Conversations from hell

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Obviously, the implication here is that in my family, mental illness is common. And it is. On my mother's side. My father is a schizophrenic, but the mental illness seems to be more of an aberration than a norm on that side. Mental illness was only acknowledged twice by paternal relatives, and both times when I was crossing the bridge in dad's Irish hometown. The first was the only time I saw my grandfather cry. He was heading out, I was coming back to the house. I ducked my cigarette under my coatsleeve, even though I was an adult and could drink in both countries. He asked me what I thought about dad, since it had been several years since I saw either him or dad. I gave a non-answer and he just started tearing up. I saw no point in hiding my cigarette anymore, since I heard things about dad that I didn't know about. He had clearly gotten worse since he left America.

The other time was when I ran into my grandmother's brother on the bridge, him coming slowly to the house with his walker, and mentioning in passing that he had to seek counseling after the war. Presumably, considering his age and the fact that Ireland is a neutral country, he enlisted with either the UK, or more likely, the US armed forces during WWII. I mentioned it to my mother, and she pointed out that dad's family always described him to her (but not us) as "sensitive." She assumed that meant he was gay. I could see that too, but sensitive could mean just about anything, can't it? It's just a polite way to say that he's not running the operating system that the normal people are. Anyway, he and grandma, and the rest of their siblings, were always very close. When my grandmother died, he was done with living. He wanted to die. And shortly after, he did. As did their sister Maura, who was always my favorite aunt. I think that just means that Uncle Rob is left. He's a delightful guy (and the only one of them who couldn't manage to learn Irish, so they all let it fall into disuse), and I hope he's still kicking about and gambling on horse races. Well, Sonny might still be alive too, but I highly doubt it. Sonny was the oldest, and Maura was in her mid 90s.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Something about seeing someone you held when she was an infant hurting herself at the same age that you were when you held her as an infant. It's a weird.... It's weird. I couldn't do anything other than tell her the whole thing. Mom and Stepdad feel the need to protect her. I feel the need to inform her. I might not understand her particular thing, but she knows that I will tell her exactly where she got it. I will hug her, but I won't tell her everything's going to be ok. I don't know that. It's more important for her to know that we're all friggin' nuts and that I'm here for her.

Informing IS protecting her.

...You're a good dude, yanno that?

Nah. I'm just her big brother.

[Left]

2011

May first  was the day of the flashback from hell.
The day my wife and I went to pick up the motorcycle.

...She told me she was going to take me out to eat...  and as she started driving I made this very odd little noise.
She said "please don't make that noise, it bothers me."
It was then that I told her I really didn't want to go in the restaurant, but certainly didn't want to deprive her of having a nice lunch, and I'd just wait in the truck.  I had images in my mind of me crawling under the tables in terror, the way I did as a child...

This made her angry and hurt...she was trying to do something nice for me. I tried to talk her into having a nice lunch, I mean, just because I couldn't go in did not mean she had to suffer...so we bickered and I felt like crying.
She doesn't read body language...so she didn't realize how far south things were going in my head. as we drove...

Then she, just wasn't in the lane I expected, and just THAT was wigging me out too, so I tried to gently say she might want to be in a different lane...and I was fussing, trying not to be obnoxious, but succeeding anyway...everything was freaking me out.
Finally, we were on the freeway back home, when I said something and she shouted "LOOK, YOU'VE BEEN BULLYING ME ALL DAY! STOP!"

###############################################

1985 (corrected for wrong damn decade)
I had made my dad late for work 3 days in a row.  I was in 7th grade, a private school.
In retrospect he resented paying for the private schools, so in the two years I went he was monitoring my grades and hitting me more.
...But this day was...memorable.
I was trying to do my last minute homework on the floor.  He kicked me to make me get up and get ready.  I could feel him simmering, I was going numb.

