Confession time: Why I deserve to be unhappy

Why is this?  I’m fat.

I don’t need a motorised scooter to get around or anything, hell I don’t need to go to plus sized clothing stores to make my clothes fit.  But I do take up space.  My lifestyle, dare I say, is all right.  I go to uni, I play sports, I go out dancing on a Friday night.  But according to many, larger women don’t deserve to have anything that makes them happy.

Oh, I wouldn’t go as far to say that I’m being denied employment or service at restaurants because I’m overweight.  It’s the little things that get to you.  Recently, my roommate posted this on his page.

Married Couples are Happier When Wives Thinner, study finds 

Now this in itself isn’t offensive or surprising to me.  What was offensive to me was how this study shat all over scientific methodology, but whatever.  I have been told, in no uncertain terms by several men that they don’t have time for rounder ladies.  I do forget how widespread this view is, but topics like this get people talking – and I realise just how prejudiced people around me are.

 

The first comment was from a pregnant friend, who wrote this:

“well, I’m screwed then!”

To which my room mate replied,

“Only for a few more months, Meg!”

Oh yes, don’t worry Meg.  See right now you are a horrid, squelchy, ugly being, using your pregnancy as an excuse.  You can make your husband pie every night, you can clean the house until it looks like the cover of Better Homes and Gardens, and you can wait on him hand and foot.  But could he be happy when he’s married to a fatty?  Never!  Don’t worry though– as soon as you pop that baby out, you can starve youself, ditch the baby body and go back to being the kind of wife you husband can take outside.

I made a comment too

“uh oh, I’m screwed long term!’’

To which my roommate replied –

“only cos you let yourself be :)”

ARRRGH!  THE CONDESCENDING SMILEY FACE OF DOOM!

Wow.  In one sentence, without even stating anything directly, my roommate has inferred everything that bothers me about my weight.  This would be my direct translation

“Oh Voyager, you so silly.  Not only are you repulsive to look at, but you’ve forgotten it’s your lazy, weak willed character it that got you there!”

And thus followed a delightfully immature facebook argument where I called him ignorant, and he called me lazy in less vague terms that got to the point where I nearly stormed into his bedroom, tipping his protein powder onto his bed and asking him why he dared make fun of my food issues when he lives on fake protein and amino acids.  Ah, but he’s not fat, therefore he’s an expert on healthy eating and successful relationships, no?  Being the ugly, weak, big mac inhaling fatass I am, I can’t help but preach the necessity of sensitivity and personality compatibility in relationships.  Silly Voyager indeed.

So to recap – why did I brain fart and get fat in the first place?  It’s a long story, but after my breakdown, they fed me a lot of Zyprexa. And sodium valproate. And many others.  I put on 5 kilos in my first week.  I gained 30 kilos in just three months.

My fuller figure is a battle scar because I was very, very ill.  I was out of control.  These drugs were a last resort to get me from a mess of a human being needing constant supervision to an independent law abiding citizen.  So, whenever one of you materialistic bitches that make up 99.8% of society thinks it’s funny to comment on my physique do you know what I hear?

“Well Voyager, you probably would be dead now if you didn’t take that drug.  But you did and look at you now – a big fat loser.  That’s so much worse!  You should have refused it – yeah, you would be dead, but you would have died thin and beautiful, and isn’t that what really matters?”

So it seems.  I’m not on the drugs anymore, and my energy levels have returned to normal.  I’ve been shifting the weight, slowly but surely.  It’s been hard though, funnily enough losing weight ain’t easy!  If only I could stop eating…it’s just that when all you hear are people telling you how repulsive the way you look is, eating a large triple cheeseburger meal might be the only good thing that happens to you all damn day.

Depression strikes - Are you Prepared?

Sooo…I didn’t up this morning.

I woke up at ten, when my alarm went off.  I wasn’t really interested in going back to sleep but I didn’t get out of bed.  I didn’t do anything, really.  I just kind of lay there, not thinking, just sort of taking stuff in like my morning backache, the rattling sounds of my roommate cleaning and the neighbours mowing their lawn.  Eventually I was forced to leave the bed when my need to use the bathroom overcame my need to be stationary.  I happened to glance at the clock to find it was already 2pm.

What the… how do I blow four hours by doing nothing at all?  Was I sleeping?  Probably, intermittently.  But usually when someone becomes aware of morning, it does things to them.  It makes them think about food, exercise, clothes.  Start getting ready for work, or if they don’t have work, they remember all the friends and housework they need to catch up on.  This sort of stuff  isn’t moving for me sometimes. 

