Hello again, it’s been a long time. Not that there’s been much I’ve wanted to write about recently. But needs must.
It’s been a terrible few months. Health anxiety has spun completely out of control. Spending all of my free time virtually bed-ridden. Things are beginning to reach critical point.
What a disaster it’s all been. How have I screwed things up this badly?
It’s been nearly 18 months since it started. Around the time I was putting volume I of this blog to bed and beginnimg the next volume. The doctor told me it was all anxiety and stress and that it wasn’t a good idea to quit smoking at that point.
Well I carried on smoking and now I feel very sickly at all the time. I’m too scared to quit but too scared to carry on.
My brain and body have been telling me no more, we can’t do this anymore, we can’t keep going.
I have just managed to make it 5 days without smoking but have slipped up today and smoked due to it being a very bad day.
How long have I been smoking to calm myself down and feel safe, actually not just calming down but feeling that nicotine buzz that allowed me to function as best as I could to keep up with the demands of work and adult life.
And now, lo and behold, my brain feels completely unsafe without it.
It’s not just that though, the depression and shame spiralling never really went away as far as I can tell.
It’s embarassing to think back to when I naively posted about conquering my autistic shame and trauma. Daring to suggest that I had been to hell and backed and flirted with insanity.
That was all just a romantic ideal and it couldn’t have been further from the truth. What it may have been was a prediction of the real battle I would come to face and have been consistently losing.
Despite the autism diagnosis I received and all the attempts of understanding and support, I have relentlessly, at every turn, tried to prove to everyone that I’m not broken and can live a normal happy life and be productive.
Well I’m still doing it, still masking, still not asking for help, still driven by fear as much as anything to just keep going and not let down those who rely on me.
And my brain and body have long since given up. There can be no way out as things currently stand. The help I need does not materialise when I can’t even communicate the help I need.
I’ve started the processing of breaking down enough to miss several days of work now. And isn’t it ironic that I have so much annual leave to take, because I kept putting it off. So I’ve been allowed to take the rest of this week off on the assumption that I can do something to help myself.
It’s becoming clear to me that my brain has finally decided to take extreme measures to protect itself and I need to wake up to certain things.
I can no longer tolerate living the way I have these last few years, I need to be brave and finally get away.
Everything I’ve ever written here that would have been the right thing to do was never really done and I wonder why I ever expected myself to be able.
But to actually recover and get healthy again from here? It means changing everything that I was never able to change and have no reason to believe I ever will.
It will involve so much that I can’t even begin to believe. Would it be fair to say that I just want nothing more than to be left alone to live with as much comfort my body will allow for as long as my heart keeps ticking.
But that’s not the way anyone will let me go out and if it was that simple I’d have done it already.
I should say at this point that I’m feeling I’m always coming across as more and more unreliable and untrustworthy, living behind the mask. When it all stems from my communication difficulties. I wish people would understand that I’m always trying to be honest but there are times I simply can’t talk honestly.
Can’t face up to things, can’t function under much stress. Can’t do this, can’t do that.
It is with the representation of the autism community behind me, pushing me onwards to be seen as healthy and not broken. That I can’t be seen as a failure or let anyone down. It is a responsibility I’ve taken upon myself which all seems so silly now.
But anyway, I don’t feel like an autistic voice worth listening to anymore. I had many grand ideas following the diagnosis and throughout the good times and the bad. I was going to do things that would be great. The “great work” I once called it.
How fucking deluded I was.
How can I possibly be anything other than a cautionary tale of how not to live as an autistic? Maybe if I actually started to assert my needs once in a while and stop playing the same old woes.
I’m so tired of making promises I can’t keep, tired of dragging everything out to the point of stupidity.
All the help that I need but won’t ask for? I don’t want it and maybe I wouldn’t need it if I could actually take control of my own life and throw everything away. Tear it all down and start again.
But then I would need help doing all that. I couldn’t do it when I still had my health. I can’t do it now.
Having fallen off the wagon today, it’s back to the quitting again tomorrow. Allow myself this latest failure and go again. I’m no longer keen to romanticise this struggle, but it might still be an idea to write a quitting diary.
Another day, another battle to manage myself. One day of hope, another of fear. I don’t imagine it will be that interesting. Another complaint, another symptom to expose. Another day waiting for things to get better.
Another day asking what’s the point. Why do I want to put myself through this when I’m just chronically unhappy anyway?
After 18 months of surviving, it feels someway like my health issues aren’t actually life threatening, although one doctor managed to scare me. Well my health anxiety makes me very scared all of the time. But I’m just as scared of getting older and losing all my abilities to do actually do things I need.
I’m not ready to die yet. Not ready to give up. Not actually ready to do anything.
But time marches on, and I only ever wanted a life worth living.
Too scared to leave, too scared to stay. Ashamed every step of the way.
To say a little on why I smoke, there was always something rebellious about it, a show of defiance. I used to do it in secret.
I smoked to overcome my social anxiety until somewhere down the line, it became a ritual that needed to be done to get through the day, I was smoking before I ever entered the grown-up world of working for a living. And in someways I’ve never really forgiven the world for having to grow up.
Now it’s down to me to unhook myself from this poison once and for all. I know I have to stay active and look after myself but I’m in too much pain and just want to lie down.
My efforts to quit haven’t worked because I’m already burned out and just can’t manage life.
Ah, so what now? Now that I rang for help and was referred back to my GP for anxiety medication, that I absolutely don’t want to take. Referred once more for talking therapy.
I could do all of this if I was in hospital, actually being treated for being sick and being looked after by professionals. I don’t think I can do this while I’m still expected to carry on like normal and keep functioning.
If there really is nothing wrong with me physically and it’s all psychological stress and burnout, then I think I just need to get away, actually take a long sabbatical, quit my job, spend some money and go travelling. Take an extended break from everyone and everything. Come back when I’m healthy. Maybe never come back at all.
I can blame many things for my awful life, both in society and in the way I have maladjusted to it. I can just try walking away. Dare I say find myself. Because I have always been pretending to be someone I’m not.
No dramatic cape whooshing, no showy romanticising. No desperate pleas, just say my peace and walk away.
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