Category Archives: autism

Moving on…

It has been difficult, but I have moved forward, and am beginning to find what I want to be. And what I want to do. It just won’t involve other people much.

Most of us find ourselves having to reconstruct our lives… the nons evolve, but not in isolation. We have to deal with suddenly discovering your world is not what your thot. Without warning, we find our world gone… and we are alone to rebuild.

I have written about how people who find themselves the victims of mental illness, will find their friends slipping away. Gradually, many of us end up without any direct contact with the outside world. We tend to become “loners” because we are forced to, not because we are driven to. The illness does not make us want to be alone… it makes us want to be understood.

What makes us seem to want to be alone, is that we can’t get people to understand what is happening to us. We can’t just “get over it”, or “move on”. We can learn about our illness, and sometimes find ways to mitigate it. But those problems/mistakes will never go away. We will have to always be on guard for each little sign that something is amiss.

People have said I am brave. It makes me feel good to hear… but I do not think of myself as brave. Is it brave to swim ashore from a sinking boat?

This is where I am.

I need to find a life… a way forward. And I need to do it on my own. It is slow going. But there is progress. In reality, I do thing I know what I want to do with my life. I am struggling to try to make it happen. But there are no other options.

I’ll try to write more about how I am doing towards my goal. I will actually be taking a needed step forward today. It may well make no difference at all. There are still major obstacles. But I have to move forward.

Coming to Acceptance

My thoughts have been drifting around my memories, and what is lost. There are so many wonderful things I have done, and seen. I have had great friends, and been involved with wonderful people. I loved my time in archery, college, and teaching. At every step, I thot I was making life-long friends. But I always found that when my life had to shift places all those friends were lost.

“All” is not a fair word. I still know a couple people from my archery days. In Seattle. I have not seen them in many years. That is my fault. But when I left teaching, I was shocked how quickly I was forgotten. Not one person I had known contacted me after I left. I tried communicating with a few… a few times. Some said we would get together when they come to Portland… never seemed to happen.

Retirement was almost 20 years ago. I have not had any new social contacts since. There have been no new people coming thru my life. That makes it hard to make new friends.

I give up.

All my life, my single greatest fear… one I constantly fought, was of ending up alone. Here I am.

So now what? What do I do with my life now?

I have hobbies… they are not very fulfilling though. There is no purpose to my life. I have no goals. No dreams.

That has to change.

I have struggled with what to do. Without friends, I have no-one to read off. There is no-one to react to what I do, to give me any feedback. So I never have any sense of success. If I write, who will read it?

This is where I am. For a couple of years, I have been trying to find purpose. No luck. How can I find purpose with no feedback? As a teacher I understand how important it is to perceive ourselves as making progress, and succeeding. After years of no feedback… my ambition has faded. Now I usually don’t try.

This is where I am.

Next?

Archery

I started archery at 14.

People knew who I was… I was the first collegiate to win 4 State, and 4 Region championships ever. Freshman thru senior year. I was 9th in the Nation twice. I coached the U of Washington team to a National Championship in 1977. I had taught half the team how to shoot from the beginning. First place mixed-team, Second place women’s team, fourth place men’s team. I had won the Men’s state champion in Washington. I qualified for World Championship team trials. I was known for experimenting with new equipment. I was known.

The next year they wanted a new coach… I was already beginning to break down. I pretty much dropped out of archery… always feeling like an outsider. It never came back.

Archery also injured my shoulders. Rotator-cuff in the right and ligaments in the left. I also messed up my left thumb. I injured my left knee in an accident running. By the time I left Seattle, at 30, I could not even shoot anymore. I tried several times over the next few years. And again about 17 years ago… my body can’t take it.

Now, I shoot 10-meter PCP air-rifle. Like they shoot in the Olympics. It requires the same concentration, but is very different physically. And I can do it inside or in the back yard. I can shoot PCP air-pistol in my office. My father was a “marksman” with pistol and carbine in the Army WW2. He shot a 38 Smith & Wesson revolver… with custom parts. It is all about the kind of concentration required.

I lost all but 2-3 archery friends by the early 1980’s. I lost my last friend just a few years ago. Someone I had been friends with since 1975. That one could recover…

Scale Plastic Modeling

I build highly detailed scale models.

Below in the cockpit interior of a Hawker Harrier. not finished.

It requires the commitment of time. You can’t just pick it up and put it down. You are working with paints, glues, and resins that have time limits. Usually I have to know I can commit at least a half hour. And most of the time, I don’t feel up to it. But I still tinker away at times.

There are modeling clubs… but there are some issues. The closest one is almost about an hour away. I really struggle with new people, especially if I am on my own. Most modelers in clubs are conservative. I get along fine with conservatives, even though I am pretty liberal. But that is not a place to look for outside friends. And the conversations drift into areas I want to avoid – politics. I have tried, though it was years ago.

I know fully well I may be wrong about everything I think about people. And I have grown to not trust my decision making with regards to people. I think I do the wrong thing too often.

Fighting Aloneness

WOW!

