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How do you all cope with the feeling you’ll never feel belonging in this world?

Forest Cat said:
For me it has just been working and doing something. Keeping myself occupied. The worst thing I can do is to sit down and do nothing. But I did feel belonging, I had peace of mind and belonging for a while. But after I lost my family I just haven't been right, there's an empty space in me. Don't belong anywhere really. I just keep myself occupied and try to not sit still and think. Not much else I can do, we all have to deal with things, do our best. Life is hard sometimes and it doesn't care what we want. We play the hand we are dealt.
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Agreed, your dealt your cards and it’s up to play your deck. It can be brutal but it’s all you can do.
 
Chimorin said:
I feel you on that. Your not missing out on it though, trust me. I know this might be too much but my old IRL friend group consisted of drug addicts who I had to constantly bail out of their problems, drug related and other issues. I was never interested in partaking in it (and never will), but what really pushed me hard against drugs and alcohol of any kind was when my friend sadly took his own life by hanging and overdose. I knew him for 10 years at that point and we were both only 14 at the time. He wasn’t the only one I knew who passed away young due to drugs, but his death was the one who hit closest to home. I really hate what that stuff can do, so much needless loss of life.
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I'm sorry to hear that about your friend.
It's a shame that something that can do that much damage can make me feel so isolated because of not doing it.
Even people you least expect, you suddenly find out that they drink or smoke weed. It always disappoints me when I find that out.
I used to think only young, impressionable teenagers did weed to impress their peers, but it seems anyone does it no matter what age when they're around others who are doing it. Seems daft to me.

Not only weed, but alcohol as well. My cousin's girlfriend is the sort you'd least expect to get drunk, as she's very health conscious and is into art and poetry and even goes to church. But one day my mum suddenly announced that the girlfriend had gone out with a couple of work friends after work one day and got really drunk to the point where she couldn't navigate her way home. And I could see everyone in the room had impressed looks of their faces, as if to say "well, she's normal then".

I remember when I was 21 I went out on a Friday night with my brother to a pub and I was back home by 9.30, completely sober. I felt so abnormal. I mean, what 21-year-old comes out of a pub, close enough to walk home, with no work the next day, completely sober? It's so embarrassing. Well, it shouldn't be embarrassing, but society makes it be.
 
Misty Avich said:
I'm sorry to hear that about your friend.
It's a shame that something that can do that much damage can make me feel so isolated because of not doing it.
Even people you least expect, you suddenly find out that they drink or smoke weed. It always disappoints me when I find that out.
I used to think only young, impressionable teenagers did weed to impress their peers, but it seems anyone does it no matter what age when they're around others who are doing it. Seems daft to me.

Not only weed, but alcohol as well. My cousin's girlfriend is the sort you'd least expect to get drunk, as she's very health conscious and is into art and poetry and even goes to church. But one day my mum suddenly announced that the girlfriend had gone out with a couple of work friends after work one day and got really drunk to the point where she couldn't navigate her way home. And I could see everyone in the room had impressed looks of their faces, as if to say "well, she's normal then".

I remember when I was 21 I went out on a Friday night with my brother to a pub and I was back home by 9.30, completely sober. I felt so abnormal. I mean, what 21-year-old comes out of a pub, close enough to walk home, with no work the next day, completely sober? It's so embarrassing. Well, it shouldn't be embarrassing, but society makes it be.
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I think the behaviour is encouraged due to the crab mentality society has, dragging people down with bad habits, etc. Even seeing what weed did to my ex also made me steer clear from it, I mean she was on it since she was 10 (no clue how her parents were that bad at being ones for their 10 year old getting their hands on that) and it completely zombified her along with being a stressed out wreck, it was hard to watch. She could barely string a sentence together, absolutely brutal. Trust me, let this be confirmation you made the right choice. Short term validation is not worth such horrible consequences.
 
Hello @Chimorin, hope you can find at least some sense of belonging here.

I'm sorry to hear about your friends. I'm also a lifetime straight edger and I've lost friends to alcohol.

One friend got addicted to caffeine, I helped him quit. Then he took up smoking because he worked with tobacco and he liked the smell. When he wanted to quit, I helped him with that. Then he started drinking, alone, which wasn't great, but I once again got him to quit.

When he started drinking again, this time with co-workers, he started acting strange and pushing me away. It was more than just denial about an addiction. I couldn't help him that time and the downward spiral began. I also noticed the same thing with an old school friend, one day fine, the next day, acting strange and pushing his friends away. The start of the spiral.

Weirdly enough, when I started working in fraud prevention, I started to see the exact same patterns from people who had been taken in by scammers. They would push their friends and family away in the exact same defensive manner. I also noticed the same patterns when I started reading about cults.

