Misery is preventing me from doing anything...

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So... I ended up choosing a couple of subjects I can actually be really interested in, but the rest of my life is so much like one big depressive f**k that I don't think even the most interesting thing possible could prompt me to do anything... especially when I'm back home. I'm supposed to study for an essay on Friday but... if you spend a whole day alone, all the week... for the previous five years... do you think you'd even be motivated enough to do things you actually enjoyed doing previously? I'm all alone until this essay... as much as I'm trying to override my very INSTINCTS (the most natural actually being death, at this point) - I don't seem to be able to concentrate on anything to do with college (unless I'm in class itself, but even then I'm just constantly dreading the moment I have to spend the next three days all alone until the next class).

I understand this on quite a personal level, honestly. Last year I went back to uni for my MA, and for the first time moved away from home. I was really, really stressed to begin with, and I felt as though I couldn't focus or concentrate on anything.

But the thing is, I really loved the subjects I was going to study. I really wanted to achieve that goal, and I really adore studying.

For the first few weeks it was rough. I almost had a mental collapse in my language placement test because I couldn't read the text, too stressed, and was sure I'd end up with a Friday class and not be able to go home on a weekend. I hid from my flatmates, I clung to the disability advisor (if you have one of those, speak to them, or guidance counsellor!), lurked in the library lots and basically threw myself into my schoolwork, and whatever else I could find to distract me from going back to the room (which was cold and devoid of TV or internet for 7 weeks of the term). The only time I felt "normal" was in class, because I had the focus of my interests to distract me from the rest of the crazy.

But shutting yourself away in your room is not a good coping mechanism. You don't have to go out and meet people if you don't want to do that. You can simply go out walking, get a bus or a train somewhere, go to a cinema (if you can tolerate those, I couldn't till this year but found them great therapy), or a library, or anywhere outside that you feel comfortable and safe.

I finished my degree in June, and I moved back home. I hated moving back home, because I had come to love the university and the people there. Little by little, I'd made that my new routine. I'd rebuilt my world around the thing I loved, and because of it, I'd bit by bit met people who understood and accepted me, quirks and all.

Basically, if you are really interested in something, find a way to productively make it your world. It might seem like a tall ask, or an overreaction, but its the best and most positive way forward. You can overcome the unhappiness, and the negatives, and the doubts. Get the essay in, then look at what you can do to fill the time between classes. If you can join societies or interact with people you haven't met yet, then that's fine - but if you can't, that's fine too. Like I said, it took me pretty much till November last year to really brave socialising with my flatmates - I didn't even meet most of them till about a month after we'd moved in! Now I consider some of them among the most amazing people I know, but things like that take time and you can only take that step when you've built a routine you're happy with.

Autism gives you great opportunities and great drawbacks. The only way to handle the one is to balance it with the other and fight through the middle somehow. It means that it's a lot harder for us to do the things we want than it is our non-autistic neighbours, but it doesn't mean that life as a whole is pointless. A lot of folk aren't smart enough to get into college, but you have, and that's a great foothold for the future. Take advantage of it while you can