Self-Diagnosing
Don't trust me to think about myself because I'll do it too much.
My creative and literary juices haven't been flowing lately, but I have ideas for blog posts and I let a friend pick one of them out yesterday for me to write.
I think that lately I've been more open to the idea that maybe, just maybe, I'm not the most normal person, mentally. That's not to say I'm insane or schizophrenic, but that I might have symptoms of anxiety or autism or something or other, despite seeming like the most chill person at my house.
I don't get panic attacks, but like anyone else, I get super into my thought processes and it leads me into a brain fog of feeling like shit about everything around me to the point I don't feel like I can distract myself until I'm out of it. Often, those thoughts concern the future and what might happen to the world around me. These thoughts upset me because I get into this mindset that it's inescapable.
If you looked at me on the outside while I'm having this war in my own mind, you might think that I just look bored, or I love looking at the void. Going to a therapist about it is something I've entertained, but I don't care to because I don't want to take medicine that I believe will just make me feel worse, if that even happens all the time, which I doubt. Anyway, I think I'm capable of managing my anxiety with the tools I have at hand; I just choose not to because I don't like the idea of frequently distracting myself from problems in this world or the world around me.
What if I just have too much time to think? I don't know. You know what they say: Never trust how you feel about your life past 9PM. Speaking of being up "late," going to sleep is something that takes at least an hour to do. The thoughts come in to keep me awake, and I'm only so disciplined to ignore them. Is that a symptom of anxiety? I don't know, and I am not interested in looking it up on the internet because I don't want to interface with some ad-filled article about how if you can't sleep at night, it's because of a million other things, or whatever.
I believe that being weird or having certain things that stimulate you in unique ways is part of the human experience. That being said, if it's not, then damn, I guess I have symptoms of autism or OCD. An example of something strange I think I do is how I'm absolutely terrible at being sincere with people. I'm honest, but I'm not intimate at the normal level. At least that's what I believe. I don't like saying "I love you," and I don't tell people I'm happy for them. It takes a lot of effort to be this way with people, and it never feels right. I enjoy getting people gifts, and I'm good at that. If that's something I enjoy and it's one of those sincere things, then I'll continue doing that when I feel is appropriate.
This is all debatable, which is why I don't take this "what if" seriously. I say that because there's a good possibility it's all conditioning. I'm not so personally connected to my outside family despite seeing them often, and living at home with siblings that spoke in a way that only I notice isn't doing good for me. I call it "marvel script," by the way. It's like they were always trying to be the best at speaking in arguments that go nowhere. But that's another thing: only I noticed how they acted in this super specific way, so I tried to act oppositely every time I was around them to seem normal. It's entirely inconsequential, because there is the understanding that all of us are flamboyantly funny in some way. I don't like that. I never felt like I could join them in being loud and proud about the things we like, because I'm already acting this way, so there's the expectation that I act this way (that only I am holding myself to so in reality I could quit whenever I want), and I don't like it when people remind me of the things that I'm interested in.
I'm opposed to claiming that I have autism or that I have a sliver of it because of how overused the words 'tism, or "acoustic" are on the internet now. It pisses me off. I know some autistic people in real life, so it's easy for me to not be insensitive about it. I'm glad that's so, because some of you guys are just deplorable seeing anyone act strange online. Everyone is saying they have autism over things I think would be completely fine in the abundance of weirdness any one of these people have. It makes me wonder who really is diagnosed or not. Being diagnosed is obviously not the only reason you can tell people you have it, I know. I only don't know who actually is autistic, and who thinks they are because they act in a way they don't think is normal.
I suppose it's an epidemic of weirdness. If you act weird in public, if you're too genuine, or too interested, or too expressive, you're weird and therefore autistic. What a fucking sentiment that is, huh? Guess you have to be diagnosed to act weird. That's some bullshit justification. Who gets to decide what's normal, anyway?
You know, maybe I don't know how anyone is supposed to act. What do I know about how the average person feels? What if I'm just convincing myself that everyone else has something that makes them act in subtle ways? What if I'm the only person that feels as if autism is something that is a collection of maybe a hundred different strange things. Or, what if all these young women online are lying about something even they don't know about? Who's to say anything anymore except people that we know, medically and for certain, are autistic? Am I the asshole? Of course, I'm not going to be an asshole because I have no grounds to tell someone else that they aren't autistic. That's just dumb.
Look, I suspect there is a sizeable hole in my head pertaining to knowledge of mental afflictions. I might as well go ask an expert if I can. This is less about me now it seems. Anyway, stop using the puzzle logo for autists. It's considered rude. It's okay if you didn't know about it. You know now.