refugee

Housesitting for another person. There is a dog and a cat involved, and a whole new house for me to hang around in, trying not to make too much of a mess of. It's a nice change of scenery from someone else's house I normally spend my days trying not to make too much of a mess of. This isn't my life. I'm just living it for a while.

I can't relate to people, so I found this hack where I keep going to the same place a few times a week, year after year, doing the same activities with the same people, and it felt almost like having friends. I knew it was lacking in some key ways, but it sure beat sitting around by myself blogging in the vague direction of imaginary readers.

I never formed any real relationships with any of them. I was still working on that, engaging with a few of them a little more here and there, experimenting with being a little more prosocial. In the meantime, training together was everything to me. Now I'm just alone and aimless again. All those years of work scattered to the wind.

Nothing is getting better. My life has been destroyed. What little I'd managed to hold onto through these last few miserable years, all gone. The life I'd worked so hard to establish for myself was what kept my mental health under control. I can't function without it.

I can't blog anymore without just doing this over and over. It's the truth and none of my philosophies about anything ever mattered. I can't even figure out how to find housing for myself. I'm not a wandering philosopher, just another abject failure of a human being in a world full of suffering.

anchored

I can't heal, recover or move forward with my life, as long as my heart is still in Vermont. Everything I do here is just passing time until I can go back to having a life. I don't know why I'm like this, but I've long known being forced to move is terrible for me. 

This is even worse, because I can't move. It's an indefinite extended visit. I don't want to fully move here, and it isn't viable anyhow. Rents are even higher here in Philly than in Vermont, and I fucking liked Vermont!

I chose to anchor myself there for lots of reasons, much as I chose to train MMA for lots of reasons. I don't know what it's like to be anyone else, but I can't just chose to do things for which there aren't enough reasons, much of which has to do with what I need to manage and overcome my mental health issues, whatever we want to call that.

I'm clinging to the pain of what I've lost because it's all I have, all that's worked for me. Do you have any idea how hard it's been to find anything that's worked for me?

Maybe I need a therapist here. Maybe I should try meds. Except I've tried all that and so much more. I've moved from state to state nine goddamn times.

no one survives

Somewhere along the line in the last ten years or so, I changed my mind. I used to think survival itself was to be lauded. Life is scary, dangerous, and traumatic. Just getting through it was supposed to mean something. Especially if you could enjoy yourself along the way, the good cup of coffee, the beautiful weather, enjoying a good book, movie, or video game.

What has any of that accomplished? The pleasure of eating a donut falls behind me immediately, while the consequences can be far more lasting. I used to think in terms of the moment but have come to think more in terms of the broader picture of my life and what I've done with it. Who have I become, because of how I've lived?

I have a range of theories as to what caused this. It could just be the evolution of my thoughts and experiences over 49 years, but it could also have been spurred by the endocrine shift that began almost a decade ago. Another possibility is that it's the product of being more social, being around people, coming to appreciate them and care what they think. Seeing myself from their point of view and realizing something has gone terribly wrong.

I've shed the notion of meeting someone "like me" as I've realized that was all a defense, a fantasy of meeting someone who would see me the way I saw myself. I've realized that I can like people who are all sorts of different and we are judged on what we have to offer each other, not our autobiographies. I've realized that this is as it should be, because of course we want our connections to be positive.

Who I am doesn't matter. How I live is what matters, and defines who I really am, no matter what I may think about it. I can say it's not my fault, because life keeps being mean to me, but the fact of the matter is that my life has been an abject failure. I have very little to offer. I can't find the motivation to do much of anything, anymore.

Yay, I'm hanging on, getting through it? What are we getting through? This is life. When you get through it, it's over.

rationale

So much is a matter of perspective that it's very easy to present who we are as a product of our own entirely reasonable interests, worldview, and ethics. To some extent, almost everyone should be able to relate at least a little to the old adage, I'm not crazy, it's the rest of the world that's crazy.

From our perspective, on a very basic level, yeah, that's why we are the way we are. I refer to my difficulties relating to people in neutral terms, but for the longest time, I let myself believe it's because I don't like them. What is the difference really? They are different interpretations of the same experience. 

It's easy to point to things that are wrong with people, by our standards of course, framing our feelings of alienation as only reasonable. Easier still, if you then avoid them all your life so as to make people into abstract concepts, easier to manipulate in our heads. This is basic othering behavior, extended to everyone other than ourselves.

Instead of calling myself disabled for not working, I could focus on how fucked up the whole system is. I'm capable of work, in the most direct sense, but what I'm not capable of is all the bullshit involved in getting and holding a job, aside from doing the work itself. I'm also disgusted by the whole proposition that we have to sell half our waking lives to make some pig rich, just to survive. Cut the bullshit, give me a job, and maybe I could work part time. I'm not disabled, I just hate capitalism, right?

In this country, a part time minimum wage job isn't enough to live on and in so doing, I'd make myself ineligible for disability, including healthcare and everything. It's a fucked up system, but the reality of it is that other people do it and seem to have much fuller lives due to being functional adults with value to society. Framing the problem as a dysfunctional system might be better for not only my self-esteem, but how I present my situation to others. Framing it as a disability wrecks my self-esteem. That's to say, I can't live like they do. I can't be a part of what they do.  

I've been feeling painfully left out my whole life, and getting close to people has made it worse, but training has allowed me to play with them. The longer I've been at it, the more I feel accepted and a part of what they're doing. Maybe with enough perseverance, all the way up to competing myself. Then doing some teaching. This would go a long way towards counterbalancing my deficiencies, and it seemed to be a challenge but within reach.

I was moving in that direction, but now I'm feeling more left out than ever. I've tumbled back into the lonely darkness where the best I can do is go stand around awkwardly in a gym full of strangers. Too much of what was working for me was predicated on all the people I'd spent years building rapport with. It takes me a long time because I am different.

They don't have a concept of how these things can change. They have no motivation to help me change. It's just who I am, so they have no interest in helping, aside from being condescending.

It's so easy to conclude that people are just assholes, but from their perspective, their behavior only makes sense, too. Let myself get too close to them and realize they're not really assholes at all. I realize that I want to be able to live as they do, striving to achieve things in the world. I realize that I don't do these things because I can't. I'm disabled. I'm not good enough. When I finally stand up, ready to show that I am good enough, they tend to smack me down. And now, really compounding it all, I'm getting too old. 

I realize that I want them to like me, but they can't, because they perceive the deficit. Especially once I've been cornered into explaining that I'm disabled. Nobody calls them disabled for not being able to live the way I do. That makes just as much sense, but of course society is going to be built around norms and not what fringe weirdos think.

That's just the reality of it. Apparently, it's neurodivergent of me to care more about material reality than appearances and feelings. To be more delusional would be less disabling.

i had a life

I don't know what it means to have a life. We all have a life, right? What kind of value judgment is this? Right? I'm not sure, over the past few years, I've come to feel that I have one. For all the years prior, I felt that I did not. In Vermont, I finally had goals and ambitions, in such a way that was socially connected. I felt socially connected.

It's not a value judgment, but an important component of good mental health. Introverts are no exception. Rather they just need to be more careful and measured about it. During the pandemic, studies showed that it was actually introverts who suffered the most from the social regulations. Our careful measured connections can be more fragile, more easily thwarted, and far more difficult to replace.

Throw a wrecking ball through that, and it's introverts who start hanging themselves. Extroverts don't have a greater need, they're just far better at meeting it. When you're so much of an introvert that you're on the spectrum, it's all the more severe.

I complicate everything trying to understand it, hoping that understanding empowers me, but it's not always so complicated. I had a life. I don't have a life here. To go from having a life back to not having one is massively depressing. Of course I'm having trouble getting to the gym and everything else. Nothing I can do is going to help, so I'm just trapped in a downward spiral of drifting further and further away from what it felt like to be alive.

Depression is like acid. We're forced to watch everything we are slowly burned away. I was beating it, but now I'm back to drowning in it. That life that I left behind was all about beating depression.

abject misery

This whole situation has been catastrophically horrible for me, and I don't know why it's so difficult to explain why. It's so easy to lose sight of the details and in turn how they conspire to destroy my mental health. It's so easy to not think about it, so as to conclude I should be ok and just need to keep going.

I'm not ok. I will never be ok here. I will never get over this. What I was accomplishing in Vermont has been my life's work. Everything I was doing was about repairing a lifetime of damage. It was a long slow arduous process, obliterated by being forced to leave. Everyone who thought making me leave Vermont wasn't a brutal miserable thing to do can fuck off forever. Literally. Not to mention forcing me to throw out everything I owned. My family in Vermont is dead to me.

I keep trying to pick up the pieces and stay focused, but the only thing that motivates me being what I can accomplish that will serve me when I'm back in Vermont. Any progress I make at the gym is all about how it might help me perform at my old gym. I have no interest in accomplishing anything here. My only motivation is what I can bring back with me, when I get my life back. 

I don't know when that will be, if ever. This is a feeble immiserating sort of motivation. I'm torn between clinging to it, because it's all I have, and letting go. I can't do this anymore. I can't function in spite of how much pain I'm in. I want to collapse into survival mode where I have no ambitions but easing the pain, knowing damn well that only brings worse pain in the long run.

