Essay for Disability
This is an essay (which turned into a journal) I wrote (over the course of multiple years) to send to the government in preparation for my upcoming Continuing Disability Review, in which my government disability benefits will be reviewed and the decision will be made to continue or discontinue them. This essay explains what is wrong with me to the best of my ability. This was originally written as a Google Doc meant to be read from beginning to end, I just broke it up into sections to make it more manageable.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Cognitive Issues
- Sleep Issues
- Transportation Issues
- Social/Interpersonal/Personality Issues
- Motivation Issues
- Additional Information Including Neurological Issues
- Sign off with date
Introduction
Dear Social Security Continuing Disability Review,
This essay is to explain to you why I’m not working. The short answer is that I can’t. The long answer is that there are six reasons. I know that you are overworked and understaffed, so feel free to skip this essay if the information I already provided is enough for you to make the decision to continue my benefits. In case the already provided information is insufficient, the six reasons I'm not working are that I have cognitive issues, Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder (where my whole circadian rhythm shifts later each day such that on average I go to sleep and wake up later each day than I did the day before, resulting in me sleeping around the clock), an inability to safely drive a car, an inability to form/sustain close bidirectional relationships (or really any real relationship) with other people (except for maybe my mother), a lack of motivation (although this varies based on my mood), and lastly I don't want to (I mean I felt that I wanted to work and have tried but it never worked out in real life for various reasons). It may be noteworthy that although I wrote most of this essay before year 2023, I added extra sentences at the ends of paragraphs and I added extra paragraphs at the end of the essay in an out-of-order manner, so dates of when things were written will not appear in chronological order. Also, even though exact dates appear, the reason they appear is not because I have a good memory for exact dates. Rather, I keep a link to this paper as a Google Doc saved on my phone and make additions to it with the current date at the time of writing mentioned in the addition. Other dates came out of things like online records and medical records. This body of writing started out as an expository essay and over time became a personal journal that I revisit regularly, with an expanded section on my social/interpersonal/personality issues (which in my opinion is my biggest and most unfixable problem). That section is the longest section in this body of writing and gives a better idea of what is wrong with me as a person.
Cognitive Issues
Anyway, the first reason I'm not working is cognitive issues. I made a work attempt in October to November 2019 and I lasted less than 30 days because I cognitively could not do my job. You have to learn things when you start a new job and I couldn’t learn. Either that or I'll make a little progress and then later I will revert to my previous ways and the progress will be unlearned (this is what previously happened when instructors tried to train me how to be a bus driver, see paragraph on why I can't drive) - training me to do a job is an issue. This next example happened at a work attempt before the latest one (I'm not sure exactly when the cognitive issues first started as they happened very gradually), but I remember one time I was told instructions that I was to follow when I got to my desk, and by the time I got to my desk I forgot the instructions. I actually asked the guy at work if I could use my cell phone to record his instructions because I knew that I have trouble remembering things that are spoken to me and it's illegal to record a conversation without the other person's consent in some US states, but he refused. I need procedures and instructions to be in written form because I am much more likely than other people to forget them when they're just spoken. I mean if someone says something short, immediate, and direct like "You pick up that box now" I can do it (with them possibly needing to repeat the simple instruction once or at most twice if I'm not paying attention) but real work related procedures usually have multiple steps and there's often a time gap between when I get told the procedure and when I have to execute it, so when it comes to real world work procedures I have problems. I've tried to write down things that were spoken to me before but I can't read my own handwriting when I write fast and when I write legibly I write very slowly (for this reason I gave up trying to write down notes when I was in school and I just learned the information by reading and sometimes underlining or highlighting the textbooks). Continuing on the related subject of memory related issues, on 11/18/2022, while on vacation in Washington D.C., I went to my hotel's front desk to ask for late check-in and they asked me my room number, and even though I had been in that room for a week and taken a photo of the room number with my phone, I still told the front-desk guy the wrong room number, so I have specific little memory issues. For example, on 2/15/2023 I walked from the kitchen counter to the cupboard to get a packet of oatmeal, and when I got back to the counter, there was already a bowl with a packet of raw oatmeal in it, so apparently I already got myself a bowl of oatmeal to microwave for breakfast even though I had no recollection of having done that. Sometimes I send myself emails containing things I need to do or remember in the future, and I noticed that I emailed myself the same reminder (only worded slightly differently) on May 6, 2023 at both 9:22 AM and 9:45 AM and I had no knowledge or recollection that I had done this twice, so I forget stuff in a way that is more normal for a person in retirement than for a 29 year old. Sometimes I walk between two places that I have walked between maybe a hundred times and I don't recognize my surroundings and need to check Google Maps to make sure I followed the correct path - there's a very specific kind of memory which is used for navigation (and also some other things) that I lack. Like I think other people, when they drive around or are working with a web of computer code, they have some sort of mental map in their head which I lack. Anyway, sometimes I cannot absorb information or have issues focusing. I used to be able to read hundreds of pages in a single sitting (for example I remember as a kid I read a thick "Harry Potter" book in under 24 hours), but all the recent times I tried to read a novel I gave up after a few pages. Not only am I not able to focus for more than a few pages, but I keep forgetting the characters and names and having to go back and re-read because I'm lost