Dyingoportunity
Member
- May 9, 2025
- 33
I want to preface this by saying that this is in no way intended to put down or discriminate against those with autism spectrum disorder, nor is me sharing my difficulties with this topic meant to incite guilt in those with this disorder. No one is a burden because they were born with a brain that intrinsically plays by its own rules and causes them emotional and physical pain. I just need to get this off my chest.
my little brother being diagnosed with a variety of autism that seems extremely similar to Kanner's Syndrome, but I don't know the exact specifics. It was pretty soon after he was born when he received diagnosis. I didn't fully comprehend what that meant at the time because I was a little kid, and I didn't fully comprehend what was going on with my brother for several years. I just knew that I my family had to operate our work,school, and personal lives around his routines and sensitivities. Well, my parents and two siblings had to, anyway. I was the one with the least amount of friends and so I was the one who had to watch for seizures, tell people he was non verbal, and make sure he didn't get into trouble when my siblings were doing things while my parents were busy. My dad eventually quit his job to the important things that my brother needed like medication and basic care, but I was still made to stay with the two of them even if I made plans with friends prior to what my brother needed. I was usually left by myself if my parents had my brother and my siblings were busy.
It didn't happen every single day and they loved and cared for me to the best of their abilities, but there was / is a sharp pain in knowing things would never be the same. Maybe I was jealous that he was getting so much attention at first, but whenever I tried to talk about it my parents kept telling me how much more difficult things were / are for him (and they undoubtedly are, but they let me know in such a guilting way that made me feel like his suffering was my fault). It was true and I knew what they sacrificed for us kids, but I couldn't shake my negative feelings about the family dynamics. Eventually I tried to ctb when I was a child during summer camp. I figured my parents would be too occupied with my brother and I didn't really have friends to miss me at that point, so I sat at the bottom of the pool in a local recreational center and held my breath until I passed out. Someone must have noticed me because I woke up to lifeguard resuscitating me in front of a crowd.
I always felt that I didn't really belong anywhere, but that feeling got worse. Over time it became impossible for me to maintain what friendships I had and develop adequate social skills, so by the time I was in my early teens I had no friends and no way to make friends without coming off as weird or bitchy. Even the few friends I managed to make pulled a 180 on me and did shit like excluding me from get togethers, never listening to me without mocking me, and spreading rumors about me being a slut that they knew were blantently and provably untrue because they thought it was funny. I was able to push my pain down until some ass clown from my school thought It'd be a good idea to sexually harass and stalk me before r*ping me. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I struggled with emotional issues in the past, but this made my depression come bursting at me with full force. It got to the point where i almost stabbed myself to death on my birthday, but i just broke down crying. Things were escalating with my parents and brother beforehand (he wasn't violent but his teenage hormones made him rebellious and somewhat aggressive), but it felt selfish to ctb when my parents did so much for me and my siblings, and especially when we all loved each other truly and deeply in spite of our hardships. My brother wouldn't understand why I'd be suddenly gone due to the way his specific condition impacts his intelligentual capacity. My other siblings would be heartbroken and my parents would blame themselves. I'm lucky that I have such a loving family compared to how hard some of you all have it.
But love on its own often isn't enough. I wasn't formally diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety disorders and start attempting treatment until I started college. My mom wanted to give me a chance at a life away from my brother, so I agreed with her suggestion to get a college degree in graphic design. Art is and has been one of my biggest passions, so it made sense at the time. I didn't fully understand what I was getting myself into. Everyone at the college was super friendly and it was nice to finally be able to develop and explore who I was, but because the entire point of the program was to get hired as soon as possible, I'd burn myself out every night only to still feel light years behind my peers in terms of professional presentation. Art became a chore. I was anxious and stressed all the time, and not just because of the program, but also because I was wrecked from the fear of every worst case scenario happing to my family for hours while I was in a part of a city I didn't know while also not knowing how to drive. I had to stop my treatment because the therapist I saw was just giving me surface level stuff that only kind of helped and the other mental help group I saw at that time was more focused on shoving more and more pills down my throat. My brother's seizures became more frequent to the point that he'd have ones powerful enough to dislocate his shoulder once a week. Everything accumulatived to the point that I had a massive mental breakdown and decided to drop out in the very last class of the final semester. That was in 2017.
