Holding pattern.

In the bottom of my latest downward spiral and wondering if I really did crack a bit again, or whether I’m really the asshole others say I am and I’m just in denial about everything and can’t handle it. Either way, it proves once more I’m not stable enough to be close to anyone for anything, and am fit for only the most superficial of interactions where I’m just another body filling a space, though sometimes I wonder about that, too. Health continues to deteriorate little by little every day with no non-surgical improvement.

Just waiting to die at this point.

(Yes, my psychiatrist knows; I said as much to her. No, she did not attempt to dissuade me: she’s known for a long time.)

Done.

Had to come off the antipsychotics. They were adversely affecting my heart rate and circulation to the point where limbs fell asleep as I did nothing. Well. I guess it was a nice try while it lasted.

I’m not sure it matters anymore. Something broke inside me tonight, and I’m not sure if I’ll wake up tomorrow, to the point where I actually sat up in bed to write this out in case that comes to pass.

Seeing the utter cruelty of the rich towards the rest of the world in this pandemic where hundreds of thousands have died, where those with the money and influence to help millions literally chose death for them—it made me completely lose faith in humanity as a people, as a species, and I can’t wait to be quit of it. All the things we decided matter to us mean fuckall when the most inhumane are regularly, consistently given the wheel of the ship. Being polite and playing fair only gets your ass used as a doormat for the shit on their shoes, but being polite and playing fair is all everyone with a shred of decency wants to do. It just gets us nowhere and covered in shit.

For deciding that numbers with subjective values of worth mean more than survival, for this decision alone, we deserve to go extinct. And we will. One day, this blog post will be corrupted bytes on deteriorating metal buried in radioactive sand, and nobody will care. Nobody will be alive to care. Fuck, nobody cares now. I know I’m just ranting into the void, and I don’t expect any kind of meaningful response or change to come out of it, because it never does, and it never will.

Assuming I wake up later, I will begin the process of cleaning up the traces of my existence; what survivors I leave behind shouldn’t have to deal with any of my loose ends. If I don’t wake up, well. I hope someone finds and takes care of Immi and Toby before they starve.

ETA: Opted to rest on the couch with Immi instead of staying in the bedroom. She woke me just as I stopped breathing.

No more.

I have, yet fucking again, managed to destroy friendships that actually meant a goddamn by saying things that were unintentionally cruel. Did I know how the affected people were feeling before that? No. Did I think to ask? No. My reasoning at the time was that they all seemed to be doing fine without me. I was informed last night in no uncertain terms that they weren’t, and that there was no communication from their end because they assumed I didn’t care enough to ask.

Part of me is screaming in frustration about this. Why would people who have known me closely for at least three years be so readily given to the belief that I did this out of some sheer, overwhelming need to be an asshole? This is the extreme opposite of how I normally behaved towards them. Why is it easier for them to believe that I want to hurt them rather than wonder if something’s wrong? At least, that’s what it felt like. I wrote a lengthy letter detailing my breakdown to one of them some time ago, which I assumed was shown to the others, since such information was usually freely circulated between us. I don’t know if that letter was ever seen by those worst affected, or whether they’d just wanted to hear it from me.

The messages I got last night were enough to push me off the steps a second time, and this time I had a physical reaction along with it: I could feel distinct sensations on the left side and left rear side of my skull, as though everything in the area was contracting, with a small, corresponding spot on the right side near my ear. I wondered if I should go to the hospital for brain scans, and even shaved my hair off to check for subdermal bleeding. I opted not to go: there’s no one available to take care of Immi and Toby if the hospital decides to keep me there, pandemic notwithstanding, and being away from them and familiar surroundings would only stress me out more because I’d be worrying about them. My dad made a right pig’s ear out of caring for my animals the last time I asked him to do so; Immi doesn’t like my brother at all, who, to my knowledge, also has no experience with birds. If I end up hospitalised, I’ll have to board them someplace.

It’s plainer now than anything that I am not getting better; that I am, in fact, getting worse despite my shitty efforts to heal without taking anyone down with me.

In desperation, I reached out to my psychiatrist this morning, whom I hadn’t spoken with since last summer. It took a bit of phone tag to reach her, but we finally talked. It seems my crash was less mental breakdown and more actual psychotic break. I now have a prescription for antipsychotics, which I will pick up and start taking tomorrow.

I don’t know if it’ll save me or salvage the friendships I didn’t mean to destroy—I honestly doubt the latter; they have neither reason nor obligation to forgive me, and I don’t blame them for distancing themselves—but I don’t like feeling any of these ways, and, for their sake, I want to try.

ETA: Too late. I’ve been removed from the community and chat servers we shared, and unfriended by a lot of people whom I thought knew me better than this. Well. Still have a cat and a bird, I guess. :/

And now for the irony.

Around January 24th, prompted by a week of social gaffes that culminated in learning I’d unintentionally enabled harm to a friend, I had a breakdown that lasted three days and was so severe that I literally lost language skills for a while—words and the ability to think in words were just gone, including the words to describe how I felt—and affected my manual dexterity to a degree. This didn’t help when I had to go grocery shopping for cat food in the middle of it: I couldn’t read some of the labels, kept dropping stuff (fortunately, nothing breakable), and had no catching reflexes at all; things would fall from my hands and I’d just watch it happen. I dissociated so heavily afterwards that I didn’t realise how much time I’d lost until numbers started making sense again, and I learned over two weeks had gone by.