These episodes of nothingness happen to me a lot, at least once a week.  Even if I have made plans that day I will not be moved until a urinary tract infection threatens, and often receive calls from confused and angry friends and family demanding to know why they have been stood up.  It upsets me that they are upset, and I have no solid reason to placate them with.  But really burns me up that even the concern for people around me isn’t enough to shake me out of these lengthy and, let’s face it, self indulgent episodes of inactivity.

I can’t talk to anyone about it, no one understands.  It sounds so idiotic:

“so you were in bed all morning?”

“yeah.  Just lying there, doing nothing.  Couldn’t get up.”

“why?  Were you sick?”

“no.”

“have a big night out?”

“no”

“did your alarm go off?”

“yes”

“so why couldn’t you get up?

“I just couldn’t.”

“Why not??”

“I. just. Couldn’t.”

Even I’m confused.

I know what causes it, of course.  This happens as the black dog begins to gain on me, getting in close enough to bite.  I start to hear things and think things I normally try to keep my distance from.  He tells me its worthless getting up, because I’m worthless.  I have nothing to contribute.  I’m leaching off the government, no – one likes being around me, people are just putting up with me.  Getting of bed would mean inflicting the burden of my personality on the world, and what on earth did the poor world do to deserve that?

Lately, a combination of severely injuring my ankle and my employment contract ending means logically that I should be prepared for these sorts of feelings to increase.  So I have a plan.  I already have a list of things to do for when I do get up.  It’s quite generic – housework, cook dinner, go over notes, that sort of thing – but I find that having to decide how to fill up my day tends to prolong my episodes.

This plan is a long term one, because depression never goes away.  It can let up for awhile, but having the best job, relationships and drugs will not protect you forever.  So I would be stupid to throw out my list when things turn around for me.  The dog will return, he always does.  He returned today, but I was prepared.  If I wasn’t, I would probably still be in bed.

Voyager

How I realised my worst nightmare

I have a confession to make.  I am now in my mid twenties and I never meet anyone’s eyes.  It does cause me trouble but not always in an obvious way.   Now I know it’s an obvious tag that there is something very wrong with me!  But to do it is unpleasant for me, so I’ve put it in the too-hard basket for now, even if it is necessary

A little while back I went for a short exchange to Japan to study at a private college.  I know I’m awkward but I didn’t worry too much – as a foreign exchange student it’s a given that I’m not going to fit in, I reasoned.  Japanese people, even young people tend to be polite and hospitable no matter what they think of you anyway.

My story starts in a culture education cooking class.  I was paired with an energetic girl named Kei and her four friends, who was happy to chatter away about her weekend escapades as she showed me how to prepare Japanese omelette.  My Japanese is sketchy at best, but being flattered by the genuine friendliness this girl was showing, I did my best to act attentive, with a well timed “ah, sou!”  and a technique I call ‘flickering.’

“Flickering” is how I attempt to convince people I’m actually looking at them, and it works best when you are doing something else while talking to someone, as Kei and I were.  To ‘flicker’ you keep your eyes on the task at hand, or straight ahead.  Then every so often, you ‘flick’ your eyes up, hitting the person’s face for a millisecond.  It says to them, “I’m listening to you, really, but I want to concentrate on my omelette/homework/knitting as well.”  If you’re not doing anything, you just look like you’re thinking really hard.

After a few flickers, Kei suddenly went quiet.  I flickered again, for a bit longer to see what was wrong with the girl and she went berserk.  She began jumping up and down, screaming “I don’t believe it!  They’re BLUE!!!”

Kei’s friends demanded to know what the problem was, and she began talking very fast – I only got the words “blue eyes…she actually has…can you believe it?”

You’d better believe it.  These girls had never seen someone with naturally blue eyes before.

They couldn’t be convinced without some solid proof, naturally.  So Kei grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around to face these six hazel lasers ready to bore into my retina.

What was I feeling right then?  Somewhere at the intersection between molestation street and white hot metal avenue.  Six faces.  Screaming, laughing, emoting more than I usually see in a whole year.  It was too much.  I wanted to avert my eyes but that would raise more questions I don’t have the Japanese vocab to answer

But we weren’t done.  The rest of the class – including some other Australian students – were a little confused as to what made Kei’s table lose the plot and me half hyperventilate, half laugh like a 14 year old boy at a lingerie football match.  Somehow word got out that they had an ‘aoi’ on their hands, so the other 24 students in the class had to see it for them selves.  I was forced into a chair, with no option than to allow myself to be visually gang banged by these kids.

