Author Archives: alifeofmentalillness

Problems Socializing With Mental Illness

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Not a great deal has changed the last few days.  I still force myself out of my apartment at least once a day, usually at night.  I’m still kind of paranoid about crowds and people in general.  I’m content anymore to do my socializing online and over the phone.  I still contact my family and friends a couple times a week.  So it isn’t like I’m completely isolated.  Anymore I desire to be alone most of the time.  As I have advanced in age with this illness I have found that I just can’t relate to most people. I don’t have kids and I’m not married, so that alone cuts into my social life.  I’m not really interested in sports, at least not to the extent that most my neighbors, friends, and family are.  I mainly follow sports primarily to have something to talk about with family and friends.  Otherwise I wouldn’t care much.  I haven’t gone to the movie theatre in almost four years.  I would rather watch movies from my own home and comfortable couch and make my own snacks.  I just never did enjoy the movie theatre experience.

There really isn’t many opportunities to socialize for single people in their thirties and forties where I live.  I never enjoyed the bar scene as it’s too crowded and the music is too loud.  I don’t have kids, so that eliminates me from most social activities.  I feel out of place when I’m at even a family gathering and I don’t have kids and everyone else does.  I tried the day rehab for mental health patients but it just seemed too remedial for me.  Socializing is tough for mentally ill people.  It’s especially tough when you don’t share many of the same interests as everyone else.  My big interests involve a lot of science, technology, history, economics, literature, and science fiction.  I have never found many people outside of academia that are even remotely interested in any of this.  I just never could work a forty hour week job, complain about how much I hate said job but never do anything to make it better.  I never could just go to bars on weekends, get drunk, and try the hook up culture even fifteen years ago.  I never got married, thinking I was doing the responsible thing by staying out of that while fighting a mental illness.  While I avoided the potential of a divorce or an unhappy marriage, I also killed much of my social life opportunity.  I’m the only person in my circle of friends who isn’t married.  And I don’t have much of a social life.  I have a couple cousins that are the same way, but they have the saving grace of having full time careers.  Being on disability I don’t have even that.

In spite my problems socializing, I still prefer being an adult to being a teenager.  At least as an adult I have the option of avoiding bullies, jerks, and idiots.  In high school I had the same interests I do now and the bullying and torment was awful.  I don’t feel nostalgic at all about my high school years outside of a few friends and a few school activities.  I didn’t enjoy being a kid and even twenty years later I still remember what it felt like.  Sure I have made my peace with my past and moved on.  But I don’t want to relive those years.  And I’m certainly not going to get nostalgic for my teenage years when they were quite lousy overall.  I far more enjoyed college than high school mainly because there were more eccentric and intelligent people to socialize with.  We had our share of fools and losers like high school, but the bullies and jerks who did well in high school struggled in college.  And they struggled even more once they hit the adult world.  While I am glad for the interests I have, these interests make it very difficult to socialize with average people.  Seems like most of what I hear that passes for socializing are reruns of old things I’ve been hearing for years.  I guess the only real bad part of being an adult is having to socialize with boring and rude people without pulling your hair out.

Seasonal Aspects to Mental Illness

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Spring is pretty much here in my part of the country.  The days are getting longer and warmer.  Been spending more time outside, mainly at night as I’m still a little paranoid around large groups of people.  Still staying up late but I don’t sleep most of the day like I had been for the previous couple weeks.  Most days I’m awake at noon after going to bed around 4 or 5 am.  I just prefer the quiet solitude of the overnight hours anymore.  Hopefully this will change as the weather warms and spring advances.  Spring has always been one of my happiest times of year.  April, May, and June are usually my most stable months.  I’ve often had my biggest problems in August and September.  There is a seasonal aspect to my schizophrenia.  I don’t know how many others with this  diagnosis have similar problems.  I’m also usually stable in the winter months.  Winter and Spring seem to be my best times of year.  From what I’ve heard, usually winters are toughest for those with seasonal aspects of mental illness.  But for me it’s always been the opposite times of year that were the most stressful.  Never could figure out why.  But like many people I do have better times of year than others.

Forcing Myself Out of My Comfort

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Been forcing myself out of my comfort zones more the last few days.  I’ve been leaving my apartment more often and forcing myself to socialize.  Ran many errands I had been neglecting during the winter.  Getting stocked up on house supplies and cleaning agents so I can do my spring cleaning more properly.  Going to get that started in a few days.  After a few warmer than usual days we are back into winter.  While I knew this was going to happen, I’m still a little disappointed in myself for not taking more advantage of the warmer weekend.  But in terms of supplies and things I’ve been putting off for the last few weeks I’m pretty much caught up.

