Being institutionalized.

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

C A - I feel very hopeful for you from your reply!  - you're 'just' 24 - and have many interests and haven't actually directly looked into an agency (so haven't been rejected from one)

there's some really good advice in the replies....

personally - a couple of things come to mind

- "You’re not a kid anymore. You have the right to choose your own life. You can start again."

when I've been reading your prolific (at times!) posts to b4  my impression of you is:

incredibly good with language

very intelligent

very caring

passionate/enthusiastic

you have stamina - persistence - capable of complex reasoning and analysis

- without further info - I feel it's time to get away from your mother.... but I may be wrong....

do you have a daily routine/schedule? that can be very structuring, comforting and increase your focus self respect and respect of other towards you

remember " we teach others how to treat us by what we allow"

exercise - even a slow relaxing walk..

development of your self esteem

(join some groups)

you will have an amazingly bright interesting future

it's time for you to seek external assistance


small steps.. don't try to do it all at once

have you a resume?

volunteer work could be a great foot in the door


have you ever had careers counselling?

you're far too talented and mentally quick to be at home twiddling your thumbs

I'm going to just share myself with you openly, you might not like my attitude.

I struggle extremely with anxiety, racing thoughts, racing heart, sweaty and unable to catch my breath.  Walking in to a place, talking to a manager about a job used to be so easy, but then one after another, all telling me they're not interested.  Suddenly the idea of walking into a place dressed up, groomed, resume in hand, with a fresh brushed smile and a light scent of cologne no longer seems feasible to me.  Like it's just a waste of time because no one would be interested in me anyways.

I haven't gone to an agency because I'm honestly so nervous about having another find me a job that I can't bring myself to actually go and do it.

In every interview I've had, I have noted.  The interviewer is happy and smiley mimicking me, until I mention that I was to work in a place of integrity, to have dignity in my work and pride in my job.  Then the smile fades, and I can just tell they already decided.

And the best part is when they lie to you about it, let you know that they'll call you, or say they're interested and then avoid all of my follow-ups.

People treat me like a kid, my friends, my mom. Sometimes I feel like ever since I learned I was autistic, they treat me like I'm stupid or something...  Or maybe I've just become really sensitive or paranoid.  I don't know, but I identify as a Child At Heart, someone who never grew up.

Language, as an autistic kid, was alongside my speech, my worst subjects in school.  To this day I speak with a slight slur like I'm drunken, I don't enunciate, I have 'lazy' speak my mom calls it.  I also stutter sometimes when I'm nervous, but not a severe stutter but enough to be noticeable.  I'm okay with language, I understand I grasp it well in the creative ways.  I do not comprehend much on language beyond that.  I get etymology and the ideas behind words but I never understood how a language is formed, how specific sounds become methods of communication.  I don't get the 'how' or 'why' of Language.

I'm selfish like anyone else, most usually my requests of others are selfish desires of my self, even if they're in the right place in heart, it doesn't change the fact I view my caring as a form of survival mechanism due to learning to be helpless and hopeless.  I often wonder since I was bullied a lot and ended up for a while being a bit of a bully myself in Senior year of high school, if my kindness would even exist were I not always treated poorly.

As for intelligence, I'm nothing special.  People say I have talent, I can't even learn how to play a piano or remember how to read sheet music.  Or manage to learn algebra+ math by myself.  I have smarts but they're not useful in a social world like this one.  I'm more of a deep thinker, I'm not practical.  I can't say I've any useful talents beyond the ability to create 'stuff'.  Even then, I'm slow at it...Meticulous, ocd even.

I'd say I have a talent for metaphysics and chakras, but what good does that do me?  I can't make a career out of that, or make a living off of a few books.  I'd rather be a Tao monk meditating in a temple for hours on end daily than live a normal life.

I'm enthusiastic about peace, about people just all working together to make each other's lives easier.  Other than that, I'm lazy and unmotivated, lethargic even.

I assure you, I have extremely low stamina in regards to patience and explanation, I suuuuuck really badly at explaining things in verbal form.  That the forum is a written word medium does me great justice, but I'm sure anyone who got to interact with me in person, would become sick of me after a while.  Just seems to be the trend of my life.  I appear interesting, even curious and strange, intimidating and mysterious even, yet once I start talking, every label reverts to 'Weird'.  I am weird.  I am different.

This place is my home, all I really know. I'd say I'm sheltered.  I have an eviction, no place with lease an apartment to me.  I have few friends, none of whom would want to live with me.  I don't do well with sharing my space with strangers and I'm hard to live with because of my moods.

