7 Streets Over

As it turns out, this is a story best told backwards…



I’ve reached my tranquil end at the intersection of J Street and my own. I’ve reached the peak, so to speak, and decided to take some moonlit pictures and recordings of the morning birds. It’s about 04:30, just before dawn, and my legs are warm. I breathe in large lung-fulls of brisk, dark air. I smell the automated sprinklers, shaded lawns, pines, and oaks. Now, I turn around.

I begin my return home. The quiet, wide, residential streets are empty of all traffic. In fact, I blissfully stroll down the middle with no fear, at all. The only sounds are the early birds, the occasional distant dog bark, and my own footsteps. This isn’t like my home just several blocks down. Certainly, they’re calm and quiet compared to the city we hug, but my streets have a car whooshing by every minute or so, in the dead of night, on either side of the block. One side is a major road with a fork, several lanes, and a mini-mart smack dab in the middle of the prongs. The large main road and complex canyon-like arrangement of houses cut through by streets, walled with trees, riddled with slopes, creates a powerful Döppler Effect. If you hear an increasingly high pitch whooshing sound, you know a car is approaching our street. You learn to translate the echoes into specific directions and vectors. Even if cars don’t come down our street often, it’s good to sense when a car might turn onto it and to get out of the way.

These streets are big, though. While my streets can have a car parked on each side with just enough wiggle room for one lane of traffic, mind you on a two-way street, these more isolated, quieter streets I’m walking down boast having cars parked on both sides with easily enough room to fit two free lanes for traffic. My streets have scars, pot holes, whole chunks of loose asphalt bigger than my foot lying crumbling in the road. These streets are black, smooth, and glisten in the moonlight. The houses here are all small and box-shaped with giant oaks, towering evergreens, and tidy lawns. Our houses are clunky, hodge-podge, and of greatly varied neatness. Some of the houses on my streets are vacant, in disrepair, and even overgrown with knee-high grasses, weeds, and unkempt trees. I remind my astonished self that I only walked 7 streets over. I can begin to hear the turbulent rumble of the city in the distance as I get closer.

Suddenly, I feel as though going from walking in secluded, tranquil woods to a vast and open expanse with a mostly unobstructed view of the sky. In the near distance of about two city blocks, I see two giant, broadleaf trees towering over a wall of smaller trees of varying shapes and sizes. They appeared as though a looming gate to a mystical kingdom.

WHOOSH! A car passes from left to right just beyond the looming tree gate. The car was soaring down the main road. I look up the vast opening to the sky and watch the stars, fading as sunlight gradually intrudes into the atmosphere from over the hills. 05:00 nears and I’ve just a bit further to go to return home. Street lamps illuminate the seemingly endless streets in the north, south, and east. To the west, from whence I return, it is darker and seemingly insulated from the city it skirts the edge of.

Another car whooshes by quite predictably, alone, and I cross the multi-lane north-south arterial. The sky is relatively open, the suburban skyline scraggly and uneven, the yards greatly varied, the constant hum and periodic whooshing of cars in the background: I am home. I walk up the two aggregate steps to my door, open my wallet, slide out my key, and unlock my front door. I walk down my stairs, open my bedroom door, and sit on my bed. It’s good to be back…

Even if it was just 7 streets to and fro, and about 30 minutes.

Overload

I wake up, groggy, and walk out of my bedroom. I walk down a dark hallway into a dark alley. The alley opens up to a cold, rain-drenched cobblestone road with gas lamps in either direction. Each direction is a mirror of the other, parallel wherever I go. I make it to a vast wooden bridge which crosses a moat, and I arrive at a fortress. They ancient stonework nearly crushes me, creating an opening through the fortress wall, so I enter. A vast citadel looms high above a seemingly endless maze, and so I enter the Labyrinth. Roars, hisses, growls, and hellish sounds echo indistinctly from all directions, but I move onward. I go forward, but return where I began. I retrace my steps and find myself somewhere unfamiliar. A supernatural dark cloud forms a wispy ceiling above me. I try to climb the walls, but the climb never ends, so I try to climb back down. Only a few feet down, and I can see the ground again. I chisel through the walls for days, but the walls have infinite depth. As I try to crawl backwards, dreading the rearward journey, but I find myself returned to the path in only a few motions.

Looking forward, I close my eyes, and I begin to slowly walk backwards, dismissing all of my senses.

