Abscissa – Autism and Techno Blog

Greetings, about time for a blog update. More than anything else, it’s a reminder that it’s still worth the occasional self-reflection.

Some recent moments of course where I’m still a prisoner to the same unhappiness that has plagued me these last 2-3 years.

These days I’m a bit more stable in terms of accepting and understanding of who I was at the time things fell apart. Why I did what I did, what I still do now.

To share a little of my existential experience is to talk about anticipation. Any time in the real world with real people, real tasks, real work, real results.

Always anticipating things going wrong. Rarely if ever anticipating good stuff. But then when I did, it hurt more to lose. Expectation is another word for it.

How happy I was when things were so good that I expected the good to continue. And when things changed and this fantastic anticipation soon twisted and darkened into something horrific and malevolent.

Base anticipation has been thought to be representing the dopamine system in the brain. When something or someone gives you pleasure your anticipation grows around them. But one bad experience can change that forever.

What can I say except that I’m ruled by such anticipation and hence never am free to pursue anything free of predictions and expectations. Free of the inner biases.

It’s common in mental health to talk about going to one’s happy place but that feels like anticipation. I get drunk alone and blog precisely because it’s the safest way for me to go to my dark place and explore, look for ways to construct guidance, shine a light.

Everyone sees worry and anxiety in me and strives to help but I don’t want them to. Rather be alone to deal with things in my own way.

I don’t truly know how to be mentally healthy, positive, free. I see hurt and pain everywhere and in everything. I don’t and can’t control people around me but it would be nice if they made feel good instead of feeling bad.

I continue to grieve the loss of the people I chose to spend my life with and I miss them deeply still.

The flip side of anticipation is the imagination of what could have been. No amount of loneliness could ever outweigh the pain of loss, knowing that things could have turned out differently.

If I had said this, hadn’t said or done that. It’s not healthy. Sometimes you have to just cut your losses and move on. Except that I refused to. Not that I had much choice in the matter. I live in outright denial of all the shit that happened but the damage was still done.

Anticipation is not about the future but the present moment, more pertinently the present moment connecting to the very next moment. I stopped thinking or caring about the future, only ever living for the very next moment.

I was always like that, truth be told. But it’s gotten worse and feels terminal now. Memories connect us to the past. I think that the loss was so painful that I had to manually sever the connection to it. At least in terms of the reality of it.

There’s no longer any shame in saying that I shut myself away and cut contact because it was, and still will be, too fucking painful for me to bear.

I’m not ever going to be able to bear seeing someone I loved move on and choose to spend their lives with someone else, not until I have replaced them and the feelings they gave me when they did choose me.

Understanding that is how I felt, I refused to move on for her. She always would and always will be my first choice.

Though eventually I started putting myself first. That meant choosing myself, choosing to be by myself. Choosing to live with my demons.

While it seems I love the drama, the anxiety of not knowing. Forever skirting around the possibility of all-or-nothing without ever committing to either. The loss of the possible, to have gambled and lost. I’ve never gone back to where I’ve lost. Why suffer further?

The suffering I can handle comes from the rumination, not the reality.

I’m at relative peace now, not in a happy place but I’m at peace with myself. Though it would be nice to start living life properly again, pursue happiness again.

The way I felt about her and, indeed still do, she would not have been free. I wasn’t free. I couldn’t grant her freedom unless I walked away. We are not obliged to make each other happy, our only obligation is to ourselves.

I committed myself to her, 120%, and it nearly fucking destroyed me in the end. And I would do it all over again if I could go back in time.

But then I always was a junkie.

That quality that makes me unique is what makes me vulnerable and I always get hurt and I always walk away. Perhaps knowing this will make me more secure going forward. More likely is that it will keep me more cautious than ever.

The point being that I understand better what I want out of life and would like to give myself as much of that as I can without chaining myself psychologically to someone else.

But that is the power that others have over me. Only they can give me that anticipation of pleasure. Lord knows there is little excitement generated by spending life inside my own head.

I think for the first time I can honestly say I don’t regret anything I did or said in the past. It was the truest version of myself. The best I could do.

I showed, not told her how much I loved her and I experienced the highest high and the lowest low. Life has little more to offer now that can change me anymore than that.

So to share what my life is as an autistic person, it is defined by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain at all costs, which includes risking an intolerable life not worth living.

It involves living a life not worth living, holding on out of sheer stubbornness, pride, cynicism and anger.

I didn’t come out tonight and write this blog out of any need or desire but simply because I had something to say and chose to say it.

A rare feeling indeed, so I’ll seek some pleasure within myself and take it easy, not give a shit about anything.

To anyone who is reading, fuck knows why you’re here but thank you anyway xx