My school was 20 minutes away, and he managed to slap me and scream at me for the full 20 minutes.
I remember seeing my mom coming home on the opposite side of the freeway, and trying to work up the nerve to jump out of the car.

Things got very blurry after that.
I remember going blank, not being able to understand his words, feeling the blows, but not the pain...Crushing myself against the passenger door.  I remember I was trying hard to count the times he hit me.  I counted 14, but I'm thinking it was more, he sort of punctuated his sentences with blows.
I remember being both terrified and numb.

I remember getting out of the car,  thinking "I have to act normal"

###################################################

2011
I needed out.
I needed out of the truck.
..."Pull over." I said.
"NO!" she replied.
The thought shot through my head " I'm gonna get out THIS time!" and I started fumbling for the handle of the passenger side door.
My wife pulled over.
I walked off the side of the road into the woods-it's a park, actually, but it's natural woods in that section.
...I sat on the ground, screaming and rocking...I felt like I was going to fall into the sky...
Then I grabbed onto the bark of a dead tree and felt the texture.  Trying to get back.
I said "I'm here, I'm here..."
My wife was sitting there watching me.  She followed me, I didn't want her to, but she did.
...I eventually went back to the truck.
We took the motorcycle home.

#######################################################

In retrospect, this was a sort of progress.
You see, I thought back on this part, and realized...I'd been avoiding shopping. 
I'd been avoiding going out.
My defenses were unconscious...I just...decided to put off shopping.  Felt a strange reluctance.
Shopping was often a weird experience for me.  Too busy in a store.
If the store was crowded, I'd kind of...not be there. Mentally.  Things would happen.
Then I'd arrive at the car with half the stuff I meant to get, and stuff that...I didn't remember getting off the shelves.
Kitchen gadgetry that I felt oddly important for having, cookware, a baking thermometer, strange cleaning products.  I could remember the shelf where I took it from only by looking at these strange items I was loading in the car.

Looking back, I realized...
I'd been mostly tuned out of EVERYTHING.
Suddenly, this stopped.
...I was HERE.
All the nice fuzzy vagueness about the world, that was GONE.
...And holy SHIT was the world a scary-ass place.

And then I started remembering more sexual abuse.

[Left]

I did NOT expect this to be such...hard work.
...I've been dealing with this crap for such a long time I feel like a broken record-er, skipping CD...It's like, can't you just think about normal shit for once?


Unnnggg.

I did manage to do that in my upper 20's, but it kept bubbling up like a lava seep.
...I wish I were done with this shit once and for all.

...Had I been less spaced-out, I would have realized my wife was re-activating the trauma, too, and I would have seen it way earlier. 
But I'd dissociate again every time she raised her voice to me, or got up in my face...By 2010 that was almost daily on the days off we had together...I managed to piss her off all the time.  Or the computer did and she yelled at that, which was bad enough.  Or she was correcting me...anything I did in her presence was liable to be corrected...and she didn't stop.

I felt like I had to be perfect to be worth tiny crumbs of affection...oh hai unmedicated Mom, didn't see you standing there...

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Did your wife have an INKLING of the stuff you'd been through?

I mean, that 2011 thing. At some point there REALLY should have been an "Oh snap there's more going on here than hylie being pissy about going out to eat."

Haven't been replying to a lot of these, apologies. Wiping my eyes a lot, though. Fucking OUCH. Fuck.

[Left]

Did your wife have an INKLING of the stuff you'd been through?

I mean, that 2011 thing. At some point there REALLY should have been an "Oh snap there's more going on here than hylie being pissy about going out to eat."

Haven't been replying to a lot of these, apologies. Wiping my eyes a lot, though. Fucking OUCH. Fuck.

I strongly believe my wife to have Asperger's.
She does not read body language.
She...tends to make assumptions about what's going on with other people that are just...off, and then she believes them.

