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Alive but unwell

mr.chip

I haven't posted on here for some time. About a month, at least, I think. 

I've been in a mental health hospital for over the past two weeks. I became too much for my aging parents to worry over and opted, after being given the choice, to hospitalise myself. So I'm voluntary, not sectioned, and can go out. I still consider myself to be suicidal but I am hoping that my hospital stay (as yet of unknown duration) and my sharing of my testimony on here can be of some benefit. If not, nevermind.

The psychiatrist seems quite sure that I have Asperger's Syndrome (Level 1 ASD) and the common comorbidities of depression and anxiety are hopefully being accounted for when it comes to working out my medication ('drug cocktail'). Access to occupational therapy here is useful and I am treated well by staff and even try to socialise with other patients on my ward and those I meet in therapy. Pathetic yet charming, I imagine it must seem.

I don't know where it's all leading. My dream of becoming a teacher crashed and burned as I have now officially been withdrawn from my training course. No wrongdoing on my part (beyond honesty that I need help) but I'm really not in a good place to appeal. The way I was hung out, left high and dry, broke me and is partly why I'm now in hospital, a broken man. I'm haunted by this rejection as much as my failure in being a husband, a father, a son and a brother. So I'm homeless, jobless, dreams and ambitions are over. And, for all I know, I could be discharged from here with no medication, awaiting the excruciatingly long autism diagnosis all the time. They'll likely try to get me into a council flat and make sure my benefits support me but it's small fry when I know I've just had enough of it all.

If this is autism, it has broken me as much as it has defined me. The rawness of defeat haunts me. My past haunts me. My present terrifies me. My future is laughable in its negligibility. 

A middle-aged, autistic man. Burnt out, rejected, lost. Suicide is logic to me, not just an emotional release. I can't stand it anymore. But I keep going. Alive but unwell.

Please note my experience of living with despair. Autistics are more likely than others to take their lives. The cold logic of not being sure that the massive overdose I was planning would be enough brought me here in the end. Now I get checked on every so often, with a regular 'privacy window' check that I haven't  somehow succeeded in strangling myself with my bare hands in this 'safe' environment.

And the sobering thought is that it does and can get much, much worse than this.

Is this really worth living? Apparently you have to reply in the affirmative, or else. 

A

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  • mr.chip said:
    If this is autism, it has broken me as much as it has defined me.

    It can suck to be autistic at times, but I found it helps to not try to compare our ambitions to those of neurotypicals as we are quite different.

    For example if a neurotypical tried to do the same course as you were while raising a 2 year old child, caring for an elderly invalid parent and writing a novel in their spare time then they would quite naturally probalby do badly at all these often and have a breakdown when it all gets to much.

    We have a different threshold when it comes to the things we can manage to do, but on the plus side our hyperfocus can often lead us to do some tasks exceptionally well.

    When we encounter stumbles like this in life it is good practice to pause, get your energy back up to a level where you can revisit your dreams and practical plans and try to learn from the lessons of the past

    What worked well, what was a major trigger for you and what were the warning signs to look out for in future. Learn from it this way and keep a note of it so you can look over it periodically to remind yourself what to look for in case you are at risk of another meltdown.

    mr.chip said:
    Is this really worth living?

    Yes. It is what you make of it but you need to be smart in how you do this. You can have a quality of life but don't try to consider yourself as if you were a neurotypical. You are different to them but still can work, love, achieve and enjoy in ways you just need to discover.

    Keeping a journal is a good start and will help you distill out the things that work best for you for the long term, so my advice would be to try this, get a therapist if you can afford one (one with lots of experience of late diagnosed autists) and focus on developing a plan over the next year or two to get you where you ultimately want to be,

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  • mr.chip said:
    If this is autism, it has broken me as much as it has defined me.

    It can suck to be autistic at times, but I found it helps to not try to compare our ambitions to those of neurotypicals as we are quite different.

    For example if a neurotypical tried to do the same course as you were while raising a 2 year old child, caring for an elderly invalid parent and writing a novel in their spare time then they would quite naturally probalby do badly at all these often and have a breakdown when it all gets to much.

    We have a different threshold when it comes to the things we can manage to do, but on the plus side our hyperfocus can often lead us to do some tasks exceptionally well.

    When we encounter stumbles like this in life it is good practice to pause, get your energy back up to a level where you can revisit your dreams and practical plans and try to learn from the lessons of the past

    What worked well, what was a major trigger for you and what were the warning signs to look out for in future. Learn from it this way and keep a note of it so you can look over it periodically to remind yourself what to look for in case you are at risk of another meltdown.

    mr.chip said:
    Is this really worth living?

    Yes. It is what you make of it but you need to be smart in how you do this. You can have a quality of life but don't try to consider yourself as if you were a neurotypical. You are different to them but still can work, love, achieve and enjoy in ways you just need to discover.

    Keeping a journal is a good start and will help you distill out the things that work best for you for the long term, so my advice would be to try this, get a therapist if you can afford one (one with lots of experience of late diagnosed autists) and focus on developing a plan over the next year or two to get you where you ultimately want to be,

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