During that time, I completely cut contact with the community associated with the breakdown, partly out of a vague fear of retriggering myself, and partly due to the aforementioned inability to communicate at all. A few people from said community reached out to me, but I didn’t reply, nor could I tell them why; the last thing I was able to tell someone with any certainty or clarity right before the crash was, “I don’t feel like talking to anyone right now.” I managed to change my chat icon to a semicolon about two or so days into the breakdown, which was for one specific friend unaffiliated with the community: I knew she would recognise it without me having to say anything (she did), as well as what it meant, since she was the one who introduced me to the concept behind it. I self-medicated with alcohol, desperate for it to sedate me and drown out the anguish even for just a while; I succeeded in drinking myself to sleep only once.

This is the closest I’ve been to suicide in a very long time. The despair at my string of fuckups is wrenching for my peculiar snarl of brain wiring, all the more so since people were angry with me about my lack of communication to the point where it genuinely feels like I’m being punished for having a breakdown, and not having or knowing any other way to cope with it—which, quite honestly, fucking wrecks me the most of all. (One person even unfriended me altogether after I finally reached out to her, and her reply indicated she doesn’t quite grok what it means to lose all ability to communicate with words. I still haven’t decided whether to accept her new friend request.) I’ve also lost joy in several things I liked, even things and activities that don’t have anything to do with the associated community. Something broke really badly, and now, almost a month later, I’m not sure if my love for those interests will come back. For that matter, I’m not sure if I’ll recover from this at all. More than ever, Immi and Toby are the only things keeping me here now.

My social track record is not improving. I fucked up yet again the evening before I started writing this, and I just…well, see previous post.

A few things.

Still alive. Mostly. Occasionally wishing otherwise, just rather it wasn’t by covid, which I think I’ve avoided the worst of so far. Being utterly paranoid about masking and washing both myself and groceries seems to be working.

Top surgery went well. Healing sucked. Have hypertrophic scars, which my body loves producing. A lump turned out benign and went away on its own.

Discovered a few months later through investigating a suddenly drooping eyelid that I had Graves’ disease, a form of hyperthyroidism with a chance of getting into the eyes, and it got into mine. Eye muscles swelled to the point of pushing the orbs out and warping what was once decent vision into an uncoordinated, unfocused mess. Have since had three surgeries for it: one for the thyroidectomy, two on the eyes themselves, plus targeted radiation I needed a custom-fitted mask for so my head wouldn’t move while getting roasted. The radiation itself doesn’t seem to have done anything. Due for at least one more surgery. My doctors in this matter have been beyond excellent with astonishing pull in getting me surgery slots, and I’m grateful for their care. Going through eye drops and gel at a distressing rate, and wearing swimming goggles (they were cheaper and more durable than a silicone mask) to bed to keep them from drying out while I sleep since my eyelids still don’t quite close all the way.

Depression has been utterly rampant throughout. Part of me feels guilty for still being passively suicidal because it feels like all this work going into saving my eyes and even transitioning will just go to waste when I die. It doesn’t help that the medication I need to manage my autistic ADHD brain contraindicates with the Graves’; I can either be a walking disaster with decent eyesight, or be an organised mess without it, and everything about my lifestyle, home setup, and what I want to do depends on my eyesight.

The more I interact with people, the more I’m convinced I shouldn’t be. I continue doing utterly thoughtless things without actually meaning to be an asshole. Apologising and pledging to do better doesn’t feel anywhere near adequate. Withdrawing from almost all human contact has been easier due to the pandemic, but still difficult because brain continues to insist on Being Helpful. A social gaffe on my part led me to have a major existential crisis: humour is a major component of how I mask in social situations around strangers, and when an attempt at humour I made towards someone having a bad day backfired, it made me question whether I’d unwittingly been an asshole to people this whole time and nobody just said anything. I now hyperanalyse everything I want to say to the point where I end up not saying anything at all. Seems better that way. Can’t fuck up as much if I don’t talk.

Cat and bird continue to be fine.

Today.

My top surgery’s in a few hours.

I am equal parts nervous, scared and OH MY GOD THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING flailing. This is it. This is really it. This is the biggest life-changing event for me yet. Today I make a large, definitive step in saying goodbye to the old me, and welcome the me I want — no, need to be.

I really hope I come through it okay.

A light halfway.

It’s been a little over a year since I saw the surgeon for the top surgery consult. A week or so ago, I thought it couldn’t hurt to call and see how much longer the waitlist was for me. After insomnia and restlessness made a mess of the last week — the memory’s even more shit when “sleep” is just “lying semi-awake in the dark” — I finally got some good, deep, immersive-dream sleep yesterday and remembered to call.

The receptionist who answered said the surgeon was going through the clients he’d seen last October, and she could probably give me a surgery date now. I was cautiously optimistic as she went to fetch the surgeon’s booking schedule, then elated as she said that yep, she could book my date: the first week of March.