I open my eyes, and before me is the great citadel. Months spent on this journey, tears well up in my eyes, for I have finally arrived. The doors creak eerily open and I enter. Spiral stairs, millions, go on and on, but I ascend. The slit windows reassure me that I am indeed getting higher in elevation. I finally reach the top, open the door, and find myself on a balcony. I can see my entire journey clearly, from start to finish…

There is no reward, no achievement, no satisfaction. The door slams shut behind me, my heartbeat quickens, and I’m trapped. I pull, I slam, I pound, I kick the door, but nothing happens. I have no tools, no supplies, stranded atop a tower. Days go by, isolated, cold, and hungry. Finally, I lean over the balcony, climb upon the stone wall, and look down.

“Jump…” it whispers. “Jump…” I give in, one foot over, and I fall. A feeling of relief flows through me as I close my eyes and slowly become weightless.

As I wake and open my eyes, I am once again in my bed.

Vee

It always amazes me just how easily a person can leave a life-long impression on a person... One moment, I'm browsing Facebook, reading a bit about critical thinking and science, glancing off to the side looking at the 'Suggested Pages' that I never click or actually show any significant interest in, and then—

BAM!

—it hits me...

A dedication page to a person I once knew online, from a whole other side of the world, South Africa, whom I've never even seen the face of.

Years ago, in my turbulent, early adolescence, hormones going crazy, bipolar going crazy, schizo going crazy, bouncing off and on the rails, I sought out an online support group for mental illness, in general. And I found one, Walkers in Darkness, and I liked it. The community was great, a worldwide chat room for people with mental health issues to seek help and community from moderators and administrators who also had mental health issues, but who always seemed so 'put together,' despite that fact. The admins and mods would give little insights into their own struggles, but they mostly held themselves together to support everyone else who came to them for help and support.

One of them was simply named, "Vee." Everyone liked Vee, everyone knew Vee (some even knew her in-person, if I remember correctly.) Vee was really quite great. But this group had trouble with funding, and they'd have to close shop now and then. Me being me, I usually came and went for long intervals, regardless of funding and if the site was running. I do that. I come, I stay for a little while, then I go for a much, much longer while. Well, one time, I went to look into the group again, some years later.

I found a Facebook page. They still had funding troubles. Okay, I joined the Facebook group. Then I heard. "Vee committed suicide." Maybe not phrased exactly like that, but it hit me just as unceremoniously...

I burst into tears, and I kept thinking, "I didn't even really know her. Why am I so overwhelmed by this? I'd completely forgotten about her..." Well, Vee prevented a few potential suicide attempts of my own. Vee got me through the suicidal thoughts. She helped me when I felt completely alone and hopeless. They may have been very brief interactions, only moments out of my whole life, but they mattered more than anyone could know. They made a difference. They kept me alive.

My mom came into my room, that day I first heard, and I was already consumed by my own tears, unable to catch my breath, unable to talk, barely uttering that someone I once knew online committed suicide, and it was a while ago, and I was just learning about it, so it was hitting me really hard and really suddenly. About every year since, only one or two days a year, I very briefly remember Vee and I burst into tears all over again.

How can you completely forget a person for most of your life, and then so spontaneously, out of the blue, become crushed and overwhelmed by this tremendous, profound, inexplicable weight, cracking your ribs and drowning your airways? How can three letters - V-E-E - so suddenly turn on this long-forgotten switch inside of me where an entire ocean pours forth from reserves I keep becoming so oblivious of for so long at a time?

And so, today, I'm listening to one of my favorite soundtracks from one of my favorite animes from that time in my life when I met and spoke with Vee. I had just happened to think of it earlier in the week and tracked it back down, downloading it. I put that on immediately before, not knowing what was to come just moments later...

"Can you feel?" the singer shouts at the top of his lungs.

"Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?"

Yes, I feel it. Too much. Too strong. I feel it all, like ripping stitches out of an old open wound I thought healed and scarred over, but is just as fresh as the first time... Like being punched as hard as can be in the gut, your gut wrapping and wrenching around the fist, the breath completely gone. You struggle to get your breath back, gasping, choking, feeling like you got sucked into outer space with no air to breathe, blood boiling, eyes getting ready to burst like grapes...

