Abscissa – Autism and Techno Blog

Greetings and time for a long overdue blog.

In truth, I find myself forced to get out and write. It’s been an incredibly rough few months and things only seem to go from bad to worse.

Does anyone remember when I posted the end of volume I and vowed it was going to be a new chapter in my life? That I had opened the door and I just needed to walk through it?

Well now, perhaps I fully understand just how deeply the old prison was needed to keep me safe from a world I simply can’t deal with. Can’t manage, can’t adapt to. Simply can’t tolerate.

That old depression, repression, suppression, all of it. It kept me safe and sane. Kept things from spiralling out of control. All I ever achieved in these times was to simply lose that safety blanket and be totally taken over by the worst fear response I have ever known.

A level of anxiety that can’t be switched off, no matter what I try. A growing feeling that I am doomed to live and die in a state of perpetual stress. To feel like I can never be safe.

Is this what I get for accepting and allowing myself to be autistic? Because it never used to be like this. I used to be able to escape. Used to have hope. Used to be able to laugh, not take things seriously.

It is, I think, a summary of what I’ve become, that I need to do everything with a level of competency required to succeed in some way, whatever it is I can actually push myself to do. The amount of pressure I’m putting on myself, for what? To prove a point or to show others that I can still be good at something?

That, despite everything society says and preaches, I’m still being questioned and criticised at every turn and I’m simply not allowed to be unhappy, not allowed to be uncommunicative, not allowed to be a struggling autistic, not allowed to be unhealthy.

Perhaps what’s been missing is this regular session of self-reflection and strong words to affirm and support myself. But then I did get sick and tired of the psychopathologising.

Anyway, I have always held a cynicism over society’s approach and mistrust in their wisdom. But when it’s those who are closest to you and care about you the most, those who do actually stay there for you and don’t abandon you, their words stick with you and affect you. How can they not?

Right now I’m struggling to determine if my perpetually clenched jaws are a sign that I need to stay silent to protect myself or a warning that I need to express all the pain and anger that I keep saddling myself with and get every little horror off my chest.

For you see the dilemma here, to unload everything I hold within myself and risk putting myself in a situation I can’t deal with or to keep withholding and suppressing and keep myself safely imprisoned.

Either way, I’m terrified. But you know the path I have always chosen is tolerable, otherwise I wouldn’t keep choosing it.

I am off work on annual leave at the moment. Among the many things I should be doing while I have the time off, all I actually want to do is sleep, or more accurately, just to doze off and rest my brain and my eyes. It’s my birthday this week. What do I want to do? Rest, sleep, stay in bed, rest some more.

Perhaps I am actually physically sick from clinical burnout and need bedrest to fucking heal. Except I’m not allowed to stay in bed. They won’t allow me and I won’t allow myself either. So good luck with that.

I must not be allowed to be sick because that is a bad thing and I’m not allowed to have bad things. Despite what every one says to make themselves look like good autism allies.

I was supposed to embracing the unknown, supposed to be taking my life back, all these mental health buzzwords. Why? When I’ve destroyed that which kept me safe.

I’ve lost all trust in society and it’s capacity to accomodate my needs so I’m keeping it all to myself as I’ve always done. And therein lies why I only wish now to go non-verbal and fuck communication off.

But talking honestly with myself is still needed. I haven’t been blogging much recently because I lost much enthusiasm and have just surrendered to burnout. Well there’s never going to be such thing as too much rest.

How many times do I say to myself now that this is who I am? Yeah, there’s lots of problems and issues and I’ve put so much effort into changing myself and becoming someone else. And yet this is who I am because I am autistic, and probably something else as well, ADHD? BPD? OCD? PDA? APD? NPD? Or just so far beyond meaningful diagnosis.

Because whatever the fuck I am, it would be nice to know that it’s ok be me. Day after day, the opposite if that is reinforced. I’d rather it not come to it, but I’m probably going to have to tell people to fuck off and leave me alone, otherwise I’m probably just going to destroy myself and end up in hospistal or dead.

And I say this now in an attempt to not take it too seriously, a bit of morbid gallows humour to lighten the load.

I’m not equipped to deal with my health failing, never was. Fuck it, it’s my life and I have only done what was needed to get through it and live it.

I am working on my music still, the current track is honestly a banger. It’s just a bit of a shame that I’m not in a state to handle it. Rest, I said I needed, and yet the track is hyperstimulation. I’ve made myself even sicker working on it. I’m making sicker every time I work on anything. That includes playing.

Video games are supposed to be fun escapism aren’t they? So why does my entire neck and skull tense up when I play? This is all so much internalised bullying, honestly. It is who I am, but need it be so?

Why is my chest perma-locked in unforgivable tension? Why does every muscle ache and grind? I’ve neglected my body for so long that it’s probably just given up now. I mean, what is the point of being healthy when I can only crave the mental stimulation that now kills my brain?

