i just wanted to tell someone, pt. 1

i've been wanting to get some feedback on my strange brain for a while, maybe even some "that's not so strange!" encouragement. i don't fucking know. the following will be long as hell and maybe shouldn't be on the internet for everyone to see. maybe i'll chicken out and erase it later. i basically word barfed in a notebook earlier, so i'll just rewrite everything. fuck.

People call me strange. I suppose that's a good place to start. i don't think i react correctly to things. My mom said i never cried as a baby. i went to sleep when i was put in my crib, and stayed quiet til morning. she said she thought my brother was sick when he was born b/c he cried all the time, and when she took him to the doctor they said i was the weird one b/c i never cried when i was hungry or needed changing or in pain or for any reason.

she took me to get my hearing tested at 3 years old because i would not respond to her when she called me. they told her my hearing was perfect, and that i was just "ignoring her". i don't think 3 year olds do that. at least, not on the level i did? she said she would stand directly in front of me calling my name and no response. i don't actually remember any of this, of course.

i DO remember how i used to "play" with toys. i didn't really understand the point of toys, aside from the building ones such as legos or linkin logs, but i did know girls were supposed to play with dolls. so i copied others. i would "play house" with my dolls, in so fa as i was just copying exactly what i had seen other children do on television. after running through all the scenarios, i would usually end up cutting all their hair short and lining them up in rows, then lining them in different rows.

around 7-8 years old, someone told me about "imaginary friends", and how it was common for a kid my age to have one. i didn't want to seem out of the ordinary, so i decided to make one. i felt very stupid, because i couldn't actually imagine someone who wasn't really there. i kept it up for about a week.

in the third grade, there were two girls my age in my class for the first time. i went to a very small school in the country, with an average of about 25 students of all ages at any given time. we'll call these two girls S and D.

D loved make up, and S loved what D loved. i was just happy to have"friends" that weren't my brother or his lil posse. however, i knew next to nothing about make up. i voiced this, and D called me an idiot. i decided i didn't want to learn about make up just for her. that was probably one of the only times i can think of doing that for myself, instead of immediately adopting a "fake it til you make it" attitude.

i tried writing a book when i was 9 years old. i was going to be the world's youngest author. it was going to be my shtick, to reel in the masses. the "book" consisted of about 4-5 pieces of construction paper stapled together. it was about a girl who was so sad she wished she didn't exist, or the world didn't exist, something like that. it wasn't done yet, but i showed it to my P.E. teacher for feedback. she said it was, "scary and you shouldn't be writing things like that. you could hurt someone's feelings!". i pretty much vowed right then and there to never show anyone my writing again.

i'm not scary. fuck you, mrs. w.

anyways. i discovered a series of books called amelia bedilia at around 11 years. it was the first time i realized things could have more than one meaning, instead of just the literal interpretation. suddenly, my world changed. maybe if i could find out and memorize these "second meanings", i could stop feeling like a lone detective in a world full of liars and code talk. it was a wild time. 11 year olds shouldn't have to worry about this shit, i don't think.

math had always been ridiculously easy for me, once i could logic out a concept. therefore, i hated it. in hindsight,it was probably more because of the fact i wasn't allowed to move on until everyone else was. i started homeschooling in the 7th grade, and my mom gave me all these placement tests to see what math to put me in. i scored high enough to start trig and the last bits of algebra 2, despite never having seen a lot of the concepts before. she put me in pre algebra because that's where my age group was at.

after middle school, we joined a home school co-op. the beginning of high school was hell for me. i especially hated the lunchroom, it was very noisy and many people wanted to do small talk. i am very bad at it. freshmen year is also when the brain goop settled in on my brain. everything was like being under water, i couldn't focus. it only got worse as the school year progressed, i probably would not have passed if i hadn't hit the teacher jackpot as far as understanding and extra hours spent tutoring.

cue the summer after graduating. i went and worked at a live-in summer camp, working 14 hr shifts on a good day in the kitchens with a few breaks in between. after one particularly bad day, with my very lazy coworker who refused to quit singing loudly off key, and the head chef's music blasting a completely different song while i panned sheet after sheet of strips of bacon for the next days breakfast, i had what i like to call, "baby's first panic attack". it was pretty much the worst experience i've ever had, and embarrassing as fuck. i had to keep working after about 20 minutes of resting while sipping some water.