I miss having ambition. I miss having goals. I miss everything I was trying to do. I miss all the people I was trying to do it with, everyone I was trying to do it for. I have nothing left but this vague hope for a future where I can get it back. I can't live like this. 

I hate myself for not being stronger, more resilient, more independent. I hate that all I can do is suffer, desperately hoping someone will save me, because I have nothing else to hope for. I hate that I never formed enough of a connection with anyone to stay in touch or turn to for help. All the people I left behind just carrying on with their lives, neither knowing nor caring how much they mattered to me.

so much pain

Corrosion of Conformity was a band that caught my eye as a teenager, exploring the fringes of the punk/hardcore scenes. Before they became generic alternative metal band, they were a lousy hardcore band. I wasn't a fan in any case, but I liked the name and their nuclear skull logo. The point of the reference being that this "on the spectrum" bit is a different way of framing what has been a lifelong theme for me. My distaste for the band making it all the more apt.

What we have in common, in this grouping, is a negative. Not a value judgement, but the absence of a function neurotypical people have. As such, it says nothing for what we might have in common with each other. It says very little about who we are or who we might relate to.

I can't get to the gym here. It's one problem after another and then I get sick and my immune system is crap because I'm so depressed, so I can't get to the gym some more. I worked out on my own today. I keep trying, but I keep failing. Life just goes wrong and then more wrong. I'm drowning and no one can do anything but watch.

It took me years to get where I was in Vermont. I don't adapt to moving, because I'm alone and fragile, desperately trying to form roots such that I make progress against both of those problems. Only to be uprooted and tossed elsewhere, again and again. Now I'm stranded here. Failed and broken, crying when people from my old gym post to Instagram.

That was more progress towards feeling connected to people than I've made ever, but now it's just more pain. I hate myself for being helpless to do anything but suffer at the mercy of such a clearly uncaring world.

corrosion of conformity

The problem with looking for like-minded non-conformists is that they're all over the place. Conformity goes a long way towards keeping everyone on the same page. Conformists naturally find each other. That is arguably the central point of the conformist impulse. We don't want to impede social functionality by having a whole other viewpoint. This is bad for both survival and the likelihood of reproducing, such that evolution has made most of us conformists.

I've always been opposed to the fundamental notion of conformity. It's by definition constraining. Why shouldn't everyone be different, of course. Should this, shouldn't that. This is just how evolution works, and how socializing works. The reality of it is that socializing is of critical importance to most of us, such that evolution selects for conformists.

I didn't like it, because my viewpoint was different. I was different. I don't have the impulse to conform. I adapted to this fact by adopting a worldview deeming conformity a bad thing. It's something that has its pros and cons, but what is good or bad, should and shouldn't? It was something that would have benefited me, were my brain not wired differently.

Some people are calling this autism now. If you aren't trying to imitate the behaviors of others from an early age, this can cause a wide array of development problems. It is essentially this dysfunction of our instinctual impulse to stick together. To be gregarious, to form a herd, to find a sense of social connectivity. It is a way of thinking differently. 

A way of thinking differently, how? Just differently. In all sorts of ways. I question the utility of calling it autism, but we should be calling it something.

gaza

Karma is when we contribute to the environment, and thus have to live in that environment. Israel has used their disproportionate position of power to enforce their will, without compromise. They use their power to then aggressively punish any resistance.

Without regard to ethics or fairness, backed by the American empire, Israel embraces the nihilistic doctrine, might makes right. Israel shows no respect for their opposition as equals, or as human beings, but dangerous pests to be crushed.

Power dynamics in the world are always changing. Those on top never get to stay there. When they find their adversaries one day strong enough to stand against them, they will do so in the cold brutal world they've created.

I used to stand with Israel. I used to believe all the west's drivel vilifying Palestinians and their leadership. Israel was brutal and oppressive because they had to be.

 

For me, the turning point was the Great March of Return, where Israeli snipers gunned down thousands of unarmed protesters in Gaza, including medics and journalists, that I realized, Israel is a monstrous evil waging perpetual war. A tool of western imperialism, our military foothold in the middle east. All the bombs, the bulldozers, the apartheid and blockade - none of it is about necessity, but domination and oppression of the indigenous population and their neighbors.

Israel has no right to defend itself, because Israel is the aggressor. A bully does not have the right to murder someone for standing up to the bullying. It is the Palestinian people who have a right to defend themselves. Even against impossible odds and certain death, I stand with those who fight back.

sparring on the spectrum

When people talk about someone who is more unambiguously on the spectrum, like OG autism, I start thinking, yeah, this is silly. Of course I'm not autistic. The word doesn't have a solid enough meaning to end these arguments in my head.

When someone has depression or anxiety, we look at the symptoms and that defines the condition. It doesn't matter if you're depressed and anxious due to trauma or genetics. The symptoms are straight forward and if you have enough of them, that's depression. With autism, it's just like, problems socializing. limited and repetitive interests, and being hypersensitive to sensory input.

Do I start screaming and crying when the smoke alarm goes off? Not always. How severe are we talking? 

A student coach comes up to me after class today, going on about how if people are going too hard on me, it's ok to tell them to lighten up. Some people think they have to be macho and take it, but that's nonsense, he says to me. He was just being nice. He was just concerned about me. I know.

happy birthday to me

Accepting my fate here in this strange new city, I might as well start devoting myself to this new gym. I decided this weeks ago, but it's taken some time to implement the decision by going more often. I finally got to the advanced sparring class today, all full of anxiety because I had no idea what to expect, and it was underwhelming. Advanced, like Han Dynasty's 10/10 on their spicy scale is all that spicy.

I had Chinese food with my aunt. It's a decent restaurant, but nothing is all that spicy anymore, except my own cooking. Northstar MMA is a decent gym, but their advanced sparring class seemed kinda basic to me. I got some good sparring in. It's more regimented than the open sparring system I'm used to. We all just spar for round after round for about an hour. It was fine, but my jaw doesn't even hurt.

The BJJ, OTOH, has been frustrating. I'm getting my ass kicked by almost everyone. Some of them tap me out over and over like I'm a complete newbie again. I don't know if I'm rusty or not trying, due to being in unfamiliar territory, or if a lot of them are simply a lot better than most of the people at my old gym.

The instruction does seem a lot better. The gym itself is lacking in a lot of ways, but both the BJJ and Muay Thai instruction has been more technical and difficult. In theory, I could go back to Vermont in a few years, having greatly improved and impress everyone, but I never seem to get the upshot of anything. Somehow it won't work out that way.

ableism

My whole life, I've had this sense that people think I'm autistic or something. It seems entirely plausible that between my endocrine issues, my cerebral nature, and my social anxiety, I appear autistic or something. Maybe that is autistic or something. If social anxiety represents an irrational fear that people won't like me, autism represents the reality that people have never liked me. Even my own family freaks out over the prospect of me living with them for a few months. I've faced discrimination everywhere.

Social anxiety is all about fearing what others think, but it's only pathological when it's irrational. I'm not concerned about what autism is and what it means, in terms of understanding myself. I don't find it to be a solid enough concept, but I don't lose sleep over that. What hit me so hard was the realization that other people see me as deficient. We are not peers. Some will try to be supportive and say that others don't hate me or dislike me or otherwise think terrible things about me. Some will point out that most people I encounter won't think about me much at all one way or another.

I find it so peculiar that this would ever need to be explained, as it seems so indisputable. So many near universally lauded aspects of life are built on getting a positive reaction from others. The realization that I'm what they call autistic is not about understanding myself better, but understanding why the world treats me this way. This is what they see. This is what they think. This is why they do what they do. 

They may not know or care what autism is, per se, but they see me as mentally handicapped, and it turns out to be true. I can't work or function well enough to find a place to live. Maybe I don't have an irrational fear of people, but a quite rational awareness that dealing with them never goes well. I've spent my life in this fantasy world sequestered from humanity, where it wasn't that important, not my fault, or whatever it took to dance around the reality of it. Humanity is not entirely wrong.

This is about realizing that people really do see me as deficient, even as they do all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid framing it that way. We don't like to talk about the disabled that way, but while we may have nothing against them, we also want nothing from them. We don't want them to suffer, and we don't want them to be a problem.

Do people hate me? No. Do they enjoy my company? Do they admire me? Respect me? Want to be with me? No. The autism I'm all upset about doesn't explain to me who I am, but it explains why people react to me the way they do. It legitimizes something I'd thought wasn't real, all these years. It isn't real to me, but objectively explains what they think they see, and I know what it's like to see that in others.

adapt or die

Some locales on the autistic spectrum often look a lot like trauma, because for those of neurodivergent sensitivities, neurotypical life can be traumatic. We get PTSD just trying to go to middle school. The stressors that callous the average person can have the opposite effect on those who are more vulnerable. 

A critical distinction between being anywhere on the spectrum and mental illness is that autism is not an illness one can contract. It is lifelong. It is not something that develops in response to anything in the environment. No one comes down with a case of autism. To fight against depression or anxiety is the only way you're going to beat it. To fight against autism is to fight against ourselves. No one beats autism.

A person with phobias and anxieties needs to confront them. They need to promote an adaptive response in the brain, wherein we learn to deal. A person on the spectrum may have anxieties and phobias that can be dealt with similarly, but they also have fundamental differences in how they process their experiences in the world. Stressing those differences does not produce an adaptive response, because it's a bridge too far. When life can't meet a challenge, it tries to shrink away from it. We run, we hide, we freak the fuck out. We get overwhelmed and shutdown entirely.

