“Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every dayYou learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play.”
Guns N’ Roses, Welcome To The Jungle
In my last post I said I was crying when I arrived at my new place, another caravan in somebody’s backyard. I was so scared this was the next chapter of my horror story. Unfortunately I was right. Continue reading “Psychotic descent- part 4: quest for safety, autism, discrimination, noise sensitivity and stuck in a world not made for us”
The day where I’d leave Melbourne and return to the country approached. I had teed up the new caravan to rent. I had teed up transport. I bought doonas, heaps of hot water bottles and a bag full of heat packs so I was better prepared for the cold, all while unwell. I kept waking up to a peculiar hammering. It was usually just a few bangs and then would stop for a while. One day, I heard three bangs, the number which I seemed to be seeing everywhere. I read a very scary post on social media once where someone reported hearing three knocks on her door at night. Another member said that it was demons and her death would be imminent. The number three is a very significant number spiritually, as seen in the Holy Trinity. I was convinced the number meant something. In fact I was convinced everything meant something, that there was hidden signs and meaning in the light flickering, the smoke detectors malfunctioning, etc. Continue reading “The psychotic descent continues: part 2”
Part 1. Fleeing the city to live with mice
My time away in the country just got worse and worse by the minute. I couldn’t get rid of the mice in the caravan which would keep me awake all night. My friend and I carried a mattress down from her house one night and I slept in the annex, a room adjoining the caravan, but the little shits were in there as well. They kept running through the room all night. I was so exhausted I couldn’t even get up. Continue reading “Reality makes you mad”
I want to write a post about Autistic Burnout. I’m not sure I really like using labels such as autism because no two autistic beings are the same and having the same diagnoses doesn’t mean you’re going to get on with somebody. But Autistic Burnout is still a thing which more people need to be aware of.
According to AASPIRE, “autistic burnout is a state of physical and mental fatigue, heightened stress, and diminished capacity to manage life skills, sensory input, and/or social interactions, which comes from years of being severely overtaxed by the strain of trying to live up to demands that are out of sync with our needs.” Continue reading “Autistic Burnout”
“Hooked on this poison, trapped in it’s deadly scene. Lost in it’s cruel remarks. Every hit takes me further from reality’s reach.” Lost in the chemistry (Chris Brown Music)
I don’t have a great deal to report in this post. I have got into art again and have spent the last few days shopping for new art supplies online. It has become an extension of my shopping addiction, which was mainly fashion. I have an “addictive personality” as it’s been called where as soon as I stop one addiction, another addiction replaces it. I’ve been off social media, which I was addicted to, for a few days. During this time I have spent at least $2000 on art supplies, which will be way more than I will probably ever earn selling $2 badges through my small art business. I’m staying up all night shopping. Recently, I sat on the laptop for 20+ hours straight. I wasn’t even tired, though that next night I paid for it. I was nauseous and so sick and I wondered if I was going to die. Continue reading “Shopping addict”
I thought I’d write a quick post. Nothing particularly eventful has happened, just the same old shit. My physical and mental issues continue to wear away at me, like water eroding rock. I have a new buzzing sensation on my left ankle and the same buzzing sensation on my head which I’ve had for years now since taking Effexor. Yesterday the buzzing and my tremor were particularly bad for some reason. I still managed to upload some new badges to my etsy site which a friend designed. So it was a torturous yet productive day. I can barely do anything these days. I can’t clean up, and there is now a funky smell in my bedroom. Now that I’m not seeing my disability support worker, who used to get me out of the house twice a week, I have nothing to get up for all week. I rarely get dressed or leave the house and when I’m not sleeping I just sit at the computer. I sit on the computer all night as I procrastinate brushing my teeth and going to bed. I then take meds at sunrise so I can sleep. On Christmas at around 9am I took some diazepam and 10mg of olanzapine, the drug I have just weaned myself off from. It seemed to do the trick and I slept all day until 8:30pm. I slept through the picnic my family had planned. So I had no Christmas, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. I hate Christmas and was glad to sleep through it. Continue reading “Update: physical issues and writing from age 13”
“Imagine living with a scream inside you.
And the scream is yours.
And no one else hears it.
That is grief.
Imagine living with a scream inside you—a scream that is yours alone.
It’s loud, it’s piercing, and it reverberates through every part of your being.
And yet, no one else hears it.
Grief can make the world feel so distant.
You might be in the middle of a conversation,
but your mind is elsewhere, caught in that scream.
What does a silent scream even sound like?
