roommate and best friend of 10 years doesn’t seem to believe me or care
I, 20 y/o male, was never officially diagnosed with autism specifically, but there isn’t even any doubt in my mind anymore. i hate the self diagnosis people sometimes, but ive been doing everything i can to get one but the process is just lengthier and more difficult than i could have ever have imagined. i’ve been talking to doctors and it’s gone basically no where. i’ve passed the online DSM tests or whatever, and even though this is my first time ever posting on reddit, this sub really helps me feel not as alone or misunderstood. everytime i try to talk to psychologists or therapists in person, they hone in on my anxiety and depression or mood instability, which i believe is probably pretty closely related to the autism stuff. it sucks cause i feel the need to be fully honest with doctors about stuff for the best results, but its just not the reason im there. i’ve been on all sorts of medication and it seems like nobody wants to listen to me when i say im autistic they just care about the other stuff.
i didn’t talk till i was 5 and was diagnosed with sensory and speech issues that i was told needed additional testing, but that it was most likely autism. mom basically just told them they were wrong and never looked back, just tried to raise me normally. almost every time id have any sort of sensory or emotional issues, i was verbally and physically abused by my stepfather. my mom is very emotionally closed off, and both my parents don’t really believe in mental heath issues, like at all. but as i got older whenever i would have certain social meltdowns or sensory problems, my mom would’ve weirdly compassionate and understanding all of a sudden, which made me believe even more that despite not wanting to believe it that deep down she knew i was autistic.
despite not believing or caring in a lot of the mental health conversations, she’s made comments for years about my mood issues, my ups and downs, and how i’m just “different” or quirky. it really sucks on its own to have something like this feel neglected by someone who’s supposed to look out for me, but now i feel like i was robbed of any sort of empathy or understanding from anyone else because i didn’t understand or talk about it enough growing up so now like no one believes me or cares because ive made it this far. more recently i started to understand myself more and try and get help, but it feels like it’s too late?
for context: my best friend of 10 years and now roommate for 1 year, (gonna call him J) is very mentally put together. sociable guy, and hit the jackpot of all jackpots for jobs as a teen. his dad got him a job as a valet supervisor, and he makes my rent payment in probably abt 4 shifts. he’s been there since he was like 15, and saved up so much that he bought and now owns the condo we live in, and i pay him rent. he grew up in a normal pretty well off family, and parents were together up until about a year or two ago. and i would always try really hard to listen to his problems but it was hard to find sympathy sometimes growing up for a lot of reasons. he has always extremely lucky, and a lot of if not almost all of his problems were self inflicted or don’t really seem like real problems to me. i really do try but it’s just frustrating sometimes to listen to. most notably he called me once to say that his dad had “beat on him” and he was balling his eyes out. it had struck me as odd because he is literally best friends with his dad even to this day, and it seemed really out of character. come to find out after further questioning he was kinda just talking back and his dad smacked him. once. for the first and last time. he also has consistently compared his loving and involved biological mother, to my abusive stepfather when he and her would argue. he’s now cut her off completly and wants nothing to do with her because of the divorce. his dad asked him to testify against her in court and because J believes she was lying about his dad and saying he wasn’t a good partner and was an alcoholic and whatever, he ended up doing it . i love his dad, but i think it was wrong of him to involve J in something in that, and he doesn’t see that. i think she’s in the wrong too but it was a relatively tame divorce, and she very clearly wants to continue to be apart of his life and he wants no part in it. at the end of the day it’s only so much of my buisness, but it’s frustrating to watch someone i care about a lot choose that kind of relationship with their mom as someone who has no choice. she constantly would text him and call him, and even helped us move and get furniture, and before she left she stopped to tell him how proud she was of him and how much she loved him. it made me a little emotional lol and when we got back in the car he just started bashing her about how she was so awful and fake and the reasons for the hate just seemed so forced coming from him.
fast forward to now, i’ve been living here for almost a year, and it’s been probably the worst year or two my life. ive been injured multiple times, fired due to my injuries, had surgery, went to the ER cause i couldn’t afford groceries, and my mental health has gotten much much worse. i have a mother a father a step father and step mother, and my step mother is the only one im even a little comfortable with, but because of my horrible relationship with my dad i can’t talk to her a whole lot. after i rolled my ankle and got fired, i couldn’t find a job for months. so J being a good friend, got me a job as a valet. i got injured again soon after i got hired, and have only been able to work as a cashier, which isnt tips just 18 hr. i’ve been struggling not only to make ends meet, but just to deal with autism in the workplace. J hyped me up to the guys there because him and i get along great and it’s relatively easy to “be myself around him alone. and i even met a few of his close friends at work at our apartment when i was drunk and we got along great. but once i started working there i just couldn’t help but be constantly hyperaware and extremely anxious, to the point where i would just shut off completly. people see me as standoffish and angry or sad, even when im just trying to be normal. most importantly i feel like i don’t exist and don’t even have the slightest idea how to be myself. i know they dont really like me and they’ve made comments to jackson about how i was way cooler when we met and that im just off now. i’ve tried to talk to J about it because i feel like ive let him down or embarrassed him and myself infront of his friends, and he won’t really listen. i’ve tried being honest about my mental stuff and my medications, and i know it’s not on purpose but he always just says the wrong thing. at first he would just tell me that i wasn’t and that i didn’t seem like that. then it was that everyone’s a little like that, or everyone’s a little on the spectrum, or he’ll compare my sensory issues to like noises he doesn’t like. or he’ll talk about how he gets anxious sometimes too and you just have to be yourself or whatever. it’s always just really uninformed and misguided advice, and it really hurts to not be understood or to feel like he didn’t even want to try and understand. more recently i talked to him yesterday about it for the first time in a while and i made a comment about how i feel like he doesn’t really believe me, and he said he doesn’t know why i think that. and then he started comparing it to like normal emotions or situations, and it makes me feel so stupid for not being able to just be normal. and i can’t even explain it efficiently enough without feeling like im rambling or something, because it genuinely does impact my entire life and work and stuff. specifically at work i don’t want it to just look like im weird, like i want at least him of all people to understand and just kinda doesn’t and it sucks. i don’t see him much at all since i set him up with a old coworker of mine, they spend every second together in a very unhealthy codependent way, so i don’t want to spend wha little time i have with him arguing or bitching about my problems, but i don’t know what to do, especially now that i live with him. i’ve been trying to focus lesson my need to be understood, but it just sucks.