A Knight in Shining Armor

The Illusion of External Salvation

Jan 05, 2025

Warning: This blog post contains mention of suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt. If you’re struggling yourself, please reach out to the 988 Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

I think just about everyone’s familiar with the classic fairytale where a damsel in distress is saved by a knight in shining armor. Someone (typically a woman) needs to be saved from some antagonist (perhaps a dragon or evil duke), and a knight in shining armor (typically a man) comes along to slay the enemy and save the girl. They get married at the end, and everyone lives happily ever after.

It’s a nice story, but that’s all it is: a story.

Of course, when you’re a child, you don’t really know any better and you think that such things really do happen. The bad guys get what’s coming to them, the good guy gets the girl, and everyone lives in peace forevermore.

And then you grow up and realize that real life isn’t a story. There are no fairytale endings. In fact, far more often than most of us would like, the bad guys end up getting away with their misdeeds, the good guy doesn’t turn out to be so good after all, and many people end up in horrible situations through no fault of their own. On top of that, you come to understand that there isn’t a knight in shining armor coming to save you — no matter how nice that might be.

Life’s Not a Fairytale

For a while, I held onto this perhaps childish belief that, one day, someone or something would come along and save me. There were certainly many people in my life who provided some guidance or conditional support in bursts like parents, teachers, coaches, and friends. However, I still felt like I lacked genuine connection in many regards, and that no one really understood what I was going through.

Many nights when I finally managed to fall into fitful sleep, my last thought would be, “It’d be nice if I didn’t wake up tomorrow.” The thought of not existing, too, has been pervasive even since childhood. I often wished that I was never born, or that I would suddenly cease to exist. It wasn’t that I wanted to die, but rather that I didn’t want to live anymore. I now know that is called passive suicidal ideation, though I didn’t know that at the time. Unfortunately, suicidal ideation — both active and passive — is a common experience among many autistic people.

Since I couldn’t just will myself to cease to exist, I instead dreamed of some vague knight in shining armor to come and rescue me, save me from my painful existence, and to live happily ever after.

But no knight ever came, and life’s not a fairytale.

Numbing the Pain

To numb the pain of existing, I drank. I drank a lot. I drank more than most would deem humanly possible. Everything suffered: my health, my studies, my career, my relationships. But, it didn’t matter, as is the nature of addiction — that is, continuing to engage with the problematic behavior even when it’s having negative consequences in your life.

I later learned that autistic people are at a higher risk for addiction to all sorts of things, including drugs, alcohol, and problematic behaviors. Go figure.

I admit that undiagnosed autism wasn’t the only reason that I drank, but it certainly was a contributing factor. Speaking from personal experience, I drank because I felt like I was a bad person, and I felt like I was a bad person because I drank. It’s a vicious shame-based cycle that continues to perpetuate over and over again… until something stops it.

I spent years trying and failing to quit, or quitting for a little while before going back to the bottle. I tried and failed again and again and again and again. What I really needed was a knight in shining armor to rescue me!

But no knight ever came, and life’s not a fairytale.

Rebirth

It took a suicide attempt for me to finally stop drinking.

I survived (obviously), but little did I know that quitting would only be the beginning. Giving up drinking meant that I had to confront all of my trauma head-on without anything to numb the pain. I had to fight off my demons largely alone, enduring the excruciating pain of existence, stumbling forward an inch at a time even when I felt like I couldn’t go on any longer. Literal blood, sweat, and tears forged the road on which I crawled.

All of my perseverance eventually paid off. I am thankfully in a much healthier place now due to a mountain of personal growth along with many different types of therapies.

One thing that always stuck with me, however, was how I’d spent so much time wishing that someone would come and save me — all those nights dreaming about a proverbial knight in shining armor, hoping that I’d be rescued and saved, and how he had never come.

Now, I’ve come to understand the truth: the knight is me.

Thanks for Reading!

Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to spend some time with me! I encourage all of my readers to RISE (Reflect, Improve, Strengthen, & Evolve) with me because healing is a lifelong journey — it’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it. You are loved, cherished, and valued. Don’t ever let anyone ever convince you otherwise.

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