I would love to live on my own, but the next problem is I've so little patience for the backwards way so many jobs operate...  I can't even figure out how to explain it, it leaves me so flustered in my mind.

Like, my last job, the apathy there made me physically sick.  Making an elderly man stock truck loads of inventory alone, forcing the night shift to work shorthanded, letting managers get away with being hours late, letting people handle food with their barehands...

Then the job before that one was too physically demanding for me that I'd end up becoming dizzy, sweaty, and nauseous from the stress.

I'm weak of the physical, strong of the mental and spiritual.  I prefer Chess or Go, over Baseball or Soccer.  I like puzzles over obstacles.  I was never a physical person, as early as before Middle School I was already out of shape and a docile type of person.  My days were mostly spent sitting in front of video games or a computer writing or a desk drawing.

I am aware that I lack the...'stuff' that it takes to work a full time job, I get fed up and sick and tired of the people, of the customers, or the job itself, it drives me insane.  I lose my mind.  That kind of life is just not for me!  I can't do it!  I shut down, my mind goes blank, I lose all care and desire or interest and just end up wanting to sleep and disappear, wanting it all to just stop.  I can't manage it, I just want an easy job that's not heavy on the physical labor, that's more mind oriented or detail oriented, that has flexible hours because my sleep schedule is extremely hard to keep stable.  Two weeks ago I was up by 8am and asleep by midnight.  Now I'm up until 10am and asleep until 4pm.

Between my body and my physical health, from randomly going dizzy and nauseous to getting hemorrhoids from working too physically hard to my stomach just hurting from the anxiety of going to work.  I just don't feel like I'm reliable regardless anymore, that one day I'm going to be needed and I'll suddenly be overcome by a dizzy spell and suddenly I'm useless.

I feel like I'm the kind of person who is supposed to work in the background, not in the forefront.

For all of my abilities to handle complex tasks and questions well, I struggle with very simple tasks and questions.  In fact Aion proved that point quite clearly a year or so ago when he asked me a really simple question regards something burning, and I thought he was asking me some kind of complicated trick question.  I struggle with simple things, I strive with complex stuff.  Computers and cars make sense to me even if I don't understand how cars run overall part by part.  Programming and computer languages make sense to me, even if they are confusing looking.  I see energy in numbers and see things others don't in numbers, though that might just be autism.

Planting a garden is confusing to me.  Decorating my room is confusing to me.  I have no fashion sense, dressing specific ways eludes me.  I have three fashions senses, casual, professional, and comfort.  I don't know how to dress up fancily.  I barely have enough clothes to make a work uniform after losing most of them in a storm while they sat in bags on my room trying to kill the bed bugs.  Woke up the next day, 5 of 11 bags with my clothes were up and gone.  Most of them my comfy and good clothing, the remainder being the clothes I seldom wore.  I struggle clothes shopping.

I don't understand many things and in many ways I don't feel like I'm fit for or supposed to live the way everyone else does.  I can't see myself, ever, eveerrrr, holding down a full time job for more than a few months.  I don't see myself ever having my own home that I pay a mortgage on.  I just don't see myself living in society.

The fact I keep trying to find a job is me trying to be supportive for my mom, so she isn't supporting me fully.  That I can't find a job even at a fast food place is greatly disturbing.  I almost feel like I'd have a better time setting up a table somewhere and doing donation based chakra readings for people, I used to do divination stuff on /x/ (specifically the /div/ thread on the /x/ board) and used to make 10, 15 dollars here or there from impressing people from 'reading their chakras' which for a time was how I practiced reading my own chakras.

I'm more spiritual than tangible it feels like, like my life isn't meant to be lived the way the majority of people live it.

I used to have a routine, it was constantly assaulted and nullified by my mother.  Whenever I'd sit down to read she'd call me up and make me do something, whenever I tried to start a garden she'd hijack the project from me and make it her own.  I try to make time to meditate she'd make me try to do chores.  The worst part of it all was it got to such a point eventually that I swear she was doing it intentionally just because she wanted to make me do something, she would make me rearrange a bedroom one way, then back to the way it was, then back again, just because she didn't know what she preferred.  When landscaping the backyard years ago, I had to dig, lay down, then pull up, cover, then re-dig parts of the backyard because she had 'better' ideas on what to do.  I was the one who did all the damn work for her.

Or like just lately, her computer broke down, now she uses mine, now she wants me to turn it into her personal laptop, to completely reinstall the operating system, when it has no CD drive, wants me to install programs without their CD's or anything.  Wants me to rearrange my room and swap furniture out with stuff in the other room.  Or she'll make a list of chores that are all ridiculous stuff like painting the overhang of the house, or painting some waterproof stuff across the entire face of the house, or cleaning the pool by myself without using the filters, pulling up carpet, moving couches, TV's, stands, dressers around into the garage and back again.  Hanging pictures that fall or go crooked over the months as she slams the doors in the house.

