Head Swimming

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Im living with my uncle in Birmingham at the moment. I dont know why I came up really. My entire family actually despises me. Ive only just comprehended it. Ive been focusing on individual people rather than the entire system and my role within it.

My uncle as head of the family believes I dont have AS or any other form of difficulty. Over the last few years ive gone from trainwreck to trainwreck and still hauled myself onward. In the eyes of my family ive just swanned along mooching off my parents.
Im having a bit of an identity crisis I guess. Im being told by my family that im normal and when I look at my life with that in mind the prospect is awful. There exists an irreconcilable gulf between us because every mistake is a wilful one and every neglected duty is a result of indifference.

I feel like a sputtering engine. Im absolutely exahusted and I feel drained. My entire life is a chaotic swarm of post university choices. Ive moved 3 times in 2 months, had to give up on my masters and left university with not one friend. Now im in a vast unforgiving city in a difficult home environment with my life in what feels like tatters. For the last 6 years ive gone from crisis to crisis. Ive socially self destructed a million times and of course I only see it once im out of it. I then vow that it will never happen again and it does it always does in the most bizarre and incomprehensible way.


I wonder whether im not factitious and that I really do need to snap out of it. That would be so liberating because it would mean that the constant gnawing pain in my gut and the sense of foreboding would go. It would mean that I could get on with my life normally and without incident.

There's so much. I dont know how to communicate it all. At the moment its information overload and I cant fully comprehend the complexity of my situation. The variables involved are overwhelming. Ive forgotten how to communicate with people.

The worst thing is realising that my uncle has no respect for me at all. I do really wonder whether im factitious because I feel torn between admitting that im normal and accepting that I have difficulties. This is a rambling mess,im sorry. Hopefully you guys can relate to the core situation and the subsequent identity crisis.

This pretty much describes how they see it I think. I cant change that and I wont try, theyre my family and that's important but I can't live with them. Im sleeping on my uncle's sofa at the moment with my future obscured. I feel as if im just surrounded by knives and pitchforks. I dont blame them really because I do things that appear to be attention seeking when I look back. Ive pushed at the edges of what's socially acceptable because I haven't perceived them. I have noone in my life who will take me aside and explain that I smell or that I did something weird. The thing is that im always aware that what im doing is unacceptable. I am extremely short sighted but ive never done anything about it. Its actually awful. It's not vanity because I dont mind contacts, its not money because ive never bothered to buy them; its also not access because there's a specsavers near me and ive made multiple appointments to go. From the outside looking in that must appear to be attention seeking. It must look deliberate. But I think it is, because there's no reason why I shouldn't. I just dont and it means I cant work effectively I cant recognise people in the street etc. Part of it is that ive existed in a slightly blurred out of focus world for too long. I can recognise facial expressions so suddenly wearing glasses would expose me to ALOT more visual input.

I'm doubting my own integrity. Ive thought of myself as a good person but now I look back on it all and I can see that the only thing keeping me from being an absolute ^&**(%$ is the struggles ive faced. Im clinging to that of course and I wonder whether this is just a defense mechanism.I wonder whether ive slowly built an identity around being ill which I cant escape. The number of people who think im manipulative is large and growing so something is severely wrong with me. Logic dictates this.

I know I come off as self involved and narcissistic but I dont have any good relationships at all in my life. They're all poisoned. I sabotaged the few good ones. Its just my head and I. I dont have any support is what so much of this amounts to. I have to spend all my time obsessively analysing myself. I dont approach people unless I want something which is terrible I know, but my life is empty and noone is rushing in to fill the void. I usually feel more or less numb thanks to the SSRI's but ocassionally I feel as if im in love with creation itself. I feel expansive love for the people in my life. I have noone and nothing on which to bestow that love and my self hatred means I dont turn it inwards. It just turns into rejection and more self hatred. I talk about myself as if im a book to be analysed and see myself thus. This has robbed me of instinct though and of the pleasures of the senses. Im constantly critiquing and analysing. Everything is about me. Then again it always was. Im starting to dread the word I and when I look over my post it's so prevalent. I have noone else on whom to turn my awareness however because I cant connect with anyone.