after that summer, i went to college out of state. it was the best experience ever for about two weeks. i was away from my mother, and studying pre-med, a way to get my hands on as much biology and organic chemistry books as i could. i had also made fast friends with my cute as hell roommate. i was able to self express a lot easier than at home. the fucking brain fog clung on, however. and it grew into something else.

i could eventually add on a deep paranoia and distrust of any one and anything, and delusions about people trying to "get" me. i heard voices, sometimes saying some pretty awful shit, some just screaming. and screaming. endless screams. i had more trouble than ever trying to read emotions on people, even myself. i would just say words wrong sometimes. i couldn't (can't) help it.

uhhh that was like two years ago, basically no change in the brain fuck. a lil worse maybe.

i'm getting kinda bored of writing and it basically devolves into a bunch of rambling about how my mom's an asshole, so i'll save all that for the is this abuse bits, if i ever work up the courage to post in the abuse thread.

uuummm, i guess have at it. thoughts and opinions welcome. please don't call me scary, though, it does weird things to my brain. not that i think any of you would. whatever.

 

Okay, so a lot of the stuff I'm reading here sounds a lot like autism, but keep in mind that a. I'm not autistic, and b. My psych classes haven't really covered autism at all, so all I've got is feedback from tumblr.

The observing others to fit in, the issues with "hey this word has multiple meanings", the meltdown due to overstimulation...I've seen a fair amount of this before in asks to seebs, and it sounds like they're pretty common traits for autism. Here's the list, if you want to compare.

Also:

seconded. fuck you mrs. w. That's not a good way to react to a story, even if it scares you. Especially as a teacher/actual adult. I feel like a responsible teacher these days would go "huh, that isn't a very typical story written by a nine-year old, I wonder if they are having problems at school or at home", and then take it to the principal, the parents, or the guidance counselor. (And if she'd done that, they might have figured out your level of brainfuckery and been able to help you figure out the world easier. In a perfect world, I guess.)

 

@boyacrossthestreet ah, thanks. yeah, my parents...uh. it's complicated. i might talk about it later. the school didn't have a guidance counselor, it was literally like 25 kids in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of teachers. my gruncle and graunt owned some land out in the country and ran a school in their spare building. it was all a bit weird.

 

Are you still getting the voices & stuff, or was that a temporary thing? A lot of it sounds like autism of some variety, but the voices and the like aren't ... but you don't just have to be wierd headwise in just one way.

And man, that sucks. I went to small country schools, but my graduating class was like 50 or so, not the whole school.

 

the voices are still a thing, i know they aren't real though. i kinda really need to see a doctor :/. i'm working on that bit. i can't just go cause my mom'll guilt me out of taking meds again + make me feel like i'm ruining the family for not being normal, then she'll get all weepy and cry, and say she's a bad mom, and i have to say she isn't or bad things. happen. that doesn't go in this thread though.

basically i went from having a "too full" feeling in my head as a muchkin and now it's more like a "melting out my ears but no one seems to give a fuck/is actually worse than me somehow" sort of thing.

 

oooh wait wait - importantish data probably, my bio dad is diagnosed with bipolar + psychosis due to drugs. i didn't even know this until college.

 

Why does she guilt you out of taking meds? That's messed up. And that is important data. I know bipolar + stress can cause delusions like voices; obviously schizophrenia can too, but those are generally much harder to distinguish from reality unmedicated, I think. At least working from the sample of schizophrenics I personally know.

 

idk, my mom said i'm "weirdly aware of myself". a doctor once told me that too, not even having met her.

...i, some of my delusions are, like, obviously not real as they dont make any logical sense, but i KNOW vampires are gonna get me every time im in the dark headed to my room for the night. i know that in exactly the same way i KNOW that vampires dont exist and darkness is nothing but the absence of light, even if they were real they wouldnt just be chillin in a dark corner.

i've gotten really good at logic-ing things out over the years to deduce what people mean when they say something confusing. its nearly second nature at this point i guess, i just use it on everything.

also, without going too deeply on the mom thing here: money. it's always about money.

edit: plus she's super anti- vaxx.

 

I'm getting the feeling that she's also rather anti medicine in general, especially psychiatric?

 

yeah. she's seen what it "did" to my dad, and kinda judges all medication on her experiences? a theory, at least. she won't explain when i ask why.

the only clearish answer i've ever gotten from her on that topic was when she said i was "too spiritual for that stuff". she thinks i have some weird gift of prophecy or intuition, it's a bit scary tbh. my whole family does. did. does? did? meh it hurts to think about, i hate charismatics sometimes. although i am a bit biased in that particular denomination of christian.