I'm alive, thanks in no small part to her. She took her own life. Life is sad, and gruesome, and some people die, and some people keep living, and there's absolutely no sense why. It's just is how it is...

It fucking sucks.

On the Folly of the Person/Identity-first Rhetoric

This conversation may very well change from language to language, but - particularly in English - the Person/Identity-first rhetoric is largely pedantic and causes turmoil where none is needed. Both 'sides' often claim their view to be superior, and many even get offended if you use the other way, whatever 'side' one may be on. This is primarily an issue in the autistic community, but it can and does extend broadly to other uses where a qualifier might be used to identify a person, such as bipolar, disabled, and possibly sexual orientations, ethnicities, or anything else someone can find a way to get offended based on how one chooses to word what is basically the same sentence.

This is how it works: 'person-first' language would be "a person with autism, they have autism," while 'identity-first' language would be "an autistic person, he is autistic." The idea is that person-first rhetoric is supposed to avoid defining a person with a label, while identity-first rhetoric is to avoid dismissing a pivotal aspect of an individual's identity. This is what they're supposed to do, in the eyes of those who make such distinctions.

I'm perfectly fine with people having their own preference, particularly when referring to themselves, but when you push either on someone as being the 'correct' or 'superior' way, you're causing unnecessary turmoil and potential conflict that never needed to be there, in the first place. It's largely a distinction without a difference: pedantic. The primary difference is between the usage of the verbs (and their different forms) 'to be' and 'have.' One can be autistic, or one can have autism. The primary difference is that one is a noun and the other an adjective. It's a bit misleading to say someone is autism, and it simply makes no sense to say someone has autistic. Therefore, grammatically, it is the semantics which determines which verb you use.

People who identify with the diagnosis of 'Asperger's' can find themselves in a bit of a pickle, regarding this distinction. On the one hand, it's grammatically proper to say someone has Asperger's, but it doesn't make any sense to say someone is Asperger's. There is a term, 'Aspie,' which can be used in lieu of a better term for this, leading to sentences like "she is an Aspie," but it's inaccurate to say someone is aspergery, which isn't even an official word, but primarily a slur used to describe people perceived as having Asperger's-like stereotypes (socially awkward, nerdy, even as an alternative form of 'dumb' or 'retarded.') But 'Aspie' can, in some contexts, also be used adjectivally, such as, "I feel an aspie meltdown, coming on..." People, however, are seldom describes as being aspie. It's not out of the question, but it's rare.

In conclusion, the distinction is primarily of personal preference, while pushing any as truly 'superior' is merely pedantic. I was once verbally attacked by someone for calling myself an 'Aspie,' because they felt it was apparently offensive. There are people, both within and without the autism community (though they seem few and far between, in all) who consider 'Aspie' a slur, despite having both it's origins and propagation of use centred in the heart of the autism community. That person thought they were defending the honor of those diagnosed with Asperger's by and large, while simultaneously attacking any who self-identified as 'Aspie,' which is a bit like saying, "How dare you call someone gay! They're obviously a homosexual." While 'a homosexual' certainly isn't the most endearing phrasing, neither is really incorrect.

Learn what others prefer to be called, and try to call them that. Identify what you prefer and call yourself, and call yourself that.