while trying to read a book. I used to read through lots of books for fun, but years ago I gave up on that entirely. On 10/11/2022 I watched a YouTube video about the guy who invented artificial ammonium based fertilizer and the poisonous chlorine gas used in World War 1, and when they mentioned his name again I was like "who is that?" and had to check the video description because I kept forgetting his name - I watched the video twice and as of 10/12/2022 (the next day) I still don't remember his name as my memory for names is very bad (for example on 11/12/2022 I tried to read the Wikipedia page for the TV show Parks and Recreation because I was considering watching it for the first time and I couldn't read the page because I couldn't keep in my head who each of the characters in the show are). To give you an idea of just how unreliable my memory for names is, my closest family members other than my parents are my cousins Karina and Kristina and I mixed up their names from time to time for about 10 years - I still sometimes mix up their nicknames ("Kika" and "Kara"). I tend to remember the first sound of a word or name and mix up words or names that start with the same sound. For example, I have repeatedly mixed up the names of the newspapers "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Washington Post" as well as the names of my second cousins "Amanda" and "Aryana". Changing subjects to my concentration issue, when I listen to an audiobook or podcast, even if it's the best audiobook or podcast I've ever listened to and I actually have motivation (which is rare), I keep having to rewind and relisten to parts because I keep spacing out. At a previous work attempt I remember at meetings other employees would talk and I could never follow and understand what they were saying (I mean when they said "hello" I understood that but when they would talk about technical stuff I couldn't understand and follow even though I have a relevant education in the technical stuff). On 2/27/2023 I attended a city committee meeting because I had a comment that I wanted to say and I noticed I had the same issue keeping focus and following what people were saying that I described in the previous sentence even though what was being said at the meeting was not technical. When I was around 26 or 27 I got my psychiatrist Dr. Pushka to prescribe me Adderall (an ADHD medication) to try to help improve my focus in hopes that that would allow me to work, and I noticed my attention, in particular my visual attention, jumped around all over the place less, but my other cognitive issues like lacking a certain form of memory were not improved and so I could not do the computer programming job I used to do, and then after a month of Adderall I ended up needing a psychiatric hospitalization which might have been caused by the Adderall (Adderall can cause manic or psychotic episodes in the bipolar or schizophrenic), so I don't take Adderall anymore (and also my current psych doctor APRN Matamoros is under Memorial Outpatient Behavioral Health which doesn't prescribe controlled substances like Adderall). Dr. Pushka and I knew ahead of time that Adderall can trigger mania or psychosis in some people with bipolar disorder, but I risked it because I really wanted to work, and honestly I'm not even 100% sure if the hospitalization was caused by the Adderall because I took it for weeks before the hospitalization occurred, and Adderall doesn't take that long to work, so maybe the timing was a coincidence; I would have to take Adderall again for a month and have another hospitalization to know for sure that it wasn't a coincidence (but I have no plans to do that). When I was in kindergarten I was diagnosed with ADHD but I didn't receive any ADHD drugs (until I received the Adderall I mentioned in the previous couple sentences) because my parents were against the psychiatric medication of children. Anway, when I was a student in school I relied heavily on the textbooks because what was spoken in lecture did not stick in my head - if I had an exam question on something that was spoken in lecture but not written in the textbook I would normally get that question wrong. That was years ago, but switching back to more recent issues (like in year 2022), when I try to watch videos online on YouTube or Reddit I typically give up (or need to take a break) after a few minutes - simply watching an entire episode of a TV show is a feat for me. My concentration is sometimes longer than that, though, like on 8/16/2022 I managed to watch a 20 minute YouTube video with just one little pause, but it still surprised me how difficult that was for me given how funny and engaging the video was. On 9/20/2022 I watched an 11 minute episode of the children's cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants (each half hour TV block consists of two eleven minute episodes) and that was hard for me focusing wise - I lost concentration around 9 minutes in due to a pseudo-seizure that resembled a simple partial seizure (focal non-impaired awareness seizure - see later on in this essay for an explanation of what that is - it’s not the whole body shaking that people typically think of when they think of a seizure - it feels to me more like a light switch going off in my brain and then weird sensations, experiences, or stuff in my brain happens). On 11/16/2022 I made it through an episode of SpongeBob without experiencing one of those pseudo-seizures until after it ended, so my pseudo-seizures are pretty random and vary depending on the day. The pseudo-seizures are very distracting and happen to me constantly, on most days, but again they're pretty random - there is no visible trigger or known cause. Anyway, I keep little notes that tell me how many minutes into a TV show I watched on my laptop because I often can't focus long enough to watch a whole episode in one sitting. I don’t know why, but I definitely noticed cognitive issues that developed with my psychiatric ones, and they haven't improved and tend to stay about the same or get worse with time (like over the long term). I’m adding this last sentence in February 2023 and the duration with which I’m able to focus on a movie or TV show is longer than it was in mid 2022, possibly due to depression going away (I hit 40 minutes of watch time with one pseudo-seizure interruption), but my eyes keep involuntarily moving (in a similar pattern/rhythm as the pseudo-seizures) and my muscles keep involuntarily contracting, which is distracting, and also the cognitive stuff (other than very short focus duration) which I mentioned before hasn’t improved and appears permanent. Now that I think about it, it appears that I actually have multiple different very specific cognitive issues where if you just looked at overall general intelligence I don't think that would be significantly below average (when I was a kid it was very above average) but I find very specific cognitive things that other people take for granted to be very hard or impossible.
