Anyone out there?

Hi out there fellow anonymous humans. So strange how this all works – its like we’re all floating in our relative universes but its to dark to notice the other pieces of star dust next to you, surrounding you, sometimes far away. A bit like me, desperate to find another piece of stardust (or whatever I am), desperately waiting and watching for just another fleeting glimmer of light to confirm that I am not alone. That it’s just an illusion. That there is hope and solidarity around me. But it never seems to come, no matter how hard I try to look, no matter how desperately I hope. I feel like on of those old broadcast signals flickered from abandoned radio channels set up years ago that everyone has forgotten, that is never heard because no one knows that channel exists, or ever existed. No matter how many times I say ‘copy, over’? A lot of days I can’t even hear my own signal, some days I don’t even know if there is one. Do other people have them? Do other people hear them? Or is it just me?

I have high-functioning autism, so sometimes I struggle to understand my own thoughts and feelings, and I often struggle to put them into words. If I can put them into words, they are fleeting, like the light you can still see in the aftermath of a sparkler being waved in the dark. Sometimes they are elusive, I feel their truth and the next minute it feels as though I imagined it, or got it wrong, interpreted that feeling or thought wrong (my logical brain tells me that this is an effect of delayed processing associated with the autistic brain, much like that lingering light left in the wake of a sparker). And then I struggle to put it into words. If I can’t understand how I feel, how can I express how I feel. And where I try despite it, try to connect with others, be honest with them and real – it comes out the wrong way, its too rude, or too immature, or too-something always – people’s interpretation of what I say is always so different to what I am actually saying. With so much risk involved with communicating, and all the mental effort involved, what is the point of it? But then the longing, the longing to connect, to be one with someone, that longing never goes away. Like an unwelcome guest sitting idly in an empty house that is your world, yourself.