I've not held a job or gone back to education since. I still live with my brother and parents. Things are a little easier now that the other siblings have moved out of the house, but because my mom has a very intense cooperate job that requires a lot of traveling and my dad is getting old enoug that his own body is actively hindering him, I have little more choice than ever but to do what I've been doing for most of my life. I've taken some driving classes, but I never took the exam and I only had driving experience for a couple of months before that fell through. Even if I do get my license and drive to do interviews, I don't know how the hell I'm going to explain the massive gap in my resume/CV. It's harder than ever to make new friends as an adult. I've had to give up social media because all I saw was how my old friends were getting married and starting families of their own. My country's healthcare is an absolute nightmare, and what the government is doing to it is not only going to screw over me and my recent antidepressants, but it's going to make living in my brothers body utter torture for him. Same for my aging parents. I consider myself to be a pretty resilient person, but that resilience feels like a mask for how fragile and alien I feel. I wouldn't be surprised if I had some form of undiagnosed autism myself.
I think I am particularly responsible for my situation because I've always been super passive towards the world around me and I never really advocated for myself or pushed myself to improve. I also hid a lot of things like my ctb attempts and what my school 'friends' did to me. However, is that really a possibility when you've been molded into something confining and then made to feel like you are just complaining about your own complacency? I never really had the freedom or opportunities my siblings had and it's no secret that my own sacrifices have caused me to become delayed. At the same time it's not fair to place all the blame on my brother and parents. They and my siblings had to navigate this situation as much as I have, and we've become stronger and closer. And yet I couldn't find my own way to thrive and be happy like everyone else.
I feel like I don't deserve the kind of life I have. I'm safe, I'm loved, and I have opportunities and potential, but I still want to kill myself. My motivation to build my future is drawing by the day and my mental health is deteriorating despite taking antidepressants and making steps towards better self care. My parents have a detailed plan for which family members to give my brother over to when they die, but they act like they don't know what they would to when I die. I want to die and my parents know that I want to die, but whenever I mention it they tell me to suck it up for my brother's sake. I do but I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. They give me opportunities at my own live and then something just so happens where they can't help me reach whatever small step we're taking towards my freedom. I don't think they abuse me. I just feel like the disposable child. All I want is to be a good person but I feel too broken to do it in any meaningful way.
my little brother being diagnosed with a variety of autism that seems extremely similar to Kanner's Syndrome, but I don't know the exact specifics. It was pretty soon after he was born when he received diagnosis. I didn't fully comprehend what that meant at the time because I was a little kid, and I didn't fully comprehend what was going on with my brother for several years. I just knew that I my family had to operate our work,school, and personal lives around his routines and sensitivities. Well, my parents and two siblings had to, anyway. I was the one with the least amount of friends and so I was the one who had to watch for seizures, tell people he was non verbal, and make sure he didn't get into trouble when my siblings were doing things while my parents were busy. My dad eventually quit his job to the important things that my brother needed like medication and basic care, but I was still made to stay with the two of them even if I made plans with friends prior to what my brother needed. I was usually left by myself if my parents had my brother and my siblings were busy.
It didn't happen every single day and they loved and cared for me to the best of their abilities, but there was / is a sharp pain in knowing things would never be the same. Maybe I was jealous that he was getting so much attention at first, but whenever I tried to talk about it my parents kept telling me how much more difficult things were / are for him (and they undoubtedly are, but they let me know in such a guilting way that made me feel like his suffering was my fault). It was true and I knew what they sacrificed for us kids, but I couldn't shake my negative feelings about the family dynamics. Eventually I tried to ctb when I was a child during summer camp. I figured my parents would be too occupied with my brother and I didn't really have friends to miss me at that point, so I sat at the bottom of the pool in a local recreational center and held my breath until I passed out. Someone must have noticed me because I woke up to lifeguard resuscitating me in front of a crowd.
