Paranoia II and Hanlon's razor

When your brain is working on two opposing thoughts at the same time:


Me: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

Also me: But it's so freaking obvious I'm being singled out here OMFG!


Ugh. It honestly sucks being me at times, because I can hold two perfectly opposing thoughts in my head at the same time, and believe both with a weight of certainty that you'd find difficult to shift. What do we call that, girls and boys? cognitive dissonance.


Sometimes it's fun and can prompt debate until the little grey cells finally decide which team they're rooting for, but other times it's just a source of terrible, almost debilitating anxiety and paranoia.


Two recent examples:


1) I enrolled on my course late on in the season. Ok, very late. Just last month, actually. All the other students seem to float around on invisible cushions of knowledge, secure that they know what they need to know in order to get through the academic year. Then there's me, drowning and clawing at any titbit of information because No, I'm not actually enrolled on that VLE board whence the information came. Now, was it a slip of the mind? Was it just an admin error? Or maybe they're just screwing with me so I'll drop out?


Me: All 3. Has to be. No other explanation.

Also me: But maybe...

Me: No, seriously - it's all 3 at the same time. Go stew on it some.




2) My eldest is due to go to Primary school (aka Elementary school etc.) in 2017 and we hear on the Mom Grapevine that there's a meeting at the local school for parents of the new-kids-to-be. No word from the school itself. No word from their Nursery (aka Daycare, Kindergarten). A letter surfaces, dated T-8 days but which was actually received at T-2 days with a tear-off RSVP to be handed in at T-4 days by the latest. (See where this is going?) Slip of the mind? Admin error? Screwing with us?


Me: All 3. Has to be. No other explanation.

Also me: But maybe...

Me: No, seriously - it's all 3 at the same time. Go stew on it some.


Meanwhile the rest of the moms have no letter and thus, in theory, do not know about this meeting (which is, by the way, tomorrow morning). I swear, if a letter DOES make its way to me, there will be a fairly sharp-assed response being sent back instead of that stupid RSVP.


As it stands, we have panic, anxiety and paranoia running a race in my head over who gets to chair the latest meeting of "How do we get through college?" with Schrödinger's Primary School meeting set to happen (and not happen) tomorrow morning causing me more anxiety because this is my firstborn's future we're talking here and I have some CONCERNS I'd like to talk to the school about, thanks very much.


It's all fun and games, until it's not.

executive functioning disorder as part of the rest of my issues

Peaks and troughs, waxing and waning; my whole damn life is a rollercoaster and not in the fun way.

When I'm neutral or hyper, I get shit done. When I'm hyper I get a LOT of shit done, and sometimes to the extreme of needing done (I have a bullet journal that I started when I was hyper, it's been planned out til the middle of next year. I also started two essays when I was hyper and managed to finish one and half finish the other before the cycle ended - neither were due until the month after). When the mood screams to a halt or starts to slide over the cliff, my productivity goes down, apathy goes up and intention gets defenestrated.

This isn't the hour-to-hour or day-to-day moods, those are part of the BPD and I can ride those through to their conclusion fairly well after identifying them. No. This is the week-to-week, month-to-month mood shift that is part of the Bipolar, that is so subtle I can't see it until I'm so entrenched in it that it feels like I'm walking through treacle. And this is after a decade of knowing about the nature of these damn moods, I STILL can't fully identify them until after the fact. Fuck's sake.

Back to the EFD. This is part of the Asperger's. It waxes and wanes according to my moods and doesn't particularly care why the mood is what it is, just that it IS:

• I can be in an overall depression when the BPD comes up and goes "let's sing to ourselves for NO APPARENT REASON!" and all of a sudden I'm getting the shit done, looking fairly presentable, being fairly productive - all whilst being depressed to the point of self-harm - and then suddenly the productive mood drops. Boom. The shit is no longer getting done and I look like a homeless person caricature. 
• I can be in a hypomanic state where I'm singing all the time, excitable, nonsensical, where getting all the shit done in the blink of an eye seems just so doable but let's go do this first, eh? Too high to appreciate that the shit actually needs to get done, thanks all the same.
• When I'm euthymic, the shit to be done list is like a chores list and it gets worked through as and when. This is when I'm least affected by EFD. It's a fairly boring stage. Chores be as chores do. But hey, it's gotta get done and I'm not exactly invested in what's on the tv just now so let's get to it. Even the laundry eventually gets folded when I'm like this.