If you try to force an autistic person to function as a neurotypical, you aren't helping. You injure, maim, and literally kill them. We have basic survival needs that we can't meet, if we can't navigate society and get no support. We suffer brutal real-world material consequences, while the closest thing to support we get it is the incessant advice to try being more normal.

disillusioned

I went from thinking that if only I get over my fears, I'd do reasonably well out in the world, maybe even exceptionally well, to thinking wow, I'm so rusty. I need lots of practice, I thought, so after years of practice, I only managed to fail everything I was trying to do. 

Something seems to be wrong with me, I concluded. Beyond depression, anxiety, and social skills, clearly there was something wrong with the way the world responds to me. Maybe there's more to this ADHD thing than I'd realized. The more I read, the more I saw that I check all the boxes.

..and then some ..to say the least. Holy shit, I'm autistic? Are you fucking kidding me. I've always thought I was different, but no, not like that.

To top that off, being on the autistic spectrum is too vague and ill-defined to be of much use to me. Does it mean I relate to others on the spectrum? No, they're all over the place. Does it give me any direction in terms of overcoming the real-world problems that it causes?  It makes me think my problems may be more fundamentally hopeless than I'd realized. It means other people will always think I'm weird, and not in a good way.

Finally moving forward and getting out into the world didn't help. I did not in fact do reasonably well. Just like before any of this, before I even started growth hormone again, I have no idea how to live here. Uprooted and tossed around like I have no agency, stranded living wherever I can. I don't want to do anything but hide. I feel lost, alone, and not because I'm too good for this world, but because I just inherently suck at everything and the world is brutal.

Even the things I've practiced the most, striving to get better for years and years, I'm good at in a lopsided way that makes it impossible to do anything with. My strengths are all so fatally flawed, I never get anywhere with any of it. Another ten years have gone by, as I get to that point where it looks safe to say, I never will get anywhere with any of it. It's just who I am. It's how it went. It's who I was.

For all my talk of the progress I've made in recent years, it turns out I've done nothing but fall apart. I don't very much like this pathetic person I've become, but such is reality. I would like to end my existence now, please.

north star

It is nice to want something that is attainable. I think this is why people with depression tend to get carried away with basic needs. They will turn to food, because we get hungry a few times a day, and if we're fortunate enough, have the food to do something about it. Likewise, we get tired and sleep, if we can. Sleeping too late and too much, we indulge basic impulses to excess for an easy and always attainable reward loop. 

In a person who feels nothing else is attainable, these appeals to our basic needs can be thin gruel to someone with nothing else. As is typical of addiction, we overindulge because it's inadequate. We don't stop if it's all we've got. In depression, we might suffer anhedonia or apathy, we often lose interest, we lack confidence, sometimes for good reason. We always get hungry and sleepy.

The desire to fight is not quite a basic need akin to eating or sleeping, but it seems to be similarly basic and primal. It's something I tap into to keep myself interested in this one thing I do. No matter how depressed I get, I eat, I sleep, and I want to get better at hitting people.

home sweet home

The past and future are all that matters. It's the present which does not exist. The present is a delusion of the self. It is a matter of perspective, changing constantly. The future gives us hope. The past gives us experience. The present is gone before we even know what the fucks going on.

Others insist on the opposite, I'm well aware. Now is all that matters. Now is already the past, so you're wrong immediately. What happened creates what is going to happen. Our perspective is the product of where we've been, and only matters in so much as how it guides where we're going.

Suffering isn't the issue. Life knee capping me every five minutes is a fucking problem. Suffering only matters in how it guides where we're going.

The stool fell aside way too easily. Ok, I guess I'm doing this. Common to these situations, there was some ambivalence. I kicked at the fallen stool, trying to find some footing, but I was already blacking out.  I couldn't reach the stool. A few seconds passed that in retrospect felt like minutes, of just feeling hopeless. A momentary trance of accepting my fate. I don't know if I could breathe, because the carotid choke was so tight. A very familiar feeling but tapping out was not going to help. I went out before I'd had to worry about breathing.

How much time passed before I started shaking violently, I can only guess. I was hit with what felt like a massive surge of adrenaline. I was confused and disoriented as I managed to wrench my head free of the knotted bed sheet, yelling involuntarily like a wounded animal. As I lay on the cold hard floor drenched in sweat, I thought about what a strange feeling it was, almost hallucinogenic. What was I doing? I didn't know or care. Living in the moment is weird.

I'd feel horrible about doing that to my land lady. That I'd be done feeling anything aside, of course. I spoke to her about staying here long term. She has concerns, but said she'd be ok with me staying for years, if necessary. I have to get out of this limbo state of visiting a place, while having no home elsewhere. I need medical insurance, ID, and a mailing address. I need doctors. I need to know how much to invest myself in adjusting to this new gym. This whole new miserable life. I need stability.  There's always the chance things will go incredibly well someday, so go ahead with the kneecapping, it's fine.

Affordable housing was never going to save me. Maybe it will come through in a few years. Maybe I won't want to leave Philly by then. I likely won't feel much connection to Vermont anymore. Most of the people at my gym will be strangers by the time I can eventually go back. There won't be much point to going back. I have no family there anymore. I'm watching fragile new hard-fought roots dying in real time. I live here now and for the foreseeable future. My room here in Philly is the closest thing to a home I'm going to get.

One thing that we can be sure of. Though it waxes and wanes, I am acutely suicidal, and my luck won't always be the same. That is my current trajectory.

game over

My instincts always turn out to be right. I try so hard to hold onto any strand of hope or positivity, but in the end, the sky really is falling. My first month here, I went from 26 to 25 on the waiting list for housing. That was pretty upsetting because if you do the math, that means it will take a year, and I don't have a year. There's no way I could endure this situation for a year, even if I did.

Today, a month later, I call to find out if the list is moving any faster. Maybe it will jump a few spots, but I was bracing for the possibility that it would only move up another single spot to 24. Moving up only one spot per month would be catastrophic. For the math impaired, that would mean two years.

Somehow I dropped down to 32. I was 25 last month, what happened, I exclaimed. The receptionist simply told me that the number fluctuates. Turns out, people over 55 take priority over me on the list, meaning I could be waiting six years, until I'm 55 and they stop adding people ahead of me.

I am never going home. I've lost everything and I'll never get any of it back. There is no way forward. I have no options. I know how to secure a noose to a door frame. I'm trying to decide when the best time and place for that would be.

I'd made a pact with myself a few years ago. My life had to get dramatically better by the time I'm 50, or I would end it. I've been working so hard on making it better. I thought I was getting somewhere. Of course, it's only gotten worse. Fuck everything. I'm done.

normative

The technique and structure with which I've learned to manage my mental health is not so outlandish. Strategies that support healthier eating habits, fitness routines, and striving to be an active member of community; these are things lots of people struggle with. Or in many cases, would struggle with, if they were so inclined. These things make a huge difference for anyone, but most pretend it wouldn't matter as a means of coping with the reality that it absolutely would.

Lots of people do not strike me as particularly happy. They spend their lives engaged in routines of not thinking about it, and not doing anything about it. They become addicts and couch potatoes, they treat others like garbage because they're too overwhelmed and stressed out to have any good will to spare. They have terrible life strategies with terrible outcomes, but I'm supposed to envy them for being functional members of society.

At what cost? People spend their lives in a world of delusion, escapism, and rationalization, not even for their own well being, not as the cost for living a fulfilling life, but because it's what this broken society expects and demands. Others are apparently motivated for functionality, even at the expense of their well being. 

Maybe this is often necessary, but that is beside the point. Mental health isn't just when we're malfunctioning. We should all be as mindful of our mental health as for our physical health. We should be realistic about the consequences of the harms we inflict on ourselves and others. Our priorities should line up with those realities, not some fantasy of a transcendent self that can overcome it all. How much damage is done because people believe we can all just suck it up and move on? Then when they're miserable, they have no idea why. Must be a chemical imbalance. Maybe we're all neurodivergent.

I go on about my strategies as if it's necessitated by pathology, but maybe the real difference is just that I think about it a lot more. I believe that I can do better than this, even as my life keeps getting worse. In the US, homelessness keeps going up, suicides keep going up, deaths of despair, overdoses and addiction, poverty, obesity, and preventable medical deaths - and ten times as many people teetering just this side of not falling into any of those categories quite yet. 

Clearly, I'm not alone in my suffering. I'm far from alone in being plagued by mental health problems. This is all intertwined with issues of mental illness. I'm alone because of the way I think about it. The way I experience it.

consequentialism

Meaningful discussion on mental health can be difficult. The ideas can seem abstract, while common sense tells us people just need to get their shit together, suck it up, smile. This is comedic ignorance on par with being a flat-earther. Mental health is an attribute we all have and the primary difference between pursuing our goals and responsibilities, or becoming an alcoholic and sleeping all day.

Sometimes our baseline mental health is dysfunctional. I'm well acquainted with who I am if I relax and let myself be, and I dread becoming that person. Relaxing may sound superficially nice, but living with less intentionality is just a deep dark downward spiral for me.

