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The Neverending Story. For adults [not in a fun way, so may be upsetting]

I keep hopping around the things I need to write about because, frankly, it's difficult to do that- to actually write about what I need to write about. I feel like it's just a lot of freaking work.
Things I want to write about:
I'm realizing one of the ways I can be aided in expressing periods of distress and instability, or rather specific ways that I experience these feelings, is to find visuals that help me.
Another is frequently to characterize them as animals, creatures, beings.

OCD becomes a mogwai, and then a pack of gremlins.


Bipolar is hard to describe because when I do, people mock my description- it can't possibly be so insanely dramatic, so soul wrenching, so... well, crazy.
Yes. Yes it can.

It can eat you up. It can take you for its own, leave you empty. It can be all encompassing but you DON'T KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE because you can't see or feel it and it leaves no evidence because there will be no you in its wake.
And yes I'm including movie clips because I don't assume people understand what I'm talking about but this is what i got right now to explain.

Like The Nothing.

You think you are strong and people picture that you can be like Atreyu and you find yourself fighting Gmorck at the entrance to a cave. So you fight the black fanged dog who some how spaks your own damn mother tongue. The trick to this is that you see him dead in front of you, having bled to death; you get up and find it HAD NO EFFECT because the nothing is still a thing. It's nothing! how is it a threat? What?
So people tell you to keep fighting but don't understand- you can't fight nothing. None of it matters except that you are passing time, waiting for a freaking luck dragon to hopefully pluck you from the swamps of sadness before you are sucked under or torn apart. Then luck you, you run into the damn dog again- he doesn't even know your name but for kicks he's gonna eat you anyway. Screw this, man.



I make it through all that and with this little glimmer of sand create my own brand new world.
In this world I might be Jean Grey. I would fear however, that maybe one day I might be taken over by a force that not many others really understand- that I really didn't know how to control. Maybe I would shoot out impossible flames, disintegrate matter, be caught inside myself and struggle to resurface but... this is part of what makes me rise again and again.

That is the beauty of bipolar.
You rise again and again and what makes you do that is the very thing that makes the struggle.
Honestly the crazy is what overpowered a lot of the autism stuff.

I have worked to get a handle on that and I'd like to say I have. When the bipolar "went away" [I learned to really cope with it and manage it well], all of the sudden this false mask was dropped, I couldn't rely on the hypo/mania crutch and it was scary as ****.

And the OCD... it gets worse and worse.
It almost feels like its crushing me.
I can't say how much and exactly how because I feel I can't expose other people to all of that.

One of my fears is that if I can't get this OCD thing under control, soon, I may start to lose a lot of the other coping skills I've built up. Down the drain goes like a decade of work to get other things under control.

I'm having trouble being here and I'm having trouble staying away. I'm having trouble being around friends, I'm having trouble being by myself. I don't want to be anywhere. At least I have that insight thing.

I go for walks that are too long and really strain my body right now because I am not at all back to "better". So, to deal with that i am joining a gym so at least I don't strand myself like two miles away and realize I'm exhausted. I'm doing pretty much everything I can- which is what I've done in the past. I just feel ilke I'm going through everything I went through with the bipolar several years ago. Only... kind of with bipolar, people just give up on you after a while. In a way it gave me freedom to be able to fix things- no one breathing down my neck to just "get it together".

A lot of people just kind of assume you are completely nuts after a while if they get that you are bipolar and not "just sad".

With OCD... there is very little understanding. And it's hard to explain, because that is part of it.
The fact that I just keep going on and on about it... really is a demonstration of how much it is just totally wrecking me right now.

I have things going on in my head that I can not run away from, and that I also literally can not tell anyone right now. And they are detailed and terrifying. When your own imagination works to scare you it can be pretty effective. And, until I see my new doctor [which, due to the ridiculous nature of OCD] is also a prospect that is pretty much scaring the piss out of me, what do I do about it?

I don't sleep, I try to clean my room, I go for ridiculous walks- hopefully just now go to the gym and come here and maybe be something other than lost. This is all using some kind of artistic license... I guess. But it's not really. I mean, it's what I feel quite literally.

The struggle is real guys!
...ok I can still make jokes, we're good.

Comments

My ex partner has ocd and bipolar, along with ptsd. I actually really do understand how difficult the challenges can be and just how overwhelming such a strobiscopic existence can be. That's not to say I understand your situation, but have a nebulous empathy for you. ((hugs))
If ya ever do feel like talking things over feel free to pm me, I am a complete no judgement zone and have experience with the s#@tstorm some manic episodes can cause. Anyway, please know that you're not alone.
 
You are the first person to be able to describe, to me, what Lazarus could have felt, on being resurrected. Jesus, also. And my former(?) friend Shelly.

I also have stranded myself, from physical exhaustion. Kinda like automatic walking. I don't remember the time in motion because the noise in my head was noisy.

The black dog sometimes get left behind, but he's got a good nose. I really need to get the Hanging Judge to abide by a leash law.
 
You are the first person to be able to describe, to me, what Lazarus could have felt, on being resurrected. Jesus, also.
What's odd but really lovely about what you wrote here- it wasn't the description/experience I consciously intended [that of resurrection, ha even though I said rising again?]… but you writing this in this particular way really makes me feel like I wrote it in a way that can be understood to some degree.

Also that you "heard" it. Thanks Aspergirl4hire
 
Ha.
So, to keep with the theme- apparently?

When Coldplay came out with Viva la Vida, I pretty immediately thought it was about bipolar. It was SO OBVIOUS to me. It really hit me "in the gut"... I guess. :]

It was everywhere, too. EVERYWHERE.
I loved the song, but it was kind of bittersweet: I had really started to turn things around. I'd had a pretty ferocious car accident a couple years prior and it really looked like things were changing. I still felt like I identified as "bipolar" but... the whole idea of completely losing control and feeling this weird sense of release that comes with hypo/mania was kind of gone. I mean, it just wasn't fun anymore. Not fun in a 'day at the beach' way.

Fun in the way that you are doing really exhilarating and potentially dangerous things but they don't matter- you don't have the sense of danger you are supposed to have. [So you are a perpetual teenager, who is crazy. So basically you are a teenager to the Nth level?]

And it's not like you don't feel that draw. You do- you just realize it creates a disaster over and over, your life is a wreck, you are a wreck. Any feeling of control or power or "awesome" you have is temporary or an illusion. on the way down you become weak as ever.

So, imagine my surprise when NO ONE knew what I was talking about with Viva la Vida being about bipolar.
I still think it is, using religious symbols to make the allusion all the more... humane, honestly.

But this video, which i just bumped into, has convinced me all the more:

RandomNotRandom.

:D
 

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SignOfLazarus
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