And then after I do everything, we get into a fight and she tells me I've done nothing at all, and denies I do anything worthwhile after everything I do for her.  For almost twenty years now.  Clean a bathroom, I didn't clean anything.  Mop the floors, I didn't clean anything.  Make dinner, I didn't do anything.  Do everything, get told I did nothing.

So I don't get why it confuses her that I feel like nothing and like I've done nothing when across my entire life she's reaffirmed and reassured me through everything from shout to scream to yell that I have done nothing.  Nothing at all.

My father once said to a family therapist with me and my mom right there, that my mother has a way of talking to a rock until it finally bleeds then crumbles apart.  It was so true that I burst out laughing because it was just so true.  You CANNOT just be a rock and not roll, you can't be still or at peace with her around.  If she isn't happy, and she never is, NO ONE IS HAPPY.  She makes you do stuff, blames you for everything.  She once knocked a glass off a counter, and I got yelled at for leaving a glass on the counter, a glass I hadn't touched.
Whats weirder were the days when she seemed to be so frustrated and upset, as a child, that she'd seemingly make me invisible in her mind, she'd walk right by me then act surprised saying she didn't see me standing right there in the middle of the room.  Very often she would not respond to a question or statement I'd make to her.  I'd ask her if she's hungry because I was going to go out and get something to eat, she wouldn't even acknowledge me, wouldn't say one thing to me.  It took me yelling at her one day asking her if she was deaf for her to respond to me.

Like, no, just no.

I don't know what to do anymore and I don't understand or get how I am expected to just fucking 'get over it' and 'grow up'.

Learned helplessness?  That was me since a child, I NEVER HAD ANYONE to help me!  I was 'difficult' and 'stubborn', I was 'different'.  I had no emotional support from anywhere, no mother to nurture me, no father to toughen me up.  My father's advice to me as a kid for dealing with bullies was to 'bust them up'.  My mother's advice to me when I told her how mean she always was to me was to 'get over it'.

She'd be cruel to me one day then the next be all sweet and nice to me then randomly become cruel and mean later.  This was so prominent that when my ex lived with me, she noted how aggravating my mother was in her personality.  Just how she'd call my name would be frustrating to her!  She'd scream at me and insult me one night then the next morning have a big breakfast all made for me as if to say 'sorry', but she never said sorry.

In fact I don't understand how I'm not schizophrenic, my entire childhood was rife with my doing things to please her only to be yelled at, and avoiding her because she'd find something to yell at me for, whether it was an hour ago or ten fucking years ago.

In fact, I began working overnights specifically to avoid her.

There is no such thing as 'allow' with my mother.  If you live in her house, she can treat you however she wants and if you don't like it, you can go sleep on a bench.  She used to threaten to kick me out as a 13 year old teenager if I didn't do good in school...

I don't allow her to do anything to me, if I speak up she takes it as a 'power play' and attempts to 'win'.  My mother is so spiteful she used to eat the chocolate covered ice cream cones my ex loved.  I remember I was swimming with friends one day when my gf at the time walked out in tears red faced with anger saying how the last of her favorite food she bought just for herself was gone, and how I didn't eat it so it must have been my mom, and all my mom would do was without looking at her lie to her face and say she didn't eat it.

But we all knew she was.

You know, my mother is the woman who sent a 15 page extremely brutally nasty letter to my girlfriends mother, calling her child, my girlfriend, a host of things she always called me.  Then her mother shot back with much more poignant and specifically factual points that she knew from her daughter living with me and my mom.

Guess who to this day is blamed for those poignant factual points being known, I never spoke to my girlfriend's mother about my mother, it was my girlfriend who spoke to her mom about my mom, so why did my mom blame me purely, and make it clear that it was my fault her mother said such awful things about my mom to her.

Like, I have a list, of all these little times when my Mom was just a literal monster.  I had a friend who was kicked out of her house, I tried to let her sleep over, my Mom told me and her and my girlfriend at the time to all go f*** off.  So I invited her over to at the very least sleep in my car.  My mother goes out there and see's my friend in my car, she literally slams through the door into our room and screams at me waking me up to get out of her house.

I told her to go away and let me sleep.  It wasn't until the next day that she pretended like she didn't know it was my friends birthday and she was homeless that night (cause her father is crazy like my mother and made his daughter homeless on the night of her birthday) and that everything was okay when we explained to her the night before that it was her birthday, and we weren't going to make her sleep on a street on her birthday.