 

you haven't said whether or not you're still in college, but if you are, it's pretty easy to see a psych on campus without your parents finding out about it, especially if you're still out of state. i'm canadian, so idk what it's like where you are, but my tuition fees include a student insurance policy that covers something like 80% of my drug fees, and that last 20% is relatively easy to pay for out of pocket, especially if they're generic medications.

i did this too! it felt like the sort of thing that everyone did, so i should do it too, but it was boring and didn't make much sense to me so i gave up on it pretty fast.

 

oops, sorry. no, i'm not, made it about a year and then had a breakdown, went to a behavioral center where they put me on zyprexa, was dragged home, taken off zyprexa and put on geodon w/ an antidepressant, put on some different antidepressants when that one didn't work, got to keep that up for a few months until we moved and i wasn't covered by the financial services of my county anymore, and abruptly taken off everything by my mom. do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.

that was important info, i just got tired of writing. it was kind of late.

 

Yeah, most of this sounds very spergy. I slept through the night really early and didn't cry about being left alone, lined up toys in rows, made up an imaginary friend for about a week because I heard that other people did it, had trouble making friends but refused to pretend to like things in order to fit in, wrote odd stories in stapled 'books', noise issues, literalism issues, overload and panic attacks, mmyep. So that all sounds pretty normal to me, for what it's worth.

Hm. Silly question, but when you say you hear voices, do you mean that you're literally hearing a voice with your ears? Because if it's with your ears, that sounds like a hallucination, but if it's a thought or image in your head that you can't get out, I think that might be something different.

For instance, I used to have intrusive thoughts about blood everywhere. I couldn't stop imagining it, it was repetitive, and it was very specific, but I was never actually seeing it with my eyes; it was just a very vivid image in my head. (I'm pretty sure that that was PTSD + severe sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation will mess you up.)

 

Yes, this sounds like brainweird of various kinds. Autism and bipolar would be my guess, for what thats worth from some asshole on the internet guessing from two posts. But i think you really need medical care for at least the hallucinations/intrusive thoughts part of things, and if your mom doesnt like it then well, sometimes part of being an adult is doing whats best for you whether your parents agree or not. Like, could you just take meds and not discuss it with your mom?

 

oh. idk, i described it as 'seeing and thinking bad things in my head' mixed with 'mishearing noises' and suddenly everyone was like OH GOD YOU"RE GOING ON ANTI-PSYCHOTICS RIGHT FUCKING NOW and i was like... yeah alright just make the horrible go away. ptsd makes a hell oh a lot of sense considering my tragic past(TM), and my sleep schedule has always been crap.

the screaming was pretty fucking vivid though. i did that semi on purpose though at first, sort of a "get these mind readers out of my brain" thing, cause obviously everyone except me could read minds. how else did they know so much about me and my feelings without me explicitly telling them?

intrusive thoughts. a fairly new term for me, but is becoming increasingly more relevent as time passes.

 

i live with her and can't do many irl things, because im a useless fuckwit with no spoons ever. i have a chance to commit myself, if i ever work up the nerve. i just don't wanna deal with the whole "im a bad mom how dare you make me look bad oh god this is all my fault" bullshit ill have to dodge to get there from her.

 

I know, right? I do not get the magic reading of facial expressions and body language thing. How do you know when people are lying, it makes no sense, allistic people. o_o

Take all this with a big grain of salt because I'm just a random guy on the internet, not a psychologist, but...

Yeah, that makes sense. You're describing things in a way that sounds very much like psychosis, but... I'm getting the vibe that that might be because those are the words you have to describe your brainweirds, and maybe not because they're the most accurate descriptions.

Even if it's not psychosis, it definitely sounds like you need to talk to someone professional about this if you can, and ideally move away from your mom, because it sounds like she's pretty awful. This sounds like it's seriously interfering with your ability to accomplish your goals and live happily, which makes it definitely worth discussing with someone professional.