I picked a huge topic today. but important to many people.

There is a huge emptiness in my life. I am a writer… trying to write a book… it is in my head. I used to have friends I wrote letters with… handwritten! No-one does that anymore. On-line is shallow and fleeting. I struggle to go past our driveway. Being around people is frightening to me. My cats understand me…

Where do I go from here? I have been here a very long time… where do I go?

Finding Social Contact

This has been my Achilles Heal. Having lost all my friends years ago… decades ago… how do I get started? What should I do? No-one I know has any ideas.

On-line is nice sometimes. I write Blogs occasionally. And sometimes I am on Facebook. But you can’t really make new friends there. It is nice sometimes… it also reminds me how alone I am. There are many conflicts.

I have always got along well with people in person. I can be oddly humorous. The effort can overwhelm me… and it is easy to give up. Then I am on my own. That is where I often make mistakes. Over the long haul, it just does not seem worth the effort.

It is time to go silent again for a while.

Trying and Pushing = Brave?

I am at a point in my life, where I have to change what I believe. I have been working on it. I need to change the way my brain inter-relates to the world. No small feat.

Progress is measured in very small increments. I cleaned up a work-space to actually be able to work on something. Why? Because I wanted to. Got a problem with that?

This is not where I thot I would be at this point in my life. I need to teach my brain to want what I have. How does one change so many decades of training? The “slow-motion” PTSD must be rewired. There is no guarantee of success… or even progress. Make what I have work.

Being Brave, is what you do when there aren’t any other options. It is another state of our being. Others will see it in a different light, and will call it “brave”. OK… But it is just us doing what we must do. Especially for the Mentally Ill. We have to be “brave” just to get up in the morning!!!!

I am not truly brave. I am scrambling to survive. The options have narrowed significantly over the last few years. My presence on-line is my only reaching-out place. so here I am.

It is very difficult to reach out to an empty audience… OK… OK… not “empty”. Though I would like to hear more from people. Is this where I remind you all, I have no friends? No? Ok… later.

I am not in point of fact, looking for friends on-line. Friends are people you actually see. Sigh… there is a whole spectrum of “friends”. You can be very close to people you never see… or distant from those you see frequently. But it is more difficult to start with no foundation of brick-and-mortar friends. Not impossible… “It is a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

Hello… my name in Neil.

An Open Window…

I am trying to give people a chance to hear from the other side of the Mental Health issues we face. These Blogs may come back to haunt me. I make bad decisions, and people may respond in ways that make me think they are angry at me.

My response: Get in line.

I am used to people being mad at me. Even when they are not. My brain goes into protective mode and it assumes anyone with cause, is mad at me. Unless I have direct knowledge, they are not. There is almost a constant fear in my brain of people being mad at me. If I cannot know better… my brain assumes they are mad.

That is what my brain does. And NO amount of knowing that, will ever be able to stop my brain from going there.

If you fall into a pool of water, your brain will respond in a certain way to save you. It would take a lot a practice to learn exactly how to react in the best possible way… that protects you the most quickly. But it would take practice. You would need help…

Here is the catch… there is no way for the mentally ill to practice unless there is someone to practice with. We need help. We need someone to unlock the doors to the pool.

I don’t have the keys.

I Guess I Was Wrong

The lack of response indicates I was wrong about all this. Maybe I am asking too much. I can’t stop the way my brain works. It is all my fault as always.

Everyone is mad at me… at least I think so. There is no-one who actually tells me anything. It is very hard to know what is right, when no-one will talk to me. It leaves me groping in the dark. Making mistakes, and making things worse. Alone.

All my life, my detractors have been right. It’s just me.

Every Day is Picket’s Charge

There is a wonderful point in an Al Stewart song (Three Mules), where he refers to Picket’s Charge. It is in the context of being in a position where it is impossible to not go forward… even if it means disaster.

The Charge of the Light Brigade is another example. People in a no-win situation, who end up doing what they “need” to do… even knowing it leads to disaster.

Eat Drink and be Merry, for tomorrow we die.

Every day is Picket’s Charge in my life. Or at least it has that potential. When your brain does not work quite the same way, you find yourself having to go into situations you know will lead to a draining experience, that will leave you incapable of doing anything for days.

Every day carries the potential of devastating loss… Each new day brings the chance of complete collapse… because I have no way of knowing how my brain affects my perceptions. I can not tell where I might be right, or where I might be wrong. There is no way I can trust my own judgement.

So every human interaction I have, carries the very real possibility of emotional disaster. Perhaps a complete collapse. I can never know.

Every day, I know that. With every decision. The effort is often overwhelming, and it goes nowhere. I give up more easily. But my fear is nevertheless real as well. My brain can crash… there are real consequences.

Every day is Picket’s Charge… or could be.

“The Aviator”

The Aviator is a movie I go to when I am feeling down. I understand Howard Hughes in this movie. What he does, makes sense… though not what I would have done. But the movie makes me feel better.

