Meds, Robots, & Neurodivergence in Like No One Is Reading

Several times over the years, I was on various antidepressants. Only antidepressants because I’m a woman and, you know, whenever there’s something “wrong” with a woman, it’s obviously just depression.

Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Paxil.

I kept trying, but each one made me feel one thing - or, rather, made me feel nothing. I felt like an emotionless robot. All of my worry, and all of my joy, left me. I wasn’t crying and suicidal anymore but I didn’t feel human, either. Well, what I thought of as human, anyway.

Now that I’m on a combination of medications, including an antidepressant, I realized that those other antidepressants? Yeah, they worked. That robot feeling was them working.

My life was a shitshow during those times. I had situational depression. The unfeeling feeling was actually the meds working plus my situation causing me such extreme distress that I was dissociated a lot of the time. Twenty years ago, I didn’t even know the word “dissociation” or that it was a thing I was doing involuntarily to protect myself in a distressing situation.

I dissociated yesterday and I recognized that old robot feeling immediately. And that triggered even more self-doubt. “Are my meds working? Is this hopeless? Am I destined to feel everything or nothing? Why can’t I cry?” This is all I’ve been able to think about since I woke up. Am I doing the right thing, reacting the right way, or is this just ol’ Crazy Me, rearing her ugly head again?

Do you know what it’s like to never be able to trust your own feelings, your own mind? To constantly doubt every thought because what if it’s not really my thought but actually just an intrusive thought, my brain lying to me? To know that you were abused your entire life because your own brain convinced you that you deserved it, that that’s just how things are supposed to be? Do you know what it’s like to have someone say something awful about you and you immediately believe it, accept it completely, know that it’s right? It must be true because, if it weren’t, why does everyone say it to me? Why has every man (and even some women!) in my life said and done these things to me? I must deserve it. They must be right.

There is a consensus, after all.

Who is the common denominator in my life?

Me.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that I’m the one who is bad. I’m the one who needs to be removed from the situation, whatever the situation is. It’s all me. And maybe it’s self-fulfilling prophecy or maybe it was just prophecy, but I remember telling my best friend when we were maybe 12 years old that I just knew I was going to end up old and alone with a bunch of cats and no friends. I remember talking about maybe being a truck driver when I grew up, just living my life on the road, no connections, no roots. Because I felt like I didn’t have any roots, I didn’t belong anywhere, even then, even as a child. I just knew I was different and wrong. My parents said it and then other kids started saying it, as early as kindergarten. Nearly every day of school was a nightmare for me. I had a new bully every year, it seemed, or a whole new group of them.

If it’s not me, if I’m not the bad one, then why? Why all of this? Why does my life always come down to this? A choice between giving another person the chance to love me or abuse me when I never know which it will be?

No one has ever had the sort of impact on my life that you have. I’ve loved you for more than 30 years. You are the poster child for “the one who got away” except you didn’t “get away” so much as I let you go because I knew I wasn’t right or good or good enough for someone like you. You’ve always been this… impossible dream. When I used to secretly stalk your social media, I would make up little stories in my head about you - because I didn’t know, you know? You were just all art and pictures of yourself and cats and not a lot of personal details. For awhile, I wondered if you were gay, just a ridiculously adorable gay dude living in a cool loft with his cats. I didn’t dig very, very deep, you know. I would subconsciously type your name into the search bar while I was at work, or at home when my partner was at work, and I would scroll through your pictures a little and then feel guilt and shame and stop myself. Well, for a bit, anyway. But I just kept going back, sneaking little peeks, and letting my imagination run wild. It’s so easy to do with your content because you’re so creative and there’s this air of mystery about you because of the lack of personal details. Oh, how I wondered and wanted to find out.

You were having an impact on me for years and you didn’t even know it.

Then you were the dream that more than came true. One of those rare times when the reality is actually better than the dream. Not rare… impossible. How could this be?

But, it could be, and it was. I told you on that first day that you shine like the sun and you do, you still do.

