Decision 2024 and That Particular Neurodivergent Despair

The last few posts on this blog have been political because I'm a political person. Politics is probably the worst special interest an autistic person can have because it leaves one stressed and depressed all the time. It hurts to know what is going on in the world but feels good to be informed. So naturally I had a lot of hopes and fears riding on the 2024 American election because it felt like a critical choice between keeping the democratic experiment alive and a total destruction of it with the rights I and other Americans pulled out from under our feet. I wanted democracy to prevail and I worked hard to phone bank, write postcards, and voted for it. I was terrified that it wouldn't hold.

Unfortunately, my fears were validated. Americans voted to kill democracy and our rights as we know them.

I'm writing this feeling hollow to my core. My family and friends feel the same and we try to offer condolences to each other as we fear the future. My social media is littered with anger, despair, pointing fingers, and hopelessness. None of this helps my mood, much less my entire being. And all this is compounded by my neurodivergence amplifying every dark thought and feeling that I have.

I've written about how emotional processing falls into extremes for neurodivergent people before. It feels like it leaves the brain unable to properly communicate what is happening to us in real time. And it is absurdly easy to exhibit the worst behaviors and mindsets when we go through the tougher emotions like anger, disgust, fear, sadness, guilt, and shame. There's a tendency to catastrophize and recess into the darkest places the mind can go. And with this recent election, that catastrophizing wasn't totally unjustified. The winning side has a whole agenda for killing the country I live in and apparently no one was terrified of it enough to vote against it.

I've felt despair before and I've felt it often. It encompasses my entire being. I've felt it in political spaces when the outcomes lead to a worse world for many people. I've felt it in my personal life when I stayed too long at a job I came to hate but felt I couldn't leave it. It produced the most sinister thoughts towards nihilism and at several points came to wanting to end my own life. I literally tried to do the latter several times to the point of having to go through treatment to stop that ideation. And it's sadly not uncommon for autistic people to feel like they want to end it all when feeling despair. It's the worst feeling in the world and I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemies.

I'm thankfully over the feeling of wanting to end it all. I learned in treatment that I can survive these feelings if I take decisive action to address them, hold space for them, and then pick up the pieces and try to live the life I want to live. I haven't cried yet over the election results but I'm sure the tears will come. And when they do, I will give them the space to fall, and then move to do everything I can to fight the worst when it comes.

It's easy to give up. It's easy to throw it all away. And it's understandable to feel that way. But life is about finding a way to persevere despite everything thrown at you. And I plan on fighting the fight so that should the worst come to pass I can at least I can say I didn't bow down to tyranny and hopelessness. After all, the bad guys want you to give up. And I refuse to give them that satisfaction.