I was going to call this post “Oh My God, I’m An Emo!” but then I looked up “emo” to check the definition and found out it doesn’t really mean what I thought it meant at all.
So, lately I’ve been having what I would describe as occasional bouts of depression. In general, when I’ve tried to tell anybody about this, I’ve gotten told to “stop being such a whiner” or “quit with the self pity” or similar things. What these people don’t seem to get is that if it was that easy to just switch it off, I would – I don’t really enjoy feeling these kind of emotions any more than they enjoy me complaining about it. So why do I complain about it? Well, it helps, a bit. As for why I get depressed, let me count the ways.
Most of the real-life friends I have now are people I’ve been introduced to. They’re great people, and it’s fun to do stuff with them, but sometimes I can’t help but feel isolated, even when I’m in a group with them. They all work at the same place, which is a different place from where I work, so (not unreasonably) when they meet up they tend to talk about work, which through no fault of their own kinda excludes me by definition. I understand some of what they talk about, but it’s not something I’m a part of.
Unfortunately I seem to have real difficulty connecting with people even when I do have something in common with them. Take the anime convention I just went to for example. 1200 plus people, including myself, all with an interest in anime, but I didn’t really “meet” anybody. I wish there was a “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Not Being a Wallflower at Con Parties”.
Then there’s girl trouble – or rather, lack-of-girl trouble. For the majority of my life, I’ve never had a relationship of any kind with women. There are a few women in the group of friends I have now, Â but I have no idea how to tell what their relationship status is, other than the ones who are already clearly attached. And even if one of them did happen to be single, I haven’t a clue how I’d go about approaching her. Or what I’d do in the unlikely event that such an approach was successful.
This stuff never really used to be such a problem; I’ve been alone for much of my life, and while I have felt bad about it on occasion it’s affected me far less often than it does now. Maybe it’s because now I have a little bit of understanding about what’s wrong, but I feel powerless to fix it; I have to wait until I can get professional help, like therapy or something. I’ve tried to research my problems on the Internet, but it seems like my Google-fu is not strong enough to find the solution there, either.
I managed to get a referral to an Aspergers Syndrome clinic. They sent me a bunch of questionnaires to fill in, which I’ve now done and sent back to them, but their letter said it will take up to 4 months before they’re likely to offer me an appointment for an assessment. I feel like I want to be trying to do something in the interim, but I don’t really know what. Private therapy isn’t an option as I can’t afford it. Talking to friends about it… well… the end result of that was really not good the last time I tried it, and in any case I’ve realised it’s not really fair to expect people who haven’t been trained to deal with this sort of thing to be prepared to help.
So, here I am. Just waiting. Sometimes I feel okay, sometimes I don’t. Watch this space.