Unconditional Love

     I've been fond of the CTV television show, Flashpoint, for a few years, now, but I never really got into it, from the first episode onward in marathons, as any decent show should be watched. Well, Netflix has been egging me on to watch it, so I started. My favorite aspect of the show is the compassionate, empathetic, psychological side. From the very first episode, they stress understanding, replace 'suspect' or 'perp' (and like terms) with 'subject,' always try to humanise and empathise with the subject, and try to end things peacefully to the fullest of their capabilities. Lethal tactics are always the last resort.
     This show gives a whole other perspective to the world of crime and policing. I think it in its own league apart from the vast majority of other crime dramas. Many of the episodes have simply brought me to tears because of the incredibly uncommon empathy displayed by the characters, and thus the creators, writers, and actors, as well. Each character struggles with their own biases, their own clashing and contradicting views, and their prejudices. In order to be a cohesive unit that goes beyond simply SWAT, they continually have to overcome these distortions and oversimplifications of their realities.
     Flashpoint also shows the more biased, more prejudiced, more distorted views that people have, which regularly define, color, and filter our realities. They show the full range and potential of human emotion, both good and bad, as well as all the grey areas. They show how good people can do bad things, how all people can be driven and pushed to extremes. Each episode allows you to step not only into one person's shoes, but several people's, as you see intimate and raw moments, both in the most relaxed and tense situations. Love, hate, confusion, contempt, anguish, euphoria; it isn't just both sides of the pendulum swing that is displayed, but the full range and motion of that broad arc.
     So... that is when I was surprised by the episode, “Unconditional Love,” and not pleasantly. It started out without surprise: high-strung chronic criminal, car chases, volatile circumstances, et cetera, et cetera... But, then, a new character – Paul – was introduced. He was immediately depicted as the weaker personality, nervous, restless, scared. He was first depicted more as a victim caught up in a crazy situation. Later, however, it is found out that the chronic criminal gun procurer was obtaining a gun for the Paul. They found out that Paul was obsessing over and researching serial killers. They found out he was obsessing over multiple girls who looked very similar to his sister. They started to put the pieces together and steered in the direction of suspected psychopathy.
     That is when I got unpleasantly surprised and even a little disgusted. Of course, I saw more than the characters. Being the viewer of a greater narrative, knowing more than the characters, I saw things they couldn't possibly have seen. I saw Paul's demeanor, his expressions (most would say 'lack of expression'), body language, lack of eye contact... I immediately sprang to, “He has autism!” Within the first few seconds he appeared on screen, I got that autism feeling. I thought, “Great! An episode which can show a more realistic perspective of autism and its relation to law enforcement!” For any who don't already know, there are countless cases of autistics getting bullied, brutalised, and berated by classmates, teachers, kids, teachers, parents, strangers, and – all too often – police. The vast majority of these incidences are simply a case of ignorance gone very wrong.
     Too often, I see people call autistics 'psychopaths,' which is a radically different condition, but which – to the untrained eye – can present similarly on the surface. I've known several clinical psychopaths, and some of them are really great people. There are tremendous differences between violent and non-violent psychopaths, and its the non-violent I prefer to associate with, of course. But that could be truly said about anyone, any group, right? “I prefer the non-violent men to the violent ones; I prefer the non-violent addicts to the violent ones; I prefer the non-violent religious folk to the violent ones.” It's really a given. But, in a criminal sense, 'psychopath' doesn't include non-violent, or non-criminal psychopaths. In the terms of the law, and of law enforcement, 'psychopath' only refers to the violent, criminal types.
     So, yes, I was upset to find out that this wonderful show that I'd grown to love would depict a kid as autistic, yet having their main characters calling him a psychopath! In the context of the crime drama, that obviously pointed toward violent psychopaths. They didn't get all the information right away, and what little they did get initially suggested that he might be a psychopath. Parker, the unit leader, negotiator, and the head of the psychological aspect of the unit, kept saying, 'until we find out more.' He didn't want to jump to the conclusion that Paul was a psychopath before all the facts were in, even when the rest of the team had just about settled on him being one. Most of the characters had taken their biases and jumped to conclusions, but Parker – the real compass and centre of compassion for the team – held out, digging and digging, trying to find out more about the kid.
     Eventually, Parker suggested that Paul might have some kind of autism. Jules, a sniper in the tactics part of the unit, pointed out that autistics aren't violent by nature. She pointed out that autistics don't lack empathy, compassion, and emotion. Parker was cautious, saying it was only another suggestion until they get more facts. Paul helped release a baby taken hostage by the gun dealer. He non-fatally pistol-whipped the gun dealer and escaped. He hadn't been making particularly violent decisions. He did show genuine concern for others. Giving a history on Paul, the mother says how Paul didn't take pleasure in others' pain so much as be the sufferer of pain inflicted upon him. He was often the victim, he knew he had trouble connecting with people, he knew he couldn't read people, and tried to study facial expressions. But the fact that he didn't seem to show any emotions with the passing of his father made the mother fear for the worst, yet still clinging to the belief that her son wouldn't hurt anyone. It was the unit's assumption that her son was a psychopath that planted any idea or fear that her son might be one.
     But the facts, in the end, pointed to the truth. It became clearer and clearer that he was on the spectrum. Paul had researched his own experiences and symptoms and mistakenly concluded – like quite a few other autistics I've come across – that he was actually a psychopath. He researched psychopathic serial killers, because that was what he believed he was doomed to become. Misinformation, misunderstandings, and miscommunication all turned into this perfect storm of identity crisis. He knew he was different, but didn't know exactly why or how.
     In the end, Paul never killed anyone, only injured the gun dealer in an attempt to escape, and even ended up saying to Parker, “I don't want to hurt her [one of the lookalikes of his sister.]” Parker replied with a smile, “No, I know that. I knew that the minute we started talking.” Paul then non-threateningly handed the gun forward asking, “Do you want me to give the gun to you?” Paul, a kid with verbal autism, was good at heart, just like the mother knew, and didn't want to hurt anyone. But in a culmination of confusion, rage, and anxiety, he'd been driven to believe he was a psychopath, and thought he had to follow through like one. He didn't; he couldn't, because he was never a psychopath.

