Diagnosis.

For many years I resisted any kind of diagnosis of my mental health issues. From the very start my teachers recognized me as a weird kid. "Asperger's" was the first label college counselors and various therapists applied to me soon after the term was coined in 1976.

Yeah, that guy.

I rejected any kind of label. Part of it was my fear that such labels would damage my employment prospects. What if I wanted a job that required a security clearance or other inspections of my medical records? I'd been through that with the Navy. Excluded for my Asthma. (But that's a whole 'nother story... I was seeking order in my life.)

In college it was made clear to me by some, in less explicit words, that I didn't want any mental health issues on my permanent record, that those could ruin my life. I'm pretty sure it was a white privilege thing too. The campus police and the local police were all very gentle with me, even when they picked me up doing totally deranged things like jogging down the street with bloody bare feet at two o'clock in the morning, harmlessly trespassing onto the roofs of buildings, chasing coyotes, or arguing with o'possums.

The first diagnosis I was forced to accept was Major Depressive Disorder. That was before I signed onto DU. I was a mess, antidepressants with a side order of "off label" anti-psychotics got me functioning again and probably saved my marriage. That the anti-psychotic was only adjuvant therapy was important to me. I was just depressed, right? Don't argue.

It wasn't to last. A few years later I collapsed. I landed in the ER a total mess, hallucinating badly. They gave me some very hard drugs and told me I should check myself into the psych ward and that there would be be bad consequences if I didn't, like 5150 or death, me wandering out on the freeway or something. I resisted, it was too reminiscent of the time I was first "asked" to take time off from college, the implied threat being permanent expulsion.

I checked myself into the locked ward the next day when the drugs wore off. I was suicidal.

The high gods of paper publishing psychiatry treated me and gave me a diagnosis which I was finally willing to accept as I was close to retirement age anyways and not likely to ever have a job where my medical records would be scrutinized. I'd been admitted to the psych ward with Major Depressive Disorder with psychotic symptoms. There the doctors added Autism and PTSD to the diagnosis.

If you ask me, my ability to "mask" had completely burned out. It's still burned out but I don't need it anymore.

I was pressured to visit my psychiatrist weekly the following year but I quit after nine months because he seemed a little too interested in my history. I have horror stories yet untold.

Somebody said autistic people lack self awareness. I do, and everyone close to me knows it. I write third person imagining myself from my guardian angel's perspective and it takes me a long time. My guardian angel is an asshole. He laughs when I suffer. But maybe he knows I need to suffer if I am to survive.

It's a fucking Catholic perspective.

Thanks, mom.