..I was on another message board, wanting to say it was in 2008? My wife was delivering pizza...and then she had a freakout.
She said everything was just too much, all the lights. She went on overload.
She sat in her car and cut her arm open-still has a scar.
Her co-workers called 911, and the usual happened (Cop was freaked, ambulance guys was nonchalant)

I talked about this random freakout of hers on the mental health message board I was part of at the time.  Someone on there said "Gee, that sounds like what I and my kid do.  We're aspies."

So I looked up the other signs of Asperger's...moves stiffly, doesn't read body language, is extremely critical, uses language in a very specific way, gets obsessions about a subject that last about 6 months, angers easily, very sensitive to certain sounds, unable to change habits.
Yup, yup, yup.


Aspies don't have as many "mirror neurons" as neurotypical people.

According to simulation theory, theory of mind is available because we subconsciously put ourselves in the shoes of the person we're observing and, accounting for relevant differences, imagine what we would desire and believe in that scenario. 28 29 Mirror neurons have been interpreted as the mechanism by which we simulate others in order to better understand them, and therefore their discovery has been taken by some as a validation of simulation theory (which appeared a decade before the discovery of mirror neurons). 30

http://www.autism-help.org/points-mirror-neurons.htm

It's not that Asperger's people don't care. 
But they have no idea what impact their behavior has on others, because they really, REALLY don't feel your pain.
At times my wife could be very kind and understanding...at other times she just failed to compute and was cold as hell.
I feel like I spent my last decade trying to explain who I was, and I failed.  I was trying to give her a mental model of me, in retrospect...and it really didn't work.

Somewhere along the line she decided I was illogical and incompetent.
Apparently, this is common in Aspie-NT couples.
She's not the most self-aware person...so she didn't realize how much she was just...pushing me around.
My dissociative disorder played into this, because she started shouting and I started not being able to think, to articulate a sentence.  Like putting my brain in a cuisinart.
...And I'd say yes to anything to get her to stop.
Oh, and I'd forget what was said as it was happening...so then I assumed the argument we'd just had was my fault.

When we were in couples' counseling at the very end, I made a statement about thinking installing a tankless hot water heater was a bit beyond my skill set.

She said "Oh, if YOU do it it's gonna leak."
...I said "What makes you think that?"
She replied "Because you never tighten the lids on jars."
...Which isn't always true, but yes, I do sometimes not tighten lids, because I'm focused on the food, not the jar.
  But the reason this was a big issue to her?
Shecould not retrain herself to pick up jars by grasping the jar.
She HAS to grasp jars by the lid, as she always had, for her entire life.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interesting partly because it also sounds as if you could no more adapt to her than she could adapt to you.

[Left]

Interesting partly because it also sounds as if you could no more adapt to her than she could adapt to you.

I know. That's why it feels more than a bit tragic.

OTOH, I was taking happy pills, going to therapy...she stopped taking her pills without telling me for six months.  When she told me I said "OHHH!"
Because six months prior I suddenly noticed she was screaming all the time, at me, at the computer.  She wasn't depressed without them, but she was extremely anxious and her temper was worse.

I asked her to get back on the meds because she was easier to live with on them.
...She said, and I quote, "Why should I have to take pills to modify MY reactions for other people?"

...When I asked her to look into therapy for her Asperger's, because it would help her get along with people(like me), she said "Why am I the one who's in need of fixing?  Why can't everyone adapt to ME?"

...As a functional crazy person, I know how well THAT works, expecting the world to adapt to your brain cooties.
Too, I take my meds in part so I won't turn into an asshole, because I DO turn into an asshole when not properly medicated. 
So...it was my job to adapt to her.  She did not put any work into making us work.
In fact, towards the end she probably figured we were through anyway, because she decided to spend most of her free time studying programming.
She said she wanted to work on the marriage, but then she learned how to program instead.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, it sounds like she's WAY too self-centered to even try to put in effort to have a functional relationship. And that will just not work, even if the other person is doing their best.

