Documentation

I’ve had this post open on a blank slate for days, and neglected to write a word in it until now. It isn’t selfish to leave, or to desire to leave, and not everyone needs nor wants help to be “fixed”, if it is a rational and premeditated decision on their part. I’m not particularly at any new risk; any of my opinions here are those I have held for years. I would very much appreciate it if any irrational or destructive actions weren’t conducted as a response of this post “because you care”. People should be allowed to speak their mind on their personal being without fear of detainment. The fact that it is viewed as taboo and people are forced to experience this in silence only feeds into the behavior in the first place. A person like this cannot simply “get over it” with “positive thinking”. As soon as your thoughts start to manifest itself in real life, that’s when everyone starts to distance themselves. And despite my best efforts, I notice it happening, and I feel helpless. Especially when people’s offerings to “talk about it” only get met with a denial with the knowledge that actually talking about it is going to get people involved who don’t need to be, in addition to generally bringing my emotion even lower due to my issues with actually speaking about said issues. There’s no sensible reason to dwell on somebody like me at this point.

Every effort required to exist is exhausting. Dealing with people, including friends and acquaintances, has always been and continues to be exhausting. “Overthinking” every social situation I experience and their effects isn’t normal, but it’s necessary if I want to try to learn more about them to avoid bad situations in the future (that I seem to continually run into) – idly suggesting to “just wing it” is very much unhelpful.

Any real-life interaction take much more of a toll on me than it may appear, for a myriad of reasons. For this reason, person to person discussion with a therapist would hinder my state even more on principle, and return fruitless, due to numerous issues with verbal communication. It would be, for all intents, an objective waste of time. I also have issues with disclosure and the fact that they are another human being who is capable of judgement. I can have conversations with people that will seem normal on their end. However, it’s not possible for anyone to know the amount of work that it takes for me to get to that point of apparent decency and normalcy. I have a very difficult time describing myself, my actions, or my situations in live discussion, as there as so many layers of thought process and acquired instincts that I can’t explain without a multi-paragraph writeup such as these. They’re all a interlaced tangle of asynchronous thoughts and events that I have to individually recognise and understand before describing. Yes, a therapist would certainly be helpful in this sense. But it can’t happen. I’ve talked to a few when I was a minor. I’ve been Baker-acted and forced into a hospital as a minor. It’s not going to happen.

Therapy often doesn’t actually offer any form of practical help for people who have serious problems. Attempts are made to try to form bonds with us to establish trust so that we can help ourselves, but that doesn’t realistically work. If I were capable of fixing my problems on my own, then I would’ve already done so. I have been in the process of attempting to, and even others notice progress. But my problems are never going to go away, and there’s no point in denying that they will. Talking to a stranger with this type of authority doesn’t allow me to be honest. This type of person cannot understand my standpoint and overall will not help me in the slightest. Whatever bond there is in therapy is gone the moment I walk out of the door and back into whatever circumstances brought me there in the first place. If I have to bottle up what my circumstances or emotions are, for fear of involuntary hospitalization or legal intervention, a therapist is significantly more dangerous to be around compared to a trusted acquaintance, or being on my own. I don’t know if I’m alone here, but the looming threat and carefully selecting what I say and when I say it simply adds on to the stress of adopting a counselor. I have already been involuntarily capacitated, and all it has done is create bad memories that I can’t stop myself from jumping back to. Forced to be stripped of your belongings, to disclose your identity, and get thrown into social situations which pains a person like me to partake in, for no good reason. The place I stayed was more similar to a jail, with its pillowless hard cots suspended off the ground while being watched by an officer while you sleep. Completely cut-off from the outside world. In retrospect, it alone was a traumatising highlight of the last few years.

If someone asks why I do something, or why I have something, or why I have certain habits, the answer is always difficult to explain due to this. I am aware no one needs a novel for a simple question, but given that I often do not understand myself or my actions, self-analysis is necessary. Generally, a person’s observance of me results in a general consensus being that I’m some weird kid, or that patronising response of “you’re funny” when meeting people while I trip up over unspoken social cues, or similar. Responses have ranged from “Dunno, you’re just an amusing person to study” to “I’ve given up trying to figure them out”, as overheard by verbatim. But above all, I would also rather not deal with a random who, is only a worker programmed to detect certain trends and warning behaviours and act based off of those findings, and is someone who still is able to judge and incorrectly assume data on the basis of them being a human, and can influence legal decisions over me without my consent. This is something I have to work at on my own terms and with my own motivation, if I wanted to document and analyze why things are the way they are. The motivation is dwindling.

