In the time in between SS, had you tried to seek professional support?
No, I'm afraid not. Being the agoraphobe that I am, there's not a chance in hell I could ever follow up on such a thing. That is assuming I wanted to which, to be honest, I really don't. I was dragged to a lot of shrinks when I was a kid and I can tell you that that was enough for a lifetime. Even outside of that, I'm highly skeptical of therapy. Without the necessary resources and outside support to carry the therapy forward, it can never truly go anywhere. That's not even getting into the fact that it can be very difficult to find a compatible therapist, one that works for you and that you can feel safe with. I don't have it within me to play that sort of game, not one bit, which leaves me both unable and unwilling to avail myself of these sorts of services.
I also don't want to have pills pushed on me. I absolutely refuse to consider the legalized drug racket which is pharmaceutical medication. I took Effexor and Paxil very briefly when I was a kid (for little over a month) and it didn't do me a bit of good. If anything, I sometimes worry how it might've effected my development, since someone as young as I was SHOULD NOT have been taking medication. My mother, to her credit, was the first to flush my pills down the toilet and stood in solidarity with me against anything else of that sort, like other doctors who suggested I start taking medication again. I mean, seriously, medication can really fuck you up. I actually watched a short documentary recently about these two guys who were trying to come off their anxiety medications, due to suffering some SEVERE negative side-effects. The worst being that they couldn't stop fidgeting or moving EVER and needed to constantly move their bodies in response to the profound inner stress they were feeling. From what I could tell, this was a permanent ailment they had developed as a result of their medications. Seeing their predicament was downright frightening, I gotta say. As if I needed any more reason never to consider medication, that certainly sealed the deal for me even further. I'd sooner swallow cyanide pills.
How did you come into renovating this home?
Well, it just sort of happened actually. It all started when I began to clear away years of accumulated junk from our back deck. Afterwards I moved on to the garage, then the basement, then the shed, then other parts of the house. We also used to have this really old and gross looking concrete pathway that had been blighting our property for years. That is, until I ordered a jackhammer off Amazon and went to work removing it. It took a couple weeks, but, by the end of it, I'd gotten rid of all of it. There was so much busted up concrete to remove during the process of it, that it basically made a little mountain by the time I was done. And, even in that, I had to move and dispose of all of it by hand. I'll tell you, it gave me quite the workout. We were in the process of just about to sell our old car at the time (which made it perfect as a bit of a temporary garbage mobile), so I'd load up the concrete in it and then we'd take it to a nearby depot where we could just drop it off for free. We must've made like 40-50 runs alone just getting rid of all that concrete. Load it in, load it out, load it in, load it out. Like I said, quite the workout. My father was, of course, in no shape to help me when it came to this sort of thing, so I just had to manage it on my own. Although, when it came to actually driving to this place, that's where my father could lend me a hand since, even with his condition, he could still at least drive back then.
Once that was done, I then jackhammered up our old driveway, since thanks to removing the concrete, we could now actually hire a team to replace it. In preparation of this, I thought I might as well take the initiative and get the old one busted up and cleared away before they came. This wasn't exactly necessary, but I just thought I might as well do it anyway. In the end, it did somewhat cut down on the costs, so it wasn't a total waste of time.
After that was done, I painted our fence, then the deck after cleaning/power washing it, I dug out a perimeter for some new patio stones we intend to put down in the spring, and I also painted the basement floor, cement parged some messed up parts of the basement wall (although I'll admit I could've done a better job on that), then painted it as well.
Back in early January of this year, me and my brother re-tiled the kitchen floor when he came to visit us, so that was something of this vein that happened fairly recently. As a matter of fact, he'll be here tomorrow so we can do some finishing touches, since he didn't have enough time to get the whole thing done back in January. My brother's the real handyman, to be honest. He's done 10 times the amount of this sort of stuff, when compared to myself. He's taught me a couple things, but even then, I can be pretty hopeless. For instance, I totally fucked up grouting the tiles to the point where my brother's going to have take care of it, since I'd rather not screw it up again and we don't really have the time to spare anyway.
Anyway, yeah. It's the sort of thing that helps me stay busy, but it's a very fleeting affair. By and large, I'm really only good for grunt work. I couldn't cut a board to save my life, to be honest. I really can only do the "easy" stuff. Anything that requires more of a skilled touch and I'm pretty much useless. That's why I really can't count on this stuff for much longer. Pretty soon all the easy stuff will be done, leaving only the remaining harder stuff, that I'm in no way qualified for doing.
