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A friend suggested something like this might help me feel better, though they suggested I do it on Reddit. I'm not gonna do it on Reddit. Within the last couple of years I found out my great aunt had severe schizophrenia. Like, clinically diagnosed, "she talked to demons" schizophrenia. Nobody in the family talked about it, it was never brought up by my mom when she took me to the doctor as a kid (and they'd specifically ask "do you have a family history of mental illness" or whatever), it was the sort of thing I wasn't really supposed to learn and then I did. This was a pretty big revelation, as was googling it and learning schizophrenia is genetic, passed down more frequently through the lady side of a family. I've had piles and piles of signs that I'm schizophrenic since pretty much childhood, but I never put two and two together lol schizophrenia? Really? It'd be a lot more obvious if I had schizophrenia, right? And statistically so few people get schizophrenia to begin with that the idea of me, my mother, HER mother, her sister and gently caress knows who else all having it is just, like, come on man Which is also what I thought about dissociative identity disorder. To be real loving clear here: I don't want it. It's not magical, it's not a superpower, I am miserable 90% of the time. The other 10% I'm confident and carefree to the point of delusion. My separate "identities" really aren't. They don't have their own names or distinct mannerisms I'm aware of, I don't know what prompts the switch, and I can't tell which one I am at any particular time. They all just kind of blur together. They're all me but how I feel about poo poo changes dramatically depending on which me I am. I would love for it to be anything else, if only because it'd be easier to convince people I know that I actually have a problem. Some of my friends don't even think I'm sick. My mother doesn't think I'm sick and she's got it worse than I do. Sometimes I'm agnostic but fairly spiritual, sometimes I have zero interest or connection to spiritual stuff, sometimes I believe in God and sometimes I scream at Him in my car for doing this to me. Sometimes I long to be a woman and sometimes I don't care and sometimes I just want a loving meteor to hit me. Sometimes I feel like an insignificant piece of poo poo slowly rotting to death from the inside and other times I have to reassure myself there is not, in fact, some kind of conspiracy to stop me from reaching my full potential and conquering the planet because I am a genius, only restrained by hidden forces Sometimes I can write and sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can make games and sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can draw (sort of) and sometimes I can't. Sometimes I'm a social butterfly and sometimes I want to never see another human being again. Sometimes I'm an eloquent speaker and sometimes I'm not (that, in itself, was trained and practiced over time as a way of dealing with my flat emotional affect; I come off as wordy online because that's how I talk in real life. People can't read my intentions or motivations through exposure alone, so I've had to learn how to be very detailed, very specific, and very careful with my word choice, which is NOT a helpful habit in online spaces). I tend to get really passionate and obsessed with an idea, work on it for a while (a week, a month, years) and then one day wake up hating it and seeing every single thing wrong with it. Sometimes I just wake up with a much better and completely different idea, and wonder why I wasted all my time on that first thing. Someone suggested it was ADHD, but it's not my attention that switches- it's my entire outlook on the thing. Sometimes the "me" that liked the thing drifts back into the fray but usually long, long after the iron has cooled and the project in question is super dead. I also get migraines with big oool' fuckin' aura symptoms, like losing the ability to say certain words or going full blown god drat blind for hours at a time. The only real external change I've been told of is the aforementioned flat emotional affect. It comes and goes. I'm never capable of really, fully expressing my emotions through my face or tone, but sometimes I can get close to acting human while other times I have a perpetually blank expression and speak in completely dead tones. I also discovered that, despite doing impressions and silly voices my whole life, I can't seem to imitate the "other me voice"; I can sound like Barney, I can do a pretty decent Anthony Hopkins impression, but if I'm flat I can't sound like unflat me and if I'm unflat me I can't convincingly sound like flat me. I can only impersonate people that aren't me. I've talked to five therapists so far, and spent some time at an in-patient mental health facility. It doesn't help. Not because therapy is bad or anything, but because I can only afford free options for therapy in a small, lovely Oklahoma town where nobody knows how to or wants to deal with me, and half my therapists don't seem to take me seriously in the first place because of the almighty flat affect. I don't come off as crazy, I just come off as some rear end in a top hat rambling in a dry voice. My first therapist was via computer monitor (because covid) and she'd frequently leave the session to go answer the door or check on her kid or whatever it happened to be at the time. Still counted against my session time. I've pretty much given up on therapy until I can afford a non-free