It feels like there's no room for anyone else. I wish id kept the good relationships in my life. There were people who listened and to whom I could listen. There was never any excuse making there was just empathy and an understanding of the struggle. I want nothing more than to learn mature and become a better kinder person but im not sure where to start or how to even frame the relationships and people in my life. There are so many interrelating factors and so many gordian knots and brick walls. There's so much emotion and all I do is analyse analyse analyse.

My head is seesawing between these extremes. Im NT Im not Im NT Im not and my identity goes with it. I think I had the same episode last year because there's alot of dejavu. This is another worrying thing, I feel as if im constantly reliving crises and blotting them from memory to cope. My memory is otherwise rather goo

It would be easier for him if you didn't, that's probably why he has the need to go on believing it. Maybe he thinks that if he can convince you that you're not, you won't be anymore. As "head of the family" I expect he feels under pressure to live up to the role and to 'sort you out'. I've been in your position myself and in my case it was either I lost it or the 'head of the family' did.
I held my nerve.

That's an interesting way to look at the situation. I have to get out of this situation. This will be the fourth move in 2 months without any support. Im down to 2 rucksacks which carry the few clothes and trinkets I have.

Sadly, it could be that your family will only recognize your condition if you end up in very serious difficulties, though hopefully all of this change and moving around will lead to you getting a well overdue lucky break, so just be open to that possibility and something more positive might happen for you.

I dont really get you, but they're already well down the path of denial and a narrative has probably already been written and applied to me. I dont think i'll ever be able to fix the relationships.

I feel trapped between adolescence and manhood. People like my uncle say get a grip and pull yourself together. I tried that and it worked. I managed to get my degree, but I became a social pariah in the process because I went through periods where I didnt wash and allowed my health to deteriorate shockingly. Its just all too overwhelming to handle at once so I have to sacrifice important things. Im making this destructive progress through life and all my errors are being defined as willful derelictions of duty.


Its amazing that I have someone willing to share their home with me but at the same time its devastating that the home environment is so hostile. In the end it balances out. Charity and Punishment are being dealt in equal shares

what field is your degree in?

music

Will you be able to stay with your uncle for a few months?

Are you registered with a medical centre in Birmingham?

It's very hard to live your life just to please your family, especially with this condition. If they can't recognize your condition and grant you the patience and space that you need to be able to develop in your own time at your own pace, then there's a real danger that they're going to end up pushing you towards having a complete nervous breakdown.

Ending up in hospital might be the point where they have to accept that you have a condition that cannot be treated with 'tough love', but I'm not sure reaching that point would be worth sacrificing your sanity for.

Sounds to me like you need to get away from your family in order to get them out of your head, then you can start to get some proper perspective. How much of a grip they had on the way you thought about yourself and what it is you really want out of life, or don't want. That's easier said than done though.

Is there a risk that your uncle might just throw you out on your own anyway, in the near future?

I've had breakdowns but they're always intense and short lived. The aftershock lingers on though. I've had tonnes of these episodes over the years and i've never had any crisis resolution at all. I just patch up the wounds and go onto the next crisis arc. The last six years have been one calamity after another and the root causes have never been attended to.

Ive managed to cope by pretending im normal and pretending the same thing to myself. While I was at uni that was easier because I was in an environment where I could thrive.Now that im unsure as to what the future holds im confronted by just how ill equipped I am and its impossible to deny. But then I have the collective weight of everyone I know saying "There's nothing wrong".

Everyone thinks I want something and I think it might be partly because im constantly trying to please them. My mum compared me to a cat in our last conversation and the analogy was excellent I thought. She referred to the way that cats leave offerings on the doorstep as an expression of affection. She explained that my attempts to win people over are much the same in that they are not received gladly. I see this so so often in my life and it makes perfect sense. Ive alienated alot of people because of this and because I appear normal they put it down to attention seeking or manipulation.

what would you like to be doing for a living in music?

I will probably do alot of different things really. Im not sure where I want to spend eternity though heh