The scenes of him testifying before Congress are great. No matter how far he fell down, he was able to pull it all together to testify before Congress… and take down a Senator. We all know how that feels… putting it all together to step up for important occasions. We have all done that… we do it almost every day! Every day we step up to be what we are expected to be. Howard Hughes was much worse off than myself, but I see, and understand the spectrum.

I stood up for many years… I did pretty well, I think. But as life goes on, it gets less and less important to care about trying. I do not think my life would have been worse if I had just given up 40 years ago, and followed the easy path. It very certainly would have been easier. Right now, that means it would still be easier for me to deal with people. Or not.

Did I waste my energies? Or would I be in the same mental place, even if I had taken an easier path? I can not know. I can never know… All I can know is where I want to be.

Give me the money, and I would disappear into a world where I can be invisible. I want to go away, and not have to expend so much of my life, just trying to get along. The outside world takes away most of my energies… it leaves me flat… it takes too much out of my life.

I have LMCS… and there are few treatments… Lack of Mountain Cabin Disorder. I have no Fortress of Solitude… no place that is only me… where I do not have to try to fit into anything. I am so tired. Even now, the world is always far too demanding. I worked so hard to fit in, and I do not see a pay-off. I am now ready to give it up with the outside world.

What I need is a world where I do not have to expend energies on fitting in… Not going to happen. I will be eligible for SS soon… and I think I should just go off into my own place. I could live on that, with my pension. It’s not like I am going to be traveling around much!

Of course… this is all pie in the sky stuff… I sit here in my office for the next 20 years.

I am good at envisioning futures, that can never happen.

Who to have as Friends?

I have found it very difficult to have normal conversations with people, without have to spend most of my time either… trying to figure out what people think I mean, or trying to explain what I mean.

I have found it easier to communicate about everyday things, with people like me… so I don’t have to explain each point along the way. Just let me say what happened without having to explain everything. It gets so tiring to have to worry about how someone will interpret what I say. People like me, don’t need the explaining part.

I want it to be “normal” for me.

Do you realize how rare that is for us?

The Ghost in the Room

There is a ghost in the room… wherever I go. It is me. The ghost of who I was… of who I was on the inside, haunts me every day. I died decades ago. I disappeared under a cloud of misunderstanding, and mistrust.

When I talk with anyone, my ghost is in the room. Do I listen to my “reality” voice, or my ghost?

People don’t even know who I am. People I worked with for 15 years know virtually nothing about me. Or I should say… about my ghost. People are afraid of ghosts. They are afraid of me. I am two people. Or was… the real me is now limited to this office, and my writings. They prefer the public me. Even with its faults.

But the ghost haunts me… I can not be the public-me so much anymore. The energy to do that has long since faded. And when I have to be the public-me, the ghost pulls at my mind…

There is a ghost with me always.

Fearing the Fear of Fear…

Most of my decisions are greatly influenced by fear. The fear of potential bad outcomes. Which choice had the least fearful path. But my brain does not trust my judgement. So I like to be able to see what someone else thinks. That is where I have problems. Who would that be?

Obviously, it can only be Lori.

I throw out plans that I can not support externally… to someone else I trust who thinks I can do it. Left to myself, plans fade away quickly succumbing to fears of failure. Usually it means not being able to run an errand. Sometimes it is much bigger. I can not commit to anything down the road. Who knows where my brain will be in four months? And I can’t have four months of worrying about it every day. So… no plans for nice trips.

Fear.

Why start something I will not finish? I never finish anything. But I keep trying… as much as I can. Trying smaller things, that don’t matter so there is less to lose. Chores… but nothing else really matters. I have to make things not matter. I have to believe all these things don’t matter.

“It doesn’t matter.” Are words I speak far too often. Fear makes us stop caring. We have to stop caring before we get swept under all the failures.

Some things haunt us… things we are drawn to do, but can not. We might spend hours thinking about it, without ever being able to accomplish anything.

But… I keep trying. J

I Have SiBS

Star is Born Syndrome.
And how to get out of it.

I used to be a teacher.  I was liked, and even admired, by students and faculty.  I was trusted, and influential.  I had built my own home to my needs, and was well known in the community… having gone to city council meetings.  I had friends, and family.  I had been president of the teacher’s union.  All of that and more.

Now I live in virtual isolation… dependent on my loving, successful, liked, and admired wife, financially and otherwise.  No friends or family.  No one knows what my opinions are, and no-one cares.  People don’t trust me.

This was a thot I just wrote down this morning. My “Run Away” approach to life has not worked out as well as I had planned. The last several months I have been trying to build a foundation for getting out to have lunch with a friend… or such. Over the years, I made a lot of different attempt to meet, and develop friends. It never worked out.

Now… I am not sure which way to go. I no longer have confidence in my understanding of what others want, or how they think, or feel. I am flying blind.

My foundation is my confidence in my ability to disappear. I would like it to be confidence in my ability to keep trying, and take more chances. I should be able to do that. That word “should” again.

My meds are stable, and very consistent… even if one requires going out. I know what happens without them. Was that 2 years ago?? It was not good.

There is not going to be a better time to start. I will be writing about how this is going.