Jules (Amy Jo Johnson): Undiagnosed low-spectrum autism, a little obsessive compulsive...
Parker (Enrico Colantoni): Maybe a borderline personality disorder... And a mother who only sees the son she loves. He's brilliant, but different.
Jules: Do you ever get the feeling that we only scratch the surface?
Parker: Hmph. All the time.
Jules: You know, you were right today, though, about digging deeper.
Parker: We do what we can with the time we have, right?
Jules: Yep.

     And the show resumes being a dear favorite of mine, also continuing the long line of tear-inducing, heart-warming episodes.

My Journey into Absurdism

I've increasingly headed into a deeper absurdist way of thought. For any who might not know, absurdism is the philosophy that there is no inherent meaning in the universe, but that humans inherently seek meaning, and there is not necessarily need for conflict for these two things to exist. I've advanced to the way of thinking that absolutely no one has true free will, that all actions, reactions, consequences, all events and incidences, absolutely all in time and space at any given time in any given space was fated, inevitable, and unavoidable. It's not so much a matter of 'no matter what we do,' as it is 'there's only one thing we ever could've done.' Strangely, when I was younger and, honestly, more religious, I thought more in this way. I believed in fate, in predestination, in heaven and hell. I believed in the word of the bible, and this is what I was taught.

By my teens, I had a crisis of faith. Further and further contemplation placed my conscience against and my religion. The way I'd seen God depicted, He would, in my mind, be a violent sociopath unworthy of praise. Heaven and Hell were unnecessarily cruel and despicable acts of God, and that any God would allow, let alone intend, such cruelty was impossible to follow. The devil further gained my sympathy in the bible's narrative. A rebel anarchist who would not follow anyone's absolute rule, even a deity's. A tester of man who was more a gate keeper to Heaven than any other figure in the book. It felt more and more a simple narrative of humanity than a religious doctrine. The writings made more and more sense as I removed all concepts of morality. This triggered a further evolution in my way of thinking.

I arrived to the conclusion, only the third year into my twenties, that fate was real. I may have questioned everything - and I mean absolutely everything - that I had believed, but not everything changed as a result. In the turmoil and turbulence, some things still stood. In fact, I went from believing without understanding to believing because I understood. Doctrine all but entirely blew away in the storm of belief and conscience. Belief essentially vanished, and I accepted the idea that nothing can be believed so much as guessed. George Christopher on Board to Death, played by Ted Danson, actually captured it quite well when he said that we're each starring in our own movies, just guessing about others'.

My therapist pointed out that this is certainly very, "pot thinking." Yes, some of these conclusions were drawn during use of cannabis, even blossomed into what they are in part because of it, but she also pointed out that it was very 'me' thinking to begin with, pot or no pot. It wasn't actually a tremendous leap from where I was already going. I would say that I went from religious, to spiritual, to... something else entirely. I believe in mysteriousness, and my inevitable ignorance of the world, as all else have, only confirms its existence. God has become a concept to embody all this chaos, these perfect and inevitable trajectories in a predetermined film. God becomes a synonym for the universe around us, and all which we could not possibly know. God is what we can see and cannot. God was no longer religious, but a word which could conceptualise an entirety beyond our comprehension. The world around us, too big to understand, too complex to see all of the trajectories, however inevitable, to know what will happen and what must happen. All that will not, is not. All that would is. All that was must have been, and all that was not could not have been.