I always felt that I didn't really belong anywhere, but that feeling got worse. Over time it became impossible for me to maintain what friendships I had and develop adequate social skills, so by the time I was in my early teens I had no friends and no way to make friends without coming off as weird or bitchy. Even the few friends I managed to make pulled a 180 on me and did shit like excluding me from get togethers, never listening to me without mocking me, and spreading rumors about me being a slut that they knew were blantently and provably untrue because they thought it was funny. I was able to push my pain down until some ass clown from my school thought It'd be a good idea to sexually harass and stalk me before r*ping me. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I struggled with emotional issues in the past, but this made my depression come bursting at me with full force. It got to the point where i almost stabbed myself to death on my birthday, but i just broke down crying. Things were escalating with my parents and brother beforehand (he wasn't violent but his teenage hormones made him rebellious and somewhat aggressive), but it felt selfish to ctb when my parents did so much for me and my siblings, and especially when we all loved each other truly and deeply in spite of our hardships. My brother wouldn't understand why I'd be suddenly gone due to the way his specific condition impacts his intelligentual capacity. My other siblings would be heartbroken and my parents would blame themselves. I'm lucky that I have such a loving family compared to how hard some of you all have it.
But love on its own often isn't enough. I wasn't formally diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety disorders and start attempting treatment until I started college. My mom wanted to give me a chance at a life away from my brother, so I agreed with her suggestion to get a college degree in graphic design. Art is and has been one of my biggest passions, so it made sense at the time. I didn't fully understand what I was getting myself into. Everyone at the college was super friendly and it was nice to finally be able to develop and explore who I was, but because the entire point of the program was to get hired as soon as possible, I'd burn myself out every night only to still feel light years behind my peers in terms of professional presentation. Art became a chore. I was anxious and stressed all the time, and not just because of the program, but also because I was wrecked from the fear of every worst case scenario happing to my family for hours while I was in a part of a city I didn't know while also not knowing how to drive. I had to stop my treatment because the therapist I saw was just giving me surface level stuff that only kind of helped and the other mental help group I saw at that time was more focused on shoving more and more pills down my throat. My brother's seizures became more frequent to the point that he'd have ones powerful enough to dislocate his shoulder once a week. Everything accumulatived to the point that I had a massive mental breakdown and decided to drop out in the very last class of the final semester. That was in 2017.
I've not held a job or gone back to education since. I still live with my brother and parents. Things are a little easier now that the other siblings have moved out of the house, but because my mom has a very intense cooperate job that requires a lot of traveling and my dad is getting old enoug that his own body is actively hindering him, I have little more choice than ever but to do what I've been doing for most of my life. I've taken some driving classes, but I never took the exam and I only had driving experience for a couple of months before that fell through. Even if I do get my license and drive to do interviews, I don't know how the hell I'm going to explain the massive gap in my resume/CV. It's harder than ever to make new friends as an adult. I've had to give up social media because all I saw was how my old friends were getting married and starting families of their own. My country's healthcare is an absolute nightmare, and what the government is doing to it is not only going to screw over me and my recent antidepressants, but it's going to make living in my brothers body utter torture for him. Same for my aging parents. I consider myself to be a pretty resilient person, but that resilience feels like a mask for how fragile and alien I feel. I wouldn't be surprised if I had some form of undiagnosed autism myself.
I think I am particularly responsible for my situation because I've always been super passive towards the world around me and I never really advocated for myself or pushed myself to improve. I also hid a lot of things like my ctb attempts and what my school 'friends' did to me. However, is that really a possibility when you've been molded into something confining and then made to feel like you are just complaining about your own complacency? I never really had the freedom or opportunities my siblings had and it's no secret that my own sacrifices have caused me to become delayed. At the same time it's not fair to place all the blame on my brother and parents. They and my siblings had to navigate this situation as much as I have, and we've become stronger and closer. And yet I couldn't find my own way to thrive and be happy like everyone else.
I feel like I don't deserve the kind of life I have. I'm safe, I'm loved, and I have opportunities and potential, but I still want to kill myself. My motivation to build my future is drawing by the day and my mental health is deteriorating despite taking antidepressants and making steps towards better self care. My parents have a detailed plan for which family members to give my brother over to when they die, but they act like they don't know what they would to when I die. I want to die and my parents know that I want to die, but whenever I mention it they tell me to suck it up for my brother's sake. I do but I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. They give me opportunities at my own live and then something just so happens where they can't help me reach whatever small step we're taking towards my freedom. I don't think they abuse me. I just feel like the disposable child. All I want is to be a good person but I feel too broken to do it in any meaningful way.
