Wales, UK; anyone out there?
I'm from near Welshpool in Wales, 19M, autistic, i play guitar, I'm good at fiddling with electronics, I'm very close to my mum, and right now I'm friendless. I'm completely uninterested in "romance".
We've always found the best place for me in the alternative education community and made some excellent friends there. My upbringing has always been child-led and I've been empowered to follow my interests and self-learn at my own pace, and now after all that i do not want to move on to overly structured, scripted education such as college, or get some Sisyphean 9-5 job, especially after seeing so many people struggle. I want to do something really worthwhile that i enjoy.
We travel long distances and can meet up anywhere within about 2 hours if it's worthwhile. The rest of the information that follows is supplementary and if you can't be bothered, you needn't read it.
In my early teens i fell in with the wrong people and became friends with a couple engaging in underage sex. I wasn't yet aware of the implications of this and put up with it, even as they increasingly tried to involve me, by just treating it as a joke. Fortunately they're not in my life anymore.
My dad has nothing to do with us and my extended family has cut us out. Since i turned about 16 we've been losing my friends. Some were a bit nasty anyway, some changed and became unbearable, some vanished inexplicably. I was planning to jam and possibly form a band with 3 friends and they've completely disappeared. I'm not clingy or demanding, i have the bad examples set me by my dad and the couple i mentioned to bias me against that behaviour. I just can't understand where all my friends went.
More understandably, some have just moved on to college, and even if i wanted to, my friend group was so scattered (we had friends as far as Worcestershire) that i couldn't follow them in if i wanted to. One old friend is a Polish immigrant and would probably be looked on by the government as a squatter if he didn't take that path. He still finds time to drop me a line every few weeks.
When i was 17 i was wandering around a park with my mum while my sister hung out with her friends. I sat around, queued for the swings, wandered, i had no friends to hang with, and then someone called park security and told them i was a paedophile staring at children - in fairness i look mature and beardy. I was lucky my mum was there, and they were embarrassed when they tried to arrest a 17-year-old, but still... now I'm old, i can't go to the park and exercise, i can't wander about on my own for fear it'll happen again.
We don't live a cloistered existence, we always follow our interests and go to interesting places, but still, apparently there's not much we can do. We've searched for and continue to try neurodivergent and homeducation groups of all kinds throughout Wales and the West Midlands, but this is long enough already and i can't be bothered to write a full account to justify myself to whoever you are.
Anybody out there?