And now, you’re a piece of me. You exist in every aspect of my life. There is nowhere that I can look and not see you, even in the mirror, because the way I see myself now is almost directly attributable to you. I don’t see an ugly, unlovable person anymore. I don’t hate the person I see anymore. I love her because you love her, because you saw things I didn’t and you showed them to me, things about myself that I couldn’t see because, then, all I could see was the me that no one loved, the me who was unworthy of love. I love her because you love her and I trust you. If you say, “Look at her, isn’t she beautiful?” I will trust that you are speaking the truth because I trust you.

That’s why all of this is so difficult for me. I trusted you and believed you and then you said I was abusing you and gaslighting you and that I wasn’t good for you.

I don’t know what to believe anymore.

And now it’s the weekend and you’ll be busy with your plague party (sorry, not sorry, and I genuinely hope it goes well and no one gets COVID) and I probably won’t hear from you very much because I usually don’t. I’ll do my best not to ruminate too much but I’m already pretty deep in it. I feel like I don’t even know who I am, who you are, or where you stand right now.

My brain has asked, “What if he doesn’t want to be with you anymore but knows you’re fragile and doesn’t want to break up with you directly so he orchestrates these arguments in the hopes that you break up with him?” Now, before you think that’s far-fetched, I’ll inform you that I have done exactly this multiple times in my life. It’s a defense mechanism. Hurt someone before they can hurt you.

You are feeling hurt by me, you said that. If that’s true, if you’ve been feeling hurt by me, I had no idea. If I have no idea, I can’t do anything about it, and not bringing it up before a meltdown is irresponsible on your part. I’ve worked my ass off for almost 3 years to be a better communicator, to talk about things that are bothering me before they reach a boiling point, because that is my responsibility and no one else’s. If I don’t deal with my emotions, if I bottle them up and then explode, it is my fault if I get fired or lose a loved one over it, because it’s abusive even if it’s a trauma response or ADHD or whatever. It’s my responsibility to deal with myself so that doesn’t happen, so I don’t hurt the people I love. Am I perfect? HAH. But I’m trying, and I know you are, too.

I want you to understand how I see you in these situations. I see myself, love. I see a neurodivergent person who is incredibly overwhelmed by some big emotions and who is having a meltdown. And I think that there’s a very good possibility that you are so triggered by talking about these things with me because you see them in yourself and you are pushing back against that something fierce. I feel like you see diagnosis as some sort of… I don’t know, black mark. As if to say that you were neurodivergent would be to say there’s something “wrong” with you, something that needs to be therapied and medicated out of you, something to be fixed, and that’s just not the case. The neurodivergence in me sees the neurodivergence in you and I fully believe that that is one of the reasons we are so drawn to each other. We are the same in many ways and we exist in a world where our sameness makes us different from the majority. You’ve talked a bit about your “other friends with ADHD” and… I mean… hello? We’re drawn to people like us because we’re the only ones who can really understand each other - in a world that doesn’t wish to understand us at all. The problem is, you see these things in other people and think you need to “help” them. Maybe that’s because you see them in yourself and it makes you uncomfortable and, if you can help them, you can help yourself at the same time. Being ADHD or OCD or autistic isn’t a thing that needs helping, it’s a thing that needs acceptance and accommodation and kindness. Yes, there are therapies and medications that help (obviously, just look at me!), but these are not things that can be, or need to be, fixed or cured.

We actually need the exact same things from each other. Acceptance, accommodation, kindness. I believe that maybe the biggest feeling I have around all of this is a feeling of not being accepted for who I am - because you want to “help” me and, like… help me with what, exactly? How do you want to help? Because I’ve told you what is helpful and what is not but you have not been very receptive to that. It feels a bit like, “I’m your ally, why are you being so mean to me, [slur]?” Conditional allyship isn’t really being an ally. If I say, “This is how I need you to help me,” and you say, “But I want to help you this way!” it feels as if you are more interested in control than being helpful.