There is a tremendous amount of freedom that comes from this evolution of thought. A weight of conscience, self-consciousness, and fear of the unknown began to dissipate. I have actually become more productive, more active, and been able to actually take care of myself in at least the minimum amount (I have had trouble taking care of myself on a day-to-day level for a decade, at least.) The culmination of relieving pointless guilt from fundamental beliefs and treating my myriad conditions with cannabis has effectively put me at a peak of functioning. Am I anywhere near being a standard, functional adult? I highly doubt it. But even terminal patients are given the possibility of living comfortably until the end. Some would say it's worth compensating more for a shorter life-span, but even a shorter life-span can't warrant such special treatment in such cases without considerable discomfort in need of relief. It is the discomforts, the struggles, the burdens which are being compensated for. I believe (or should I say 'strongly guess,' now?) everyone has the right to do what they think they need in order to tolerate life and all that comes with it. I'm not such a delusional optimist as to possibly think all will or could possibly get that comfort. I do think, however, that every person and thing in the universe does what it 'thinks' it must to be in the most comfortable, moderate state. I think quantum physics, thermodynamics, and chaos theory all support my stance and are applicable.

My belief system became synonymous with the most fundamental aspects of science: most notably, making best educated guesses given the information we are aware and, thus, exposed to, and using these 'best guesses' as our new, and forever metamorphosing, foundation. We intuitively try to make our foundations as solid as possible and forget that nothing is completely unchanging, let alone permanent. A balance is struck, to the best of our capabilities, between open-mindedness and scepticism, questioning absolutely everything while maintaining our stance until new evidence comes to light which says otherwise. We rely whole heartedly on the facts, real or perceived, at hand, but benefit most from the acceptance that the conclusions we draw can change as more of such facts come to light. We try our bests, no matter what, given what realities we form out of what information we can scrounge up. Every reality, for each individual, becomes equally real, and all capable of change when new information capable of swaying and mutating our beliefs becomes accepted. We cannot always accept, however, and some things can actually harden our resistance to acceptance of all sorts and forms, making us maintain our realities, often even in the face of new information. Absolute belief, or even extremely strong beliefs, can become fundamentally resistant to certain forms of acceptance when new information is presented, which sometimes has more destructive, rather than constructive, consequence.

This has been my journey into absurdist thought, and reconciling my consciousness, thus far.

Action and Reaction

I am bipolar. I am autistic. I am anxious. I am who and what I am. There is no golden standard, there is no mold. I replaced my meds almost completely with cannabis, and it has worked out quite well for me, but everything is relative. If I say how great the pot has been for me, people assume that must mean that I am now 'normal' (ish) and no longer have any problems. False. Let's say I used to function at 2%, then I started using cannabis and went up to, say, 10%. That's 400% increase in functioning. Wonderful, right? 400% is a big number! That's 5 times how much I was functioning before! So, all the problems are solved, right? No. 10% is still a far cry from 100. That number, also, would still be an average and not a constant. That means that one day might be 4%, another 15%, another 8%, and so on. Outside factors also heavily influence this. If I'm staying at home watching Netflix all day, I'm more likely to feel like I could function more if I wanted, but if I'm out doing new things in new places, I'm going to feel like I'm pushing or breaking my limit, which leads to overload, which can lead to either a meltdown or shut-down. Meltdowns have been more the typical result.

When I get anxious, I get irritable, and when I get irritable, I get angry. Getting angry can make me aggressive, and then people stand there in the aftermath with dazed expressions wondering what just happened. Poking the bear is what happened. If I escalate, that all but undoubtedly means something or someone is causing me to escalate. When it is a someone that is escalating me, as I get more aggressive, the other person tends to get more persistent, which causes a continual process until I explode, which works out for no one. All the person has to do is stop. Stop talking, stop trying to alter or help me, stop everything. Just stop and leave. That is what I need.

My overload, meltdowns, and anxiety are not just quirks, they're not just things I can get over, not just overreactions I can briefly contemplate and then change my mind completely to, "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right." That simply is not the case. I also cannot just put these things in my back pocket when it's most convenient for everyone else. There are things that are acute and things that are chronic, and they require entirely different approaches. For instance, an acute panic attack as a result of a chronic anxiety condition requires a far different approach than when I'm not in such an acute state and can address the more long-term issues (which still don't benefit from immediate attempts at change, but take time.)