Been feeling a little less at ease as I’ve been forcing myself to expand my horizons.  That’s probably why I’m a little more irritable than usual.  That and I’m attempting to readjust my sleep patterns so I don’t sleep all day while being awake all night.  I could tell this routine was starting to take a toll on me.  I don’t understand how people who work night shifts for years do it without losing their sanity.  I used to work night shifts at a factory.  While the work was simple enough and the pay good, I just couldn’t adapt to sleeping all day and working all night five nights a week.  After several weeks my work started to suffer and I had to leave the job once my request for a different shift was denied.  I could tell a breakdown was coming if I stayed there.

While I’ve been socializing more I have found I really haven’t lost my social skills in spite spending weeks essentially alone.  I still prefer to spend most of my time alone, but sometimes things like this come and go in phases.  Sometimes I’ll want to sleep all the time and sometimes I won’t want to sleep at all.  Sometimes I’ll want to socialize every day and sometimes I’ll want to go entire days where I talk to no one.  But at least at this point in my life with mental illness I can recognize this and plan accordingly.

Why I Isolate and Don’t Socialize

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Even though winter is all but over and the weather is warming up, I’m still spending most of my time alone and isolated.  Just been more irritable and short tempered lately.  Even hearing my neighbors walk down the hallway can irritate me anymore.  And since my neighbors are prone to argue among themselves and make lots of noise during the day, I have intentionally been sleeping during the days and staying up until sunrise for most of the last two weeks.  Why shouldn’t I?  It’s not like I have much of social life anyway.  At least I haven’t had much of a social life for the last few years once even social media stopped being fun.  I mean, do normal people enjoy being angry and argumentative all the time?  It seems to be that way to me.  It didn’t use to be this bad.  In fact, most people used to be pretty cool about petty disagreements.

I can’t imagine what’s going to happen to my nation and my friends over the next few years.  I used to believe that if we made it though these tough times, we’d have a real cool future.  But every time I try to be encouraging or bring up something cool science has done recently, I’m met with either stone cold indifference or fear.  My countrymen didn’t used to fear change nearly as much as we do now.  Hell, we used to force change sometimes out of boredom.  When I look at my elders, leaders, and even people my own age in my hometown and my country in general, I find it hard to believe that these peoples’ parents and grandparents landed on the moon, built personal computers, won major world wars, or even had the courage to immigrate to a new land where they knew no one and had only their dreams and work ethic to keep them going in the dark times.  Whatever pioneer spirit and love of innovation my people once had is dead.  And it’s quite sad.  But no one cares anymore, at least not enough to embrace change.  I know some really cool things are coming within the next ten to twenty years for the people of this world, at least those who are willing to push through their fears of change and adapt accordingly.

But I look around me in my hometown and my family and friends, and I don’t see any adapting.  I see nothing but fear and hate.  In some ways I’m glad I’m not well adjusted to my current reality.  The only people who seem to be are those who are nostalgic for a past that never really existed in the first place.  I no longer see the courage and original thinking that made my nation and it’s people the envy of the world.  And I won’t let us slip away without putting up a fight.

End of Winter and Desires for Travel

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Today was the first day in weeks we had warm weather.  I had to get outside to enjoy it.  This has been a tougher than usual winter.  I spent a lot of time indoors and hibernating because of the bad cold spells and snow storms.  Now that it’s almost March I can see the beginning of the end of winter.  And I am not sorry at all to see winter on it’s way out.

Been spending too much time indoors and isolating.  There were times I would go entire days without leaving my apartment.  With as bad as the weather was, it seemed pointless to just wander the halls.  There were days I would sleep sometimes as much as twelve hours a day just out of boredom.  Unfortunately I didn’t get as much reading done as I would have liked this winter.  And I was lazy about writing for the last few weeks.  While I have been stable mentally this winter, this was probably because I wasn’t doing much to invite troubles.  I lost some of my social contacts from isolating and staying home so much this winter.  Hopefully I can get those reestablished soon.

I still hear from old friends and family a couple times a week.  Not as often as I would like, but I get that most people don’t have as much free time as I do.  Mental illness essentially sent me into early retirement right about when my friends’ careers were taking off.  Most of my friends now are married and have kids.  I have as much freedom as anyone I know and yet I don’t get to share it very often.  It’s a shame that most of my best friends from the past live out of state.  I do have online friends from my discussion groups, but many of them live in other countries.  I’ll probably never get to meet them in person even though I have far more in common with these friends than I do most people in my own hometown.