After a few minutes of this violation, the teacher managed to get everyone back on task – after taking a few close up pictures of yours truly on their phones to prove their discovery to their friends. I returned to my omelette despite wanting to plunge my brain into a bucket full of ice, while an exhausted Kei explained to me that she had seen pictures of models with blue eyes, but assumed that they were just contacts.  Blue eyes were considered to be a rare genetic anomaly.

It wasn’t all bad in the end.  I made some new friends, even if they were hoping I had some blue eyed male friends I could set them up with.  Plus I was told that the close up pictures of my wide, petrified periwinkle eye on people’s phones caused quite the sensation over dinner tables in this smallish Japanese community.

There are some situations in which eye contact is unavoidable.  So I started wondering if I couldn’t test my limits a little.  Maybe I should start flickering for a bit longer.  After all, if there’s one thing this incident has taught me, it’s that I never know when I might need it.

Useful links

Slowly, ever so slowly this blog comes together.

I've started adding links with some useful information on the right.  It's looking awfully scant at the moment, but I'll add more links if I find some good ones.  So far we have:

http://www.anxietyaustralia.com.au/ A support site covering a variety of anxiety disorders, including panic, social phobia and PTSD.

http://www.aspia.org.au/ Resources for those in a relationship with someone with an autistic spectrum disorder

http://www.autism-help.org/ Info for parents of an Autistic child

http://www.autismspectrum.org.au/ Home of the Aspect organisation.  Lots info for people with ASDs, their families, friends, educators and health professionals, support groups, fundraisers, conferences and social events.

http://www.beyondblue.org.au// Beyondblue is a mental health awareness organisation.  Has info about support systems available for those living with mental illness in Australia.

http://www.livewire.org.au/ An online community for people under 21 for people living with chronic physical and mental health issues.  Also has support sites for family members.

http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome Personally I'm not a fan of self help, but if you don't want to pay $200 a session with a psychologist for Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) then this program is for you. Can be done wherever you have a computer. 

http://www.wrongplanet.net/ Thought of as a community for people with ASDs but all 'neurodiverse' people (Tourettes, Bipolar, Schizophrenics etc) can find something here.  Plenty of resourses and people prepared to share their live lessons.

http://www.ybblue.com.au/ Sister site of BeyondBlue.  Provides mental health awareness for school age children.

Top ten reasons to date a girl with Asperger’s Syndrome

Disclaimer:  I apologise for any individuals who do not fit this list, these are light-hearted generalisations based on myself and girls with AS in my acquaintance.  It is not meant as serious advice.

10.    We are not clingy.  Sick of girls who must know your whereabouts at all times?  Over her calling every day?  Had enough of her going ballistic because you waited two whole hours to respond to her text?  Then I can guarantee your girlfriend is neurotypical.  Girls with AS are an independent bunch.  We like spending time with you, really we do, but if you call more than a few times a week, we feel stifled.  If you are living with an AS girl, expect to be briefly acknowledged in the evenings before she goes off to pursue her own interests – meaning that you can too!  Oh and one date night a week is more than enough, thank you.

9. We like hugs.  No really.  With the recent rise of pamphlet psychiatrists in the world comes manyl broad misconceptions about individuals with AS.  One of the most widely believed and upsetting of these is that we hate physical contact of any kind.  Well fellas, while people with HFA frequently seem to, most if not all girls with AS that I have met would say that they love to be held.  In fact, because we often aren’t good at verbalising feelings, this is a great way for us to express how we feel about you but -

8. We do not overdo PDA.  As said before, we don’t mind a bit of hand holding or lap sitting with our one-and-only in polite company.  Spontaneity, however, is something we are not known for.  Don’t expect us to pounce on you mid sentence in a crowded room and start sucking your face off.  Not unless you want us too, anyway.

7. Buying us presents is easy.   Because of our restrictive cognitive functioning, we develop so - called ‘specific interests’, hobbies or subjects that take up a lot of our time and conversation.  Find out what our current interests are (should take about two minutes of conversation max) and buy us something related to that.  Relatively painless for you, we feel like you care – everyone wins.

6. We are always on time.  We have photographic memories and more often than not neurotic fears about being late, so we will always remember what time you intent to show up and how long it takes to get to the restaurant/cinema/party.  There’s none of this screwing about for half an hour putting on make up or finding the perfect pair of shoes to match the hand bag and accentuate my waist.  We’ll have figured this out long in advance and timed our prettification to be all done upon your arrival.