Some things to keep in mind:
- It sounds like you're usually low on spoons, likely because your mom is stressful, and people are expecting you to cope with loud noises / rapid changes in plans / crowded environments / lots of social interaction. You sound pretty autistic, and it's normal for autistic folks to get overloaded by that kind of thing. Overload often involves things like meltdowns, crying, panic attacks, hiding somewhere safe, listening to calming music, not being able to talk...
- Brainfog can be caused by being low on spoons, because you don't have enough spoons to think straight. It can also be caused by common brain things like depression, which sounds pretty possible given what you've said about your homelife. Also possible that it's something else, but those are fairly common reasons for it.
- PTSD can cause paranoia and delusions, because it is super fun like that. It's common for PTSD-symptoms to show up after you're in a better environment, after you feel safe, not while bad things are happening. Common symptoms include either constantly remembering Bad Stuff or being unable to remember Bad Stuff that happened, recurring nightmares, trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating, always being on edge, overreacting to loud noises or being touched, always feeling like a scary threat is going to come at you... Again, it's possible that this is something else, and psychosis has some very similar-looking stuff.

For instance, for me...

Spoiler: Cut for gore/depression/death

I had some Bad Stuff happen that involved a lot of people close to me getting sick or dying all at once. I was already depressed, and I had a lot of survivor's guilt - clearly it would have been better if I'd gotten hurt or died, instead of those people, because I was worthless and suicidal already. This turned into feeling like it was all my fault that those people had gotten hurt.

I watched a scary zombie movie right about the same time, and I started having horrible gory nightmares every night, about being in a hospital where everyone I loved was killed by zombies and it was all my fault. I couldn't sleep because I felt like every tiny sound at the window was zombies trying to get in. I had to sit in the corner of any classroom, I couldn't stand to be surrounded because I was afraid of being trapped if a gunman came in, or if monsters attacked. When I saw or heard people, I couldn't stop imagining their bloody corpses, and my walls and hands covered in bloodstains, and their screams as they died. I knew all this was crazy, but I couldn't make it stop.

You can kinda see the through-line there. It wasn't about zombies. It was about me being upset and afraid that people close to me had gotten hurt, and my brain was just using zombies as a metaphor to talk about it, because cancer is pretty abstract. But if I'd said, "I can't stop thinking about the bloody corpses of everyone I love, and I keep thinking I hear monsters scratching at my window"... That's true, but it sounds psychotic, which wasn't actually what was going on. And it took me a long time to take it apart well enough to figure out what was actually going on in my head.

Not sure if that's what's going on for you, but it sounded familiar to me.

 

obvs not the same scenario, but... it would honestly explain why everything suddenly got horrible once i was happy and away from home in college. everything got pretty bad, and a lot of the ptsd symptoms sound super familiar to me.

like

all of this except nightmares.

not having enough descriptors sounds right too, i have actually hoarded vocabulary words from a pretty young age cause i needed multiples of the same meaning when i would forget a word. e.g. i would forget lady or woman and have female all raring to go so my flow didn't break and my concentration wasn't lost on trying to remember the word lady or woman.

i have major troubles with the out louds most of the time, but people don't tend to notice that when you're 10 and using words like precipitation instead of rain or trash receptacle instead of garbage can.

 

Yep, the out-louds/descriptors thing sounds autistic too; I do that too.

Is there any chance that you could see a psychologist once, even if you can't manage it on an ongoing basis right now? I imagine that 'hey, I'm going on an errand' and saving up money might be easier than an actual regular appointment, while you're living with your mom.

The thing is, I understand that untreated schizophrenia and other psychoses can get worse if they're not dealt with. PTSD is no fun, but it doesn't escalate in the same way. Both is of course also always possible, because brains are complicated.

So while seeing a psych type would definitely be good in general, even seeing one once might be useful, because it might help you figure out whether you're really having psychosis, or if you've been having communication issues and it's really something else. Might help you figure out the best step going forward.

(Given the issues with outlouds, I would suggest typing up your thoughts for them to read, or even printing out this thread; communicating clearly about complicated brainstuff on the fly is really hard.)

 

there is a way, i'm just gonna have to suck it up and do it. i might just do the "print all this out" thing. the sucky part is the place that will see me and work out the payment options is an actual facility i'd have to commit myself into, and i'm a little afraid cause media has told me many things. and my mom'd have to take me. and i'd have to leave the house. for a long time probably.

i'd also add the whole "my siblings are more important and at least one is even more fucked up than me and the rest are on my level" but i just dont have the goddamn energy anymore. not for her and not for them. i might be a bad person but i do still love them and want them to be happy.

i'll go soon.