brokenmind

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I kind of hate most of ‘how to’ books and blog posts.

The only kinds of ‘how to’s I can accept are the the technical manuals, as in ‘how to correctly assemble a bookshelf/repair your appliance and not brain yourself’ kind of things.

The ‘how to’s that talk about art and living in general make me nauseous.

I think, compared to my dislike towards people who need to have someone to tell them how to live or write, I despise those who are all too happy to tell others how they should live or create things even more.

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It’s a nasty kind of irony… that the worse I feel, the higher the probability that I won’t be able to handle calling in sick… and I can’t even convey how ridiculous it is, because not a soul on the other end would say anything bad about it. Or act in any way that would show that they didn’t like me taking days off. But the phone is one of my triggers and no matter how many times I make myself do it next time never gets easier. If anything it only gets worse. Probably because I have to make myself do it, but I don’t know how do you even get around that.

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Every time I post something on flickr and take a few moments to go through the recent photos of people I follow there, it’s like they scream at me, my mind screams at me, that I’m trapped and wasting my life on things I don’t need to be wasting it on.

But, contrary to the popular belief, I’m not trapped because I’m too stubborn and cant take myself out any time I would decide to do it. What traps me are immigration laws and my condition that makes me a care-needed individual every time I set my foot outside.

Doesn’t hurt any less though.

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Me: Buys a tone of books that have ‘romance’ as one of the genres every time there’s an anxiety attack (seeking ‘comfort books’ like cheeseburgers).

Also me: Gets genuinely surprised and disappointed when plot/romance balance exceeds(on the romance side) 70/30 and characters can’t stop thinking about sex… (like I thought I was buying something else).

I also complain about cheesy covers and titles. But then keep buying fantasy, sci-fi, and historical romance books anyway. And stuff them into my brain like gauze into bleeding wound.

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It took me ridiculously long time to realize that I always have unexplainable bruises not because I’m clumsy and bump into things, but because I’m scratching myself to bruises.

I only wish I could stop doing it in front of people and at work.

Though if I wasn’t going to work I probably wouldn’t be scratching.

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I’m on a dark dark loop where I can’t stop feeling strong resentment towards people for having it easier than me (not some random people, but someone right in front of me, in almost the same circumstances, doing what I can’d do and having 3 times less obstacles while doing it), and then resenting myself double for feeling that kind of resentment. I shouldn’t be looking into others’plates. Even if they shove them under my nose. But damn it sucks.
It also sucks that I can’t even vent without feeling guilty about it and am back to crying in bathrooms.

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Levels of mental stability on audio scale:

Single earphone in one ear -> two earphones, but taking one out occasionally -> nose-canceling headphones on -> one earphone in one ear with music in it and headphones over it with game or drama/movies in them, to be able to listen to both at the same time.

I think there’s a meme that fits this format.

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I don’t know what changed and why now, but words with multiple different meanings have been jumping out at me and confusing the hell out of me like they never did before.

When you hear that someone is a ‘vet’, do you think veteran or veterinarian?
When you hear ‘groom’, do you think wedding or stables?
We can go on and on.
The problem is, if there’s no context, what makes you pick the right one?
And what makes you stop?

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sometimes I get these moments when I feel like writing might the very only and last thing I have for myself

and in the next moment I hate it, my writing, for it with all my heart

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can I please have a person who would just care to talk at me (and sometimes for me) and not expect me to engage in any social interactions adequately
pretty please

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among the stages of ‘reading fluffy fanfiction therapy’, there’s this very distinctive stage of ‘reading fluffy fanfiction about bookstores’.
it comes after the ‘reading flaffy fanfiction about coffee and/or writing’ and when things are pretty damn awful. 
it doesn’t even really matter what fandom it is. 
(it could be an original fiction for all I care, but people for some reason don’t publish fluffy therapeutic fiction unless it’s for children. Or at least I haven’t seen it.)

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I stopped writing poetry because it feels like vomiting words in a language I don’t myself understand, from somewhere around backside of my frontal lobe.
It confuses me and feels like I’m trying to say something, but can’t hear my own voice, and can’t know what I’m actually saying.
Even more than usual.
And when it just comes out and I can’t stop it, it reminds me of how a cat looks after coughing out some fur. I just stare at it, and don’t know what is it, what to do with it, and why did it even have to come out.

I also hardly ever read poetry for similar reasons.