Typically this next paragraph would talk about the second reason I'm not working, but instead I'm going to go on a tangent where I talk about the ramifications of having cognitive issues more. I know you have to be severely retarded for your IQ to be low enough to qualify for disability based on low IQ. I do not believe I am severely retarded. I used to have excellent cognitive abilities in specific areas, actually. The first time I took the SAT (college entrance exam), I scored a perfect 800 out of 800 on the math and a 720 out of 800 on the reading, for a combined SAT score of 1520 out of 1600. I studied long and hard for that exam, but it's an impressive score nonetheless. Like if you Google “average SAT score Harvard”, it says that the typical SAT score for a Harvard accepted student is 720-780 on the reading and 740-800 on the math. So basically my SAT score was at Harvard level the first time I took it (and I raised my reading score to 740 the second time I took it). Like out of every 100 people who took the SAT, only about 1 or 2 scored higher than me. My cognitive abilities are less than what they were, but I don’t believe I’m retarded. That being said, my cognitive issues are a severe hindrance. The third reason I’m not working (I talk about it more three paragraphs later) is that I can’t safely drive anymore, but I used to go on highway drives that were hours long (I think I could still drive on a highway without hitting anything as long as I don't have to change lanes in traffic too much, but despite that I can't drive in cities). Now I can only safely drive in the gated neighborhood of my mother’s house where I live, where there are no traffic lights, almost no traffic, a 20 mile per hour speed limit, and wide streets. Like my basic abilities are still there, they’re just impaired in specific ways or in specific situations. Having impaired cognitive functioning is a severe limitation because it reduces you to things that cognitively (almost) anyone, even a high school dropout, special needs student, person with a learning disability, elderly person who couldn’t afford to retire, or someone who just got out of prison can do. And these people who lack talent, cognitive ability, or skill are all competing for the same set of shitty, low-paying jobs, resulting in high unemployment rates for these people where they would be lucky to land any job, even one that does not pay enough to live independently on. A year after I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, I had multiple competing jobs offers and ultimately accepted an offer from Amazon for $150,000 a year on full-time W2 (not including great health, dental, and vision insurance, and a little bit of vesting stock) in year 2016 for a junior or apprentice level position in an area where my rent in an ideal location was $2,350 a month. It is also of note that $150,000 a year was for an entry level position in big tech - within two years of being hired you are expected to actually know how to do the job independently, at which point you are promoted from "junior developer" to "senior developer" and your total compensation roughly doubles (mostly because the amount of vesting stock increases), or they fire you because you can't learn how to do the job (which was my problem). Before it became apparent that I sucked at the job itself, employers were competing with one another to attract me to their place of work because I had done so well on the interview coding tests (and also because I managed to distort the truth successfully on the non-technical portion of the interview, but most people distort the truth when they're trying to get a job). Anyway, cognitively the coding tests are very different from the day-to-day job; the coding tests are more like brain-intensive puzzles to test how smart you are because smart people tend to learn fast and do well at the job. And I was really smart (at least in the specific areas they tested). I don’t have those cognitive abilities anymore. I have no talents or special abilities (and in my teenage and adult life I had tried for years at everything from singing to piano to acting to pre-medicine to leadership and been bad or very bad at everything I tried). I have no leadership skills or special connections - I'm not even really friends with anyone (at least not in the sense that I am their friend and also they are my friend). I do not have a personality that is desirable to employers or skills that are desirable to employers (I mean I still have a degree but I can't do the job that the degree is supposed to prepare me for). Before I was awarded SSDI but after I was no longer able to do the high paying computer coding work that I used to do (and I honestly tried my best - like I said my last work attempt lasted less than a month) I tried to get a job that did not require cognitive abilities. I made a resume where I put down that I used to work for big tech companies but am no longer able to do that work and applied to everywhere I could. I got an interview at an ice cream parlor. They asked about my work history and I said I developed a disability and cognitively couldn’t do the high paying work anymore. The manager interviewing me expressed concern that I might forget how to mix a smoothie or something. I did not get the job, but I saw someone else who they hired and noticed how