Undercover Agnostic (Update 18): A Foggy Mind, a Wedding Ring, and Bittersweet Memories.

Sheldon's note: This post is somewhat of a continuation of update 16 in my Undercover Agnostic series, A Long Talk with Rose. If you are not familiar with that post, please read it now before proceeding to read this post, otherwise it will not make sense to you.

This past Sunday, the normal after church conversations were going on, and Rose's father "Jim", said for Rose to show me a picture on her phone. I saw what it was, a wedding band, on what was most definitely her hand. I had so many different emotions then, ranging from confusion, fatigue, bewilderment, happiness, to somewhat of heartbreaking disappointment.

I was already in a fog, and this picture didn't help my confusion any. Not only was I having some bad fatigue from my depression that put me in a mental fog, but I was starting to have the lottery ball effect at the same time, and I have never had both at the same time. I don't know why, because I have been taking my Cymbalta regularly, but sometimes I still have my bad mental health days, where I feel lost and like absolute crap, tired, confused, and like absolute crap. I haven't had days that bad since the Cymbalta, but I guess life happens that way.

I suppose I should start from the beginning on why this caused so many different emotions for me all at once. I have been good friends with both Rose and her now fiance, Sam, since between they ever started their relationship. I have known both of them for at least 10 years. When we were teens, and shortly after high school, I was very close to Rose, and we had a odd and unique friendship.

She kind of startled me at first, with her happy personality, and her insistence in the first few years that I knew her of always wanting to hug me. I did get used to that, and after some time came to enjoy it, which is odd, because I have talked before on the blog about my resistance and discomfort about people touching me in my post, Personal Space Invaders. I can only tolerate anything more than a handshake if it's coming from a close female friend, like Rose, or if I am in a relationship. Not even family can get too close.

Rose liked being affectionate with me, and we spent a lot of time together in those years. When I was about 19, she brought up the idea of us dating. That's when I made one of the worst mistakes of my life, and one I still regret to this day: I shot down the idea. It's not that I didn't care about her (I did), it wasn't that I wasn't attracted to her (I was, and I still find her to be cute), quite frankly it all boiled down to the fact that quite simply, I was a coward.

There, I said it, it's the truth, and it was a very pretty truth to confront about myself. I was too sacred to take that leap. I was scared of what would happen if we would break up, I wondered if we would still be friends, I was afraid to lose her that way, I was afraid of my abusive mother, who  didn't approve of her, since there was not much I could do to break free of her then (this was very shortly after the nervous breakdown that so greatly changed my life in many ways), I was just scared all around.

Though we remained friends, we have never been as close as we were at that time since. She went on to date Sam, and about a year into their relationship, I confessed the way I felt to Rose, just laid it all out. I felt so guilty, like I had betrayed her, since she cared about me so much. She was surprised that I was carrying so much guilt about it, and I believed her when she said that she had forgiven me, but what was done was done, there's not much I could do about it.

Guest Post: Life Is Like Planning a Trip Across Antartica

Sheldon's note: Today's guest post is from Lana of the blog Lana Hobbs the Brave. She is a wife, mother, and ex-Christian who grew up in the world of Christian fundamentalism.

I have to say that I greatly admire her courage in speaking so openly about mental illness both here and on her blog (under her own name, no less). She has been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder, and like me, has her strong suspicions that she is autistic as well.

If you haven't done so already, check out yesterday's post for a link to my recent guest post on her blog.

Once upon a time there was a woman who just couldn't be happy, who couldn't keep her house clean, and who had trouble making friends. 

That would be me.

Sometimes I may look like a lazy person with a bad attitude, but actually I suffer from bipolar disorder 2 -- with a lot of depression -- and am probably aspergers. 

What life with mental illness and autism spectrum disorders means is that a person must work very hard just to seem ‘normal’. 

An autistic person works much harder to do what comes naturally to a neurotypical person. This post does an excellent job of explaining this dynamic.

I think the concept works for mental illness, too. For example, at times I have to work very hard to simply NOT think about suicide all day long. It takes all my brain power to constantly redirect my thoughts. 