What would it sound like if someone else could hear it?
Perhaps it isn’t really a scream but a feeling
with sound, one so raw, so painful, so excruciating
that there are no words to describe it,
so it becomes a sound, a noise, a vibration
that rages through our entire body, screaming,
The scream of grief.”
– Author unknown
I spent most of my day in bed lethargic. The lethargy was actually a welcome relief from the restlessness and agitation that rips apart my insides every day and especially every night. I got a text from my dad thanking me for the various adventures we’ve been on together. It sounded like he was expecting one of us to die soon.
“Dear Zoe,” he wrote. “Thankyou for all the “adventures” you have taken me on ! Thanks for Philip Island, and taking you down there – to run away from the wretched police, and the stupid psychiatrist at Chandler House. Taping my torch on the back of my car, so you could follow in your car … Thanks too for taking me to see Margaret’s place, and her “church”. Thanks for checking out Bendigo, with me, and meeting Dr Julia Bourke… Thanks for “Wet & Wild” … rafting down the Yarra at Warburton. Thanks for inviting me to that place past Sale, where you stayed (with the woman who couldn’t stop talking), where I almost lost her dog, on one of my long walks. Yep, … we have been on some great adventures together ”
I didn’t know if the stress of seeing me suffer for so long, which has led me to isolate, no longer speak and lash out at him, was driving him to suicide. I didn’t know if he senses I am slipping away and may not make it through another year, or even to the end of this year. But tears welled in my eyes when I read that text. Continue reading “Losing things, OCD and more on dissociation”
“You build me up, you break me down. My heart it pounds, yeah you got me. With my hands up, you got me now, you got that sound, yeah you got me.” Ke$ha – TiK ToK
It is the first time I’ve been able to blog since my last post a week or so ago. It’s felt like the longest week of my life. I feel like I could write a whole book on this week alone. The disturbing saga continues, without resolution, like a piano with endless keys which just get lower and lower.
The psych ward only gave me two nights, even though I asked for longer. They wanted to dump me in a facility called PARC, a non-clinical mental health facility, which people stay in for a week as a “step down” from hospital, or a “step up” from home to prevent a hospital admission. But there were questions about my medical stability. I was barely eating and the hospital wanted to do a blood sugar level test which involves pricking your finger but I was scared of the test so refused it. The nurses said they’d come back in half an hour. I then got in the shower when they came to the door to avoid getting the test done. I was so traumatised in general- by life, by the way they just wanted me out when I was acutely unwell- that I became mute. I am still speculating on what is causing my muteness, which I will discuss later, but whatever it was, I just couldn’t will myself to speak. The day of my discharge one of the doctors came in and told me PARC wouldn’t take me if I wouldn’t speak. I felt like she thought I was being manipulative and could blackmail me into talking. I brought up The Shutdown Dissociation Scale research paper on my phone and showed it to her. One of the symptoms is muteness. There is some more great information about the different responses to trauma on this page.
“We don’t follow that here,” the doctor said.
She said if I didn’t go to PARC they’d just be sending me home. I couldn’t believe it.
“So you’re just going to send me home in this state?” I wrote to her, with gestures of disbelief. “This is discrimination against people with disabilities.”
Becoming non-verbal is common in autism when we become overwhelmed, as is shown in the series Heartbreak High, with one of the autistic characters, Quinni, becoming mute for a while after her horrible girlfriend put her through hell.
“I’ll get your discharge papers ready,” the doctor told me. “Have a good day!” Continue reading “Negligent hospitals, mute, trauma, autistic burn out and the fight for freedom”
I feel like the weather here in Melbourne: all over the place. It is the start of spring and we have had a couple of sunny days, but most of the days are still cold, wet, and overcast. The past two days we have had storms with thunder and lightening. Apparently it even snowed on the mountains.
Sometimes I’ve had the energy to put some effort into my appearance. One night I was watching N3ko Mom’s channel on YouTube. She identifies as an adult baby and also has BPD. Her outfits are art. She pairs cute onesies with beautiful make up. It awakened something in me, and I pulled out the black and white party wig I bought a few months back at the $2 store. I tried it on and it actually suited me. It instantly shifted my mood. I will share a photo of me in the sound-proof box I sleep in wearing the new hair. I am with my clowns, which I bought to nurture my inner child. I had two clowns just like these when I was a toddler. Their names were Coco and Noddy. I took them everywhere with me. I think my mum threw them out, but I managed to find some just like them online (they are now considered vintage). The clowns and I are starting to look alike.
hsphaven 