And I’d also like to mention at this point that you have said several times that you are not my therapist. We’ve been over this before. You are not my therapist, so why this insistence that you have to help me? “People come to me with problems.” Well, good for them. Am I people or am I me? Do I get to be an individual here or am I just another in the collection of women that you perceive as needing your help? Have I not successfully navigated this world with neurodivergence and mental illness all on my own for 44 years? Have none of us successfully navigated without you there to tell us how? Do I sound like an angry, man-hating feminist right now or just someone who sees a hard truth that maybe you haven’t allowed yourself to see? Your insistence that you must be helpful to struggling women is, I believe, internalized misogyny. Because I don’t believe for a second that you’re a misogynist, so don’t come at me about it or say I’m making a blanket statement or lumping you in. Don’t #NotAllMen at me.

If you want to be a good friend and ally, listen and don’t argue someone’s lived experiences or think they need fixing. If you are literally incapable of just being an ear for someone, I need to know that, because I have looked at you as a safe space for almost 3 years now and now you don’t feel safe anymore. I feel like you’ve been judgmental of my progress, my starts and stops, my regressions, like you think I’m not trying hard enough or listening to your advice enough.

Man, the boys’ dad started our relationship with, “I can help you,” because I was upfront and honest about my issues, okay? It’s a huge fucking trigger for me. And maybe I didn’t realize that’s what has been happening when we have these arguments about you helping me and maybe that’s why you think I’m pushing back every time - because I am! Because I don’t trust people who say they’re going to help me because they never, ever have - and also because they can’t because they are not experts on mental illness and neurodivergence! And neither are you.

So please, stop making me feel like a project. I just wanted to be your girlfriend and your friend and your lover, not a problem to be solved. I cannot be fixed. My brain is wired the way it is. You can’t help that. Experts can barely help that! I’m the only one who can help myself and learn to handle it better. I’ve lived with this my whole life and I assure you there is very little that you could suggest that I haven’t heard or tried already - that every ADHD person, in particular, hasn’t heard or tried already. What works for some of us will not work for others. We are not “ADHD people,” we are unique individuals. If you’ve been able to help your other friends, hey, that’s great, good for you and good for them. I am not them and I would appreciate not being constantly compared to them.

I thought we had a deal, you and I. No demands, no expectations. I feel like I’ve done pretty well at following those guidelines. You make all decisions for us, after all. When we meet, where, when we talk on the phone, when we vidchat. I have never demanded anything from you that I can recall, or placed any unrealistic expectations on you. I’ve accepted my limited role in your life without complaint - because it suits me. This is the most free I’ve ever felt and it’s glorious to not have someone constantly demanding my time and attention, expecting things from me that I’m unable to give. It’s also been pretty amazing to not have any expectations of you, I have to say. Not expecting anything from anyone, beyond basic human decency and respect, has been the life I’ve always needed. If I don’t expect anything, I never get let down.

I’m worried that you have unrealistic expectations of me and you’ve been pretty demanding. I want you to know that, if you do have expectations of me, it’s okay, but I need to know what those expectations are, specifically, so I can decide whether or not to meet them. Making demands of me will never work. Maybe it’s pure defiance on my part, but I’m entitled to a little defiance at my age. I’m willing to talk and compromise, to meet you in the middle. But it’s going to require actual talking and not just, “Oh, I was having a bad day, it’s over now.” It may pass that easily and quickly for you, but not for me. Obviously, since I still hold vivid memories of these events and how they made me feel because they were traumatic for me, and I really don’t appreciate my trauma being waved away as you were just hungry and tired. The boys’ dad used to push and hit me when he was drunk, okay, but he didn’t mean it because he was just drunk.

Do you understand now? Do you understand why I’ve continued to believe that I am a hard person to love? Why I still believe everyone would be better off without me? I’m too damaged, I have too many triggers, and now I’m in a relationship where I’m not supposed to have any expectations, and that’s great, but I guess I maintained at least one unspoken expectation - don’t use my trauma as a weapon against me. Hell, not even unspoken, because I know I’ve mentioned it to you, that people have done that to me, done things specifically to trigger me.

Do I believe you’re intentionally triggering me? Nope. But you have, and you do, and sometimes it’s so incredibly obvious, such a very specific behavior, that I can’t make myself understand how it couldn’t be intentional.

Make it make sense, please. Make it all make sense, because I feel like I’m losing my mind.

Last updated February 04, 2022