Hello again, I’m compelled to write today. Well, forced in some small way.
Today has been one of those days I just want to lie down and sleep, but pressure has been applied to make me do something.
Just getting out of the house for a walk and stop for a rest and a drink.
For a quick update, I spoke to a mental health first aider at work and it was arranged to take some part-time leave for a few weeks, working 3 days a week and taking some time to do things, stay active.
And yet, I can’t help but feel that I don’t really want to do those things we discussed. Moreover, it doesn’t feel enough time and space.
I managed to engage in an old hobby which I spent all day doing, only to feel aches and pains all over the next day.
So I did nothing useful to escape this hell I’m currently in.
And in truth, I wake up everyday weighed down with so much that stops me doing anything except hide away.
And so I write today to say that I can no longer tell any difference between my mental and physical states. That is to say I don’t know if I’m physically unable or I’m just mentally believing I’m physically unable and making it so out of sheer refusal.
The real disabilities I suspect are all mental or neurological, but I can no longer manage my life and can no longer escape the real world, and I no longer have any hope or belief that I will ever get better.
In fact, I’m now looking into schizoprenia. A condition that has some overlap with autism and feels more believable.
In particular, the negative symptoms such as the 5 A’s. Anhedonia, Alogia, Asociality, Affective flattening, and most crucially Avolition.
The most well known symptoms are hallucinations and delusions.
Not sure if I’ve ever presented with those but my grip on reality has come into question during these difficult times.
Not least the idea that all my physical ailments were put down to anxiety. Not sure if I ever wrote it here, but when the health anxiety kicked off, I was seen by paramedics who suggested I come with them to be checked in the mental health ward. This being justed after they calmed me down and reassured me physically.
I was frightened and I refused. But that lay the seeds what came next.
I mean I’ve believed for a while that I should be in hospital, receiving treatment for something. If not just autistic burnout. And there in lies why I keep refusing. Why I just want to be left alone to be sick if I’m sick, or just to find myself and rest my brain.
Because everything I’m trying to do for my health is something I just don’t want to do. Quit smoking? Change my diet? Exercise? See another doctor again? Take medication? Confront all my fears? Get out of bed? Talk to someone? Keep turning up for work? Wash? Tidy my room?
When I’ve already lost so much of myself already and life hasn’t really felt worth living but I’m too afraid to do anything about it.
The hope of rebirth and renewal is strangled by regression, aging and maladaption. The perpetual failure to understand or communicate. The eternal frustration.
The discourse and around autism suggests that we shouldn’t see ourselves as broken. that it shouldn’t be fixed or cured.
The discourse around schizophrenia is very different indeed. Perhaps I just want to see myself as broken so I won’t ever have to face up to my own responsibilities.
It’s true, I just don’t want life to be difficult. It has become more difficult than ever now.
The problem now being that I don’t see a feasible way out, only a slow decline into mental destruction.
With that being said, I’ll continue fighting this battle as long as I remain able enough.
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