A Hodgepodge

I woke up from a dream where I was telling a joke: the old wheeze about the farmer in the back country who shoots a crow, sees a band on its leg and phones the eight hundred number to complain. "I followed your directions: 'Wash. biol. surv.' It was turrible."

Back by the popular demand of one person [you know who you are] is my blog. I haven't blogged in three or four months for the same reason I almost never write letters. I am always waiting to find out how things turn out in the end before I report. So far, turrible. If my life were a book I would burn it, and I don't burn books.

At the moment I am more or less lost in a fog, but at least I have decided to live. Usually when I see no viable alternatives in my life I become devoted to the notion that my life needs to end, but I have realized that even if I don't know what my next step is or how to get there, even when I'm turning away from my only known means of support [i.e. the nursing profession], I may as well live life anyway. And contrary to opinion, buying and eating bacon does not count as a suicide attempt.

My current theory of life is the recognition that I am on the Autism Spectum, relatively high-functioning, AKA Aspergers Syndrome. I am on a quest to verify that with the Powers That Be; to me, the more I study it and recognize how things have gone, particularly in my early life, the more obvious it is. Currently reading Tony Attwood's book, something like The Complete Guide to Aspergers, and one of the statements he makes is that older people with high intellectual functioning, particularly women, are often very hard to diagnose because they have learned to "camouflage" symptoms. Many of us are great mimics.

I rarely have credibility with people. I was in a social situation the other day when I mentioned the Aspergers. Usually a mistake. His response was that "it must be very mild, since you just looked me in the eye." My unspoken response: thank you very much for just invalidating everything I said. [The DSM-IV does not mention eye contact, by the way.] One symptom for me is continually being misunderstood. Another symptom is the peril of people making small talk. Invariably my talk is never sufficiently small, and I am just warming up to a subject by the time the victim turns their glazed vision to someone else to escape into conversation with anyone who can rescue them.

I am boning up for my interview with DVR. Don't jump to the conclusion I am looking for a handout. Just wanting a diagnosis and a way out of what has become completely unworkable as an occupation. I cannot work nor contemplate working without burning in an invisible hell of anxiety, fear, and mortal terror. If I am not working, I am terrified of homelessness and starvation on the streets. If I am working, I am terrified of messing up social interactions, losing my job, and dying of starvation on the streets.

My last job was beautiful, fascinating, wonderful. It was very easy to get: an interview with the administrator [for an acute psychiatric facility] and forty-five minutes later I am floating around Lake Waughop in an ecstasy of joy that after seven months or more, I am employed. No idiotic behavioral interview questions or anything. I did dimly suspect that there was a reason they hire people on-call initially, which turns out to be so they can sniff you out and decide whether they like you.

I did everything I was asked at this facility, meticulously, scrupulously, for two and a half months, enduring conferences with a new RN serving as the temporary DNS and very condescending to me, confronting me with episodes reported by her staff which were warped beyond all recognition, and continually warning me that "not everyone is suited to work here." Yes, I might be, if I weren't being hounded and being unable to control my anxiety. I did everything I could do, except for changing my personality.

It's more clear to me than ever that nursing is a detour for me, a dead end, even if I can perform a job for four years or two and a half years or two and a half months, and end up having spent my great riches, and my good health, and my psychological wellbeing, no better off than before. The profession, for me, is like being in one of those housing developments where every street is named Onyx, which you can drive around in for hours, every turn taking you back into the labyrinth before you catch some slight current of luck, locate the exit and escape.

So my fog is that if I turn away from nursing I seem to find myself in a big nothing. Except possibly to go back to college and pursue mental health counseling. To be continued.