We all know what it’s like to be alone, just like we all know what it’s like to be lonely. I enjoy spending most of my time alone, but I hate being lonely. Just because I need time alone doesn’t mean I want to be alone always.
Does anyone like to be lonely? I doubt it. Being lonely is itself a form of longing, a sense of loss or isolation. Some of us, however, enjoy being alone.
I know many of us on the spectrum have a hard time making friends, not because we don’t want to, but because it is difficult for us to understand and fit into social norms and the unwritten rules of social interaction. We have often learned the hard way how to mimic others and fit in as well as possible, or perhaps gone the opposite way and refused to try and fit in.
I mimicked others my whole life in an attempt to fit in. I tried to look normal and be like everyone else. It’s not an easy task, but luckily my mother let me take drama lessons from I was 6 years old. During those classes I learned about how to really see people and how to mimic them and I used those skills until around the time I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
I don’t want to use those skills now. I want to be free from all the masks of my past and simply be me, but several things make that difficult. Firstly, my idea or image of who I am is wrong. I soon discovered that not only is my image of myself wrong, distorted somehow, but I am also not able to be the kind of person I want to be. I cannot hide from who I truly am, even though who I am is not who I want to be. I wanted to be someone who found love and happiness, someone living with my own family in a house in the countryside, had a job and a career and friends to hang out with too.
The reason why this isn’t possible is that I am not the kind of person who can do that. I need a lot of space to recharge and rest between social interaction. Sometimes, and this breaks my heart every time I think about it, I worry that I may never be able to have children.
Children are a beautiful gift and having a family with children, maybe a cat and a dog, was always my dream. I have had long periods where I am convinced that I can never have children and then I can have moments where it might seem possible. To be honest, I don’t know if I can have children. Sometimes, I’m not sure I want children.
You see, children need love and affection, they need hugs and kisses and they need attention. They need to be raised, taught right from wrong and learn how to handle themselves in the world.
I can barely take care of myself; how could I possibly take care of a child? I don’t want a child if I cannot give that child the love and affection it deserves. Often, I worry I cannot truly love anyone, and a child cannot be any different. I cannot tell you or express how deep my fear that I cannot love my own children runs in me.
Life is difficult for me; the little things are difficult.
Remembering to eat and drink is difficult even on a good day. I wake up many times every night because lots of things wake me up. Some days I can’t leave my house, some days I am so tired and exhausted from social interaction I can’t talk to anyone.
I need time alone in the same way others need to breathe, to eat or to drink water.
If I don’t have periods alone then it’s like my already damaged filter, the filter that stops sounds, smells, colours, light, touch and all other things from the outside world, that filter grows increasingly thin until it snaps.
I can’t just be alone in a room for myself, I need the whole apartment or house to myself. I need to know that there’s no one else near me to relax and recharge myself.
Right now, I’m living at my mother’s house because I have no job and no money, but it’s far from ideal. She works 5 days a week and while she’s at work I can be alone. It’s not enough, though. I need to know that I can be alone as long as I want to fully recharge, and a few hours doesn’t do anything but keep me going.
You know what that means, right? It means that I don’t know how to ever have a family and children, because what family can accept you not living with them full-time? I want to live with someone and have a family, but every time I try to suppress this side of myself I can feel myself hurting more and more on the inside and at some point I can’t keep it inside anymore.
I get frustrated and irritable easily, I snap at people and my mood grows darker by the day. I feel more and more sad and those around me will feel it. I am not the type to hide my feelings anymore.
Hiding my feelings was natural once, I played my part very well. I don’t know how to hide myself away now, however, because it feels like it is a door that cannot be closed now that I have opened it.
When I get time to myself, I am happier, more relaxed and generally feel good. I have the energy to be social once in a while and that’s good. Great, actually, because I don’t want to be alone.
I need to be alone, but I never wanted to be alone.
Accepting myself was never something I thought would be a challenge. I foolishly assumed it was loving myself or valuing myself that would be my problem, but now I’m not so sure. Acceptance feels like a much greater task.
I thought I had dealt with that. I thought I had accepted myself long ago. I feel like I did. I felt like it was a process I went through. I don’t know, but one explanation is that acceptance is just not what I thought it was. Or perhaps, and this is by far the more likely one of the two, I was accepting what wasn’t really me, but only the image I had of myself in my mind.
It was easy to accept because it was merely a shadow or maybe a dream, but it was never who I was.
There are parts of me, aspects of my personality that I don’t very much like. I assumed, I think, that I could change some of it.
I thought I would learn social interaction; I would get better and then I wouldn’t get so tired. I accepted that it was difficult at the time, not that I might never change. I accepted that I needed space sometimes, that I needed to be alone occasionally – I never accepted to what degree I need it to be happy.
I don’t know how to change that. I don’t even know if I should try.
What I do know is that before I decide if I want to change it or not, before that, I want to accept that part of me.
I want to have my own home, my own little home, and live there alone. I want don’t to be alone, though.
In fact, I am quite afraid of being alone because I am afraid of isolating myself to such a degree that I cannot re-enter society. I am afraid of being lonely. I am afraid of being lonely all my life and then die alone with no family, no friends and no partner. I am afraid they won’t find my corpse for days or weeks because no one will miss me.
It could happen, you know. Not because I have no one in my life, but because I need to be alone sometimes and when I do, I prefer as little contact with others as I can. That means no texting or phone calls or anything – not if I can avoid it. I need to cut all social interaction for periods of time. If I died today my mother would know because I live in her house, but many years from now, if I haven’t changed, how would anyone know?
Funny thing is, I am more afraid of not being afraid of this than I am afraid of the thing itself.
What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to accept that my dreams might not come true because I might need to be alone more than I will need social interaction in the future?
I don’t have any answers, merely the dilemma of being alone versus being lonely.
Is it possible to be alone and not end up all alone?
Accepting the need to be alone is but one of the different aspects of myself that I dislike, there are other aspects I need to accept too. It’s strange realising that not who I thought I was. I think I spend so many years mimicking others and trying to be normal that removing all those layers of masks were even more arduous than I ever thought possible. Some of them are so old and have been with me for so long I don’t remember creating them, but now when the newer layers have come off I start to remember and see that what I thought was me is simply more masks.
I am just not sure who I am when all the many layers I hid myself behind have been shed. I am afraid I won’t like the person underneath it all. I am afraid I won’t like me.