I don’t communicate with my family at all, and that extends to any other person as well. It’s happenstance, and not by choice. I’ve worked by myself as long as I can remember. I don’t have the skills, patience, desire, or stability to have a normal relationship with people and it’s ridiculous that I don’t have the most basic skills required to function in any society. It’s taken me from work, caused me not to return messages to people that I don’t want a negative relationship with. However, the latter is what the action typically entails or implies. The sum of these situations caused me to be content with being trapped in a room alone for almost twenty-four hours a day, six days a week for half of this year. Political nonsense burns me out as it’s more realistic to describe politics as an internal civil war between the both halves of the nation’s citizens, at least in current society. Even the sitting President does not hesitate to publicly condemn “the other side” simply for their views, like a child. I am not a sociology major. Don’t pretend like I know, or care, for what is best for the country, when I don’t know how to function as an individual.

I’m not content about my relationships with people in general, however, due to the above. I’ve felt like a side character for nearly everyone outside of my immediate family aside from one or two persons. I’ve made efforts to change this, of which I’ve given up on after years. I’ve even attempted a more radical change in my everyday life within the last few months by not working, focusing on myself, and leaving an online toxic timesink that I frequently spend almost 24 hours a day on since 2016, all of which did not return any effects. I’ve received tons of cards and phone numbers after my coma from other students and work acquaintances that I have not responded to. There are people who I’ve known since elementary who have had a desire to reconnect with in the past two years, and the only thing separating us is my brain. There’s messages that I’ve left on read that I often desire to respond to, but a mental block forces me to stay silent, and finally responding to them months after the fact is “out of line”. Similar things happen when I am told to explain personal issues in real life. I become mute and there’s nothing anyone can do (read: anything I can do) to change this. Some of it may be anxiety, but there is evidence for other issues as well.

Every symptom of the above is very similar to selective mutism, however, there are a few things inaccurate about that assumption: the fact that it is normally a childhood disorder, and generally refers to groups of people, not topics, and it likely can’t refer to nonverbal communication via technology, in which case it could be generalised anxiety there. The latter one would require a proper diagnosis. However, there certainly is a case for local person-to-person discussion. In late 2017 to late 2018, I certainly had a severe period of it that was also affecting work, as I did not and could not physically talk, despite the line of work requiring it. Looking at a person in the eye was not possible, nor was saying a single word to any person until the following day, getting by with gestures and head movements. Not one vocal chord is triggered during these days. One could say they are invasive thoughts telling me that I’m crossing a line as part of a fight or flight response, but whatever they are, they can be excruciating, and that reaction does occasionally happen to this day in certain circumstances aside from mutism. The last time I’ve had a period of this mutism explicitly occurring was in late 2018, when I was not fully sentient but conscious inside of my hospital room after the accident. This is documented in legal papers surrounding the stay, along with an avoidant personality being noted. I remember communicating via writing on a board or texting and showing doctors the text file.
Regarding that, immediately after my awakening from my coma, I was able to form and retain memories. During this time until mid-November, I was in a dream-like daze. My closest analogy to the experience is like the period of time immediately before dozing off to sleep after not sleeping for two days, however this period lasted for weeks. I was not using any executive brain function and lacked any critical thinking and many motor skills, but I was able to receive and process auditory, nervous, and visual information. I didn’t realise that I had been struck by a rogue car (or that anything in my life was out of the usual) until about a week after I returned home from the one-month stay in the hospital / physical rehabilitation, and regained full consciousness. Everything from mid-October to mid-November was nothing but one large dream in my experience. I vividly remember having a moment of realisation in my house in November, recalling that all of my memories of a hospital setting and unknown people were, in fact, reality, and I realised the stress that it put on the people around me. I certainly felt guilt then, especially given how I generally am okay with being the side character in everyone’s life. Not the one who gets the attention.

Social situations out of the way, misophonia also affects how I conduct and structure each day. This is a audio sensory disorder which causes a person to exhibit strong reactions, either physically or only mentally, to certain sounds. A good comparison would be nails on a chalkboard to most people as a general “annoyance”. However, the response caused by auditory triggers with misophonia are not “annoying”. They are not even excruciating. They are insufferable. There are two specific sounds which cause this reaction that I don’t dare to even mention. In any case, learning the name of a reaction that I’ve had memories of ever since Kindergarten up until now, and finding out that it isn’t just myself, brings a small amount of peace. For a while, I had been wearing wireless earbuds constantly to drown out any instances of these sounds occurring, namely while working.