My mother isn't just abusive, she's fucking crazy.  There is no such thing as allowing to her, she didn't even give me an allowance, ever.  I had to do chores just to 'live in her house' while all my friends are getting paid to clean their homes.  All of my friends who live at home, live at home for free.  My mom forced me to pay rent, and kept springing new 'bills' for me to pay, until she finally was making things up to have me pay for her weed without her telling me.  After I also lost my bank account (from unemployment and not having enough in it to keep it open) it was either get a new account at another bank (and have my paychecks siphoned off by FASFA debts) or link my direct deposit to a joint account she has with me.  That turned into 'this account is my account and so is all the money in it'.

So every 'avenue' with her is a slippery slope of her manipulating you and after all is said and done, it is your fault in her mind.

Keep in mind she's 56 years old.

I used to exercise as part of a routine, I'd do yoga and meditate during those times of work out, I used to go on walks daily, Ra advice style, especially at 3am in the night just to get some peace and silence, but silence no longer exists in my area.  Construction all hours of the night building apartments around me (But not jobs!), cars on the highways nearby always making the faint roar of driving in the distance.  A mall not too far away with it's delivery trucks beeping and honking and making loud crashing noises...No more silence...

I don't really do any of that anymore.  I do now and then but I just don't feel like it matters anymore.

Every thing I do for my self esteem, confidence, sense of empowerment and self belief is all always shot down and torn up by her.  Like, when I got into a car accident, I was happy (and in shock) that I was okay and I didn't hurt anyone and no one was hurt.  I was excited to be okay.  I called up my mom and she didn't give two shits, she drove up to me and with an angry face asked me if I did the rounds of getting the other drivers name and insurance, she didn't tell me she was happy I was okay, she didn't give a s***.

Or when I go out, she always tells me I look like a slob, that I need to wear better clothes, brush my teeth, comb my hair, all while I'm standing at the door with combed hair, brushed teeth, in casual clothes going out to be with friends, just like you can't say be safe or I love you?  It has to be something cruel and mean?

I don't know or understand.  I don't understand love and compassion from others, it's very confusing to me and the only response I know how to give when I'm being praised is, 'No, I am not, I do not deserve this, I am nothing.'

If I didn't discover the Law of One, the only Love I'd have known was the love for my son who I could not see because my girlfriend turned right around after our son was born and said I did nothing, just like my mom, and then pretty much moved away immediately and told me if I tried any legal actions her father's two lawyer friends would be busy ruining my life with all the dirty little secrets of mine I told the love of my life while we were together.

I don't know any groups to join and I don't think I'd have the means to keep myself going to any kind of meets.  I tried CoDa (Co-Dependents Anonymous), and that was just awful, horrible, a bunch of people who would break down crying halfway through a sentence and no one would know what they were saying or doing, and there's nothing to be said or done.  And the religious overtones were downright rude to anyone who wasn't a Christian.

I don't really think I'd do good in groups.

I have several resumes, one for convenience stores, one for retail stores, one for more 'professional' positions such as trying to work at Data Doctors or GeekSquad.
I have over 200 hours of volunteer time from just AZStRUT (Arizona Students Recycling Used Technology) alone where I'd fix donated old computers to be re-distributed to organizations who needed them.  I have over 100 computers fixed and donated, I singlehandedly fixed enough computers to fill three classrooms.
I've done some volunteer work for the homeless too as I empathize with them extremely, but the misery and pain of 'volunteering' for the homeless was too much for me to handle on top of everything else.  I met some interesting people though like a girl named Val who was heavily synchronistic as she was an urban nomad walking to the West Coast to live on a beach, and made money by doing chakra readings and tarot readings for people sort of Gypsy style, and she was beautiful and kind for someone covered with dirt.  I felt like I met a soul mate that day and I regret not attempting to do more for her.  Dealing with the homeless was so painful for me.  It's wrong, it's just wrong how so many people have wound up homeless and 'invalidated'.

I think my life is bad, but there are so many others who are so much worse off than I...

I have desired assistance since I was a child, but the only assistance I ever got was that tinged with my mother's influence.  Like she wouldn't even pay for a numbing agent when I was getting my wisdom teeth removed, the dentist literally told her they do not want to perform anything unless I'm numbed in more than just the jaw.  She lied to my girlfriend saying she paid to have me asleep during the operation, and I sat there while some strangers drilled apart my teeth conscious for it all.  That event was so traumatic I remember hearing a voice in the back of my head because I was disassociating from the moment so badly, and all I said was 'Hello' and I said 'Who are you' to this voice in my mind, and all it said back was 'I'm you and I love you'.