I’m so relieved. The dysphoria’s been bad enough that I need to have my chest covered all the time so I can’t see it; at one point after a shower, I clawed at my skin in semi-meltdown because I couldn’t stand seeing it, even peripherally. I look forward to the day I won’t have to see them anymore, and instead see part of the body I need to have for my own mental well-being. The recovery’ll suck at least as much as the hysterectomy’s did, but it’ll be worth it.

Speaking of mental well-being, I put in the legwork last week to get started on medical cannabis. A friend let me try some low-strength Hempworx oil, and its effects were noticeable and beneficial enough at the time for me to consider going further. Unfortunately, Hempworx lied when they said they’d continue shipping to Canada after marijuana became legal, so local options became a must.

I mentioned this desire to my psychiatrist, who told me there happened to be a clinic for it in the same building as her office, so after our appointment I immediately set out to see them. I received a nice information packet about the clinic, their procedure and some general cannabis info, and had to fill out a questionnaire online before the intake appointment. That appointment consisted of three stages: an intake worker, a doctor trained in cannabis research to ensure there’d be no contraindications with existing meds, and a cannabis specialist who knew about each company providing it, ingestion methods, terminology, and so forth.

The entire thing was pleasantly surprising. They took my pain seriously and without judgement, which is exactly the opposite of what I’m used to, and were shaking their heads when I told them about how other doctors and even my previous disability workers had treated me: my last temporary disability worker had “goes into victim mode” in my file notes, for fuck’s sake, and my rheumatologist doesn’t believe fibromyalgia exists. (At that, the doctor asked, “Is he an older guy?” which I confirmed, and we both nodded ruefully.)

All in all, oils will be better for my chronic conditions, since their effects last longer but take a little longer to kick in, and I can vape the dry herbs and flowers for more immediate relief if necessary. Turns out conduction atomisers compatible with my vape mods exist, so I can use that and save money instead of buying another unit altogether. The company whose products I chose take 1–2 weeks to process the paperwork, with the doctor’s recommendations and my medical information sent directly to them so no other doctor visits are required, and they send me my stuff via courier to my door — which, no lie, was a big seller for me.

If the stuff works half as well for me as non-recreational strains have for another autistic friend, and lets me cut down on other, liver-damaging pills, I’ll be so fucking happy.

Still plodding along.

Probably goes without saying that I didn’t manage NaNoWriMo. Brain health tanked two days in, and the concept was kind of shit, anyway.

HRT dose increased again. Haven’t noticed much difference from before. Dysphoria’s still bad and I wonder how much longer I actually have to wait for top surgery. I’m drinking as much as my wallet will allow.

Wonder of wonders: I scored some plastic money. Used most of it to buy a special kind of pop-up tent via this Indiegogo campaign. The ease of assembly and breakdown should be kind to my crappy physical health, which generally puts the kibosh on outdoor activity as it is. So why this fancy tent? It’s because I’m preparing for homelessness. No, nothing’s happened to endanger my current living situation: I’m being practical and preparing for nasty curveballs. Also, the plan for the end of my life is still in effect, and this will help with the necessary travel when I get to that point.

Speaking of travel, a trip to Europe is in the works for the end of June. Dad wants to go back to his home country, and, given his advanced age and ailing health, it’ll probably be his last visit. The logistics for three are a little crazy-making and a lot expensive, mostly because I plan on going from here to there for a week (parents are going for two weeks), then flying to visit godsibling for a week — we’ve known each other something like 20 years and never got to meet — then going home. It means three separate one-way tickets for me, which, somewhat hilariously, add up to be cheaper than plotting a multi-city route on a single ticket. I hope the tent arrives before I leave so I can bring it with me, as I anticipate using it for cover from the sun while we tourist about in Dad’s home country. More importantly, I hope my health holds out for the duration.

Most importantly, I hope I actually survive his country. Things there are significantly less than ideal for someone like me, and by “significantly less than ideal” I mean “shit there is fucking terrifying”. As much as I want to see where part of my blood comes from, I almost would rather not, and if I didn’t know it’d be Dad’s last trip, I’d have declined my parents’ request to accompany them. I can only really, really hope no one with the power to fuck up lives notices me. It’s been a long time since I actively had to hide, and I’m going to be afraid for my life while hating myself even more for every second of it.

Oddly, a good thing has happened: an indoor gardening setup with full-spectrum growlights I ordered several months ago finally arrived, and my health finally managed to stay together long enough for me to assemble it. Using a 2:1 ratio of veggie/herb soil mix and compost, I planted blue mallow, chamomile, rosemary, oregano, spinach, spearmint, lettuce, green and yellow onions, tarragon and tomatoes. That happened on March 20, which I, in my perpetually brainfogged state, didn’t realise was the first day of spring. The lettuce, green onion and tomato sprouted exactly six days later, and the lettuce and tomato are already growing true leaves. Tiny oregano sprouts are also coming up. Another few weeks and I might actually have food; at the very least, I’ll have tomatoes, because I certainly didn’t expect all six seeds to sprout.

My life feels like a constant fall down a gravel hill.