At other times, I’m hypomanic and everything feels like a huge deal. I must accomplish ALL THE THINGS immediately! And heaven forbid anyone stands in my way. 

When this happens, I have to concentrate very hard to remind myself to slow down and not holler at everyone who is irritating me by walking too slowly.

When I’m anxious, just picking out which barbecue sauce to buy at the store feels like I am planning a trip across Antarctica. And then I have to do that a dozen more times, for every item. It can be exhausting. I sometimes only make it through by muttering to myself aloud. I probably look insane and out of control, but the fact is that I am working very hard to be in as much control as I am. Without all my willpower and effort, I would be standing blankly in the middle of the very first aisle.

Lottery Balls and Superheros

It’s been 10 days on Cymbalta now, and it seems like it has taken full effect already (see my last post A Full Bottle of Pills and an Empty Wallet if you haven’t already). It was rather fortunate timing that I got on the medication when I did, because due to some circumstances beyond my control, I can’t access my Google + or Blogger account very often (I won’t discuss it publicly, but I’ll let some of my Google + fans know what is going on in the next few days). Between that, and the many hours I have been putting into rebuilding the house I may only be able to log on 2-4 times a month from now on.

It’s highly disappointing, my followers both on the blog and on Google + have been a great support to me over the past year as I have opened up about my past, and my current life. I feel like a recovering alcoholic that can’t get to their AA meetings. The lack of support would have truly caused me to lose what little I have left of my sanity had it not been for the medication. It’s made a world of difference in my life.

The chronic fatigue I used to deal with is gone, I still don’t have the energy levels that someone who is 24 years old should have, but I can wake up in the mornings fairly easily, and I don’t feel tired all the time. The pain and stiffness has been greatly reduced, I don’t get the stiffness in my arms and legs anymore, and the pain in my lower back has been greatly reduced, I don’t usually notice it unless I have been moving around a lot that day.

One of the best aspects of being on Cymbalta is that I now not only don’t have to deal with the physical symptoms hardly at all, but my mind has calmed down quite a bit. MY mind used to race all the time, all these conflicting thoughts trying to process all at once, competing for my attention, causing anxiety, making me worry that in all the chaos, I was going to end up forgetting something along the way, and leading to a lot of obsessive habits.

 If you could have looked inside my mind at the time, it would have looked something like when the numbered balls bounce around in the round plastic container during a bingo game or a lottery drawing, thoughts bouncing around, crashing into each other, just like those white plastic balls, so loud and chaotic, and hard to watch. I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with that anymore. I’m still somewhat obsessive (occasionally I still pace back and forth, which annoys people to no end, but not nearly as often), but my mind is so much clearer, my memory actually works, and I’m so much calmer. The Cymbalta has given me what fundamentalism always promised but never delivered on: peace of mind.

A Full Bottle of Pills and an Empty Wallet

Yesterday, I took the opportunity while I had a doctor's appointment for a minor and unrelated issue, to finally get medication for my depression. I am fortunate to have insurance through work, unlike quite a few people in this town, but the company I work for likes to skimp of the quality of the plans that they provide, so leftover bills can be awful, as I have learned in the past.

So, on what rare occasions I do need to see a doctor, I end up going to the same Medicaid funded clinic that my mom and dad do, and I have the exact same doctor as them as well. This guy, well, let's just say that the state scraped the bottom of the barrel, as the American saying goes, in hiring him. He really doesn't know what he's doing, and I wouldn't trust him with any serious problems. I just went there because the allergy problems I was having made for good cover, since I haven't moved out of home yet.

I went in, talked him about the allergies, he wrote the prescriptions for that, and I talked to him about the depression, and how I have had it for most of my life, and in recent years, it's caused quite a bit of pain, stiffness, and fatigue. He didn't quite seem to understand why I would be depressed, and was basically saying "You have a job, insurance, and a house, what do you have to be depressed about?".

Great..... Yet another person who doesn't understand it, and he's a doctor. (It's bad enough that my family doesn't get it). He wrote the prescription without protest, he asked if I was suicidal, I told him no, which is true, I have been in the past, but that's been at least 4 years ago.

