3:58am May 18, 2014

Typed cautiously because words are a problem right now.

But between Josiah and Fey, my mind had a moment of quiet, and that was very necessary, and I can’t thank either of you enough.

Also since someone asked, I never mind getting prayers regardless of whether I share your religion or not, because I kind of figure that Whoever and Whatever is dealing with prayers, sorts everything out in the end regardless of individual beliefs. (Which also means that if someone prays for something that would be bad for me, things will get sorted out and it won’t happen, or at least, if it happens it won’t be because someone ‘prayed wrong’ or something.)

Anyway I got out of bed and just for a moment everything fell away and I was just me again.

The moment passed but I know it will make way for more such moments.

This is actually an extremely good example of what I was discussing (borrowing language from Donna Williams) in some other posts – states of awareness of “all-other no-self” and “all-self no-other”. The state I’ve been in the last couple of days has been an extreme all-other-no-self state with occasional spikes of all-self-no-other just to make everything more confusing.

[If there were any justice in the world for the way words are constructed, allistic would be not a word for nonautistic people, but a word for a state of mind autistic people get into where we become hyperaware of things outside ourselves and lose touch with who we are. And autistic would be a word for the opposite state. And there would be some other word(s) that meant what we mean when we say autism these days. But language isn’t logical and neither is psychiatry. And that’s as far as I’m willing to go down that discussion pathway while my mind is still vulnerable to spinning out of control.]

I’m starting to feel better from my cold, which means I’ll be trying to reduce my dexamethasone back closer to my normal dose, in the morning. That should hopefully help some of this problem too.

In the meantime I feel like I have to be extremely careful what I do. And at the same time, I know that I’m not capable at the moment of being careful enough. I have too much inertia. I’ll slip and fall a bunch of times and it will be messy. But I have absolute faith that things will turn back to how they’re supposed to be, possibly sooner than I think.

What I felt like in that moment where I could perceive myself clearly, was that I was huddled in the middle of the room, and all these bad flashy things were flashing all around me trying to grab my attention, and the flashy things couldn’t actually touch me but they could distract me very easily. Not literal flashy things, more like flashy-thought-stuff. Although there’s plenty of literal flashy things too because I’ve worked myself into a bit of a migraine.

Anyway, if I don’t turn this off right now, I’ll get swept up in all-other-no-self again, and I couldn’t stand that again so soon.

Or specifically, I would become what Donna describes (and I have to borrow her words because I have none of my own) as “consciously aware of and voluntarily responsive of external other, but only unconsciously aware and automatically responsive of self”. Which is how I’ve been operating a lot the past few days. Even writing this now is pushing me ever closer to that state.

(For more on different self-other adaptations to being mono tracked, this is an interesting article, but it’s a PDF.)

So I’m going to stop here. Try not to worry too much. This happens, and I’m on a new medication and dealing with illness and all this other stuff, so things are bound to get rocky. But I seriously appreciate the people who really get it about what’s going on. Being seen can be the key that brings me back to myself from one of these states.

I hope I can sleep. That would help too. I haven’t been sleeping enough. I’ve been in a lot of physical pain. None of that is helping. I’m turning off the computer now. The computer makes things worse sometimes.

Notes: