I could just use a hug...(long, whiny)

I'm almost a 30-year-old woman, at least, physically. Mentally, emotionally, that's different. I have some form of Aspergers, high functioning autism, PDD-NOS, it was never quite made clear to me, I usually just say Aspergers because that's what people have told me the most. The end result, regardless, is that it leaves me at a permanent level of an approximate mid-teenagehood. It's not so bad, really, I'm still functional almost totally, just stuck at an age where it's better I still have someone to keep an eye on me.

My mom was the person who I would always go to. She and I were both night owls, and she was the only person who just held me up for who I am. She didn't mind that her adult daughter was still basically a 14-year-old, if I wanted to come to her and lay my head on her lap while she was on the computer, she just let me. If I woke up from a bad dream and wanted to drag my blankets into her room to sleep beside her and my dad's bed, she'd simply move things around for me with no further comment. She watched cartoons with me the way no one else I know would, without writing it off as "babyish." I could and did talk to her about everything and anything and she listened, and she never made any comment whether my thoughts were weird or random or anything...she's the only person I ever knew who was as quirky as I was.

The only time it was ever an issue was once, exactly once that she made a comment to me that sometimes she worried it was because of something she had done that made me the way I am. I told her that no, I didn't think it was, although I don't know if that reassured her. She had mentioned earlier in my life having taken some sort of medicine before realizing she was pregnant with me and I think she wondered if that was the cause.

My mother, my best friend, the only person in my life I've ever consistently loved, died less than five months ago, suddenly and out of nowhere. I was in the backseat of the car with her, doing everything I could do to try and save her, using all the first aid training I had, and needless to say, I failed.

Since then, I've taken over the house as best I can. I cook and clean and do the laundry for my retired father and my sister who works a horrendously long-houred job. We aren't poor, but there's really no money for emergencies, which leaves me worried constantly.

My sister is older than me, and still here at home with us, and it's all I can do to keep her going. After losing our mother, we lost our grandmother three weeks later, a beloved uncle about two months after that, and then lost several of our pet cats to coyote attacks, and it's all gradually worn her down. She's constantly stressed from her work, but despite how much she dislikes it, it pays well, and despite her efforts she can't find anything else yet. And then, after I got her a new kitten to try and cheer her up, it turned out I picked the one kitten in the entire pound who was carrying some nasty disease, and despite sitting up four nights trying to nurse the little guy back to health, he died less than a week after we brought him home. (And don't worry, we notified the pound so they could be on the lookout for any of their other animals getting ill.)

Today we were all sick all day...but I had to suck it up and do my best to take care of her, fix her some tea and make her take medicine, things like that. She's just not as tough as I am...that's not bragging, it's just unfortunate fact.

I just don't feel like I have anyone to go to anymore. I have a few friends, not a lot thanks to my inherent fear of socialization, but I can't talk to them. I worry about weighing them down with my problems. They have their own issues going on, and I'm afraid that if I tell them how awful I usually feel, they won't want to be around me anymore because of the awkwardness of it. It's not that they're bad friends, but I know how hard it can be to talk to someone in grief and especially if you're one of a very few they turn to. I let them talk to me, and I do whatever I can to make them feel better, but I always hold back on doing the same.

Every day it feels like it gets a little harder to get up and get going. I feel like I'm coming apart every second. As much as I used to pride myself on being the person anyone could come to with their problems, I find myself withdrawing, I'm emotionally exhausted from propping everyone else up with no one to prop me. I let out small amounts of the rage and grief to a certain few trusted individuals, but I don't dare tell them everything lest they think I'm just a crazy mess who can't deal.

I'm just at my wit's end. I'm not suicidal, but I'm afraid I'm losing my will to live, if that makes sense. More and more I just want to spend my days laying on the couch staring at the TV, without even paying attention to it. I don't like going out anymore, I don't want to clean. I have a certification in culinary arts, I normally LOVE to cook, but I don't even want to do that anymore, I've just been eating ramen and microwave meals. And the doctors I've talked to are all quacks. They think throwing pills at it will make it better but they DON'T. They don't do anything.

I know I'm not the only person in the world with problems, and someone probably needs to grab me by the shoulders and shake me and tell me to snap out of it, that I'm being selfish acting this way and I have people who depend on me. But I'm just so goddamn tired and I just don't know what I'm supposed to do at this point to make it better.

I can't really put myself in your position, as I'm an only child and I have never lost anyone close to me to death. But for crying out loud, don't withdraw into yourself. Go out and talk to your friends about it and keep meeting them, and don't feel guilty about sharing things with them. Anyone would be reeling after what you and your sister have gone through, so don't turn away support.

Other than that there really isn't anything I can say, that will be of any help.

Have you gone to grief counseling?

Okay, first of all, here's a hug. -hugs-

You don't seem like an eternal teenager to me. Having childish interests doesn't make you a childish person. From the way you care about people and do your best to help them, you seem pretty emotionally mature.