So, I had all this structure I imposed on myself. Everything in my life was built around that structure. My belongings helped me make breakfast the same way every morning, or adhere to my workout routine. The people I knew motivated me to get the the gym. My ambitions were deeply interwoven with all the people I knew, people I wanted to work with, expectations to live up to, and wanting to impress. It all means so much less when we're talking about random strangers in a whole other city.

All of these things made me who I was. It's what held me together. This is all abstract to everyone, until I start getting drunk and sleeping all day. Then suddenly it's my fault.

baseless

This is so surreal. A few months ago, I was just living my life, planning my days, my weeks, managing my expectations and disappointments. All the people I looked forward to seeing at the gym, the daily dread of seeing all those people at the gym, worrying about where I've been and where I was going.

Where the fuck did all that go? It hasn't followed me here, because I haven't moved. This isn't mere moving stress. I live there, where I am homeless. I lost everything I owned, because I had no home to move anything into. I didn't just leave some junk behind for my new landlord to deal with. I left my whole life.

I've been thinking about these survival/crafting games that've become so prolific. You're in a harsh new environment and the first step is always to secure a base. You start minimal, a tiny makeshift shelter over whatever you can call a bed and a place to store your stuff. These games become aimless and far more difficult if you don't have a base to build. Your home becomes both your means and your reason for surviving.

I am visiting Philly. Renting a room in a house owned by a friend of family. It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. I don't live here. I'm a stranded foreigner. It's stressful for a recovering agoraphobic to have to live in someone else's house. This horrific situation is stressful for so many reasons beyond typical moving stress.

I haven't been doing any sight-seeing. I haven't been doing any exploring. I've been getting good at feeding other people's cats. I've been doing a lot of cooking. I've been getting to this new gym sporadically. The bar to getting there is higher, and the feeling of reward on the way home has been meager. I'm afraid of losing interest in the only interest I've got left.

The reward for doing everything else is indiscernible. I'm just surviving, aimlessly and with great difficulty.

lost connections

I think the hardest part of all this is feeling cut off from all the people I spent the last few years getting to know. Countless randoms strangers I grew to feel familiar and comfortable with, to at least some degree. That's been a huge challenge. It's taken me years just to get to this basic level. I felt known and respected. To a degree. It was always a work in progress. I was making progress. Long slow and more important to me than doing anything else progress.

I had the idea some of this might transfer with me to a new place, with all new people to potentially get along well with, I thought some of it had to do with social skills, and a familiarity with socializing itself. That must play a role here, but I think it's just a long slow process that takes time for me. Time for people to feel more familiar and comfortable with me, just as much as the other way round.

I think it's an arduous uphill battle, and I've tumbled all the way back to the bottom, each time I go live somewhere else. In some places I've lived, I had nothing to lose. In others, I had a lot. This time, I had more than ever.

I'm probably going back, but I don't know when. I don't know that anything else won't go wrong in the meantime. I don't know for sure how this will all work out. I don't know what of my fragile connections will remain, if and when I finally get back home.

I just want to go home, but I am a person without one. I have safe and comfortable shelter, and that's saved my life, but I was kinda aiming higher than that for a while there. That seemed like incredibly important work for me to be doing to save my own life. When I talk about having a life, maybe it's about all these connections with strangers. This was a massive setback and I keep getting older here.

change averse

Autistic types do not like changes, from what I can gather. Everyday transitions can be difficult, like going from laying in bed, to getting up and moving, or going from clothed and dry to naked and surrounded by water. I hate to admit that it took me way too long to learn to bathe regularly. I'm still working on getting up in the morning. Sometimes it takes me all day.

Routines help a lot. We shower every morning before going to do the things we do every day, or we shower as part of the ritual of getting ready that we perform before going anywhere. When transitions are routine, they become a lot easier. So, the fact of the matter is that I do not bathe regularly because my mental health is better - I bathed regularly because I've learned to incorporate it into my routine. Which is to say, if I'm forced to abandon my routine, I go right back to being itchy and smelly, and inexplicably procrastinating the whole thing.

My mental health hasn't improved, per se. This is how my brain works. It doesn't get better. Whatever caused my problems when I was younger is still the same old problem. It's my strategies for living with it that changed. I've learned to manage my aversion to change, such that I can function, or even thrive, or at least properly bathe, but I still go through all sorts of hell if you make me change my plans, such that my routine is thrown all askew.

How do you think I'm going to feel having my whole life turned upside down and having no choice by to go live hundreds of miles away, where I can't keep doing any of what I was doing? I can keep doing some of it here, except no I can't, because none of this is routine. All my strategies have been completely demolished. It was routine to go socialize, for fucks sake. Now what the hell am I supposed to do? 

Adapt, form new routines, no big deal, right? Yeah, well, big deal or not, I've been failing at it. I can't even get to the gym. It's a completely different gym. I didn't form these routines overnight. I can't rebuild new ones overnight. It's a constant shuffle of baby steps and setbacks, plagued by anxiety and failure, as I start doing things regularly, only to have other people constantly trample all over my efforts just by existing. Solitude helps a lot. Everything is easier alone. Living with others has always been a problem.

While I know that this is what I need to do, I also know it's going to involve lots of not doing it.

unstable

That I am emotionally unstable is not reason to dismiss what I say, but rather all the more reason to expect me to behave irrationally. I have been extremely unstable lately. I am having massive difficulties adapting to having my entire life ripped away from me, from everything I was doing, to everything I owned, to all my fragile social connections. 

My whole life was structured around building up those things and now what am I doing. Of course I'm falling apart here. It's insulting to tell me this isn't a catastrophe. Do you think I didn't have much to lose, so what difference does it make if I lose everything? How fucked up is that. That was a $500 bicycle, not some easily replaced piece of trash.

I call affordable housing a mirage, because they put people on these years long waiting lists and actively look for excuses to throw them off. It takes forever and feels incredibly unreliable. In many states it's literally worse than useless, due to requirements that applicants not be in anything resembling actual poverty.

This is why I hadn't applied sooner. I didn't think I needed it, and know it's a last resort that might not even work out. Still, some would blame me for my own homelessness, for not applying seven years ago, when it was last mentioned to me. Sorry you feel guilty for being so petty and selfish, but that's not my problem anymore.

Aside from being unreliable, that it may take a year makes it feel like it will never happen. So much can go wrong in that time, from where I can live in the meantime, to how I handle this situation dragging on month after month while I fall apart. Turns out though, there is no Vermont residency requirement. That was an assumption that simply isn't true. I finally called and asked outright and was told that I can move to another state, I can officially change my address, none of that matters as long as any mail they send me doesn't bounce.

What a massive relief. I thought I was at risk of losing eligibility, and that it would get worse the longer I'm not living in Vermont, but that whole concern turns out to be unfounded.

goodbye forever

It's not looking good. I really needed to stay in Vermont, if I was going to find a way to keep living there. "Affordable housing" is just a mirage. I can't keep looking for roommates there, while I'm here. Where I'm living now is a stepping stone to nowhere.

Five years ago, I embarked on this journey to get my life together, because I knew eventually something like this would happen. I completely failed. Now my whole life is gone. All my dreams, ambitions and endeavors, all gone. I spent years fighting to earn the respect of people I will never see again. Everyone I knew, gone. I had a life, for the first time in my life, and it's gone.

I can't start over. I can't live anywhere else. I don't want to live anymore.

germantown

I haven't much felt like writing since I got here. It's taken some time for the dust to settle, such that I'm feeling my tired old anxious self again. I've been doing stuff, but have only been to the new gym here twice. I'm still learning their schedule, trying to sort out what days I should be aiming for. They do a lot of things differently. I miss my gym in Vermont. I miss all the people I'll never see again.

Instead of getting this lousy gym more, I've found myself doing other random things. Things which should not preclude me getting to the gym, but I'm always struggling to manage my time and energy levels, even when I should have plenty of both. I've been trying to say yes to everything people ask me to do. I should be doing stuff.

I took part and contributed to a vegan food swap last night. I made mujaddara. I thought it was one of the better dishes on the table. A few days ago, I got stung by a wasp, trying to do yard work. The woman I'm renting the room from has some pretty severe injuries from a scooter accident, so I help her with things. She's a temporarily disabled dog-walker and cat-sitter. I went to meet a nice couple who need a cat-sitter. On Friday, I'm supposed to go meet another couple that need a house-sitter, in addition to cat sitting. I had to get up early this morning to buy a transit card, because they have to be bought in person and they close the sales offices at 10:30am. My third pepper seed germinated today. 

I'm doing stuff, but I'm also feeling exhausted and plagued by anxiety. These are all dead end distractions. Nothing can be routine here, everything I'm doing is chaos. I'm falling apart. I can't handle it. I'm fasting for the first time tonight, since I got here. I'm trying. I'm always trying. I'm so tired.

turbulence

Moving via airplane is terrible. I've been trying to organize my accumulation of crap for months, but only when it's too late do I realize I should have shipped myself things. Maybe a lot of things. I could have even shipped my clothes, my trenchcoat, random stuff that poses some problem or another. I had the foresight to send myself a few things, but I should have shipped a lot more. Now that I'm leaving tomorrow morning and it's too late, this seems clear to me.

Hey, just do it tomorrow morning before going to the airport, right? I don't drive. Getting to UPS feels like an all day ordeal. I certainly can't do it before going to the airport. I'm not that much of a grown-up. Every little thing is so much more work for me than it's supposed to be. 