Like, I tried to get assistance from a child psychologist, but she didn't listen to what I was saying about my mom because my mom told her that I was a pathological liar and to not believe anything I said about her.  Instead I was asked a bunch of vague questions that ultimately led her to deduce that I was 'depressed'.

Good, fucking job, doc, gold sta--NO, platinum sta--NOO, GOLD PLATINUM STAR FOR YOU!

Similarly as a child some doctors thought I was autistic and my mother pretty much shut that down by telling them I wasn't and that she was 'certain without a doubt'.  Only for all these years of trouble later to discover I am!

I've never had career counseling, the idea of even ever having a career seems distant like a fantasy.  Me, have a career?  I can't see it.

I have an idea of who, and how I want to be, but I feel I will never be able to be the way I want to be.

And when I ask myself if my Mother ruined my life, all I can think to tell myself is I'm the only responsible for my life, so really, I ruined my own life.


This is just a taste of the...Complicated madness my mother has put me through my entire life.

You call me 'mentally quick' but all my life she's treated me like I was mentally 'slow'.

I can barely make sense of my life anymore and how its all gone and turned out and become.

I don't even know what to do anymore.

I had a dream, more of a nightmare, that's been recurring this week, where I'm in a dark blue place inside of a dimly lit winding tight tunnel, like it were a spiraling down kids slide, only it's made of something soft and squishy that can't be gripped, and there's a sense of dread and doom if you slide down too far. And at the bottom is this darkness that when you slip into it you lose awareness and consciousness, sort of devolve.
And I keep having this dream that I'm in this tunnel clenching desperately at the walls while I'm winding down towards the darkness, and there is this fierce keen sense of helplessness.  I even have my 'final thoughts' in the dream over and over thinking, 'how did this happen to me?' 'why did this happen to me?' right before I slip into the pitch black area and the dream dissipates into the emptiness of sleep.

And all I take away from it is.

Yes, I am helpless.  And no one seems to know how to help, and I seem to be so shut in, so closed off, so defensive that I don't know how to let people help me without becoming upset or defensive with them.

And often times I think I've become just like my mom and I'm just not yet fully aware of it.

And I'm just left with this deep impression, that I am nothing, that everything I do is nothing.  That there's nothing left for me.  Nothing in life for me.  Nothing for me to give life.

Actually, the impression is closer to I am less than nothing.  Just a waste of space.

And while I think none of this is true, it doesn't change how these things feel true...

And I can ask for help but I'm so strange and a weird and prolific.

I just don't feel like there's anything to help me, or that anything that is possible for me to do right now would actually be helpful. So I just keep telling myself I'm meant to suffer, I'm here now for a reason, whatever lesson there is to learn it's catalyst will not stop making me suffer until I miraculously figure things out on my own somehow.  So I just call this place literally Hell, and I cry often and feel suicidal daily and just keep trying to make it through life cause I'd rather not kill myself and hurt everyone the ways I hurt every day.  Even if that means I wind up homeless living under a rock.  I just keep telling myself, 'this is all the way it's supposed to be, I'm supposed to be suffering, I obviously did something to deserve this, I'm getting what I deserve, why else would this be happening to me?  I must be a monster, I live with one, my God is one, I act like one...  I deserve this.'

So, I'm sincerely sorry everyone, that I don't understand all of your love for me.  That I don't even understand it, that I can't feel it is genuine because there's that paranoia and chance in the back of my mind telling me that you're all just saying what I want to hear, that no one understands, and no one ever will.

I don't have any resistance to being put in a psych ward place, I already think I'm insane...I don't fit in with society.  I am different and strange and odd and weird and special and unique.  I am mentally ill.  It's just me ending up where society believes people like me belong.

And nobody cares, and no one is going to change anything, nothing is going to change...  Why should it?  Why should they?

It doesn't matter to anyone...  If I'm just another crazy with a bunch of crazies, how is that any different from what society has always done to strange and different people?  At least I don't need to worry about being brutally shocked while submerged in water, or nearly drowned, or sexually assaulted to 'cure' me of my mental illness.

I don't belong here.  I'm sorry for bringing this up.  I don't think I deserve these kinds of responses considering all the mean things I've done here.  I was just hoping people would offer some insight into what I might have to expect, I didn't realize you'd all care so much.

Had I known I wouldn't have brought any of this up, I don't feel like I can adequately reciprocate such consideration, or even show happiness at it.  I just don't feel like I deserve this.

I don't know anymore.  I don't know anything anymore.  I don't know how to end this post, how to thank you all, or how to be honest.

Sorry everyone.

I wish I had something more cheery and upbeat to give you all.