Don't be afraid to talk to friends. You do so much for them, but there's nothing wrong with wanting support from them now and again. Sometimes you have to do what's best for yourself. Do you think of them as selfish for going to you with problems? If not, then why would it be wrong for you to do the same? You can help each other.

I second the idea of grief counselling, there are competent psychotherapists out there.

~Hugs~

(hugs)

Not that this one is good at sympathy, but feel free to PM if you'd like.

You came to the right place, I'd say. *hug* You can feel free to vent to us all you want; we don't think of you as whining. c:

My thoughts on reading this were entirely sympathetic and not in the slightest that this was a rant or a whine. You're pushing yourself to the limit, and it's entirely human to have a limit. I think you've got a lot to be proud of, with the way you've handled everything life has thrown at you, and you clearly do deserve a break of some kind.

So Mysty, why do you get up in the morning in the first place?

edited 12th Sep '11 11:19:46 AM by Ramus

You have my sincere sympathy and respect. I can only echo that I really can't see that post being written by someone who's effectively a child.

I can only say to you that, yeah, counseling is probably the way to go. Try to find someone who feels trustworthy. Maybe it's even better not to go see a professional... there might be groups of troubled people who meet somewhere nearby to talk about stuff and have fun, who knows. You definitely don't want to lose the will to live. That's something that'll drag you down further and further, and once you're in that bog, it's incredibly hard to pull yourself back out. The further down you go, the harder it gets... A group of acquaintances with similar problems would help you deal with your situation and probably teach you to smile at it. Well... I guess there's nothing to smile at about the death of your mother. But everything else... those things life keeps throwing at you. Think of them as challenges. You are very strong to have made it this far. This is just a difficulty spike. You can fight your way through it.

Also, consider yourself hugged tightly.

I gotta say, this may sound a little mean...but I didn't honestly expect there to be any responses to this at all when I came back online. Not that I expected people to be MEAN, just that to me, I sounded, well...pathetic. So first of all, thank ya'll.

So far as grief counseling, the funeral home offered a class, and I went to it with my sister, more for her than me, but I didn't really feel like I got anything from it. It was full of little old ladies who'd lost their husbands, so it was kind of hard for either of us to feel really comfortable there.

So far as my friends, I'll be honest. I tell them to come to me, and I mean it, I really do because I'm good at helping people with their problems. But at the same time, sometimes I just want to yell at them because their problems seem so...well, trivial, and I don't because I know to them their problems aren't, and that with some of my friends being actual teenagers, I remember how it could feel like the end of the world bringing home bad grades or getting rejected from the school paper. A lot of my friends refer to me as the Team Mom and I take that seriously. So many of them are younger than me, and while even though I consider them peers in most any other way, I'm still always aware of the age difference and I worry about piling more on them than they could handle. I do vent a little bit here and there and that helps, but if I were to just open up and let pour the way sometimes I feel like, I'm just afraid I'll scare them away.

Why do I get up in the morning? Sometimes I don't anymore. Recently my sleeping patterns have gone so to hell that I end up just laying there wide awake until sunrise and when I finally do fall asleep, I'm not back up until late in the afternoon. Normally my sleeping is something like 2 a.m. till about 10, which works well enough, but I just can't fall asleep the way I used to, and I'm afraid to try and take any sleeping medicine because I know how addictive that sort of thing can be. But the only real reason I still get up and do anything is for my dad and my sister, because they're my family and they need me. My dad's an old man, and he can't do all the stuff he used to around the house, so he needs me to help him with cutting firewood or repairing little things, and like I said, my sister's job is currently somewhere in the realm of 55-60 hours a week, 6 days a week, and she's exhausted by the time she gets home every day. If I weren't worried about taking care of everybody who needs me, I don't know what I'd do, honestly.

How about this then: Why did you wake up in the morning before? You know, before life got this rough. Had any driving reason to go forward in your day?

My mom died just a couple weeks before I graduated from culinary school, which I was doing to get a degree/certificate, more or less to reassure her that I would be able to take care of myself if something happened. So...up until then, that's what I was working at every day. I didn't really get a chance to transition from that into finding anything new before everything went kind of crazy on me.

Did you enjoy doing culinary related stuff?

edited 12th Sep '11 4:14:09 PM by Ramus

I did. I still do, sometimes, when I'm having a better day. My first love has always been professional wrestling. I actually did move away from home for a while some years ago, to live with my brother in a town with a bit of a wrestling scene, and spent some months at it, and in a perfect world I still would be. But I got worried about my mother's health (it was bad for years beforehand), and I had gotten injured in the ring around that time so I took it as a sign I needed to come back home. Culinary stuff, I love, I really do, but the fact of it is that I intended it to be a back-up plan if wrestling didn't work out. At this point though I'm starting to wonder if I'm too old and too out of the loop to get back into wrestling though.

You could try. Go down to your local wrestling club and see if you can join.

