Better with out

Post Reply New Topic

Have you any of on here read the book "House Rules" its a story written by jodi picoult about a young man with aspergers syndrome who is accused of murder
but what caught my attention is how he and his family are portrayed reading through it i noticed how much better his family would be without him like if he had never existed in the first place his family would be so much happier now i know at first it sounds bad but if you read the book you will see what i mean
and this is what i wanted to discuss has anyone else with autism or aspergers ever sat down and just thought about this if your family would be better off without you
i have and they would be alot happier but that ain't gonna happen

To be honest I've thought this a lot over the years. When I'm depressed this is one of the ideas I fixate on, in fact. The thing is we DO exist. We have to deal with what is, not what might have been and we'll never really know for sure whether they would have been better or worse off without us. Now , if we were to disappear after we've already come into and influenced people's lives it would be totally different than us never having existed in the first place. When I'm not depressed I think that since I DO exist I should just try to be as good a person as I can be and contribute as much as I can to my family and society ect. being the person I am.

Not that I actually do this...this is all theoretical.....I'm pretty useless and selfish in practice......

I think my parents lives would have been better without me, I don't think this is what my parents and family members had in mind when they had me. I think they would have been better off without me although meny have got used to me, meny family members appear to be in general more impressed with my perfect NT half brothers. My existance has coused alot of trouble over the years for my parents, then again its there fault for having me, right? so they get what they create.

When I'm depressed, I think the whole world would be better without me/ not care if I exist or not.
I just make problems for my family and they do not understand me so I appear bad or like I'm not trying.
Things they see as little are big to me.

I'm sure your parents don't think it's their "fault" to have you. That sounds as if you were some kind of unwanted being. I don't think your parents see you in that way. Not that I know your parents though.

I think I've been the cause of worry for my parents all my life. Even now. Although they are great parents, they surely would have been less worried/stressed if I hadn't been born. They certainly know that I'm not normal in some ways but don't know exactly why. Still if I somehow disappear now after existing for so many years, my parents and siblings would be devastated. So I guess there's no point in thinking about not having existed at all. It won't happen.

I got the impression as I got older that my parents invested more of their time and interest in my brother and his family than in me.
I think this was mainly due to him having had children though.

I was well supported by my parents financially but I think there was a lack of affection towards me because I was seen as difficult due to losing my temper and never wanting to mix or go anywhere as an adult. So they ended up managing me rather than having a normal parent-child and then parent-adult child relationship as they did with my brother.

I came to see my parents for what they were outside of my parents ie as adults like myself and flawed human beings.

They could have been better but they could have been far worse, so I think I was lucky to have them.

They never made me feel different/less than normal and this has given me a good sense of my own self-worth but on the
other hand it meant that other people treating me as different came as a big shock. My essential stance has always been that
other people are the ones with the problem though, not me.

It is likely that your family cares more for you than you are feeling at the moment, but maybe your Mom just isn't very good at showing it. Maybe she has borderline Aspie traits herself and isn't good at showing her real feelings.

Last edited by PrncssAlay on 04 May 2013, 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I guess i should be more accurate the real question is do you think your family would be better off if you had never existed?
not if you just disapeared like that after you have made an impact on their life
but as if you never existed like in that movie "its a wonderful life" were the protagonist wishes he had never been born and see's what life would be like
though i guess in my case it would have the opposite effect
i've made several lists and analysed them and the odds are my family would be better off if i had never existed
not that i feel anything bad about it i hate them anyway
it gives me a warm feeling that i can and have made them suffer in some way just as i have done to others who have hurt me
Aspies Rule

Oh yeah, I've definitely thought of how much easier their lives had been if I had never existed.

For starters my parents had likely not been married at all.

My mother hadn't wasted her youth (as my grandmother said) on having me. She was only 20. Instead of wasting her good years raising me, she should have gone back to school and gone on to become a vet, gold smith or architect, all of which she had interest in and skill for. Instead she has a boring job she only thinks is okay because she has some nice colleagues.

Yeah, their lives would've been a lot better if I had never existed or been stillborn.

I know she loves me a lot, despite me being as far from the daughter she expected, and if she doesn't think of that at times, I know I do. I even dreamt recently that my nonexistent unknown twin sister came home and she was so perfect. She was slightly taller than me (I'm short), she was perfect weight, didn't have with a birth defect, was NT, had a successful life, and I saw my mother loving her instantly and recognizing her as the daughter she should have had in the first place. I saw the contempt my sister felt for me and I assumed I was out now.

The first time I came to this realization was due to some trouble when I was 12. It's the only time I said it directly "I must be such a disappointment"
She grabbed me and said intensely that I wasn't allowed to think so, and that I wasn't (a disappointment).

I don't see it though.

It would never even occur to me to consider whether my parents' lives would have been better without me

They chose to have children so they took the risk of their child potentially being less than perfect

It's not my fault for having Aspergers, which was only diagnosed at age 37 anyway so hardly overtly noticeable to anyone
and even if they'd said to me 'I wish we'd never had you', which they never did say, I'd have thought 'Tough s**t - deal with it!'

No way on this earth would I have felt guilty for being born!

I once said to my Dad I wished he'd died when he'd been ill in the past and he chased me up the stairs and hit me! lol

I agree with this. I refuse to feel guilty for the results of other people's choices.

I recently read it. I don't think they would be better off without him, I think they would be better off if that mother didn't give in so much. I think she could have taught him better coping skills rather than do things like cook only certain colors of food on certain days, etc. Rather than adjust her life for him and teach him how to adjust to the world the best he could, she simply rearranged her entire life around every preference of his and ignored her other son.

They would have all been better off if somebody had just asked him what happened to the girl rather than assuming things and such. He could easily have told them.