[chelsea89]

A 22 year old college student named Elliot Rodgers went on a shooting rampage on May 24th of this year after a life-long battle for acceptance. The similarities between myself and this man have shaken me to my core. It's struck me like a rock that I was once very close to the same morbid end he met.
There are several differences among the similarities between us, but they're semantic in nature. I'm a female, he was male. I wanted somewhere to belong, love, acceptance, understanding: He wanted love, acceptance, sexual gratification, and validation. But my teenage writings mirror the content of his manifesto with an eerily similar tone. I'm doing everything I can fathom to be just like everyone else, even better, so why does everyone still reject me?
An excerpt from my journal highlights this dilemma perfectly.
I didn't understand how everyone could reject me. I mean even rapists and murderers have friends and advocates. So what was so inherently wrong with me that I had no one? Life had stagnated. I went though the motions, but felt nothing. I didn't want to live, yet had no will to die. In essence I became what the world had projected upon me since my youth, nothing. I don't remember much of those years. I was a robot, disassociated from myself and my surroundings, surreal. Somehow I snapped out of it, standing in front of the mirror shocked at the stranger standing in place of my own reflection. Slowly I realized I had lost myself while trying to be everything everyone else wanted me to be. Entering into high school I became narcissistic. I welcomed the ridicule from my peers because I could use the anger it evoked as an outlet for the turmoil festering inside of me. This dissolved quickly into apathy, "Yeah. Whatever. I don't care." were my favorite phrases then. And I truly didn't care. I prayed for death and fantasized about a day when everyone would tangibly feel the pain they had caused me and realize the monsters they were.
So why am I still here? Why didn't I lose it and finally intertwine my inner world with reality? I don't really have an answer to that, just speculations. For one I wasn't sexually driven, which is a huge factor in alot of serial murders and perhaps more of a push over the edge than any painful experience I've encountered For two I found acceptance in my teenage years with a few friends and my now husband. In my darkest moments I could call these people and tell them how homicidal angry I was or how deeply despairing of life I was. For three in my Sophomore year I found, or more realized, what it was I was good at. I could learn languages with such ease that it surprised people. Finding that one little bit of me that was good for once carried me through to adulthood. And here I am... empathizing with a man I've never met, but with whom I share so much in common. We both have Asperger's Syndrome, both felt the ridicule and sting of rejection, both held the irony of living in such a beautifully complex world, while writhing in the agony of being unwillingly set apart from the milieu, both fantasized about a "Day of Retribution" for the wrongs suffered that we internalized so deeply there was no escape from the coursing pain even a second of the day. What I would hope anyone reading this will take away from my musings is this; Realize that your words and actions really do have an impact on others. Everyone deserves love and acceptance no matter how strange or awkward they may appear.No human is superior to another and we all have our faults. They have emotions and they're every bit as fragile as the next man's. I in no way condone the actions that this man perpetrated, because wrong is wrong no matter how justifiable or understandable it may seem, but you never know how close someone is to their breaking point until they snap and that next person to snap could be someone all too close to home. Be the reason they don't take that step over the line, not the force that pushes them over it.

[CompleteNerd]

Thank you for making this post. Very well said and especially like "Everyone deserves love and acceptance no matter how strange or awkward they may appear.No human is superior to another and we all have our faults." and "Be the reason they don't take that step over the line, not the force that pushes them over it."

[Harmacy]

Thanks for your post but I think it's worth remembering that having homicidal fantasies isn't in any way a typical symptom of ASD.

The media have made false diagnoses of killers before based on anecdotal opinions and I suspect his true pathology was far more complex. At least one news report now suggests he didn't have an official diagnosis for an ASD.

The damage is done though and once more people with ASDs have been linked to a particularly cruel and unusual crime.