At the moment, I'm struggling. I struggle to get up through the night to attend to the goddamn nightowl spawn of satan we affectionately call "our youngest". I struggle to see the needs of others (oh? you are hungry? and you're telling me this because...?). I struggle to get anything done. You can put me in front of a sink of hot soapy water and give me the tools I need to get those few dishes that require hand-washing done... and I'll just stand there in a fog or sit down on the floor. There's three weeks of laundry to put away. Nearly 4 weeks. And I know this because NOT ONCE has it been tracked in my housework tracker, and I started that bitch on the 14th November.

I severely dislike being this way but it's not as simple as saying "suck it up buttercup, let's get going" - might work for an hour or two that day but after that I slump back down and can't be moved again. I had help a little while back from SAMH in the form of Jo, who would come around once a week and who initially got me to plan to do the work that needed doing the most. I did it. It tired me out. Wanna know what "it" was? Yeah, just putting the laundry away. Seems stupid, eh. And yet here we are. I managed to do that and a little more by the next week. Updated the plan. Eventually, at the end of 6 weeks I had a schedule to follow. Just a Monday to Friday schedule, leave the weekends free. And then it started to slide, I don't even know when. By the time I got my journal up and running, I was able to see that I wasn't doing as much as I thought I was doing. Tracker boxes going unfilled, tasks getting migrated. It's a hassle for anyone to get dressed who isn't me (because I wear the same shit over and over until it NEEDS laundering, basically - another Asperger's thing apparently), because all the clothes and towels etc are in a pile on top of a suitcase that hasn't yet been unpacked from our OCTOBER holiday. The kids still have their summer clothes in their drawers, the winter clothes safely packed away. And yet here I sit, arms like lead, typing this shit out to the 'verse where nobody will read it.


Meh.

There's something missing from my life

You know my background: I have Asperger's Syndrome and Borderline Personality Disorder. There are so many inspiring stories about those who have overcome, those who have defied the odds, those who have illnesses who have done the unexpected... and then there's me.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen - I am missing something. I don't have a superpower!

Everyone else seems to have a superpower. Amazing empathy, kindness; can tell you the number one single from when you were born; can play an instrument; great with numbers, memory; beautiful handwriting... seems like everyone who has something has something. What do I have? I don't have nothing, you know - I've got family and friends who care greatly for me, and I them. Got a roof over our heads and a means to get from A to B fairly reliably. But what do I have to offer?

A fairly fiery temper.


(ok, I've been stuck for about 5 minutes here, a little help?)

I make a pretty decent bolognese.


(stuck again)



That's it, guys and gals. That's it. Can't think of anything else.

Even a little party trick (aside from grinding the bones in my wrist) would be nice.


So I can haz for Xmas plx?

Wanna be a model?

*going out on a limb here*

I'm looking for people with first-hand experience of mental illness who would be happy to answer a couple of questions and send a headshot selfie to an email address/facebook page.

I'm looking for men, women and everyone in between; the young and old, the ones in recovery, the ones who feel they're stuck in a rut, the ones who hide it from friends and family and the ones who are more open about it. The hurting and the healing. I'm looking for these people and their answers and their images to create an artistic series called "Fractured People".

I'm hoping that by creating this series and getting these images out there it will reduce the stigma around mental health (because make no bones about it, there's still a hell of a lot of stigma); that it will comfort those involved even if they choose to remain anonymous, and bring to the attention of those who perpetuate mental health stigma (in whatever form, accidentally or by design) the very real face of mental illness - waking them up, educating them and helping to reduce stigma.

If you can help, or if you know someone who might be interested - please show them this. Don't post it to them publicly; copy and private message them, screencap and email them, show them this post on your phone and let them decide if it's for them, privately.

Thanks for reading.

***If anyone's interested you can private mail me on fb; at my fb page Kitty's Design Studio or email me at 035963@uhi.ac.uk***