This year, I’ve often been feeling as though I wish I didn’t exist.

This is a tough one to explain to anyone who doesn’t have Asperger’s; the immediate assumption is that you are speaking of suicide. I don’t wish to die, even if sometimes I feel like I want to. Dying is scary and too final. I refuse to intentionally inflict upon my family a loss like that for the rest of their years on Earth. For all they’ve done for me and how much I love them, I couldn’t ever knowingly do something like that to them. I’m also not sure how that fits in with God and my relationship with Him. I know He made me. I know He put me on this Earth. He’s been right about so many things that I’ve been wrong about in the past, I’m not sure if it would be right to just opt out on my own accord.

So please don’t call a suicide hotline and other emergency-intervention-stuff for me, there is a difference.

Rather instead of being snuffed out too early and ending everything that was started, I wish I never was. I wish I had never been.

I wish I never had to walk on Earth. I wish people never knew me. I wish there would be no hole or space for the place I occupy. I wish I didn’t have any obligation to anything. I wish I never was.

If there was a button to leave this Earth and escape to another, then I would wish for that. But right now I just wish to have never been.

I don’t want to be in this life. I hate how I have no choice but to be a participator in it. I hate how there is no option not to.

I have to work to survive. I have to play the work game. I have to interact with colleagues. I have to stay on top of things. I have to use my own time for work. If I don’t do these things well, I lose my job. I have to have an income. All I want right now is to quit. Quitting won’t help me survive life with the fundamental necessities I need.

I have to go to the store, and frequently. I have to find a time to force myself when all I want is to be at home. I have to expend this energy I keep so guarded. I have to go down aisles plagued with people I don’t know and interact with the cashier.

I have to talk to family members. I have to socialize when I just want to go into a cave, block out stimuli, and have nothing expected of me.

I have to interact with people. I have to put on the brave face, make an effort, keep up the façade. If I slack and feel tired, I make horrible blunders.

I have to pretend that these things don’t bother me. These things are a part of life, who would complain about this except for “just a whiner?” In this life, you can’t be seen as just a whiner or complainer. And you must follow the rules if you want to even marginally get by.

I have to exist, but ironically people treat me as if I don’t. I don’t know normal social interactions. I don’t know how to break into groups and be a part of things. And when my threshold is low, I don’t care to. I am forgotten. I am overlooked. I am brushed off because I don’t know how to portray the severity of what I feel. Close friends don’t understand what Asperger’s is like, and often don’t support me in the way I need to be supported. Because of this, people don’t realize how I need more time to heal, process, and feel, and they invalidate what I go through. In my attempts, my lack of communication skills often distance me when I try to reach out.

When my threshold is high, these things are hardly an issue. But when it is continually low, I just want to escape until I can tolerate life again. But that isn’t an option. And if the factors causing my low threshold don’t diminish, who’s to say that a rest would do any good once I come back…?

To the person without Asperger’s, this can seem like a case of depression. Although it still might fall under that blanket, it’s a little different than typical cases. When choosing to withdraw and not do the above things, with depression you feel stagnant or worse. When I choose not to do these things because my threshold is low, I feel better. When I have escaped, when I am able to retreat, I feel almost rejuvenated. The difference is that I can feel results. But the problem is, how likely am I actually able to escape for what I need and what is the cost in letting life slide? I have no choice but to participate in order to avoid worse consequences.

Sometimes it just seems like it would have been so much better to have never been made, to have never had to be a part of life, to have never had to feel anything, to have never had to be here.

But yet for reasons somehow beyond me, reasons I’m not sure outweigh the struggle, I exist. I am here. I was made. So, therefore, I trudge on. Given no choice, I march forward leaving my trail. Reluctantly I stamp my positive footprint on humanity as a contributor to life.