As for the culinary side... hmm, there are things like soup kitchens even if becoming a chef is too much. I don't know much about it but I imagine they serve more than just soup there. Someone has to prepare that food... maybe they need a chef?

It'll get you out the house, and give you some job satisfaction too. Ideally I'd say try to get into the cooking profession but thats a big step obviously.

I'm just throwing ideas around. I do think you should take a look at wrestling again, because it sounds like you really enjoyed it.

edited 12th Sep '11 4:22:51 PM by GameChainsaw

I wish I could help somehow. With that said, I know that you want to look after your father, but I'm worried if you're stuck living there, you're only going to keep yourself in the same self-destructive thoughts and feelings over the loss of your mother. If you're too grief-stricken by your mother's passing away that you can't take care of yourself, I don't know how much good you'll be able to do to help your family.

I feel that it may be a good idea to just leave the city and go live somewhere else, but I understand that money is a factor and it may not be financially feasible to do so. However, I would strongly advise that you look for a part-time job. I don't think that working 8/10/12 hours a day will be productive, but if you work 20-25 hours a week (and preferably in a culinary-related field), you'll accomplish two things. First, you'll give yourself a tangible reason to get up and do something every day. Secondly, it'll give you some structured time away from home; some time to meet new people, and some time away from the painful reminders of your mother that can trap you if you spend all your time indoors.

But first -offers hug-.

Well, I don't about the physical part but remember that there's always other parts to the wrestling scene, after all, they'll always need announcers, technicians, etc. It's a team effort and you might find that while you're not the one wrestling, it might be just as fulfilling. Either way, I think what you need at this point is a goal to keep in mind. Even when I'm at my lowest, I kept a few goals in my mind and constantly worked towards and, well, that kept me going and I find myself in a better position today than I was a couple of years ago.

-hugs-

I'm in a similar situation myself. I've had mental issues of some flavour since the beginning, and I was only recently, at 34, diagnosed with Aspergers, something I've suspected for years due to my narrow interests and difficulty making friends. My parents are both still alive, but my stepfather has been out of work since early 2010, and no one will hire him. Mom has tried to look for a job, but she has medical problems that make it difficult to walk at times, and a long commute would simply wear her out too much.

I pay for practically everything but food here. Water, sewer, electric, cable and internet, property taxes, everything. It's hard, but I know my parents have no other place to go right now.

I'm also currently working through some of my own issues with making friends and how to deal with liking someone you can't meet or even see. It's really hard, in no small part due to the intrusive daydream I have about hugs and such, but I'm managing.

I'm so sorry to hear that, Lee. I know it's got to be stressful for your father, and I'll cross my fingers for you that something will come up to help you out. I wish I could offer advice as far as making friends, but all I've ever done was go to groups of people I already knew I shared interests with, like wrestling groups or my culinary classmates, and that's helped me make a few good friends.

I have put out feelers looking for some kind of little part-time job. I do go out once a week and gather court information to sell to the local paper, but that's maybe three hours a week and usually I bring my dad with me to get him out of the house. It's hard to find anything hiring even in the chef work. But I guess that's something I can look into a little more.

Mysty: Well, thank you. :) And I hope those feelers work out for you.

You're not whiny, and it's pretty clear you need someone to unload your anxiety on. In that case, you've certainly come to the right place. What corner of the world are you in? Maybe some of us could come up with more concrete suggestions to help you.

How's your relationship with your dad? Close? Distant? I'd imagine he's pretty glum about everything also, right?

Well you are clearly a wonderful and awesome person!

Seriously, though, if you're feeling down or lonely feel free to hit me up for a chat about wrestling. My MSN is t.wagstaff@hotmail.co.uk if you have it.

And I'd legitimately be fascinated to hear any stories you have about the business.

edited 13th Sep '11 3:05:53 PM by Wagrid

First of all, a minor update...my sister had food poisoning and we're at the hospital now. She's fine, and getting better as the day goes on, and for the moment I'm enjoying the free high speed internet. I'm actually feeling a bit more centered today than usual, I think that's good.

My dad and I aren't really...CLOSE, I don't suppose...he's a little too busy being baffled by me, I think But we do love each other and we have some common interests. He's just a bit emotionally distant...he's better at dealing with his problems by himself in his own way. I like to think I'm like that, but sometimes I'm just not sure.

Location: The Ark-La-Tex! It's this little area around the place where the borders of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and to a degree Oklahoma meet. I'm pretty close to the middle of it, and so far as I can tell, there's really nothing going on around here. Usually not, at least.

@Wagrid Oh I have some stories. The one everyone always likes to hear is about the time I walked in on Kamala the Ugandan Giant naked in his locker room. ...never living that one down.

Food poisoning is not fun.

I don't think it's a huge deal not being close to one or more of your parents. Obviously, you had a great relationship with your mother but I know barely anyone who is close to their parents. As long as the love is there on both sides that's all that matters I think.

Also, that is absolutely terrifying. Kamala is pretty high on the list of people I hope to never see naked.