5. Looks are not a priority.  This prettification I mentioned in no. 6 is not extensive anyway.  We don’t spend a lot of time putting our faces on or choosing clothes.  The reasons for this are a combination of our aforementioned rigid cognition, motivation, poor self esteem and that tendency we have to feel like quietly rebelling against something.  So even if you spring an outing on us, you most likely won’t be waiting too long for us to get ready.  Also, this goes both ways.  You should be assured that we are dating you because of your personality.  We get used to being hated on by beautiful people so the main thing we find attractive is kindness and compassion.  So you don’t ever need to worry about not being cute, fashionable or buff enough for us.  Treat us right and you could be a swamp creature for all we notice.

4. Your friends belong to you alone.  When guys get together, there’s always one that insists upon bringing the girlfriend along, or she maybe she insists on being there.  She then proceeds to sit on the edge of the group, clinging resolutely to the boyfriends arm with one hand and texting or checking the nails of the other.  The only contributions to the conversation are a prissy lip curl in response to a dirty joke or a half hearted “that’s so funny.”  As for girls with AS, we prefer to stay away.  It’s not necessarily that we respect your right to your own space, or that we don’t erase all facets of a non shared life once we are in a relationship.  This sort of situation makes us uncomfortable, so we bow out and let boys be boys for awhile.

3. Change scares us.  How is that a good thing, you ask?  Well, sometimes it’s plain annoying, sure.  But it has its perks.  Namely, chances are a girl with AS will not be pressuring you to commit.  For most of us, changes in life that will shake up our day to day living in a big way, such as moving in, getting married and having children. make us nervous.   NT girls who are having nesting urges might be pressuring you to move in within a few weeks, to get engaged within months, and even to have children within a year or two.  Not so with the AS afflicted female.  If things are comfortable in the relationship we are perfectly happy to stay in that situation for years.  That’s not to say that we won’t commit under the right circumstances.  If you think you are at that stage with your AS girl, make sure you move slowly.

2. We do not read minds.  Ok, NT girls don’t either.  The difference is, we don’t pretend to just to stir you up.  From your NT girlfriend, you are far more likely to hear things like:

“You think I’m fat!”

“I know you’re angry…”

“I know you still like her…”

The average adult with AS comes with shattered self esteem.  We spend our whole lives being assured that it is impossible for us to empathise with the thoughts of others.  As a result, we still draw conclusions about behaviours of yours we don’t understand, but we don’t trust our own instincts.  If you do something we just don’t get, we will ask you about it out right.

1. We try really, really hard.  Anyone with a disability is constantly made to feel like a second class citizen and a burden on their loved ones on a daily basis.  If you give us a chance, we will try our best to make you happy.

 Love always,

Voyager

Now, Voyager!

Realising you need to change is often a harsh awakening, but that's just momentary.  Enforcing the change is often a long, uphill process.

Welcome to the journey of defeating the dog.  I realised I needed to change last year.  I have four defined conditions - anxiety/panic disorder, asperger syndrome, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.  As a result, the first 20 odd years of my life have been a tumultuous tale of confusion, discouragement and unhappiness.  As far as mental distress goes, I got pretty far.  Several doctors, psychologists and hospital stays later, I found myself exhausted with life.

After my last discharge from hospital however, exhaustion gave way to movtivation, finally.  I was motivated by the fact that quite frankly, I was a loser.  I was in my twenties but I was not living like a mature adult.  My hospital stays had left me a bitter, angry person more than willing to take this anger out on the innocent bystander for the slightest offence.  I was fat and my memory was shot to shit so I couldn't work or concentrate on my studies.  I had to live at home with my family who were resentful of me for all my disability, illness and money wasted on medical bills had put them through (their words, not mine.)

I could have put up with this. I could have drifted through life, uneducated, unemployed, proved my family, the kids at school and the self rightous hospital staff right.  But as Oprah Winfrey said, success is the best revenge.  So I started trying to life like an adult.  I returned to uni, moved out of home and joined a few sports clubs to get fit and get out of the house.

This is just the beginning though.  Depression and anxiety don't magically go away when you leave hospital or come off your meds.  OCD isn't gone when you learn to control it.  Asperger syndrome never stops sabotaging you, never!  My journey will have many parts.  I need to get a job when my studies are over, make friends and keep the friends I have happy.  I have to navigate a world that I don't understand and am afraid off when all I really want is to hide in my room watching anime for all eternity.  But the responsible adult does not do this.

I'm going to try.  It will be difficult but I've got no choice.  So journey on - whether you are neurotypical or also 'unique-minded' the world doesn't stop just because you do.

Voyager