Within the last few months, I’ve began to have unexplained jerks and twitches, especially on the left side of my body. I’ve always had episodes which are similar to focal onset aware seizures, and those have been a part of me for as long as I remember. However, myoclonus is a new one that has appeared within the past two months that I need to talk to a doctor about. Generally, my left shoulder will flinch or jerk uncontrollably for a split second, and this happens disproportionately (but not exclusively) during times where my body is idle (standing up, or otherwise). It happens at any time during the day and can occur during walking or running, and may keep me awake during the night, but I don’t know if it happens during full sleep. Unlike the focal-onset, which have occurred for as long as I can remember, these likely are a direct result of the stroke and/or traumatic brain injury that I’ve experienced at the time of the accident. This entire situation regarding both types of seizures are minor in my eyes, but they’re both worth mentioning in this context.

All in all, there’s nothing that obliges me to stick around and nothing to stick around for. Being unable to “turn my head off” is a phrase only partially suitable for this situation. On one hand, I’ve had an ongoing period of “brain fog” since 2018, and paired with a high workload between both home, school, work, and online, has caused an extreme burnout which is ongoing. During the majority of the day, I can’t ‘”tune into” any specific thought process, which causes it to feel as if I’m thinking about nothing at any given time. These words are coming from my fingertips, not my brain, or so it seems. I used to be an avid reader, but I’m not able to visualise the words that I read anymore. I can process what is happening in the immediate sentence, but I can’t relate it to the rest of the events on the page. Reading for entertainment is now very much impossible. Being particularly unmotivated before, this “brain fog” sealed the deal, but on the other hand, there are other situations in which millions of thoughts are being processed per picosecond and they all seem to individually stab every square millimeter of my brain, like a Taser dart – often physically causing a reaction where I kneel or fall over covering my ears. It sounds overdramatic, but the fact remains that it painful and this is the result. Coincidentally, this is an identical reaction to any sound which triggers the misophonia. This happens over minor things like conducting a phone call in which the other side cannot understand me due to a speech impediment and/or stuttering, or otherwise acting as if I’ve never spoken to another human face to face in my life and I can hear their patience dwindle away. This reaction also happens during periods of mutism in cases where I need to speak yet can’t, despite a desire to. Though, I haven’t had a period of it in more than a year as of today. It also happens at times where a critical mistake has been made by me during an important task.

College is a disaster that I’m not looking forward to facing again soon. Aside from the existing issues with it, the career path that I’m destined for is not the one I am looking forward to and enjoying right now. None of the fields interest me, frankly. What is the end goal? To get a piece of paper which certifies my competency in a subject, so I can spend a large portion of my life continuing to sulk (only with debt this time), or in a job that doesn’t mean anything to me?

Some things don’t magically get better just because one talks about it, and this patronizing people by undermining their experiences and calling them “temporary problems” is nothing but disrespectful and, frankly, absolutely nothing more than an ass’s move, as with approaching a “simple solution” to a person’s mountains of issues as if they haven’t tried to better themselves already. There may be some situations where one acts irrationally, or if suicidal behavior is caused by a single trigger and the person needs to be brought down to earth, which are the exception. A combination of major mental and physical issues is valid enough for me. There are certainly some issues I have here which can technically be mitigated, but I have never had a strong outlook on living out the rest of my life and have no reason to “force” this to work aside from living for other people. I’ve known that I would die by my own hand ever since seventh grade at the latest and fifth at the earliest. I’ve no desire to try to stitch together a broken puppet with medication and therapy if the puppet is inherently destined for the landfill. I’m not interested in being forced to watch a seventy year long movie that I have no interest in seeing the ending to. Don’t really care if there’s another potential period of euphoria in the future which lasts for seconds at a time and comes with a hiatus of months. The amount of times in a single day I go back to 2018 and regret not getting a DNR filed before the accident happened, as I had planned, is painful. And I realise how much of an asshole I am to want to go through with it so much. I don’t like cracking a suicidal joke to myself while in the presence of innocent and happy people who just want to have a good time in a friendly discussion. I despise myself for each and every time I do this and other similar actions, but people’s overall opinion of my character, positive or negative, doesn’t magically make my experiences any more bearable. I have been sticking around exclusively for others already. I started writing a short novel over one of my favorite stories as a form of self-preservation or some motivation.

Important note: there is a major amount of information and issues relating to other official diagnoses, family, gender identity and orientation that I’ve neglected to put on this page. They’re not irrelevant in the slightest, but not worth putting down right here. People who already know some details will know what they know. “Details” does not equate to vaguely knowing an aspect of info about me. That extends to personality, orientation, or anything at all political.
I’m tired and apathetic to the idea of existing on its own. Anything other issue listed on this page are just adding salt to this wound. There’s a point where it’s not worth it and staying around becomes an obligation.