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.