For the last three or four days I’ve been experiencing anxiety way more than usual. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to get back on my medication after accidentally being off it for awhile, but I don’t know. I’m a Christian, but my faith has been little to no comfort to me. No matter how much I pray, no matter how much I read my bible, my anxiety never goes away. I have Asperger’s and view things, the world, and my faith, differently than everyone else. All my life, even before I knew of my diagnosis, I sensed I was different from everyone else. But I didn’t realize how different until I reached my teens, and especially after I graduated high school seven years ago. Around the same time, I became a Christian personally, but even then, I’ve never felt as though I belong. A lot of things about faith that Christians take comfort in just rub me the wrong way.
I’m very shy and introverted, so I don’t really have any friends. I’ve also never dated and I’m 25 years old (shocking, I know). That said, in a way, I should consider myself “blessed.” I grew up in a middle-class loving Christian family, I was never abused, I never went to wild parties or drank or did drugs or sleep around. And yet, I feel guilty for how blessed I’ve been. How can I be practically living in luxury when the world around me just seems irreparably broken? This feeling of guilt tends to paralyze me from doing anything about it, because I already feel powerless.
Another big thing that contributes to my anxiety is that I’m very empathetic, such to a degree that it’s very easy for me to feel emotional distress, whether that be extreme sadness over someone suffering or enraged anger at the person making them suffer, sometimes both. I know how valuable empathy is, but sometimes, I wish I didn’t have it. For one thing, I have a friend who lives in Scandinavia. She has Asperger’s like me. But her “parents” verbally and emotionally abuse her, and yell at her and each other a lot. The final straw for me was them claiming they were divorcing over her, calling her all sorts of awful names. I may be a Christian, but I do believe grace does have its limits. If I were in front of her parents, I would slap them both HARD in the face and tell them they are selfish, cruel, miserable excuses for human beings, and that their daughter deserves actual parents rather than a jack@ss and a b*tch.
Not to mention, I’m a history nerd, but the more you study history, the more you realize how truly evil human beings can be to one another. Some people truly see other human beings as just pieces of meat to be experimented on and abused. I’m not gonna get involved in an apologetics conversation, but let me just say, I have three young nephews and a niece. They’re innocent and blissfully unaware. But I dread the days when they come to learn, either in school or just educating themselves, how utterly and completely fallen this world is.
I will admit, sometimes I unintentionally indulge in my emotional distress. I’m not always aware of it, and when I’m into it, it’s hard for me to stop. I don’t know what to do about it. There’ve been evenings when I’ve ranted and cried. I’ve been to counseling, my family knows about my problems and supports me, but no matter how hard I try to make friends or try to get into my faith like everyone else does, I always feel alone. Truly, no one I know understands how hard it sometimes is to be an Aspie. I didn’t ask to be born this way, I didn’t ask to be born at all. I feel as though I’m too much and not enough at the same time. I live in a world where I feel like my faith won’t let me enjoy the “world” and the “world” won’t let me enjoy my faith.
My story is a long one, but I’ve done the best to keep it short. I’ve never had suicidal inclinations, but sometimes I wonder if it truly is better to be an adult than a child. Often I feel older than my age and more jaded, and I wonder if I’ve just lived too long. All I want to know is that there’s at least one person who’ll at least read this and let me know they have. Just listening (or reading) is sometimes enough.