I feel like I'm doing it all wrong, but I can't do anything about it. It's taken everything I've got to do it at all. I'm too stressed, too overwhelmed, I have to leave behind all sorts of things for my landlord to deal with, because he's the adult who has a job and owns houses, and I'm an old child who can't figure out how to live in this world.

Everything I was looking forward to was in my life here, in Winooski. Everything I've been looking forward to this summer has been replaced by trying to find a place to live, trying to move, trying to look forward to other things. I'm torn between the impulse to be optimistic and wanting to hold onto the feelings of loss. Look at what I'm going through. What kind of lunatic would be ok? Don't I have a right to feel eviscerated by this?

Optimism looks better. It's more productive. What good is dwelling. Just keep moving forward and adapting. Make the most of what comes, not what could have been. Never mind the scars and trauma. If we don't think about them, they aren't there. We just inexplicably feel like hell, whatever the future holds.

I had a bookshelf full of my own books for the first time in my adult life. A whole range of interesting books that I've mostly read. Can't ship many books., let alone pack them into my overstuffed duffle bag. Too heavy. Back to having no books, no bookshelf to say anything interesting about me. I could have shipped a few favorites, but wasn't thinking clearly enough.

There are so many random things like this. Everything is replaceable, but most of it won't get replaced. That's good in a way. We shouldn't hoard and clutter our lives with so much crap, but we shouldn't have to periodically throw out everything we own, either.

fragile roots

Still watching roommate ads and the like, I noticed one of them was posted by someone I know from the gym. I've been trying to tell people about my predicament for months, but I haven't systematically made sure everyone knows. Lots of them have no idea. One of them was looking for a roommate.. but just filled the position the previous day.

Opportunities periodically arise beyond just checking the listings. Knowing people and having connections means having a leg-up, should any of them be looking for a roommate or a tenant. I've been trying to keep my feelers out, talking to anyone who might know of any such opportunities, but now I won't be able to do that anymore. Yesterday was the last day I'll be going to the gym, before I leave.

What an interesting opportunity that would be, forced upon me by circumstance. I dread having roommates, but it could help me build further connections to people here. Connections branch and and deepen the longer I'm around and engaging with a community. Maybe I'll get along great with people I meet in Philly, but it's unlikely I'll be there long.

Connections are like the roots we form, and roots are vital to sustaining us and keeping us healthy. Some people grow roots quickly and easily, but I never have. It takes me a long time, and my roots and the ability to grow them at all are easily damaged. Some plants can be planted and replanted over and over, while others will immediately die if you do that. 

Having lost my grip on everything else I was doing to pull myself together these last five years, getting to the gym was all I had left. Now that's gone, too. In theory, I will come back in a few months. In theory, I can get to the gym in Philly and form new connections. I am trying, but it all feels so uncertain and I am feeling very damaged.

time marches on

I don't think I'm coming back to Vermont. I have no faith in the system that would make it possible. I'm afraid that by leaving, I won't get it sorted out when things go wrong. I won't be here to figure anything else out. When the door closes behind me, I'll be gone.

All my life, I've moved every five to ten years. Moving from Syracuse wrecked me when I was eleven. Moving from New Jersey when I was sixteen ensured that I'd never recover. It didn't help that the place we moved to was Long Island. Each time I've moved, my frayed capacity for connection has further collapsed. I leave the past behind me, a one way road of scattered memories, of people, places, and things. Each time I've said good-bye, it has been forever.

It's amazing that even when I find somewhere that I like, I still have to leave after a few years. Moving always inspires a forced optimism. We never know what lies ahead. Maybe it will be great. Nowhere ever is. Great is what we can build where we are, and that takes more time than I've ever been allowed to stay anywhere.

what are the chances

My mental health has really nose dived these last few months. To some extent, to be expected, as the stress of moving looms closer, but I was also a lot more optimistic about how this could go. It all seemed pretty straight-forward and achievable. This is from an unfinished blog post that never got posted. I wrote it back in May.

This is the first time I'll be moving on to a new chapter, without leaving the place I'm in. I like it here. I no longer long to live somewhere more urban. New York and San Francisco aren't what they used to be. Burlington may hardly be a city in comparison, but it has almost anything I'd want. The food is good when I have anyone to eat it with. I don't feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere, but the middle of nowhere is always just a short drive away.

It's beautiful here, but like everywhere else, my lack of transportation poses a problem. I can get into Burlington easily enough and most of what I need is within reach, including the gym. What I can't do is get out into the countryside, where most of the beauty is. I can't go hiking or camping or any of that, not easily enough to ever do it. Grocery shopping is a pain in the ass. I've been afraid to move too far from my gym. Etc, etc.

As I have to move though, I've realized that I qualify for subsidized housing. There's a long waiting list, but I can pitch a tent in my Aunt's yard or something while I wait. They're out in Colchester, which made me panic at first. I'd be stranded.. except no, I'd finally be able to afford a car for the first time in my life.

I can be a good driver, albeit on the careful side. Cars do scare me. Accidents happen, and when they happen in cars it can be pretty bad. In the past, I never wanted to go anywhere, so it didn't matter so much. Back then, a car would get used a few times a month. My life is a lot different now. Not having a car is an impediment in lots of ways. There are all sorts of things I never even think about doing, that I'd suddenly be able to do.

It feels like my life could be about to change quite a bit. I feel a strange optimism about it, even if the chapter begins with me living in a tent for a few months. The path looks clear for life to go relatively well, but it could also go all wrong in any number of not terribly unlikely ways. What are the chances everything just keeps going wrong though😬

For one thing, I didn't expect my family here to say no to everything. Can't have a car because parking would be a hassle. Can't drive anyhow, because my first time behind the wheel in over twenty years did not go that well. Can't store my stuff there, because they've got orders of magnitude more junk of their own. Can't have a tent, because what would the neighbors think. They might think something crazy like, why the hell aren't you letting him sleep in the house?

When every little problem is treated as insurmountable, it only makes sense to conclude that they don't care and they don't want me living there. It's all motivated reasoning. They have all sorts of reasons, but I'm about to be homeless and just needed to wait for that subsidized housing. This should not have been hard.

Turns out, my new chapter starts with leaving again, after all. This time for Philadelphia. If everything goes as planned, I'll be back in Vermont in a few months, but what are the chances everything goes as planned? I'm flying out with a one way ticket on the 29th, my life's possessions reduced to what I can carry with me. I will not have a home there, but a place to stay for a month or two. Maybe more, if it goes well. Maybe not. 

Leaving behind every positive routine that was holding me together and keeping me moving forward, I'm being evicted from Vermont entirely, thrust into the unknown. I don't know what healthy routines I'll be able to pull together. I don't know what my mental health will be like, or what options I'll have, to make the most of the situation.

My whole life is here in Vermont. My whole life will be gone in two weeks. I'm trying to be optimistic, but how in the world would I not be freaking the fuck out over all this?

new plan

At first the idea struck me as awfully random and ill-suited to my problem. A huge part of that being that I don't want to leave Winooski. It takes me years to acclimate to a place, to develop routines, and maybe even form connections. It's also the first place I've lived that didn't make me want to live somewhere else. I like it here, for the first time in my life.

I figured if I'm going to leave, I might as well go live die in Florida with my mom. If moving somewhere else is an option, I could find lots of places more affordable. I could move back to Pittsfield or out into middle-of-nowhere Vermont. It's beautiful there, but that would be a huge disruption to my life. There are no MMA gyms in the middle of nowhere. Rent is affordable in places that lack everything else.

It's also a strange option, because I can already afford to rent a room. In theory, I could rent a room here, well within my budget. I'd live in the extra bedroom of a stranger's house. In reality though, I'd have to go look at places, hoping the stranger I'd be living with thinks I'm a good fit. It's a weird situation, and you never know what you'll be dealing with. That alone is a step that gives me too much anxiety to take.

It helps a lot when the interaction begins with understanding that I'm in a tough situation and wanting to help. Understanding that I have mental health issues, and being ok with that. I struggle with any interactions in which the response might be sorry, no, you're not good enough. We all do, sure, but I've avoided that entirely my whole life. The more I've fallen apart, the less likely I am to start overcoming that anytime soon. Once I've got my foot in the door, I do a lot better.

It also helps that this particular room is in Philadelphia. A much more interesting place than Pittsfield. I'll be able to find a gym there, not to mention lots of other stuff bigger cities have that Burlington does not. I can think of it as a nice diversion, an adventure, and the person offering to rent the room to me seems like a nice person, someone who is also a vegan, and more open to sharing food than other room rental situations are likely to be. A stranger, but one who seems like someone I'll get along with. I have family nearby, it will be great to finally be able to visit. 

This plan gives me a lot to look forward to, and all of it helps. Most importantly, it's a plan, without much that can go wrong. It feels reliable and achievable. There isn't much to feel anxiety about, except moving itself. Which is itself no small amount of anxiety.

I have a place to go, but I'll have to leave most of my stuff behind again. It would all be cheaper to replace than to store. Big items like my heavy bag and stand, I'll never be able to set up again. I have to sort out what I can take. There's an annoying gap of a few days between when I can travel and when I'm being evicted. I may have to rent a hotel room for a week. Lots of hassle and relatively daunting crap to deal with, but it's all doable.