So, 60 mg of Cymbalta it is. After going to the pharmacy to get all the perscriptions I got the bottle of anti-depressants, and hid it in my old SUV. It's only been 2 days on it so far, I probably won't know fully how it effects me for at least a week, but I have noticed slight changes in the problems with the fatigue, I have been waking up easier, and I'm not as tired during the day.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 2): Questions From My Boss About My Unbelief

I have come out to very few people at my job, even though it would be fairly safe for me to do so. Contrary to my online life, I actually don't talk about being an agnostic in the real world, and especially not at work.

Part of it is a personal feeling of mine that there should be separation of religion/politics and the workplace. If you need to work with people, it's best not to potentially have them turn on you because of being outspoken about political or religious beliefs when there really isn't a need to discuss it in the first place. I just want to get in, work, do my job, and go home (and enjoy a paycheck every 2 weeks).

 I've come out to a few people, mostly when during the course of the day, a conversation comes up about one's beliefs, and I try not to be obnoxious, or practically walk around with a sign that says "I'm agnostic". I find it annoying when religious people exhibit that kind of behavior, so why should I do it to other people? I don't hide my beliefs, but I feel no need to let it define me.

I'm different on the internet, because well, it's the internet. It's a place made for discussion and sharing, and it's my outlet for letting it all out.

Back to my job again, one of my two bosses on my shift is a very religious man, I've known that since I started working at this job. He has never been the type to try to force his faith on others, like most fundamentalists.

He is the kind of guy that his faith influences his lifestyle to the point that it oozes out of him in ways so subtle, even he probably doesn't realize it's happening.

He never talks about any specifics of his faith, and it fact, his calm, polite demeanor, and his sense of fashion had me wondering for a while if he was a Mormon (it turns out that he is a fundamentalist Pentecostal).

My rant about a bigoted Postsecret submission

This is from one of my favorite sites, Postsecret, it truly is one of the greatest sites on the web. People send in postcards, anonymously, with their mostly deeply held  secrets, to the site's founder in upstate New York.

Submissions range from the mundane to the shocking and hilarious. Postsecret's founder, Frank Warren seems to have a policy of not censoring secrets due to their subject matter or offensiveness. Comments are not allowed on the blog itself, but on a separate site known as "Postsecret Community".

This week there was a submission that well, to put it mildly, royally pissed me off.

For those of you that don't know, Aspberger's is the most highly functioning form of autism. For more information, click here. Why this postcard pisses me off is the assumption this person is making that someone with autism is lying about having their condition to get away with being an "asshole", in the words of the secret sender.

I'm sure that there may be one or two people out there who may be doing this in the world, to get away with offensive behavior, or to gain sympathy, but I highly doubt this is the case. Why this makes me angry is that there are many ignorant and bigoted people out there who would assume such a thing about a person, probably for no good reason. I have depression and OCD, and I will that in person, I don't tell many people I have it, because there are so many people out there, riding on a high horse, just like the person who sent this postcard, who do not understand mental illness, and have a burning hatred for those of us out there who are not "normal" by their standards. I have been mocked, misunderstood, told that my depression isn't real, that it was the result of "guilt" (about what, they never told me, and I don't know to this day). I have heard people say that depression is "unconfessed sin", I have had my own family deny my mental illness.

I'm telling you this to say that if you have the notion that mentally ill people have it easier in this world, shake that idea out of your brain now, it's a flat out lie. Ask anyone you know with depression, bipolar disorder, autism, how they have been treated by people in their lives, and the misconceptions people have told them.

Why anyone would lie and voluntarily put themselves through this kind of hate, misunderstanding and discrimination is beyond me, and strikes me as highly unlikely. 

I have to wonder, the person who sent in this postcard, if it would change their mind if they ended up having a son or daughter with autism? What if they themselves came down with depression or schizophrenia?

Would they treat their son or daughter the same way they have treated this person? Would they have the same skepticism and bigotry, or would they finally come to their senses and finally learn more and become a more accepting person? How would they feel if they were the person with mental illness, and had to face the same kind of stupidity they are spouting day after day? 

I think they would start seeing things from a whole different light than their current, bigoted point of view.