I would love to travel more but I absolutely can’t stand driving anymore.  And flying airlines anymore is about as enjoyable as going to the dentist for root canal work.  I have friends scattered to the four winds I haven’t seen since college graduation that I would give almost anything to see even for a few days.  Since some of the old friends live in foreign countries I’d have to get a passport.  I don’t know what Social Security’s rules are for disabled people traveling overseas and collecting disability pension.  But I guess those dreams of travel and seeing old friends will stay in the realm of pipe dreams probably forever.  I’ll just have to do the next best thing and socialize online I suppose.

Feb 20, 2018

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Still staying close to home these last few days.  My part of the country is supposed to get some snow in a couple days.  So I won’t get to go anywhere for awhile it seems.  Not that it really bothers me.  I have made a routine of staying closer to home than in previous years.  It is something I have gotten used to.

I guess the days tend to seem longer than normal this winter because I do much of my sleep in the mornings and sometimes nap in the afternoon.  It’s dark out the majority of the time I’m awake.  But I haven’t had any flare ups lately.  I socialize mainly online and that is going well.  I think I’ve adapted well enough I can avoid much of the negativity that is social media.  Fortunately most of my friends aren’t negative people by nature.

It has been a long drawn out winter for me.  But it doesn’t really bother me oddly.  I haven’t wanted to go anywhere for awhile.  With the weather being lousy most of this winter, I have had the perfect excuse to stay home.

Thoughts on Isolation

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Been isolating a lot lately.  I sometimes have entire days when I don’t even leave my apartment anymore.  I’m just burned out on people in general.  Even though I sleep at night I find myself wanting to sleep almost all the time anymore.  Seems like the only time I don’t feel anxious or depressed is when I’m asleep.  I have gotten to where I am anxious every time I even hear people talking out in my hallway or even when I hear footsteps in my hall.  My neighbors had an argument this morning I could hear through my wall.  Made me definitely not want to leave my apartment today.

I know that eventually I’ll just have to gather my courage and force myself to leave my apartment just to do laundry and check my mail.  But I really have gotten to where I no longer trust anyone it seems.  I’m afraid of people more or less.  Seems that everyone I meet is in a foul mood all the time.  Of course going online to look my friends up doesn’t help any as foul moods and arguments are the rule online anymore.  A friend of mine once suggested I start a youtube channel and just do voice over videos.  Not a chance.  YouTube comment sections are even nastier than twitter or facebook.  We have near god like capabilities with our current state of tech yet we act completely uncivilized online.  If I acted a fraction that rude in public, I’d expect to get a beating or a jail cell.  Though knowing my countrymen’s attitudes about guns, I’d probably get shot rather quickly.

At this point I don’t feel sorry for isolating or having all my groceries delivered to my apartment.  I don’t regret that it’s been two months since I had guests in my apartment. I don’t regret rarely leaving my apartment.  I don’t regret being lonely.  I’d much rather be lonely than made miserable by other miserable people.  In some ways I am glad I am an outcast and an outsider on mainstream civilization. I’m burned out on all the fighting and negativity I see every hour of every day.  I’m tired of people being ugly and evil to each other all the time.  I’ll interact with some people via phone or online chat.  The rest of humanity is welcome to keep it’s distance until they come back to their senses and act like civilized people again.

Mid Winter Doldrums

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It’s been a while since I last wrote.  I couldn’t do much online after my computer crashed over a week ago.  I managed to recover my mac and I now have a new PC too.  Being offline more or less for over a week made me realize just how much I use my computer.  I managed to recover my mac by watching several how to vids on youtube.  I’m glad I found some advice that worked for my problems.  It saved me from going to the shop.  Now that I have both my mac and PC back, I feel like I can move on.

During my forced hiatus from my online activity, I did some reading and more sleeping than was probably healthy.  Sometimes I just slept out of boredom.  I still had my phone so I kept in contact with family and friends.  But it was kind of lonely at times as many of my friends I keep in contact with via social media sites.  And of course I couldn’t post blogs without a keyboard.  I tried to post via my smart phone, but my fat fingers make typing on the phone almost impossible.  I’ll never complain about people using shortcuts in their text messages anymore after that.