Have you stopped dating all together? Do you fear only your actions towards a future partner?
Umm, well. Not exactly. I've actually never dated anyone in my entire life. I've never once approached or been in a relationship with anyone else. I haven't spoken to anyone beyond my own family, at least not by myself, for nearly 15 years. I fell out of normal circulation in school near the beginning of grade 6 and, even before that, I was always highly withdrawn. People tried to befriend me, but I was too anxious to reciprocate, on account of not knowing what to say to them. Girls and relationships just never came up. I was too busy grappling with my anxiety and trying to muddle my way through seeing therapists and having to attend school in a specialized fashion. By the end of my first year of high school however, I dropped out of formal education altogether and everything else as well. Nearly 15 years later locked away at home since and here I am.
I've never been physically intimate with anyone either. Not even kissing or holding hands or, heck, even hugging. I mean, yeah, I've hugged my mom on occasion, but that's different. Romance and physical affection is unknown to me and I have no idea what it must be like. Not that I really put much emphasis on those things anyway, but it is what it is. Even if I never experience any of it, that's fine. I've long come to terms with that sort of thing.
A thought crossed my mind, does she even know how? Does she know what she's "supposed" to say?
Yeah, I'll admit that's where I can be a bit unfair. I know I can't expect her to be a mind reader, but still. I just wish that she could more often say the sort of stuff that would really soothe the way I feel. If I have to tell her what to say, it mostly loses all of its meaning. Heck, I've also tried to coach her a bit when it comes to this sort of thing and somehow it just never seems to make a difference. After enough times of this I just feel like....I don't know. She'd just have a better grasp on what it is I want to hear, I guess? But sadly, most of the time, she just doesn't. That's not to say she doesn't understand me, but just that she always prefers wording things her own way. We agree on many things and can talk about a lot with each other, but, again, she always seems intent on giving me an "answer" when I'm distressed, even though I'd really she'd rather just listen and acknowledge the broad strokes of what's bothering me without trying to say what it is I should do, or to otherwise segue into what's bothering her instead. Something she unfortunately does A LOT of, I'm afraid.
I live alone & think aloud to fill the space
As do I. Whenever my mother isn't around, I tend to think out loud a lot. It sort of gives the illusion that someone might be hearing me somewhere, somehow. There's a certain amount of catharsis that comes with it, although I'm not sure why, since I'm simply talking to an empty room, with no one around to register it save for myself. I guess it just feels nice to talk, even if no one is there to respond. Just making conversation with my own mind, trying to sort out all my thoughts.
I mean she gets to decompress in way you cannot- maybe your great listening skills give her more room to breathe while you aren't given the same space.
Maybe. I'm not sure. To be honest though, I think you're right. I often listen to my mother go on and on about all the usual stuff, and I always make sure to stay involved reciprocating/responding where appropriate. By contrast, my mother doesn't do as good a job as this for me. And that sucks, but I realize she can only do as much as she's able to. There are a lot of other mothers who wouldn't even do that much or bother to listen to me at all, so I'll take what I can get. At least she's not abusive or cruel, or otherwise totally incapable of understanding me. At the same time, she dumps on me A LOT. Like basically every day and I'm just expected to stand there and listen to her. It's very tiresome to the point I lose sight of the point of even talking to begin with. I just drift in and out of my room and just say "Uh, huh. Okay.", before then just shutting the door and sitting out yet another dumping session. So yeah, I don't know. There's, of course, some nuance to it all. It's not just this or it's that, but it's still tiresome. Like I said, my mother's barely holding on herself these days. We're like two people out at sea barely able to keep from drowning. It's a pretty morbid situation when two people are both this lost in life and are unable to receive the help they need.
but their thing was they wouldn't just sit around & just exist anymore because the mental anguish it was causing was debilitating
Yeah. My problem, I think, is just how much this enduring and "surviving" of my situation has become a routine of its own. It would be nice if I could get a sudden jolt of some sort to shake me loose from all this, but the real horror is realizing that this might never come. How the pain, while sharp, has almost taken the form of an old leather jacket. Something that's taken to the shape of your form and bears its own odd sense of familiarity, even dubious comfort. I've just gotten used to it, basically. Far too used to it. So much so, that I've become almost doubly trapped within it. Almost like the jacket itself were lined with kryptonite, zapping my energy and lulling me into a kind of zombie like slumber. Enslaved to my own weak inertia. Keeping myself locked to the same old nowhere, having to experience all the many frustrations and sense of strong mutedness that comes with it.