Then in a few months give or take, I should be able to come back to Winooski, to settle into my Subsidized Housing Complex for the Elderly and Disabled. It sounds like a rather depressing end goal, but if I can afford a car, I won't be spending so much time there. I'll finally be able to go out and see the parts of Vermont that I moved here for.

a stable plan

When I shop for groceries, I always make a list. I buy exactly what's on the list, no more, no less. Relatively normal so far, but wait. Everything I buy corresponds to a specific meal, including exactly how many meals I can make with a given item. I then consume everything in careful order of perishability. 

I know what I'll be having for every meal, for the next seven days, when I'll need to go shopping again. My fridge never has old food in it, aside from a few condiments. If I didn't shop this way though, my fridge would never have food in it at all. This is the level of organization I need to deal with going to the grocery store. 

Incidentally, this is why I usually decline when offered to tag along with anyone else. Planning around other people can be challenging. Is this a being on the spectrum thing? I'm not inclined to be organized. I do this because I'm so severely disorganized.

My mental health has been very unstable these last few months. Sometimes I've been ok, but then I keep crashing hard. Dangerously hard. I need to hold it together and move, but you'd be naïve to think necessity will force me into doing what I need to do. Stabilizing my mental health is more important than ever at a time like this.

I'm not sure what I need to do or when. I keep trying to make a plan, but the plan depends on where I'm going. How I pack and organize my stuff depends on what I'll be able to use, store, or leave behind, but that depends on where I'll be living and for how long. I've realized that a major source of instability is not knowing that. I keep thinking, it's crazy that I have to manage all the typical stress of moving, without anywhere to move to. This is an awful lot of work just to be homeless.

I've been finding it extra difficult to search for a place, when finding one might be impossible, necessitating a completely different plan. I'll get some help from my family out in Colchester, but they can't seem to decide how much they're willing to help, and unfortunately, I may need a lot. I'm acutely aware of what an imposition that is, but I'm drowning here, thanks to the housing crisis of a political system that only serves the wealthy. 

Some rich scumbag buys the place and evicts me like its nothing, so that he can gut everything and renovate it into much more expensive housing. Now I'm screwed, just another victim of gentrification. Other countries just build housing for people. Here, we make it illegal, to keep real estate prices going up.

More to the point though, is that I need to know what I'm doing, so that I can plan around it. When I have time to think about all the ways to make a given circumstance manageable, I calm down and can think about dealing with it. When my options keep changing, it's like having the rug pulled out from under me again and again. I can't depend on any of it. don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to plan for it. 

Without a plan, all the normal stress of moving is compounded, involving terrifying unknowns that I'll be expected to deal with when I'm having a meltdown instead. That's not going to go well.

This is why I initially jumped on the prospect of living in a tent in their yard, instead of thinking about it as a last resort. Despite all the problems with that, I was relieved having something to plan for. I focused on all the ways I could make the most of the situation. 

When they changed their minds and decided I couldn't do that, I fell back into the chaos of trying to figure out what I was going to do. I start thinking something else might work out, and then fall apart again when it doesn't. I need to know what I'm doing, or I'm not going to do anything.

Planning has become a critical tool in how I manage my mental health. Without it, I can't function. This is not an issue I need to overcome. It is how I've learned to overcome a much worse issue.

housing crisis

I tried so hard to be optimistic, but the situation is worse than I'd realized. Under the best of circumstances, finding a place to live and moving there is a lot for me. Something I've never done without someone else finding the place for me, one way or another. I'm doing so much better these days though. I felt ready to handle it this time.

Then I saw what they're charging for rent now. It's more than doubled in the last decade. I have more money than I've ever had I before, but still not enough to afford the rent for the cheapest one bedroom apartment. I thought I was seeing a few listings in my price range, but realized those are for renting a room, or sharing an apartment with strangers. Half of them are outright scams. Some people are capitalizing on the desperation, advertising non-existent apartments and asking for an application fee in advance.

I'm on a waiting list for subsidized housing, but the wait could be a year or more. I need to be out of here by August 1st.

I'm far from being the only one impacted by this. People handle it in different ways. Some live with parents or family, if they can. Others end up homeless, if they don't kill themselves to avoid it. Many are forced to randomly live together to share the rent with strangers, but no doubt, that poses all sorts of problems. Unlike landlords, bound by law to have good reasons for rejecting applicants, people looking for randos to live with need to be more discriminatory. 

The ads are almost all the same. Young working people, often in college, looking for other young people to live with. They get plenty of responses from others in similar situations. What are the chances they choose the old unemployed guy with disabling mental health problems? Is it just my mental illness talking, or is that a long shot?

It's a difficult solution, and of course, I'm extra sensitive to it. I'm trying to accept that it may be necessary, but it's tough to imagine trying to cope. Maybe it would be good for me, right? It may be a last resort as the end of July approaches. Failing to figure out what else to do, I'm thinking that I need to focus on getting my stuff out. I can streamline that down to a single car-full. Store it somewhere. 

Then on July 31st, I can go wherever, without necessarily moving in there. I'll then qualify for homelessness assistance, but I don't know what that entails. I can double down on trying to find anyone looking for roommates or renting a room. It might be easier to focus on finding a place, if I move out first.

Sure, that sounds nuts, but I can't deal with this. It's not going well, and I need to just stop thinking about it.

condescending

When we're benevolently condescending towards someone, it's typically someone we deem lacking the faculties to perceive the condescension. For example, if someone is deaf, that can make speech difficult. They can't hear themselves, so it comes out differently than intended. It can sound like they're not cognitively developed enough to speak clearly, but if we talk to a deaf person the way we might talk to someone who is cognitively impaired, from their perspective, we're just being ignorant and insulting.

A more common example would be how we talk to young children. If we talk to an adult the same way, it is insulting, even when intentions are benevolent. We condescend towards children because we're cognizant of the fact that their minds are less developed than ours. They haven't experienced as much as we have. They have a lot to learn, and we adjust accordingly, not to be insulting, but to communicate more effectively.

When we do the same to someone that has been through just as much as we have, if not more, it says a lot about how we think about that person. It shows how we're interpreting someone's appearance and behavior, such as whether they speak clearly and coherently. If they don't, it makes sense to assume they can't.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why people respond to me as they do, but I've come to realize that they aren't necessarily wrong for it. Under ideal circumstances, my cognitive abilities are fine and then some. When I'm out in the world though, under stress or depressed, trying to navigate social norms, distracted by everything going on around me, my cognitive ability is impaired. This is the only version of me most people know.

What difference does it make if I'm a different person when I'm alone? It makes a whole lot of difference who I am out and around people. If who we are is not the abstraction in our heads, but how we behave out in the world, no wonder people are condescending towards me. I struggle like hell to function like a normal person and can't even explain why. 

We understand why deaf people have trouble talking. It's not so clear why I do, but I am not so impaired as to be oblivious to the condescension.

last summer

When I talk about my hopes for this summer, I'm talking about the possibility of another chance to fight. I'm talking about lots of highly motivated training. Last summer, I didn't blog about my hopes for fear of somehow undermining them. Almost superstitious, but I didn't want to take any chances. You never know who might be out there with a voodoo doll, daring me to express a glimmer of happiness.

I've worked on my cardio to say the least, although ironically, I've never believed it was about my cardio. I remember jumping from one possibility to another, entry after entry. Hindsight's given me some perspective, so thought I'd sum up the possibilities. Any of them might be true, maybe a combination of factors, or maybe none of them. Maybe just my cardio, or something else entirely.

First, there's my age. I figure there's a good chance it was at least a consideration. Here's another fight from the same venue I posted the other day. One guy's 49, the other 57. Were they showing their age? Sure, but it seemed fine. There might be reluctance to match a 49 year old with a 23 year old, despite being in much better shape than these guys.

I wasn't even being ambitious enough for an event like this. I just wanted to fight at my own gym. A low key event with shin guards and foam helmets. Age doesn't seem like much of a reason to deny me on its own.

Another possibility is that he wanted another guy to get the fight, who's since moved on to bigger leagues, as I knew he wanted to do. This was his chance to get his feet wet, it helped get him started. The only problem being that he outweighed his opponent by 17 lbs. He outweighed me by 15 lbs. Already very lean, they had him cutting 12 lbs, and I suspect simply putting me name in the mix would give the other team the option to fight me, instead. 

This feels less likely, how dare I even suggest it, and yet the pieces add up awfully well. Maybe the coach told himself eh, the old guy probably shouldn't be fighting anyhow, so it's ok. I train with this guy all the time. Here he is a few months later.

The third possibility feels most likely to be the whole problem, or none of it. It is what shattered me, questioning what I've always thought was just low self-esteem. This wasn't just people being condescending and weird, but tangible consequences. One of the only things I've ever had any confidence about, shot down like I wasn't to be taken seriously.

People have been treating me strangely my entire life. I thought it must be due to my endocrine problems, but maybe it's never been about that. I think it's visible in how I carry myself, how I flounder expressing myself and socializing, maybe even in my bone structure. Autism is genetic, and if it interferes with social ability, maybe people immediately pick up on it and read too much into it. 

If someone is anything from schizophrenic to brain damaged, I can understand thinking it might not be a good idea to put them into the ring, and it sure seems like people often don't know what to make of me. They don't need to have any concept of autism to see someone behaving like an autistic person and make assumptions. 

I don't know if this is really true though. I can't figure out what people see or why they react to me the way they do. I know it's possible I'm getting it all wrong, which is a whole different kind of crazy. I just figured if I work hard enough, I can blow past expectations powerfully enough to crush all of it this time around.

Then it turned out I suddenly have to move and rent costs are insane. I've been so stressed, I keep faltering. I haven't been training enough. I don't know where I'll be living when the next event rolls around. I don't know if I'll be able to keep training at all. Even if it all works out ok, I'm struggling in the meantime to stay focused on being optimistic. It's not easy finding the motivation to go get beat up like I need to.

wiring vs chemistry

There is an important distinction to be made between mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety or even personality disorders, and being on the spectrum. Mental illnesses develop in response to conditions and can be alleviated by changes in conditions. People develop depression, and they can overcome it. Personality disorders can be complex, but we're not born with them. None of it is easily defeated, but it's always possible, always something to strive for.

Being on the spectrum is less about chemistry and more about how we're wired. People are born this way, and it will always be how their brains work. We can learn to manage it, mitigating the problems our differences can cause, but it will always be a part of our lives. ASD is not an illness. It's who we are.

Today has been another dreary day wasted feeling terrible. I woke feeling terrible and never pulled out of it. Problematic wiring can certainly lead to bad chemistry. I am not miserable for being neurodivergent, but because I am failing miserably at managing it. That is, I am unable to meet my needs or function in society, and the rest of the world isn't much help. I was really hoping this summer I'd be able to turn things around, but surprise, I'm on the verge of homelessness again, instead.

I'm stressed and overwhelmed, procrastinating dealing with it every day. In theory, I should be able to sort it out, but that's always been a problem. In theory, I'm a normal functioning person, when in reality, I never quite get there. In theory, dealing with people goes easily. In reality, it's all drowned in white noise, exhaustion and anxiety.

I have until August 1st to be out of here. Maybe I will pull it together at the last minute and everything will work out, but in the meantime, my mind is a wreck. I spend all day every day planning to at least get to the gym, and then don't do that, either.

priorities

Training has become my whole life. Before training, I had no life. If I have to stop, that will end my life. This is not simply a special interest that I'm being hyper-reactive to losing. It's me looking at the causal array of consequences that will occur. There's no reason I'd have to stop training, as long as I find a place to live. This is directed at those who think giving it up is a reasonable option to suggest, for any reason. You don't understand what you're suggesting.

My entire life has been swallowed up by this state I refer to as having no life. It is not some cutesy catch phrase for having the sads. To explain it though, how far back do we have to go? Do I need to explain the neurophysiology of why humans need social connection and a sense of purpose or direction in their lives? Do I need to dig up statistics showing how many people literally die when they lose these things? Do I need to remind anyone that my own mental health is pretty far from being stable? Do I need to explain how getting myself to the gym has been the only thing holding me together for years, or why I can't just take up crochet, instead?

I don't know where to start. Keep it succinct and nobody understands. Go into detail, and nobody listens. I've lost so much these last few years. I hold onto this, all that I have left, with everything I have. It's the only hope I have left that my life will get better. I have no reason to live without it. 

My priorities are fine. If I deprioritize getting to the gym, everything else falls apart. 

support needs

In ASD discourse, they talk about differing support needs, instead of differences of severity. The problem is that I look at "support needs" as synonymous with deficit and disability. I don't understand the word games we play to destigmatize things that are inherently undesirable. Stupidity is stupidity, no matter what we call it.

I understand that it makes people feel bad. I understand that all too well, being disabled myself. I just don't think it helps the situation to go renaming everything. It only serves to confuse people, from those who want to help to those who need the help.

I find the notion of support needs just as stigmatic, and I wonder if that has anything to do with my upbringing. I don't feel entitled to any support. My sister and I didn't even get the normal support kids are supposed to get, let alone anything additional. We had to fend for ourselves a lot. My sister handled it by getting a job and moving out when she was thirteen. My support needs being a little higher, I handled it by giving up on trying to do much of anything.

Maybe this is why I'm a communist. I believe we should all be entitled to share in the fruits of modern civilization, that letting nature crush those with higher needs ultimately leads to a weak civilization. Ideally, we should all get the help we need to flourish so that we might give back to society in our own ways.

In reality, this is just not how it works. In reality, we need to survive, we need to find our own way to flourish in a world that will crush us if we fail. Not only because I'm a citizen of this modern American dystopia, but because that's how we were raised. Our father in his own world, our mother always had other priorities. When I needed more help than other kids, I got less. That's just how life works, as I know it. Higher support needs might as well be a death sentence. Destigmatizing it means accepting that, when we should be fighting for our lives.

When we lift each other up, that does not make our needs go away. It gives us means to find other redeeming qualities in a world where of course that fucking matters. Pretending we're all equal no matter what does not help anybody. 

Others grow up having their needs met, lending them the privilege of seeing things differently. While they're worrying about which words make them feel bad, I had to figure out how to survive, despite unmet support needs. I had to make sacrifices. I had to sacrifice life.

more words

Why am I fixating and obsessing over this concept of autism? When I say it's just a word, I'm saying that to me, it doesn't mean enough to explain my situation. I don't understand why I'm like this. I don't understand why I live like this. Slapping a label on it doesn't help, if that label doesn't represent much of an explanation.

What I'm actually fixating on is not how I think of myself, but how others think of me. Is this the word that explains why people have treated me this way my whole life? Is this the word they use for those they think are like me? Does this explain how I present, the range of ways in which I struggle to meet social expectations and the sort of dysfunction others read into that? Is this the word for what others see?

This is why it's making me feel hopeless. It's a word that represents what I am, and not just my circumstances, in terms of who others understand me to be. It's something that isn't going to change, no matter what I do. Everything I do is forced into the context of an autistic person trying to do it. Even as I overcome all these hurdles to try to make more of myself, I only run head first into social dynamics that shut me down like it's nothing.

What people think does matter. It matters a hell of a lot. When we apply for a job or an apartment, or see a doctor, or try to make friends or meet someone attractive, or try to prove readiness to get into a boxing ring, of course what other people think matters, but maybe I'm still getting it all wrong. I can't tell. 

People are nice to me, but they aren't interested in me. They don't admire or support my endeavors. I am tolerated as long as I'm not an imposition. I'm allowed to exist at the fringes, taking college courses or training at the gym, but people expect me to stay there. Good for you, engaging in healthy activities, but don't get in the way of everyone else actually trying to get anywhere.

forever a white belt

I need to explain a few things about competition; why I keep talking about it, and why I never do it. For one thing, it's how you progress through the belt system in BJJ and Judo. They're not like Karate or Hwa Rang Do. There are no belt tests. Different gyms handle it differently, but where I go, win or lose, competing is the main criteria. As long as someone is training regularly and competing, they'll be regularly promoted. 

Having never competed, I'll never move beyond white belt. I don't typically care about belts, but that's pretty harsh. It's also just odd being able to tap out blue belts who are bigger, stronger, and half my age. Competition is considered really important. If you don't compete, you're never really being tested.

I also need to clarify that this is very different from competing in kickboxing or MMA. Nobody has to allow me to compete in BJJ. I just hear about an upcoming competition and give it a go. These BJJ competitions are much less appealing to me, but they're also without all the drama surrounding my coaches not thinking it's something I should do. Even if they think it's a bad idea, they aren't going to try to stop me, whereas in kickboxing or MMA, they are gatekeepers. It is possible to compete without their involvement, but that requires a whole array of things I don't have.

There was a fight recently, at a venue my gym participates in sometimes, where one of the fighters clearly lacked experience. Watching him fight, I wondered what kind of terrible coach would allow it. They're supposed to protect people from themselves, as well as protect the reputation of the gym, by not putting anyone in the ring who isn't ready to be there. 

So, looking into it, I saw that this guy was unaffiliated. That means he didn't have a coach giving him the go ahead or support. This was a great example of why that matters.

The reasons I haven't competed in BJJ are completely different, although not entirely unrelated. Having my self-confidence torpedoed sure hasn't helped. The primary reason I don't compete is unusual though. Not something most people would even consider. I was rereading some old entries when it occurred to me to address this. I hadn't even thought about it.

Competitions are an all day thing. They're almost never local, taking from an hour to five hours, just to get to. There is a ton of waiting around for your turn. I was exhausted just spectating that one time. I'm dependent on others to get me there and get me home, while doing anything that takes so long is a major endurance trial for me even on my best days, let alone my worst. When my turn does come up, I'd already be feeling drained and profoundly uncomfortable. I'd be dependent on people who don't understand any of that.

Even going to the gym picnic out in Colchester was an ordeal and an accomplishment for me, before crawling back into my apartment feeling defeated. The matches themselves would be the easy part. I would be competing with my own limitations most of all. I might not be able to handle it, I might be miserable, and that's before losing to anyone. If there were ever a BJJ competition at my own gym, of course I'd compete. Without hesitation. If it went badly or just dragged on too long, I'd simply walk home.

ball and chain

Why is life so hard? We look around us, we look at social media or mainstream media, we compare because we're trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Is this normal? Is this manageable? What is everyone else doing, because what I'm doing has not been going well at all. Is something wrong with me?

