It’s a good point that able-bodied people like me rarely consider the needs of people with your combination of disabilities — mostly because that combination is vanishingly rare. I have friends with Asperger’s and physical disabilities, and would be absolutely furious if someone described them as a different kind of monkey!
You use a lot of angry words and hurtful terms in the post, especially to describe yourself. I would be very sad and annoyed if anyone used those words about someone I knew, and even more so if I heard that person use those words about themselves.
You don’t think anyone’s beneath you, but you DO seem to assume that you have more empathy than the rest of us. If you have been banned from an internet forum, where nobody can see you, perhaps you broke the rules in some way,.
It’s difficult to make friends if you regard other people as a different species. There is no wall around the pre-existing groups of friendships people have. Half of the people I call “friends” are those I’ve never met in person — many live thousands of miles away — but we connect over a mutual love of music or art or video games. The things that we have in common are more important than our differences. These friendships are strong, genuine, enduring.
It’s very difficult to love someone who doesn’t love themselves. We all have things about ourselves that we don’t like, but you have to make peace with that and treat yourself with the same kind of compassion and kindness that you would treat another.
Nobody knows what you look like on the internet — and you can’t be beaten up or mugged — so you could practice making friends online by responding to threads on discussion forums: not “will this person spend time with me” but “is this the sort of person that I would like to hang out with?”
Music production forums would be perfect for this — just get talking to people about mixing techniques and watch as connections naturally emerge.
As for work, I didn’t wait for permission to write, I just started writing. After a while, people started paying me to write for them (press releases, advertorials, etc). They had absolutely no idea what I look like.
It’s extremely likely that you’re not being given a shot because of the lack of experience, not the disabilities. When I didn’t have experience in my chosen field, I joined a Facebook group for entrepreneurs and offered to do a few short free digital marketing assignments. I was inundated with requests. Again, they had NO idea what I look like.
While there is breath in your body, it is never too late. We’re all stuck at home anyway, so get yourself out into the world from the comfort of your living room. Make friends and influence people.