[Left]

Yeah, it sounds like she's WAY too self-centered to even try to put in effort to have a functional relationship. And that will just not work, even if the other person is doing their best.

...It honestly took my best friend telling me she bullied me.  His words.
I just thought I was crazy, that it was me...like I did when my parents went berserk.

He's part of the story too, I guess...so I was going to address that next. 
My best friend is an English lunatic, and no, we've not met in IRL, yet.  Fucking ocean.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, it sounds like she's WAY too self-centered to even try to put in effort to have a functional relationship. And that will just not work, even if the other person is doing their best.

...It honestly took my best friend telling me she bullied me.  His words.
I just thought I was crazy, that it was me...like I did when my parents went berserk.

He's part of the story too, I guess...so I was going to address that next. 
My best friend is an English lunatic, and no, we've not met in IRL, yet.  Fucking ocean.

Fair enough

One of my best friends lives in Tucson, and I've only met him once in seven years.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

And shit, I've never met Dimo, but I would talk to his jerk ass about anything.

[Left]

2011

I believe we started talking when it was still cold
Though the emails I have are all around May...I think we'd been talking on the forum instead.
I was hanging out on a science forum.
Where I learned the motto: cites or GTFO...learned to argue a point more convincingly, and learned a lot about a lot of far-ranging things in the course of argumentation.

I also met Lou...and started fussing over him, as he'd rode his motorcycle into a fence. He'd broken his foot this time...as opposed to last time, when he'd damn near had to have an arm cut off, because he smashed it up so badly.

I remember chiding him for "inadvisably applied motorcycling," "and he said "I know, I know...but I just get to feeling worthless and start riding recklessly."

I first noticed him on a thread about sociopathy.
He said that he'd once been diagnosed with it, and it made him angry and a bit horrified...and he talked about what nobody back then had asked about.
His uncle sexually abused him.
His uncle really is a sociopath, so he'd felt the diagnosis was telling him he was like his uncle.

...And at some point...my brain went off the rails.  I was basically making a hobby of concocting suicide plans most of the day.
...See my wife had my pistol locked up...So I thought, well, how can I kill myself with certainty?  Well, I could just go buy a shotgun, climb in the bathtub for easy cleanup...
...I could step in front of a train, of course.   That's messy, hard on the engineer.

At some point I got on alt.suicide.holiday, and realized my mom and brother would get to identify the mangled slab of meat that I'd be leaving behind and/or clean up the mess.
...So I thought "why don't I figure out a way to kill myself that won't involve leaving a body behind?"

Well, if I had access to the gun, it would actually be not that hard...The next county over has more alligators than people.   Go stand in a pond with adjacent alligators, shoot self in head.  Alligator cleanup.
...There'd still be the matter of the car left near the scene, but that would hold with anything.
Still, chunks might turn up of me.

So I thought...get a bunch of sedatives...go to the beach with a 55-gallon drum, with a few small holes drilled in the top and bottom.
Climb in, seal lid, roll self into ocean, swallow all the sedatives...go to sleep.
The barrel would eventually either sink or continue bobbing around in the Gulf, either way rendering my stinky carcass unfindable.
See...I was thinking about this a LOT...

I drive over a 200-some-odd foot high bridge when I go home, and I was slowing down at  the top a lot.
The drop would kill me, the agony would be over.  I could escape this agony.  I needed to feel I could escape it, escape being what I hated being, myself.

I was...expressing this wherever I went-the mental health forum, the science forum, wherever. It was "steaming out of my ears," as someone put it.
I would have gone inpatient-but one, I'd probably lose my job,  two, they no longer keep you in long enough to do any good.

Lou told me "Look, I've had too many friends kill themselves and not done something to try and stop it.  Talk to me first."
...I said "Ok, but that goes for you too."
It was a lifeline, and I grabbed on with both hands.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sounds like Lou had an incredibly incompetent psychiatrist.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

It sounds like Lou is awesome, too.