People always ask you how you’re doing. I always lie and say something positive.
I’m alright/Doing well/Fine, thanks/etc. Isn’t this what everyone does? I mean, who’s fine, ever?
If I were to answer truthfully, I'd probably say something like “disordered,” or “dysregulated,” or “unsupported,” or a combination of those things, because that’s how I actually feel. Every day.
Now, there are days when I do feel “fine” or “well” or whatever. Sometimes that feeling will stretch to a week. Sometimes two weeks. But it takes a tremendous effort of nervous system regulation, a monk-like level of self-control via diet, exercise, rest, meditation, therapy, scheduling and routines, and much more (without the aid or accountability of a monastery, other monks, or even reliable, present friends) to achieve that, and it inevitably crashes down like a house of cards, leaving me a mess for extended periods of time: weeks, months. But nobody ever sees it because the people in my life other than my immediate family only see me maybe once a season, if that, and when we do see each other, well I grew up by learning how to mask my thoughts, feelings, desires, mannerisms, facial expressions, etc. with some degree of effectiveness. And if we see each other that seldom, are we really even “in each other’s lives?”
Yes, I’ve been diagnosed and the verdict is that I have a pretty disordered mind. That means they told me I have four disorders: Autism, ADHD, SAD, and Adjustment Disorder with Anxiety. I had to look that one up, and I have to say that it’s a relief to receive diagnoses as it gives me a more clear path on how to heal and hopefully get better somehow.
So I’ve been in therapy. It’s helped me a lot already. Unfortunately though I’ve come to self-diagnose with yet another thing: Complex PTSD. I think some people think of this as “childhood PTSD,” and it has to do with having an “injured nervous system from coming out of a rough family.” Anyway, I’m pretty sure CPTSD well-describes a lot of my feelings and behavioral patterns, so I’m adding it to the list. Isolation, feelings of being utterly alone, even feelings of not being human, are regular states of mind for me and feature into the criteria for CPTSD.
When I was a kid, my parents would fight. And by fight I mean they would have screaming matches and things often got broken and there were multiple threats of divorce. Once when they were having one of these fights I got in the bathtub to feel safe and stop shaking. The hot water and the bubbles were soothing. But when the dust settled, they barged in on me and asked me which parent I would rather go with if they divorced. I’ll never forget it. I was eight years old.
Me in 1985 as an alter boy at St. Mary’s in Greenville, SC. I was in third grade there.
My older brother would beat the shit out of me every time I was alone with him, humiliate me in front of his friends, call me a “faggot” and otherwise degrade me, ever since I could remember. By the time I turned 13, in July of 1990, he’d cut all that shit out—he had been a wild teenager, even getting into fist-fights with our Dad—loud crashes as they wrestled each other against walls and into furniture—Mom and Dad and Danny all screaming at each other, cussing—chaos, entropy—I remember one incident where the big mirror that hung on the wall in the living room fell and broke—I would hide under my bed, shaking like a leaf, not out of fear for myself but fear for them, that they would be seriously hurt or even killed—I imagined I could just jump out a window and run away and that’s how I made myself believe I wasn’t scared for my own physical safety—I guess he had matured a little after having been kicked out and having to get a job and an apartment and all that. That summer he’d returned from working in Tennessee and started taking me out in his old Corvair convertible and getting me burgers and fries and milkshakes and talking to me like an actual human being, as opposed to a piece of shit that he wanted to scrape off his shoe. It finally started to feel like I had a real brother, not just some kid who was six years older and hated me. But then he got in a car wreck that same month that left him in a 5-month coma and permanently and totally disabled.
There’s a lot more than that, and I could go on and on about all these things, but those two patterns of abuse—let’s just call it what it is—are enough to fuck a little kid up pretty good for life.
I’ve never wanted to talk about all this shit for a lot of reasons, but mostly I feel ashamed of all of this, even though not a single thing they did to me was my fault. I don’t know why I’m even writing this now, except that the shit I went through in my volatile home life as a small child has led me to the state of extreme isolation in which I now live.
There are (thankfully) at least a few people to talk to on the phone about some things, but I don’t have a real social support network or a real circle of friends, i.e. people I can rely on to be present for me physically (as in in the same place at the same time) or offer me affection, people I can see more than once or twice a year. I can’t even get anyone to come over for a fucking cookout. It’s not their fault. It’s no one’s fault really, except maybe my family, who raised me this way.
Anyway, I’m fine! How are you?