Shidduch Crisis? What Shidduch Crisis?

I still feel really drained today, if anything more so than yesterday.  I was naughty and stayed up late watching a long (and sloooow) Jonathan Creek episode that I really remembered too well to justify re-watching if I wasn’t working my way through the box set.

Today I feel really depressed and exhausted and annoyed that I have to go to a shul (synagogue) meeting this evening about finding a new rabbi.  I also have to buy a present for the family that invited me for dinner over Shabbat (the Sabbath).  I would normally do this beforehand, but they didn’t invite me properly until the evening.  I don’t really feel like I have the energy for the meeting or shopping.  It would be good if I could cook dinner too, but I don’t think I have the energy.  I need to get a passport photo taken too, as my passport expires soon and I’m hoping to go to Israel later in the year for my cousin’s bar mitzvah.

I just feel so depressed and lonely.  I know rationally that being in a relationship would not cure my mental health issues or make the autism less challenging, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that if someone really loved me romantically then I would feel better.  Because for most of my life love (all love, not just romantic love) has been difficult, conditional, absent… not the way it should be.  It’s easy to feel that if someone really loved me I would feel better, even though it is unlikely to be the case.

A while back, I saw the former British Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, advise some American students not to call themselves Modern Orthodox Jews, because that makes them “a minority of a minority of a minority” (Jews are a tiny minority of the world population, Orthodox Jews are a minority of Jews, Modern Orthodox Jews are a minority of Orthodox Jews).  I feel that as a Modern Orthodox Jew with autism and mental health issues, I’m a minority of a minority of a minority of a minority.  No wonder I can’t find a mate.  Supposedly there’s a real shortage of potential husbands in the frum community for various demographic reasons (google ‘shidduch crisis’), but this has yet to play to my advantage.  So far no one has been desperate enough to want me.  To be honest, I don’t really get set up on dates at all, which is problematic as that’s the main way of meeting one’s partner in the Orthodox world.  I have hardly any friends in the community who could set me up with anyone.

This is all over-familiar for readers of my blog, but I don’t know what else to say.  I’m just so lonely and miserable all of the time.   I wonder a lot what it would be like to be in a real, healthy relationship.  All of my friendships and family relationships are either problematic on some level or long-distance.  My romantic relationships were relatively short-lived and problematic too in different ways.  Is it even possible for me to love someone, being so messed up, let alone for someone to love me?

When I was with E., it was really good for two months.  I was still depressed and it was awkward that our relationship was long-distance with a big time difference, but she cared about me and I cared about her and that made things easier.

I wish I was asexual.  Not caring about being loved would make my life so much easier.  Or, I wish I wasn’t so weird.  I wish I didn’t care about not fitting in to my community, or I wish I did fit into my community.  I wish I was a neurotypical, mentally healthy frum person with normal interests and a full-time job.  I wish I wasn’t an unmarriable, fudged-up-beyond-all-repair semi-unemployable autistic depressive fannish weirdo-freak.  Someone who can’t do normal frum things like go to shul (synagogue) for Shacharit (the Morning service) every morning or “learn” a page of Gemarah every day or two.  Things that would help me fit in.

But, no, God fudged me up beyond all repair so that I wouldn’t be happy in this world and can’t earn reward for the next world.  I’m pretty sure that in Olam HaBa (Heaven) I’ll be on the sidelines watching everyone else have a good time, as happens in this world, except that in Olam HaBa, I won’t be able to slip out and go home after a while.

I hate myself so much for being me, for being such a weird, useless freak who can’t do anything right.