2004-10-04 - 6:21 p.m.

Amelie: a review

An attempt to understand why I became so desperately depressed last night, and hopefully so that I will be less and less like that in the future.

I had been lonely all weekend, my brother off at work and parties and my mum off at a person's who she met on the net. That didn't bother me too much.

I went to church early. Everyone was nice to me. I found myself speaking to someone who has an 11 year old son with Asperger's and listened to how hard it has been for that man to raise his son but at the same time he was so grateful for the "miracles" that God had done for them since coming to church. Apparently the kid's behaviour is greatly improved, he explained, as I watched the kid run amuck, annoying the other kids while thoroughly enjoying himself and oblivious to the fact that the other children found him a pain. I remembered my not too distant childhood and how painful it was to be so loathed.

As usual I endure church, alone as always, the talk challenging and refreshing as always, even though I fight back tears all through it, as always. This has nothing to do with the talk. I can not understand it completely. I just HATE being alone. I say g'day to a few people afterwards. Small talk.

I am invited to a person's house to watch a DVD. Amelie, a French movie. We go over there, more small talk in which I participate little. An ad for Latham comes on the TV. I despair silently at the emptiness of their comments which don't completely register in my head before quickly reminding myself that I should not have expected any different.

At this point I struggle to understand what exactly happened next. For the preceding 30 minutes I was not to keen on watching a DVD, although I didn't have a good enough reason not to, and besides I must make an effort to me social, no? A person enters the room and the DVD starts. I am unable to look at the TV screen for the pain of my peripheral vision and senses. I use every fibre of my body not to be judgemental and remind myself I would probably do the same thing, not knowing the pain I would be causing. After all it was not this person causing my pain, only my perception of what was taking place.

My choices here are unattractive. I could: (a) scream in pain and swear, and smash the place up; (b) walk out of the house, and walk the 10 km or so home in the cold; (c) pretend that it is not happening, after all, this person is not doing anything wrong or everyone else would have noticed and also wished that they were unconscious until the end of the film. So I covered my ears and eyes. My imagination was more difficult to cover. The movie aggravated the situation.

I began to cry and shake, engage the eardrum muscles in a vain attempt to further block the sound. Perhaps 30 minutes later a friend whispers to me, offering to take me home. I did not know what I wanted, and had not the capacity to answer the question. All I knew was that I did not want to go home and be alone for another week. Eventually the movie finished and my friend took me home.

What have I learnt from this situation then? What could I have done differently? I struggle to understand what. Perhaps this is less due to intellectual limitations as to the fact that I have difficulty accepting my social impairments. Why must I accept them? I could not bear to be like this all my life. I do not want to cause as a condition on someone that considers (sj) making a commitment to spend a significant amount of time with me that they serve as a psychiatric nurse during my episodes of depression. Therefore I want to be free of depression and Asperger's; I refuse to accept them. Now how do I go about removing them, then?

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