Hello, board.

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Hi,

I couldn't resist putting my two cents worth about some computer threads yesterday. My username is my score on one of the internet self-tests my mentor recommended from Reddit.

I am over half a century old and not likely to have funds for an official diagnosis. I do have a 30 year old HFA relative, a friend with an HFA granddaughter, and tend to gravitate towards aspies online so it's not a complete shock. My mentor has always known he was an aspie, has always suspected that I was "one of us", and is nineteen years old.

I'm going through some fairly intense autism burnout at the moment or perhaps it's just situational hell. Regardless, I'm not a troll or a bad person, just not likely to be all that communicative for awhile, other than jokes and random stuff.

Welcome to Wrong Planet. We have some old threads on autistic burnout - which most typically occurs in the early twenties and at midlife it seems, though I have also experienced it at a much older stage. Unfortunately the search feature here doesn't function, though you can probably find old threads on this by Googling "Wrong Planet autistic burnout".

No-one needs a diagnosis from a medical person to be part of Wrong Planet. Many people here realised they were AS and joined before deciding to seek one, and whether to or not is a personal choice that WP, as a support site, respects.

Welcome AQ38!

Enjoy the forum! Hope you can find information that can help you in the struggles with your burnout. Wish you much strength in your struggles.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Thank you for the warm welcome. It's been so helpful just reading the old threads and playing forum games with some friendly faces that are becoming familiar.

Today I got in my car and drove far enough from where I live that I could spend the day at a public park and just practice how I could meet my own needs without impinging on the NTs. It was actually kind of fun and I wound up looking forward to doing it again tomorrow instead of feeling sorry for myself for having to be not-home.

Sometimes it was kind of forced, like trying to practice not engaging with exactly three people before I let myself say, "Nice weather." to the fourth one and always messing up because the dogs kept picking up on how bad I needed a kind tail wag or wet sloppy doggie kiss even though the people thought I was just normal creepy.

But other times it was really cool, like when I realized that the health and fitness people thought I was one of them and I got to say how weird it felt being a size small when I was a size XXXL up until "a short time ago" and they thought it was a weight loss program instead of grief so they said sweet things like "keep up the good work" and "you'll be jogging/riding a bike in no time with THAT positive attitude!"

The best was definitely when I saw this log that was like a bridge and I thought about how many times I had watched my kids, starting when they were about eight and it terrified me all the way up to their thirties when it made me roll my eyes and tell their disposable dates "S/he's still just a big overgrown kid at heart so I'm not sad about never getting to be a gramma" and when I didn't have kids, everybody else's kids were always walking across those logs but I NEVER GOT TO because I was always responsible for kids or husbands or parents or bosses or somebody else.

I took one look at that log and I felt like I was thirty again. I'm no bigger than I am when I was 30. Grief doesn't know about things like destinations and directions and jobs and real estate markets, it just makes you want to walk and walk and walk and walk and walk until I really DID feel like I could walk across that log.

So I did. And I didn't fall and nobody had to clean up a dead body. And the whole time I was screaming and crying like a crazy person and telling those trees how I NEVER got to play and now nobody cared if I died because I'm not worth anything to them and nobody would even know if I died because I left my ID in the car and I look like any random homeless person that would have "Jane Doe #26845947" written on their death certificate and get shoveled into some crematorium at New Treblinka or whatever President Trump has up his sleeve besides his tiny hands, so I'm screaming and sobbing and telling God and the trees who have known me since I was a teenager even though all the people moved away and forgot I ever existed that I want to play and I don't care so I'm going to walk across that log even if I fall off and die.

Then I heard voices and they weren't in my head.

The college student heard me but she was very sweet and didn't make me feel any worse than I made the houseless person with Morgellen's when I wanted to help him and didn't have any power except my guitar. He was very polite when he explained that he was very angry at Jesus but Jesus wasn't there and I was and he didn't want to yell at me.

I understood and apologized and he understood.

I like that park. The park people were nice.

Hello and Greetings and enjoy your tenure here as, there are many forums & threads to incur your interest and so forth.