It’s coming into focus again, how much I will destroy myself before I can make any sort of real change to improve my life. I’m simply unable to fucking change my ways. I keep hoping the world will change so I don’t have to. And it does not.

So what now? I will continue to struggle, but keep my options open and just keep fighting.  Until I can fight no more. It feels like I’ve already reached that point, but no, there’s more to come.

What do I want for my birthday this year? Someone to break this painful reality and hold my hand and kiss me while they set my brain on fire. Failing that, I’ll settle for someone just saying things will be ok, and it’s ok for me to be unhappy and uncommunicative and miserable because that is how I survive this miserable existence.

I’m probably just bullshitting again here, the only thing I actually want is to forget these last 5 years and go back to the way things were.

What’s that? I can’t have that? Yeah, no shit. I know, that’s why I’ve been burying myself ever since.

It’s saturday night and I could stay out, get hammered and have a great night, or it could just end up a load of shit. I dunno. It’s wasn’t the plan tonight, saving it for another night.

I’m in a dark place tonight, just want to get some more stuff off my chest. But honestly, how much of this unwillingness is down to being constantly criticised for doing what I want to do? How much is down to just being a paranoid, neurotic basket case of anxiety, how much down to being weighed down by potential consequences of being myself?

I have little doubt now, that I have been severely compromised by the way I have been unequipped to deal with my own autism as well as that of others, being undiagnosed for so long and for so much lack of genuine affection and acceptance.

I have become a monster for all intents and purposes. A monster that no one can help. A semi-autonomous agent of misery and hate. A self-reflected hate that has always turns in on itself.

A hatred born of ignorance that I still do not fully understand. A puzzle that doesn’t make logical sense. An addict that cannot be cured. A demon that will always hide away to avoid examination. A sorrowful soul who’s only wisdom comes through intolerable suffering. A penitent sinner that craves what cannot be forgiven.

A coward who’s only redemption is to fight against his own cowardice itself, destined to die on the hill of his own pointless self-importance.

Subversion of the human soul, to seek horrible validation of pain and fear above all else. This is what happens to people like me. I offer no solutions because I don’t know anything else.

Actually, it’s worse than that because I do know what joy feels like, but it has become locked away, access denied.

I hope you’ll understand why the trauma demons took over and why I don’t see them as the enemy anymore. A pair of evil eyes that protect me by distorting reality.

Well, that all sounds very frightening, doesn’t it? 

Only it’s infinitely preferable to pretending I can survive living a normal life. I don’t expect people to understand because I’m incapable of communicating this in an honest way. I can function better than anyone else in this state, I’d like to think anyway.

Or used to anyway. I’m getting fucking old now. Ageing isn’t anything to celebrate at this age. I think I will make a deliberate joke that is or isn’t a real joke about this.

Do you know I would like to laugh again. Or even better, to make others laugh again. Alas, this is not sense of humour, this is just how dark my mood has become.

I think I know now what I need to say. It’s a bit different, dare I say, subversive. Please just allow me to be sad at this time of year. Lord knows, I have enough trouble allowing myself. Just maybe, that’s because the people around me won’t let me, for their own struggles are crying out for help and support from those who are supposed to be the ones to be there for help and support.

It’s a battle for who has it the hardest, and do you know, I have autism so I think mine takes some beating. Though I’m always reminded how hard others have it. And sometimes they do. I wish not to have that responsibility placed on my fucking inadequate shoulders.

I’m developmentally disordered, don’t you know. I’m mentally a fucking child. An overanalytical hyper-child but a child nonetheless. Oh how I wish it weren’t so. Believe it or not, I wish I weren’t neurologically disordered.  Mainly because my brain has always been my main attribute.

What’s that? I could do all the way up to 25 times tables when I was only 7 years old? Well so what, the drawback is that I struggle with reality and can’t cope with relationships and can’t relate to human beings?

I’m both gift and curse, but no one can accept or forgive the curse.

And so the path forward appears, though it remains extremely difficult. Fucking be myself but maintain that desire to connect. Connect though on my own terms.

Autism. Do you remember the word stem? Aut… the self. What does it mean? I should pay more attention to what my fellow autists are saying, but I should pay more attention to what I am saying.

Oh fuck it, I don’t really know if I belong here but I have been diagnosed so I might as well be part of it. I only know that I can’t keep defining myself by others’ standards. I am who I am. I have to suffer being myself. I have to live with what I have to live with.

Will I have the courage to tell everyone to fuck off? Very much doubt it. Though it is the very obvious solution.

What is beyond doubt is that I will continue to protect myself at any cost and therein lies why I will survive. If I do survive. Aha, if I really believed I wouldn’t survive, I’d be royally fucked then.

No, the only thing I want for my birthday is to be understood and forgiven for my many screwups, past, present, and future.

Thanks as always for reading xx