I’m sorry.

@Blackcloud you have absolutely nothing to apologise for. There is no pressure here to have to hold a conversation for a long period of time. Simply popping in and saying hello and having a brief chat or saying how you are feeling is more than enough. We are always here for you and we don't judge anyone based on what they may or may not be diagnosed with. This community is accepting of everyone cos we all know what it's like to be different in one way or another.

You are not a terrible person and you deserve to exist just as much as anyone else if not more. You are a valued member of this community and you make the world a better place by being here. Please don't hate yourself cos you are amazing and you have overcome so much to just get to this point. Suicidal thoughts are horrible to manage and I battle with that everyday at the moment myself.

Always an ear here to listen if you need/want. It doesn't need to be a conversation, sometimes just knowing someone is here to sit with you in those moments is really helpful.

Take care of you, you don't have to do anything your not comfortable or capable of doing right now.

Sending lots of hugs @Blackcloud

Nothing to say sorry for

please know those of us on the forums are here whenever you want, including just to say Hi. 🫂🫂🫂

@Gary4 welcome to the forums. I hope you can find them as supportive as I have. I too am alone with no friends or support in the real world so for me coming here and knowing there's people that care has been amazing.

You aren't alone in what you are going through and we are here for you 🙂

Hey @Blackcloud, you're not the only one who struggles with this and not the only one to feel down on themselves for it. It's so frustrating to struggle with something so much that everyone else appears to find so natural. Until we discover that we're not alone in it, how else are we supposed to feel other than we are broken or a failure. It took me over 50 years to figure this out.

So i dont think you need to apologise for anything. Not only because it's not your fault, but because I think a lot of people here will understand this very well. It's such a difficult thing to admit to and i've only just started that myself so I look at it as a huge step forward so i think you should as well and be very proud of yourself for doing it.

Hey @Blackcloud!! First and foremost, thank you for taking the time to write this!! It tells me that this space feels safe enough for you to be vulnerable and open about how you're feeling. And in my experience, that's never easy, particularly in a very public space!!

Secondly, whilst I appreciate that you feel like you need to apologise for (your perceptions of) how you are received here/how you might be impacting the community, personally I think you have absolutely NOTHING to be sorry for! The whole nature of the forums means that effectively, conversations here can carry on forever!! So long as we remember that everyone here has their own pace of reply/amount of time and energy that they can dedicate to forums, and so we might not hear from people for aaaages! But then others are able to smash out 30 responses in an evening 😋 Point is, you do you, and if folks need to step away from that conversation they can do so - and that doesn't mean they no longer want to talk to you, just that they probably ran outta steam 😉

And not to worry, I know I personally have never been irritated by your messages and I am always happy to see your name pop up in my notifications!! Just so ya know 😁

You could come on down to the ASD Social Space if you like? It could use some liveliness methinks!! But yeah all of us in there are likely to be quite well-accustomed to that feeling of being soooo different, almost alien, to neurotypicals.... Feel free to kick off a convo about it in the thread, would be a pretty decent discussion I reckon. Totally up to you 💜

you do not need to apologise for being you!!! @Blackcloud

and i think one of the reasons i enjoy connecting with you is because i've literally felt the same - i'd really struggle to maintain conversations and feel unsure about how to start convos without being awkward and how to end them without losing 'connection' with someone. you're not alone, we've all got our way of building and keeping connected with others, and if that means having a never-ending conversation on these threads- then that works for us!

just know that there's no pressure to keep a convo going IF you don't want it to, but if you do, then keep going! i understand that socialising and maintaining friends can be exhausting and tricky to navigate, paying attention to social cues, tones, emojis, etc - it can be confusing with everyone having their own 'voice style', but i hope you know you can be yourself here. we get you 💙

Hey @Blackcloud ,

There's some very big feels there. I read that you feel you are 'so different' and undeserving...

What's wrong with being different? I'm different. God help us if there was another one of me on this earth! (Jokes)

My dear @Blackcloud , thank you for sharing how you've been feeling. Please know we do not judge you.

You are you and we appreciate you for just being you.