My brother and his fiancée are getting married. As the wedding has gotten closer and closer, as well as more and more 'real,' my anxiety has begun to skyrocket. The real tipping point was the fitting for the tuxes. That was when things really took a nose dive off a skyscraper. I'm also known for my big, curly, unfettered, and crazy hair. I've had it in many different styles throughout my life, some I like looking back on more than others. But the point is that I had some modicum of control. I could decide what I wanted to do with it. As I'm diving toward the pavement, my hair acted like my parachute. It was something I could depend on to not surprise me, to be there as it was before. I could decide what I wanted to do with it. It might seem silly to others, but my hair is - in some ways - an anchor.

Well, as people started turning my hair and how it should look for the wedding into a bigger and bigger issue, it was like watching someone trying to cut holes in my parachute while I was still falling. Of course I would panic and even act aggressively in an attempt to get others to stop. Of course it triggered an extreme reaction in me. But people never have the whole picture. We only really get a tiny glimpse at our very own pictures, our own lives and minds. So I'm not going to take it well when people make grand assumptions and enforcements about how I should look, act, be... I wear the tux that feels uncomfortable, stuffy, and drives me nuts because that is what was chosen. I'm attending because it's asked of me. I'm being a groomsman because it was asked of me. All of those things produce incredible, unbearable anxiety, but I do them anyway. So... when I'm adamant about my hair, about how I want my hair to be, others can back off and let me be. I think it's not such a big problem to ask they give me that much.

Also, comments like 'act your age,' or 'you should do ___ because it's what people do,' or, 'you could be/do so much more' are all bullshit, and I'm going to call them bullshit. If I am drawing the line at my hair, everyone else can get over themselves and just give me that much. If not being pestered about my hair, if being able to wear it and have it exactly as I want, can alleviate some of the anxiety all the other things are causing, you can give me that. Taking that away is a really, really shitty thing to do.

We live in a world of people who demand instant change, instant fixes, instant gratification. It doesn't work. Some things virtually never change, even, while other things always change. The other side of the coin is how people desire things to always remain the same, hustling and bustling to keep it that way in the face of a universe that would tear them apart without hesitation. Wanting change isn't inherently bad, nor is wanting things to remain the same. It is healthy - even understandable - to attempt to change some things and keep others the same. All actions cause reactions, and the wisdom of what actions we choose to take derives from the difference between what we wanted to happen and what did happen. Doing something repeatedly despite seeing a different reaction than desired is generally unwise. All reactions are warranted based on all of the influencing factors, and are seldom the result of a single, isolated incident.

Miracle cures don't exist, and most things don't get better right away. For all I or anyone else knows, I could die young never having been what anyone hoped for, or even die old and have the same result. Hypothetical thoughts and beliefs are not realities or facts, and very well may never come true. The only things that 'should' happen are the things that do happen, and everything else is fantasy. No, I'm not going to grow up to be the president. I may never be 'healthy' and I certainly will never be anyone's idea of 'normal.' I get by. I survive. I manage. Do I want more? Sometimes, but I also realise that wanting something doesn't automatically make it happen. Do I try to improve myself? Of course, but sometimes you can only do so much, get so far, and you have to live with and accept what you cannot change. People who can't accept that some things can't be changed hack at it so much that they kill it, anyway, making any possible resulting change meaningless and inviable.

Everything happens for a reason, I do believe that. In the simplest form, this means A causes B. A little truer would be to say A causes B; B causes C; C causes D... and so on, but even that is a gross simplification. A causes B1 and B2. B1 causes C1 and C2, while B2 causes C3 and C4. C1 causes D1 and D2. C2 causes D3 and D4. C3 causes D5 and D6. C4 causes D7 and D8. Then the Ds cause the Es, the Es cause the Fs, the Fs cause the Gs, and so on, growing exponentially more and more complex, a chaotic system, everything with a place, a role, a cause and effect. I don't do things without an underlying reason: none of us do. My actions and reactions are a product of countless forces and factors, some seen while others unseen. My anxiety, irritability, overload, meltdowns, and aggression are all results (which cause more results, which cause more results...) Some are more acute forces at work, while others are slower and more chronic. While others may be able to do little about the more chronic forces, at least in a given moment, they can do something about the acute ones. When I'm tipping over the edge, people don't have to help push me over. The best thing to do, sometimes, is to back off and do nothing.

People may be enigmas, but enigmas are codes, and codes can be cracked. No enigma is without its solution, its cipher, which can interpret its coded messages. No actions are without cause, ever, and everything has a reason.