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HetFlexK 51M
155 posts
11/13/2018 8:00 pm
I'm a bit mental


When you have a mental illness, it is difficult to describe it to other people. It’s usually easy to describe what it does to you - what having the mental illness causes - but not what happens to you as a result of having it. See, I already having trouble here. Let me start again.

Being mentally ill can sometimes mean being irrational. Explaining irrational thoughts and feelings to people who are stable, and literal, isn’t always an easy thing to do. They “think” they get it, but they really don’t. It’s kind of like people who have never smoked marijuana saying they “think” they know what it’s like to get high, because they smoke cigarettes, and have watched movies where people have smoked weed. Until you actually inhale, you don’t know, and until you’ve had a few days, weeks, or even months of irrational thoughts and feelings, you really can’t imagine what it’s like. That’s the position I feel like I in. I mentally ill, and I try to share that with people, but nobody seems to really understand, comprehend, empathize. Here, let’s see how well I do trying to explain my crazy to you:

I have Asperger’s, but the symptoms that bother me the most, that are slowly making me more and more disabled, are my sensitivities and reactions to auditory stimulation(s). The simplest way to describe it: repetitive noises, and songs, become intrusive, and eventually become an irritation. When the noise or music does not cease or change, I become irrational, lose control, get angry, and have verbal outbursts that almost always contain unnecessary profanities. A perfect example: I go to the grocery store, and when entering am confronted with music being played so loudly that there is no avoiding it, no ignoring it. The song being played is a Pop tune, and the chorus is going to be repeated no less than 20 times in the next 3 minutes. It will likely take me less than one minute before I am complaining, out loud, to the empty aisle I am standing in, about how stupid the song is. Chances are, being loud enough that people in the next aisle can probably hear me, but I already so incensed I cannot control myself. By the end of that 3 minute song, around repetition number 15 of the chorus, I will be angry. Fucking angry.

I want to just toss everything down and get the hell out of the store. Suddenly my brain is scrambled, and I can barely think, let alone remember what I came in to purchase. To combat this, I have begun taking my own music to the grocery store, so that I can drown out what they are forcing me to listen to, with something I actually enjoy. My earbuds do a good job of blocking out their noise, while amplifying my own, and it is the only way I can now shop at a relaxed pace. not fully relaxed, mind you, because I cannot hear what is going on around me, but the trade off is acceptable. The same is true when I exit the store, though I admit I don’t to wear my headphones if just walking back to my car. If, however, I walked the 2 or 3 miles from my home to the store, and plan on walking back, I my music to stay on, because it’s not just Pop tunes that drive me crazy. I really hate the birds as well.

There are two kinds of birds that I dislike, because of the noises they make. Their “calls” stab into my brain, and make me want to destroy them. I’ve chucked rocks, used a slingshot, and even purchased a b.b. gun at one point, to rid myself of the noise that certain birds make. The affect they have on me is the same as described above - irrational anger, inability to think, violent verbal outbursts - so I don’t walk very far, or for very long, without taking music with me. Crows and Stellar’s Jays are two very prolific species in my area, and they are loud and obnoxious (to my ears) year-round. As a result of their presence, I cannot go for a stroll, do yard work, or even relax on the back porch without worrying that some bird is going to begin chirping, or screeching, and turn my brain into a hot, fiery mess. When I walk, I wear my headphones. When I rake the leaves, I wear headphones. When I go out in the backyard to talk to eve, I spend as little time out there as possible, because if it’s not the birds, it’s the dogs in the neighborhood, or the next door, or the squirrels trying to attract a mate, or the construction going on across the field behind our house that gets to me. There is always something just waiting to disrupt my literal piece of mind, and drive me into chaos. That’s not a fun way to live, so I spend a lot of time inside, and when I am out, I do my best to exert control over my environment. If that means wearing headphones and listening to music all the time, I do it, but that’s not what I would prefer. I would prefer to not feel tortured by the things that everyone else seems to barely even notice, or when they do, has no issue ignoring. Being broken is no damn fun, and no fair.

Like many people in this world, I have other issues like depression, and anxiety, but I firmly believe that those are issues that can be overcome, by me. The levels at which I have suffered these things has risen, or lowered, depending upon how my life was going at the time, but my Asperger’s symptoms have only increased. The things I used to be able to do, to cope, don’t always work now, but they are still better than the alternative, which comes in pill form and has more side effects than healing affects. I don’t believe for one moment there is a pill that will magically make me like Pop music, or lessen my reactions to barking dogs, but I know being able to control my environment, and escape bad situations when I can, is a decent substitute for now. My mental illness is not going away, but perhaps I can live a decent life if I learn to work around it. That’s a better choice than swallowing a medication and walking around in a daze, or worse. I’ve tried many pills, and not once did I think there was an answer in that approach.

I am mentally ill, but doing what I can to make the best of my life. That is all I believe can be expected of anyone.


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