If you turn to your local community, you might find everyone has problems, everyone is struggling, you might help each other. Maybe we work together to solve our problems, or maybe we just take comfort in knowing we're not fighting alone.

Or, maybe you look around, and other people seem to be doing ok. They have problems but they're not being crushed by them. They acquire tools to make it all easier, they form social relationships, they work but they also have fun. Wait, how fucked up am I that all of this is beyond me? Why is life so hard?

From my perspective, my burdens are massive and I am strong for every step I take in spite of that. From their perspective, I am weak and struggling to barely do anything. Why is life so hard?

We might call it autism. We might say that we have a disability, like a ball and chain we drag everywhere with our powerful legs, strengthened by a lifetime of this. They only see that we are slow and we walk funny. 

None of this is right or wrong. It makes sense from our perspective. It makes sense from their perspective. It makes sense that I hate their perspective so. I hate that they see me this way. I hate that it only makes sense and I can't even blame them for it.

Giving it a label like autism can be meaningful, because that makes it objective. It explains why life is so hard, for me and not everyone else. It indicates that it's not subjective, not something I can think away, or even hide all that well. The objectivity of it upsets me, because that means it exists not only in my head, but in what other people perceive me to be. It validates the way that they respond to me, when I've been hoping all my life that it was all in my anxious imagination or that I just need to learn social skills or that they're just being jerks.

critical mass

I've been feeling severely depressed since yesterday and I don't know why. It could be a number of things compounding the ever-present number of other things. It would be useful to know what specifically triggers this because it chain reactions into making everything worse. 

• I end up with no food in the house, because I can't deal with acquiring food.
• I only get three hours of sleep just because. 
• I don't do my laundry, so I can't even go to the gym, even if I could achieve the herculean feat of getting myself out the door.
• I don't do assorted other errands causing a range of problems. 
• I don't get any sunlight, human contact, or physical activity.

Feels like all I can do is wait to feel better, which typically happens eventually, despite doing everything possible to make myself feel worse. This could depend on what's making me feel like this in the first place.

• Speaking of sunlight, it's been raining and overcast for three days now. It feels like superstition, but that often seems to coincide.
• A few days ago, I learned that the housing subsidy application I filed two months ago had stalled because they need more info, and weren't even bothering to tell me. As I'm running out of time, it's endless problems trying to get any help.
• There's a BJJ competition coming up this weekend, so of course all this goes wrong just beforehand, lest I have any kind of positive experience to help me feel better about life. 

The coach that usually handles this stuff is away this week, so it seems to be in the hands of a coach whose class I never go to because we don't get along. The one who even went so far as to say to me, not everyone should compete. So I found out about it late, I don't know what's going on with car pooling, and I'm too depressed to deal with finding out. I don't have a clean gi, and I need food and sleep to even consider going, anyhow.  

I thought I'd get it sorted out at the gym last night, but that didn't happen. I had plans for groceries and laundry today, as well as a trip to the housing authority office a few blocks away. Maybe I'm overwhelmed by planning to do a few things on the same day, because I'm autistic and can't handle life's normal bullshit without melting down.

Maybe it's all of it, because the stars always seem to align to crush my will to live. Most brutal of all always being what we're inclined to overlook in this hyper-individualist society - that I'm always going through it all alone. That is what has been shown time and again to be the difference between recovery and trauma that wrecks mental health.

This does not mean I want to be dragged into hours of phone calls with my family. It makes me feel subhuman when people fail to see that it's branching out and meeting people in the world that matters. You don't think I have normal impulses and needs for connection? I don't think anyone would overlook this if they didn't perceive me as different; inferior, I should be happy just to survive.

When they say I shouldn't compete, what does that tell me? I don't get to partake in the normal healthy experiences everyone else does. The positive experiences they take for granted aren't for someone like me.

What do people think I am? Autistic? What does that even mean to people who have no idea what it means? They don't even seem to know. They get confused if I ask. They have no problem discriminating but can't be bothered to really think about it. They're only vaguely aware that they treat me differently at all and won't face why. 

What am I supposed to think? How else should I feel? Just accept my unfortunate station in life? Fuck you. 

just a word

If I try to explain my theory of mind theories in person, it's a challenge to keep it succinct enough to be worth saying at all. Is it a form of masking that I'm conscientious about this? I'm always abridging what I want to say, because if I go into adequate detail, I'm just going to confuse and bore people. I have trouble thinking clearly enough in the moment, anyhow. 

Sometimes I am motivated to write precisely the things no one wants to hear. One might say my blog is intentionally unappealing. It is the discarded remnants of conversations I've had where I was less than genuine, because to be genuine would be problematic. I want to get the gist across, to express the basic angle I'm coming from, without getting into any lectures of extended implications and supporting evidence. 

I find it interesting to think about what's going on in the brain at a lower level, before it manifests into the behaviors people ascribe all their understanding to. Maybe this is what they call top-down thinking. We start from a premise and then explain it, using what we already know. 

In neurotypical theory of mind, we start from the premise that others are similar to ourselves. This streamlines the process of relating and empathizing, by glossing over any need for facts. It tends to work most of the time, as humans do share a lot of similarities more often than not. 

Oxytocin may play a key role in this, and that also produces in-groups and out-groups. We relate and empathize in this streamlined way, with those we consider our own kind. We can learn to define that more broadly or narrowly, but it is neurotypical to be averse to those who are different. To be deemed somehow different is to get the ugly side of oxytocin.

It is not difficult to understand the direct impact a person might experience, if they struggle to trust or relate to anyone, but if this is rooted in neurologic dysfunction, it likely goes all the way back to infancy, before we have any cognitive framework to make sense of it. Some of the more severe manifestations of autism may be the consequence of lacking a basic sense of affinity for caregivers. Development occurs without emulating or learning from them. Facial expressions, language, even how to eat.

Apparently some in the autistic community oppose talking about autism in different degrees of severity. It's a spectrum, they argue. We're all different, but nobody is more or less autistic. I don't know why that would be the case, or know of any evidence that is the case. So I'm left to wonder what would motivate  such a bias.

We're not supposed to consider it a disability but what does it mean to have higher support needs? What does it mean to be more severely impacted by all the ways autism has made life so difficult? What if the degree to which we lack trust and affinity varies, such that developmental consequences are more or less profound? Mental health is rarely binary, but we want to frame things a certain way, we want to feel good about them. 

Bottom-up thinking is when we look at all the information we have, and build towards an interpretation. Whether or not that makes us feel good falls to the other side of the equation; a consequence, not a premise. We learn to mask how harsh that can be. How is it a disability when we're right and it's neurotypical to be happily wrong about everything? Well, look at my life. That's how.

Tonight, I am depressed despite getting to the gym. It seems worst of all to be depressed after doing the one thing that allegedly makes me happy. Sometimes it just goes all wrong. I wasn't feeling great beforehand and going anyhow didn't help. I come home just wanting to do whatever it takes to insulate myself from the pain, but nothing works anymore. 

This idea that I am autistic could be liberating. Maybe I should stop trying to hide it and follow my impulses. Maybe I'm destroying myself, hopelessly trying to be what I'm not. What, someone who can afford a place to live, someone that other people might actually like? Maybe there are reasons I never get there. 

No wonder my life has been so difficult, but I don't feel relieved. I feel my hopes that it will ever change have been dashed, and everyone who's ever doubted me has turned out to be right. I've spent my life failing to prove them wrong. I will end my life before accepting this.

eye contact

Eye contact is the go-to example often used in autism discourse when talking about masking. Growing up, I was often told how important it is. As a kid, as a teenager, it didn't come naturally to me, and so easy it is to chalk it up to being nervous. There is a presumption that we all have to learn social skills and some learn faster than others. I learned to make eye contact, but to this day I'm always worrying about whether I'm making enough or too much, or where I'm supposed to be looking exactly.

If we don't even try, we look autistic. What if that's because we are autistic? It takes us much greater effort to do, but we do it anyhow, it to mask what we are.

As I've written about in myriad ways, I reject any solid notion of who or what we are. We are always changing, growing, dying, learning and forgetting. It's a mistake to think a label makes it any more immutable. We shouldn't be judging ourselves, and we should always strive to do better, regardless.

Eye contact isn't just this trivial thing people do. We are animals, our lives full of systems evolved to help us adapt and flourish. We use our superior cognitive abilities to blind ourselves to all that, reducing everything to arbitrary choices we make. Eye contact stimulates oxytocin, which produces feelings of trust and affinity. For autistics, that system may not work as it should, so eye contact doesn't do anything for us. We don't feel trust, we don't relate, whether we make eye contact or not.

What does this mean for those we interact with? Do we want their trust? Do we want them to relate to us? Do we want to try to overcome this obstacle to human connection, or do let our current circumstances define our entire lives?

Jenny was big on this idea of being who we are. We are all different kinds of flowers and that's ok. No pressure, no judgment. I believed in that, too. I stopped masking so much. I played Civilization V all day every day for over a year. I stopped making eye contact. Towards the end, she commented that she only ever sees my profile. I barely thought about it at the time.

I've grown a lot. I don't like calling it masking. I thought I was superior to everyone, but I had so much to learn. I still do. We can call autism a disability or a superpower, but no matter what we are or what we call it, weaknesses will be overcome and strengths will atrophy, depending on what we do with what we are.