u/merganzer

There's only a handful of people I know who can follow my train of thought and understand most of what I say when I'm not masking. It's not like I can't be understood--I work a customer-facing job in the American south and I am very good at putting people at their ease in English or Spanish. Elderly farmers and sweet old ladies love me. But that act is very tiring and it's not helpful to me to be in that mode all the time

In my various attempts at therapy over the past 20 years, I've gotten a lot of blank stares, one "did you make that word up?", and the last one kept defaulting to "That's interesting!" until I quit.

I could use some kind of support. I have (currently unmedicated) bipolar disorder, late diagnosed autism that I've never discussed properly with a professional, and I've had a couple of moderately traumatic events happen this year. I have stopped believing that things can ever be better and now consider life an endurance exercise that I will participate in as long as I have to.

I'm not, like...super mysterious or smart or interesting. If I actually were an alien, that might be easier, since no one would have any particular expectations of me. I'm just an aging millennial who learned how to talk from books. Gender and sexuality are almost irrelevant to my self-conception, but I perform a semi-adequate impression of the cis-woman I am for the sake of blending in and I don't feel any need to explore that further. I am equally uncomfortable in groups of woman, men, and mixed company, but I do a little better connecting ne on one with people. I have my family and just a couple of friends and coworkers I can talk to and that's it.

I'm currently working about 50 hours a week (one full-time job in retail, plus a couple of side gigs) and I have children in school and activities, so if I manage to move heaven and earth to make room for therapy, I want it to be worthwhile.

But I don't think it will be and I don't know how to improve the odds...

I'm well into the end game and one of my last tricks was to expand Jockey Island (tiny dot in the lower left corner of the ocean) and plant a bunch of grass and apple trees before releasing a half-dozen baby jockeys. That created a nice, stable population of sentient bipeds who are somehow less weird-looking and a little steadier on their feet than humans.

Anyway, I roped a few and optimized their DNA several iterations before trying one in a race.

It wouldn't run. Tried another and it also refused. I lassoed a random citizen of Jockey Island and threw that into a race and it would not leave the starting line.

I put some into the power plant field and after a few generations, those would run races, but they also didn't look like jockeys anymore.

My conclusion: pure-bred jockeys refuse to participate in races unless they can ride.

I have been mentally stuttering all day. The best metaphor I can think of is a manual car driven by someone who does not know how to drive a manual car--lots of shuddering and stalls.

Today is actually my "flex day." I do data entry/bookkeeping for a parttime salaried gig and if I play my cards right, I can get everything done in 8 hours of mostly unsupervised, solitary office work once a week. Been doing it for 8 years now, so it's mostly rote, and hour for hour it pays very well. No time clock, I just get my shit done in some kind of timeframe and make a report to a committee once a month. Pretty sweet deal, really.

Had my six month med check this morning and, while my combo is not working per se (too much sertraline vs quetiapine and I've been a little hypomanic), I was getting pretty depressed on less sertraline and I can't take more quetiapine because my hair will fall out, so I answered the questions in a way that will let me stay where I am. Because it honestly is the best balance I've had in ten years and I don't want to add anything or try anything new.

I started drinking when my coworker left at 2 and it's been better since then. Should be sober enough to interact by the time I need to unlock the building for an event at 5 and sober enough to drive home at 6.

I don't normally drink at work. My other job is fulltime retail management--lots of physical/social demands. I couldn't get away with it there. I don't usually drink at this job because it's a bad sign, you know? Dysfunctional people do that.

But I am struggling. hard, to get through the day. This day in particular and many days lately. I want to die or I want to live alone in a little apartment where no one expects anything from me. But I have responsibilities that I can't walk away from. I have kids.