I need to keep writing.

Overwhelmed by raising an autistic child with ADHD, an autistic husband, borderline autistic younger son, abusive work environment, having zero friends, loneliness, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, short breaths. How did I get myself here?

I’ve been working so hard since I was a teenager, all for the hope of having a happily ever after, which turns out to be just a fantasy. In so many different cultures, people value hard work at a young age in exchange for an easier life at an older age. However, it does not exist for me. Life has been equally hard at every stage for me. Just when I thought my life would become easier, Little O’s disability throws me off the boat; sometimes I really want to end my life when he throws a tantrum whenever I carefully plan a new experience for him to learn and expand his sensory, cognition, and language. He loves to travel but he goes ballistic nonstop when he travels. He’s already 6 years old and physically I can’t just lift him up and stop him from rolling on the floor. But every time when he travels, his language expands so much and his drawing becomes much more advanced. I go through the pain of taking him to places for his sake only; when he throws a tantrum I just wanna die and I believe he’s better off living in an orphanage or some mental institution where he can do the same thing repeatedly every day. That way he’d be happy and throw no tantrums.

My marriage is almost non-existent at this point. Nobody shows me care; nobody listens to me anymore. I am absolutely back at ground zero. What’s worse is that I am trapped in a marriage for family duties; I believe staying married is better for the kids no matter what unless there’s violence between us. I am sacrificing every piece of myself that’s left. There is no more dream, no more hope, no more freedom in me.

I wish there’s someone who can listen to me; I do have a psychotherapist but I still feel that’s very different from someone who listens to me because they love me. Angel claims he loves me but he doesn’t really hear what I’m saying and he doesn’t not perceive my feelings. To me that’s just not love. I truly have no one who I can connect with. I love my children and they love me, but they’re too little to know how I feel. I am destined to be the feelers of others but no one can feel me.

Sometimes I wish I could speak to Jes again, because even though we’ve never met but every time we talked, we could feel each other. We didn’t have to be blunt and we could just know how the other person was feeling, despite all the denial. Sometimes I wish I could go way back in time and be a teenager with Ian. I wish the circumstances with our schooling could be different so that we could just fall in love freely. Then he would be my first love. Obviously it didn’t happen when we were only 15 and he was my first crush and I think I was his too. And life had to send us apart. The first time we kissed the circumstances were already too different in our lives and we were already 24. If it had happened when we were 15, how different would our lives be?

I’ve been binge watching some romcoms lately and I’m starting to feel really jaded. I don’t believe in most things in those movies and dramas anymore. Nobody would love anyone as much as in The Notebook, or Purple Hearts, King the Land, The Titanic, or even just Ted Mosby and Robyn Scherbasky. Angel doesn’t really make an effort in sex or in treating his impotence. He’s just in an absolute denial. In our 8 year marriage, we’ve only had sex less than 10 times and we haven’t had sex or done anything sexual since I conceived Little N, 4+ years ago.

Being in a sexless marriage is kind of a deal but not a deal breaker for me, because 1) he’s terrible and he’s never made an effort to try to please me, 2) I’ve never had sex with anyone else in my life so I don’t know how good sex can be if it was with other men, and 3) my vibrator and imagination have always satisfied me since I was a teenager; if I would live that way when I was single then I can still live this way today. 

On the other hand, what bothers me is that, if a man truly loves me, would they want to please me sexually too? Out of the single digit times of sex we’ve had, most of them were done to conceive. In the end I still had to use a vibrator to suck in the sperm to conceive because he was impotent. He couldn’t penetrate me fully. Other men have told me that if they were having sex with a virgin, they’d go an extra mile to relax her and do foreplay but it just never happened to me. Angel doesn’t have the physical stamina to do those things because he can barely function even if a tiny bit of sleep is deprived from him. He’s tired all the time, and sometimes bedridden when there’s an issue with his spine.

As I think about this, I begin to feel sad and pathetic. As I am almost 38, middle age, I have not experienced the most basic biology in human, and I’ve given birth twice already (both via C-section). Is this right? Do most women have the sexual experience that makes them feel loved, rather than sad? After most sexual intercourses with Angel, I usually felt angry and sad. I’ve never had the serendipity to be with a man who wanted to make my first time special. If I were impulsive enough and just flew to Kansas to meet Jes, would he have given me the best summer of my life, like The Notebook?

That sharp pain is back in my heart. The sharp pain of a broken heart. I met Jes at the age of 18, and he told me when I was 26 that he really did love me back then, but the distance made it too painful for him to tell me that. And he was already getting married back then. And I think they’re still married, and possibly no kids.

If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to escape from all the circumstances created by myself and just be selfish. Kiss Ian at the age of 14. Date him. Fail classes. Fly to Kansas to meet Jes. Drop the illusion of getting higher education and having a better life. Those do not exist. I now have more money than most, but my life is hard as hell. Everything I was told was a lie. You marry someone with some money, and then you get an autistic child that just burns your money quickly. There is just no happily-ever-after.