Another problem I heave with poetry is that when it ‘comes out’ like a fur ball like this:

look at them hungered eyes
dreaming of soft toes
buried in black soil
look at them burdened skies

 it also ends as abruptly as it came out. And with a feeling that there is nothing else where it came from, like I’m straining to hear what comes next but the sound is not there. But that also for some reason I need to keep it.

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One of the worst things about lasting anxiety attacks is that they often lock you into the place/state you are in, taking away your chances to take a breath and recover.

When you’re already ‘barely hanging on’, you will always instinctively choose the path of least resistance = the path that will bring less new anxiety. Which will also meant sticking to the ‘normal’ or the ‘routine’ that brought you into the place with anxiety in the first place.

For example, if you had your anxiety attack start during the night and last almost all the way till morning, preventing you from sleeping and making you feel like shit when you’re alarm trying to get you up for work, it would be a logical decision to call in sick and rest at home for a day, or at least take first half of the day off. However, the amount of anxiety involved in ‘picking up the phone to call work and tell them that you’re not feeling well and will take a sick day’ involves 2-3 times more anxiety than ‘make yourself get up and go to work as usual (even though there are people there)’. So you get up, no matter how bad you feel. Because, chances are, the worse you feel, the less chances there are to find strength to pick up the phone.

The same happens when you’re already at work and have an attack there. On one hand, you’re clearly not well, and your body tells you that it can’t continue on, and you need to get out. On the other hand, breaking the ‘everyday normal’, getting up to explain to people that you need to go home, bringing attention to yourself by doing all that, too often feels like something that will bring more anxiety than you can already handle. So again you sit there trying to imagine which is worse.

Getting out of your anxiety attack by yourself is very difficult, because it feels like quicksand – as in any kind of struggle you imagine attempting seems like it will only suck you deeper. It feels safer to stay still where you are and save your energy. And it’s really hard to know which of the options is actually the correct one this time around.

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This past year, I’ve been trying to read some books on Asperger’s, but wasn’t really able to do a good job of it.
I just can’t seem to handle it. I’d like to hope, ‘yet’.
I read articles and impersonal descriptions online just fine. And I have Tony Attwood’s book too, and perhaps I should have tried to read that one first…
But the full “Guide to Aperger’s” is big and serious, and I thought I’d ease myself into it by reading much thinner personal accounts… like “Pretending to be Normal” Liane Holliday Willey or even “Aspergirls” by Rudy Simone… and that’s where I thought wrong. I don’t know if I’m just too bitter right now, or am constantly in an unstable place.

Reading about mildly confusing but generally supported childhoods gets me angsty and snuffling after every paragraph, even when I later read that usually the difference is only that what I went through in elementary/middle school, others still went through, but perhaps somewhere closer to college age. But then the chapter when she begun talking about friends had me in tears 2 seconds in and I almost flung the book against a wall as hard as could… which was rather unfortunate because I also for some reason thought that reading it in small portions during lunch at work would be a good idea.
Whatever it is, I can hardly read these personal accounts without getting frustrated or tearing up, and there’s nothing good about these tears. They are no tears of relief, sympathy, or empathy. They are bitter, and resentful (even if not towards the words and those who wrote them), and exhausted. And I really don’t like myself like this. I don’t want to be this person tearing up 20 times a day from some kind of self-pity or what is this even. I think Simone wrote in the Introduction how it made her exited to read these accounts by other women, because they finally allowed her to recognize herself in others, or identify with someone, and I get that. And I wish I could feel like that too. I wish I would just read these to learn more about others and myself, to maybe even get some hints that could help working through it, to understand things a little better. The problem is, is while I can identify with most of related issues, and am perfectly aware of the fact that each person is different and even if share some one ‘thing,’ there is no way for any other experiences to have any overlap, I still… just can’t handle it, apparently. And it is not really about perceiving my experiences ‘worse’ than the way someone else had it. Though, to be honest, I don’t even know what is this about, really.
And there are plenty of people who are not diagnosed until well into adulthood, and say things like ‘I wasn’t diagnosed until my child was,’ but I’m still in that bitter corner where I just want to narrow my eyes and say “yeaaah, the point is you still managed to get married(likely) and have those children though, didn’t you?” And the marriage and children is not the point, it’s the fact of being on the ‘inside’ of the human society, and having enough social abilities, where you’re even able to do things like that.