therapist, which isn't happening any time soon because my brain problems make it hard to make money. Or maintain a relationship, or even finish something. Aside from that I have a lot of the usual. Blackouts and amnesia periods, sexual dysfunction, delusions both paranoid and of grandeur, passing periods where I just stop giving a poo poo about hygiene, horrible sleep habits if I sleep at all, disorganized behavior (lip picking and chain smoking lately, my habit of biting my fingernails well into my late twenties has contributed to the numerous factors that are god drat destroying my teeth right now). I had some hallucinations in my teens but these gave way to the delusions in my twenties, something I've been told is pretty standard for schizophrenics. It took me a long time to understand that mental illnesses, even schizophrenia, are a spectrum; I can have mild schizophrenia. My mom's condition being substantially worse doesn't negate the existence of mine. Besides, my brain poo poo is only getting worse- I'm pretty sure I'll catch up sooner or later at the current rate. Anyway, I really told you that story so I could tell you this one: because I've been a manic depressive mess with a bouncing brain my whole life, my life has also been kind of all over the place and involved a lot of varied experiences. I have tried and failed at a lot of jobs, I have taken a swing at a lot of different projects. I can talk about my DID and schizophrenia but I'm still figuring them out; other things I can talk at length about include but aren't limited to: - Living in a small town in Oklahoma that's every ounce as corrupt and backward as you might imagine it to be, if not somehow worse - Being involved in a really hosed up adoption scheme - Having gone to a private school inside a Pentecostal church, with about 9 students, under the ACE program - Basically being raised by wild Nintendos, because my mom is a detached monster and my dad was a cross-country truck driver - Getting to go on the road with my dad a few times as a kid - Being an overnight security guard at a hospital - Training to be a professional wrestler - Being a blackjack dealer - Being a maintenance guy at a tribal casino that gives zero fucks - Writing tabletop RPGs like RemiNES and Gratuitous Anime Gimmick - Making two HTML5 browser games that frontpaged Newgrounds for a year each, mostly on the strength of big anime tiddies in the marketing, Labyrneath and Labyrneath II - Being the author of the greatest Mario fanfiction webcomic to not feature any Mario characters circa 2010, Mushroom Go - Being the author of experimental webcomics(?) Blood is Mine and My Delirium Alcazar, the latter of which is ongoing and my main source of income - Doing so much bullshit like Amazon MTurk and Inbox Dollars that they're basically my secondary income, combined with the tabletop RPGs and rare T-shirt sales - Plus a bunch of normal poo poo like washing dishes, painting houses, mowing lawns, being a keyholder at a Gamestop (twice), working at a convenience store (which I got robbed at, so I guess that's a story), etc. I'm probably forgetting some because that's what I do. It's a big stupid post but I'm a big stupid person. I'm not as depressed as I probably sound, there's just no real way to sugarcoat that my whole life has been Mr. Bones' Wild Ride and all I can really do is try to figure out how I got here from inside it. Ask me about whatever, I'm tired of typing this post up edit: added links Lunatic Sledge fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Sep 20, 2022 |
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Sep 19, 2022 23:24
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Uhh have you actually been formally diagnosed with any of these various mental illnesses?
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Sep 26, 2022 11:36
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You should have posted on reddit.
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Sep 26, 2022 11:43
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Sometimes I run, sometimes I hide
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Sep 26, 2022 14:16
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Laminator posted:Uhh have you actually been formally diagnosed with any of these various mental illnesses? two, two mental illnesses, one of which is more likely because of the other I've had one doctor say it definitely sounds like schizophrenia but hesitate to commit (and they recommended me someone else based on it), and one therapist tell me they're not sure what else my particular stack of symptoms could be without saying it definitely is anyone else I've talked to wouldn't confirm schizophrenia but refused to rule it out, but again, I'm not exactly paying top dollar for access to these services so grain of salt I didn't get a ceremony or a certificate or anything, but I did get prescribed anti-psychotics, I don't know how formal is formal here if you've got another theory I'd love to hear it, my original goal in hitting up mental health places was to rule out having what my aunt had and so far nobody's been interested in doing that kordansk posted:You should have posted on reddit. thanks, I appreciate folks bumping this week old thread to take a big poo poo on it I can just close the thread if it's that much of a blight Lunatic Sledge fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Sep 26, 2022 |
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Sep 26, 2022 14:56
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