being a "cardiomyopathy" - and left me to read about how the disease was in fact terminal over a decade or so. Pondering this reality by myself disturbed me deeply. It left me angry, scared, depressed. On top of that, it turned out my insurance was complete bunk, and that I owed the hospital $53,000. They began badgering me for money ($1000 a month payment plan).

I submitted for a mortgage modification, but was rejected again and again due to the medical debt, and income issues. I clung on for dear life over 14 months, and eventually was approved at the end of last year, but with $8,000 added to my mortgage debt.

The last few months, my "girlfriend" of 9+ years began to feel distant, began to be annoyed by, and scared of my depression, panic attacks, anger, and so on. She kept telling me I'd "changed" and that I'd "become a jerk" because I was pulling inward and becoming judgmental towards people generally. She began pursuing social activities separately from me, and the people she knew whom I did encounter had an oddly sub-radar or negative attitude towards me (as though I was the source of her stress = I am the jerk in the equation).

two weeks ago, June 22nd, I got home from my grandmother's memorial/funeral wanting simply to put myself back to work and get my mind off all of this. I mistakenly think that after 10 days, she will feel relaxed and able to help me deal with whatever I'm feeling. I find that in my absence she has been invited to a housewarming party, and I have not. I express my feeling insulted and not liking a person who would deliberately exclude one of two people who live together. I explain that being social would help me, if anything. That night, she leaves in my (our) one car to "check on" a friend ... and never returns. After one night gone, I leave concerned messages. After two nights, her father becomes involved and manages to find out through an employer that she has been staying with a guy "friend" ... and immediately I become all extremes - angry, hurt, disappointed, betrayed, terrified....

I do not want to end up in a police station for assaulting this guy I don't even know, I book a flight back to my parents' house. So, here I am, a week later in my parent's basement, feeling horribly cynical. Drinking again for the first time in 4 years... And wondering how the hell I am supposed to recover from stuff like this. I'm at a total loss, in a twilight zone of trying to understand what has just happened to me - scolding myself for ever feeling optimistic about life...

Whoa. All I can say is... that is one heck of a story. I am planning to move out soon myself and sure hope something like this does not happen to me.

I don't think it will, my experience is not typical, at least I hope. I made the wrong call at the beginning, thinking I would be OK, thinking I had enough energy to combat all the social cards stacked against people who are different. Thinking that people I cared about would be a support system of some sort should I need it (as Aspies often do). It has been a lesson in many things - most specifically what my limitations are, and how little I really know about human beings in general.

i think you did well to achieve what you did. relationship endings suck, but you'll be ok again

You was just unlucky, you tried your best but you had to deal with healt issues. If you want it, you will start again. I disagree a lot with an healt services that is paid by "customer". A patient is not a customer and he has not to pay. State has to pay health services.
In Europe this is obvoius, I hope it will be soon in your country.

Well, it's also the stark unfairness of the social situation. The "guy" she's staying with she's known for a year, and she has been talking about him and many other people (she would talk with me about all of her daily conversations) - he's is one of the steady-job, never-had-a-medical-or-psychological-condition types (and of course, he believes such mind conditions don't really exist, and that people like me should just get our s**t together) - which is clearly the influence he was having on her point of view. Easy-going, positive about everything, type of passively incredulous person which I have trouble tolerating, and who is basically my own life experience's antithesis. So, knowing this drives the horrible feelings I am having, realizing that I am fighting a larger social ignorance, often willful, towards "invisible" disabilities - even in those who are supposed to be closest to me, and be an advocate of sorts. I am pissed off knowing these things about this person, to a point where I knew for everyone to be safe, I had to remove myself totally from the equation. I never knew I could be so violently furious. I scare myself.

America is full of morons who don't realize they are socially and financially disabling people like me by insisting on private insurance. For them it's not a matter of civil rights and social equality, it's a selfish matter of "you have no right to tell me what to do with my money" and "everyone should pay their own way, be personally responsible" social-darwinism type rhetoric. I am thoroughly pissed off at Americans with this common attitude also, indeed.

....and I think that someone with autism should look before leaping. I have learned the hard way that you can't fight City Hall. If you are in a job situation or a relationship where it is out of control, it's time to say "I can't take it. This hurts". It isn't a sign of weakness to say "This is too much". Find a job less paying even, if it doesn't subject you to humiliation and degredation. You don't want to "Work for the man". I amazed at your independence and initiative in starting your own business. Good for you. For we, with autism, we have absolute limits, and we should be very aware of what they are.

people generally aren't very nice and are mostly driven by hedonism and selfishness.
on the one hand i feel bad when people aren't that great to me. but on the other hand i can see that i am the opposite of things like those you listed and can't help but understand why someone would want something simpler and someone less troublesome. it sucks but it makes sense. i always feel more angry at me than them. not that i'm saying you should do that:/. oops,offtrack.

9years is a long time to have been with someone. perhaps the relationship had just ran its course and someone new was bound to seem like the easy option, regardless of the qualities he had.

it's good that you recognised your anger and removed yourself. i think that matters more than the fact that you felt anger in the first place

In my early 20's I was in a naive, child-like state of mind, I had the energy of 5 people, and thought that by expecting "the worst possible scenario" at every corner, that I would be OK. I hadn't experienced the brunt of Asperger's social illiteracy in the workplace - I just thought "yeah, I'm weird, but diversity is a fact of life" - never knowing really how narrow people's tolerance and understanding was. --- I can't stand working for "the man." I am surprised I figured out a business, as well - it was a decision done out of sheer necessity to preserve what I had, in a market bereft of jobs. It's based of course on the pedantic, detailed information stored in my brain - pomology, botany, ethnobotany, and so on.

I understand the guilt thing - I always feel so guilty about being different - if I wasn't, this bad stuff wouldn't happen in this way... As it has for most of us, it has been a battle with myself, I was in denial about being different for many years. I had no desire to find for myself that it was actually so, and I glossed over it, learned to adapt, to act a part, to play a fool of sorts.

Thank you for listening, and for talking. I really do appreciate all people's input.

That's awful. I'm really angry they're charging you so much at all, let alone for a messed up operation!

It's no wonder you became depressed but I wouldn't be too harsh on your girlfriend for not wanting to be around you if you changed so much. It's just a shame you didn't get the help you needed.

I'm also sorry she left the way she did...that was kind of cowardly of her.

I went through the ordeal in disbelief, because I am an active person. I opted for extra tests, including invasive surgical perfusion tests... and even after all that I personally ended up rejecting the doctor's opinion. I went to see a specialist who determined I was programmed all wrong, and that my heart had settled into a sick rhythm because of improper stimulation from the pacer unit. After having it corrected, about a year ago I began to feel relatively normal again, though I still get odd sensations here and there, and the disturbance of the experience still reverberates strongly.

I am hurt by her because my first girlfriend did the same thing when I was 18. I went into the hospital for a heart arrythmia, and the next week she was emotionally distant, then suddenly gone and non-communicative. It's coming to seem like people are not as noble as we are led to believe. I have been losing my faith in people's better natures, which is another aspect of my struggle with all of this..

Man, I don't know what to say... you went through so much. I hope things fall into place for the better for you.

Thanks. I think I wrote all this because I still don't know how to feel about it. It's extraordinarily painful, yet that pain is also strangely compartmentalized, alien and not palpable at times. I feel a kind of numbness, arid, vacant quality in my mind. All I know is that time will help me to think and feel more rationally, and decide where to go from here. I cannot express my disappointment in human beings. I am fighting my the consequence of becoming cynical, judgmental, and hostile generally towards people. As if I needed to be any more aloof than I am naturally...