They say the UK has a drinking culture. Well I say we have a drinking CULTure. A drinking cult. It's only 3 letters away and some people start acting like cultists around alcohol and those of us who don't partake. Some people find their own way into alcohol addiction to try to cope with problems and have a much higher chance of being saved. Others get taken in by the cult. And it is borderline impossible to get them to leave that cult.
 
Angular Chap said:
Hello @Chimorin, hope you can find at least some sense of belonging here.

I'm sorry to hear about your friends. I'm also a lifetime straight edger and I've lost friends to alcohol.

One friend got addicted to caffeine, I helped him quit. Then he took up smoking because he worked with tobacco and he liked the smell. When he wanted to quit, I helped him with that. Then he started drinking, alone, which wasn't great, but I once again got him to quit.

When he started drinking again, this time with co-workers, he started acting strange and pushing me away. It was more than just denial about an addiction. I couldn't help him that time and the downward spiral began. I also noticed the same thing with an old school friend, one day fine, the next day, acting strange and pushing his friends away. The start of the spiral.

Weirdly enough, when I started working in fraud prevention, I started to see the exact same patterns from people who had been taken in by scammers. They would push their friends and family away in the exact same defensive manner. I also noticed the same patterns when I started reading about cults.

They say the UK has a drinking culture. Well I say we have a drinking CULTure. A drinking cult. It's only 3 letters away and some people start acting like cultists around alcohol and those of us who don't partake. Some people find their own way into alcohol addiction to try to cope with problems and have a much higher chance of being saved. Others get taken in by the cult. And it is borderline impossible to get them to leave that cult.
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Agreed, once your in the ‘game’, it’s very hard to get out of since you not only have to resist the temptations to start the cycle again, but people wanting to drag you down with them.
 
Jonn said:
Well, I don't have have a real-life group of friends that I regularly hang out with, but I have found a peer group online.
That seems to be enough for me.

"To each their own." <shrug>
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Agreed. I don't have ANY real life friends, so I have nobody to hang out with. Like you, I found a peer group online. It is called autismforums.com.
 
Shamar said:
Agreed. I don't have ANY real life friends, so I have nobody to hang out with. Like you, I found a peer group online. It is called autismforums.com.
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Agreed.

For the most part, I am too weird for people in real life. I have learned that individual people (NTs), here and there, can be helpful for some particular kind of companionship or help. But nothing comes all in one package.

I am so grateful for this community.
 
WhitewaterWoman said:
Agreed.

For the most part, I am too weird for people in real life. I have learned that individual people (NTs), here and there, can be helpful for some particular kind of companionship or help. But nothing comes all in one package.

I am so grateful for this community.
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Agreed. It’s a weird world and can be an isolated one, at least we can all congregate here when we need people to relate to one another eh?
 
Tuffsy said:
Thanks for this post and all of the replies. I was starting to feel alone in my isolation. This is a great group to be a part of.
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As already mentioned, the ironic thing about our situation is that we’re not alone in it, and that’s theres plenty of people like you and me in this forum who are going through the exact same thing. Life is hard enough for us all here as it is, but at least we can come here and be understood by people just like us. If it makes you feel any better, feel free to send me a DM, in PMs, I’m quite isolated myself so company is always appreciated lol.
 
I partly create a new personality, partly try to create my own private space apart from that.My public persona vs my true personality is very different
 
I tried coping with the fact my autism's stopping me from doing anything meaningful by playing games, watching stuff I grew up on, reading books, listening to music, or go to my happy place. There's no way I'll ever live a normal life at the age of 39, so I'm at the point where I'm just giving up on everything and just accept it.

If I end up living alone on the streets or at a care home, then so be it. I'm just a kid living in an adult's body and nothing's gonna change for the better.
 
AprilR said:
I partly create a new personality, partly try to create my own private space apart from that.My public persona vs my true personality is very different
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100% relate to you on that. Honestly, this might sound pathetic, but it really hurt me when my imaginative world clashed with my real world and it got shattered, to be honest still kinda recovering from it. For me, whilst I consciously can identify the real world, my subconscious part of my mind still tries to cling onto that imaginary world. I suppose it’s like an ego death? Not entirely sure.
 
Heroine of Winds said:
I tried coping with the fact my autism's stopping me from doing anything meaningful by playing games, watching stuff I grew up on, reading books, listening to music, or go to my happy place. There's no way I'll ever live a normal life at the age of 39, so I'm at the point where I'm just giving up on everything and just accept it.

If I end up living alone on the streets or at a care home, then so be it. I'm just a kid living in an adult's body and nothing's gonna change for the better.
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Yep, a harsh reality to swallow but it is the truth nonetheless. Sadly we have to endure said limitations for the rest of our lives, the consequences of which can be quite a brutal truth to accept.
 
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