My name's Luke, I'm 21, and I have a lot going on in my life. I suffer from Osteoarthritis, Major Depressive Disorder, General Anxiety/Panic Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and am somewhere on the spectrum (soon to be evaluated). My parents are both psychologists, but raised me as neurotypical. My mom and I have an okay relationship, it used to be rocky while I was still a minor, but my dad is a narcissistic sociopath and I'm working on weaning him out of my life. When I was 3, I am pretty sure I was screened for ASD/Asperger's, but my parents never told me the exact test I was given, nor the results, and always become upset when I ask about it. I requested another psych eval when I was 12 because I was suicidal and wanted to know why, and my mom paid off one of her close psych friends to "evaluate" me and tell me that I was just "too smart," and that was why I didn't understand people and wasn't happy. I've just started seeing someone who specializes in ASD and who's going to refer me for a full evaluation, this time on my terms and without my parents' involvement.
I've been living on my own now for almost 6 years (I went to a boarding school for the last two years of high school), and have been paying rent and been in the working world for about 4. I did one semester of college, but experienced three great losses (two deaths, and the loss of my highschool romance) within a one-month span and had to withdraw from classes due to the effect on my grades and concentration. I've held full-time employment maybe twice in my life, and both were for relatively short periods of time followed by extreme burn-out and high-risk behavior (self-harm, isolation, marijuana dependence, etc).
Over the past year or so, my ability to function has just absolutely deteriorated. A year ago, if you asked me what I struggled with, I would have told you "anxiety, and some depression, but I manage it pretty well and can work through it." However, I crashed and burned pretty hard last fall with a huge spike in intrusive thoughts, to the point that my new partner had to help hold me down so I wouldn't hurt myself at times. Thinking back on it, it was also the first time that a full financial responsibility for rent had fallen completely on my shoulders -- I had always lived with my parents or a partner beforehand. I was overwhelmed by the financial burden while experiencing a work burn-out, and the two couldn't have paired together at a worse time.
I struggled for a few months, most of which is a dark blur to me now, and somehow I got myself into counseling and into a partial hospitalization program. It was great. It helped me learn how to cope with my panic attacks better and how to steer myself away from extreme depression. I also started an anti-anxiety medication that actually worked for me. I thought I was getting better, and if you had asked me then what I struggled with, I would have said "anxiety and depression, as well as borderline personality disorder, but I feel equipped to face it."
Well, I went back to work for a bit, and seemed to be doing well, and was even in line for management training (I absolutely love the place, it's a coffee shop and I want to own one someday), until I had a meltdown again and ended up in the emergency room for a crisis evaluation. I got fired because of that emergency room visit, since I was unable to call out of work. My partner had quit his job due to his mental health two months prior, so now we had no income. Luckily, I was able to get unemployment since I was fired for illness, which means I wasn't at fault for not calling, but one unemployment income can't really keep two people afloat. I had begun an application for disability, but that process is so long and I still don't have a decision.
That was at the end of May. Through my job search, I started to realize that a lot of the things I struggle with, and continue to struggle with, along with many of my behaviors and patterns growing up, scream ASD/Asperger's. Eventually, I got a new job that paid well and promised good hours halfway through June, as a night crew stocker at a grocery store. It seemed ideal. Not much social interaction, manual labor to keep me busy, and night hours to match my screwy sleep cycle.
Well, that's ended up being a huge effing nightmare. Not only have I been having a lot more symptoms presenting lately, but I'm also LGBT. I was isolated, verbally abused, and cast aside because of both by my manager, assistant manager, and another coworker. I had to call out of one of my shifts and call the crisis line one night, and I had to go into an emergency counseling center before work another night. I had the biggest shutdown I'd ever experienced, going completely nonverbal and crying for hours. I didn't fully recover the ability to communicate for a week. I've never experienced anything like it. I'm a writer, and words are usually really easy to find. It's one of my special interests. But I couldn't express myself at all. I still feel like I'm not making sense most of the time, and it's been three weeks at least. It's created a huge self-invalidating spiral in my head that pops up every now and then and makes me doubt whether or not I've ever been able to do things as well as I thought I have. About anything, not just communication.
I talked to HR about what I was experiencing with my coworkers/manager, disclosed as being on the spectrum, and the lady said she'd talk to my manager and explain that things might take longer for me. She also said she'd speak to the other people about their behavior - she knew who I was going to talk about before I had even said their names, because apparently one of them has been cited specifically as a reason for other former employees' leaving.
The behavior didn't improve, and on top of that I ended up hurting my back. It's a sprain of some sort, something I've encountered in the past because of my joints, and so I was given some reasonable restrictions - certain lifting limits, and instructions to change/take a break from activities every hour to reduce repetitive motion. They gave me light duty for two days, which seemed to be working, but the next day I was called in to meet with the lady from HR and two other managers who I never even worked with, and I was placed on leave and told that what I'd encountered in terms of the verbal abuse was, "just part of growing up." (I was laughed at and called names and put on breaks instead of being called to help with new truckloads, among other behavior, which I've never experienced in my eight years of customer service history...I don't think discrimination and using slurs is 'part of the working world' in a legal sense.)
So again, we have no income, and I don't know if I'm going to qualify for further checks from unemployment, since I technically am still employed by this employer. I've had to make so many phone calls in the past week, the absolute number one thing I struggle with, for unemployment, disability filing, applying for voc rehab, trying to get our local health coverage for people with low income so I can pay for physical therapy and counseling, trying to get things together to apply for General Assistance so we can pay our electricity and rent this month, and helping my partner fill out his forms and applications for jobs because he's returning to work but is also disabled and can't do those things on his own. I've run errands nearly every day, forcing myself to get up hours earlier than I typically would, when normally I do maybe one thing a day, which could be something as small as changing the trash bags or putting away the laundry.
I'm so completely overwhelmed by all the responsibility on my shoulders, and I'm mad about my parents not helping me learn to cope with these things through any method other than loading more responsibility onto my shoulders to the point that I have no option but to push through even if it causes complete shutdown and puts me at high risk of self-harm/running away. They raised me as neurotypical and forced me to adapt to neurotypical responses to stress. I feel lost and like it's only getting worse because I don't know what to do other than keep going and I feel like I just keep loading responsibility after responsibility onto myself and I don't know how to stop, and it feels like it won't ever stop. I try not to think about it, and try to just get things done to check them off the list, but as soon as I check something off the list I put something else on the list and I just want to get to the end of the list and find a way out of this situation. I know there's a light at the end of this tunnel, I'm going back to school in the fall and my partner is going back to work in a week or so, but my emotions can't see that far and that knowledge feels like it bounces right off my brain and my body completely ignores it. I can't stay asleep, I have trouble getting to sleep, everything feels like it's out of control.
I wish I could take things one thing at a time, but I don't have the time to do that. I wish I could take the time to understand what being on the spectrum may mean for me. I wish I could take the time to look at resources one by one with someone. I wish things would just slow down, it feels like I had that meltdown where I went nonverbal and the world hasn't stopped spinning since.
I don't really know exactly what I'm looking for in this post, but maybe a little advice? Has anyone been in any similar situation, or dealt with any of the stuff I talked about? Does anyone want to help me talk it out?
18 Jul 2016, 12:02 am