Overall I’ve felt good.  It’s been quite cold with snow for the last couple weeks.  Haven’t gotten out as much as I should because of that.  I just can’t endure cold weather as well as I could even a few years ago.  Been stable overall even if a little lonely and kind of unmotivated.  It doesn’t really bother me anymore that I don’t want to go out much.  I know, that should bother me.  But I have been an introvert my entire life.  And sometimes I don’t mind going entire days without talking to anyone anymore.  I couldn’t make it a permanent thing, but I can isolate for a few days and be content if needed.

I don’t have any plans for any major changes or shakeups for the next few weeks.  Right now I’m just taking it one day at a time as we go through winter.  I really don’t like driving on ice and snow anymore.  And we’ve had continuous snow cover since before Christmas.  But we have another four to six weeks of this left.  I should feel guilty for isolating and not socializing this winter but I really don’t this winter.  And I’m not exactly sure why I isolate so much.  Maybe the depression is creeping back in.  Or maybe I’m more selective about whom I spend my finite time with as I age.

Discouragement

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I spent several days at my parents’ place last week.  I was needing the peace and quiet and a little encouragement.  Unfortunately the encouragement left as soon as I got home. I have been convinced for years that the environment a person lives in and the type of people they are forced to associate with on a day to day business can greatly effect a person’s happiness and overall well being.  Most people have thought I was full of it for believing this as the majority of people I know believe you can will yourself out of depression, mental illness, and a bad situation.  You can’t will yourself out of mental illness anymore than an amputee can will his leg back.  In this day and age of advanced medicine and science, the people that think such things think them mainly because they choose to remain ignorant about science, technology, and illness.

I don’t get encouragement from being around my neighbors.  Haven’t for a long time.  I certainly don’t find encouragement when I try to contact even close friends and family online anymore.  Even family and close friends too often act like barbarians online, and don’t even get me started on random strangers and friends of friends.  About the only real intelligent and rational conversation and interactions I have anymore on my tech enthusiasts groups and my parents.  And my parents are both advanced in age and not in great health, so they will probably be dying within twenty years.  When they go, I’ll lose the vast majority of my social outlets and supports.  Tell me again why I want to live to old age?

I’m not sorry for being discouraged and sounding off about it.  Why should I?  Everybody else feels free to gripe and complain and generally drag anyone within ear shot into the cesspool that is socializing.  Even Superman has his kryptonite.  And lately I have been exposed to near lethal doses of it.  I’m tired from fighting and not seeing any results.  I’m tired of trying to encourage people with good news that doesn’t make the press only to be told I am a liar and that I’m a peddler of fake news.  I’m tired of always having to keep my head down in the dirt when we as a species were meant to reach for the stars.  Normal people are discouraging, you really are.

Mid Winter Recharge and Reset

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I’m currently at my parents’ house.  Been here for a few days.  I’m using this time away from city and apartment life to reset and recharge.  I haven’t been anywhere outside of my current home city since Thanksgiving.  I had gotten stale and stuck in my routines.  I imagine this happens to a lot of people in their mid thirties with careers and families where it sometimes becomes month after month of nothing but job and family responsibility.  It happened to me and I don’t even have a family or a traditional job.  I spent so long doing the responsible adult routines that I forgot why I was doing them or what I was living for.  I have found that it sneaks up on all too easily.  I haven’t even been fishing for over two years and I used to go fishing almost every weekend during the summers as far back as high school.  I want to do more of that once the weather warms again.

While I haven’t been subject to nasty psych breakdowns for months, I have been having problems with anxiety, paranoia, and depression.  Because of these issues, I had been not leaving my apartment except when absolutely necessary for several weeks.  I finally had enough of this and came to the conclusion that changes were needed.  To help this change along, I left my apartment and came to my parents’ house in the small village I grew up in.  In my younger years, I used to travel some at least once a week.  Sometimes I would come to my parents’ place for a day or two or I would just go places with friends.  Once I got serious about the blog and started having issues with chronic pain, those travels became almost nonexistent.  I haven’t seriously road tripped since before my car accident in October 2015.  I think as a result of not seeing anything different and just seeing the same neighbors day after day made me stale and more closed minded than I would have liked.  I even ran into the rut of only eating in the same three or four restaurants when I did dine out, did that for two years.  Routine can be settling for mentally ill people, yet too much for too long can be mentally and physically unhealthy.  It was even starting to make me a jaded and bitter old man far before my time.  So glad I was able to break out and see something different for a few days, even if it is just my childhood home.