personable, smiling, good-looking, and pro-social they were. I didn’t have a chance. A second place interviewed me to be a food runner (a person who delivers food from the kitchen to the table), and the hiring manager asked me about my educational background (my resume had the answer but apparently he didn't read it). I truthfully answered that I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and he was like "bachelor's in computer science?" and didn't hire me. I think he was probably expecting me to have no education beyond high school. A third place I tried to apply to was a local shop, and they said they wanted someone who spoke both Spanish and English (because South Florida has a lot of Hispanic people), but I only spoke English, and I didn't even take Spanish classes in school (in middle school and high school I took French, and I only remember a handful of French words anyway). Speaking both Spanish and English is a common request of employers in my area and I doubt I could learn Spanish - when I took French as a student it was one of my worst if not my worst class (I was always good at subjects that required logic like algebra and bad at subjects that required rote memorization, and learning foreign language terms and irregular verb conjunctions was entirely rote memorization without clear logic). Ultimately after I couldn't do tech work anymore but before I was awarded disability, I sent out more job applications than I ever had, got hardly any interviews, and none of those interviews resulted in me getting an offer, even though the offer would have been for $10 an hour whereas I used to work for $86 an hour on W2 (and didn't need to know Spanish). And nowadays (I’m currently typing in October 2022 but this started years earlier) I sometimes experience muscle rigidity and involuntary muscle contractions (not necessarily at the same time - I don’t know if they’re from the antipsychotic medication I'm on or if it’s another weird unexplained neurological symptom - I talk about the weird neurological stuff more in a later paragraph of this essay) and about half the time I can’t walk or even bike far enough to get to those local places I applied to anymore and I can’t drive there myself either so even if a local employer hired me and even if I didn’t have Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder (I talk about that more two paragraphs later) I would still have problems. I bought an aluminum kick scooter and found that on some days when I have difficulty walking I am able to use the scooter, but on other days I can't walk or scooter, so it varies from day to day. Some days I walk while sort of hunched over, using the kick scooter as a sort of cane on wheels. I have tried to get (or at least considered) every job I could possibly think of and for one reason or another I couldn’t do or get any of them. Heck, I even replied to an advertisement for the armed forces and they didn't want me. On 11/29/2022 I got a text from the Marines after I replied to their internet ad, explained my situation to them, and they said they can't employ anyone with a schizophrenia (or in my case schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type) diagnosis, even for non-combat roles. Even bipolar (which I was diagnosed with before given a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder) isn't allowed without a special waiver which the military hasn't been giving out. They said even for non-combat roles you need to pass basic training including firearm training and thought I wasn't qualified to be trusted with a firearm (which makes sense), and also I'm not in the physical shape necessary to be able to pass bootcamp (on some days I can't walk more than a few hundred steps in total). Speaking of other jobs I tried to get, in late December 2022 I applied to be a sperm donor and they didn't want me, presumably because they didn't want anyone with potentially genetically inheritable mental illness. I saw on social media a post about a remote part time job that pays an average of over $100,000 a year with a maximum of 90 days training and no degree required, but that turned out to be a scam. Over the years I tried or applied to, or at the very least seriously considered, every way of making money that I could possibly think of.
There is another aspect of cognitive issues that I would like to talk about before I go on to the second reason I'm not working. Cognitive issues can be very non-obvious and hard to detect or predict. For example, I saw a guy on a TV show who had an issue with his brain where his memory lasted 30 seconds. He developed this issue late in life. But even though he forgot everything new, he was still able to read and play piano sheet music just by looking at it. I took private classical piano lessons for 6 years and I was never able to just look at two-handed piano music on paper and play it (unless I had the whole song memorized before and could play it without the sheet music). Sheet music has horizontal lines where the position of the note on the line determines which note to play. For example, for the left hand, if a note is on the second horizontal line from the bottom, it's a "B". That being said, if I saw that note on the piano sheet music, I wouldn't know it's a "B" just by looking at it - I have an acronym that I say out loud whenever I look at a left-handed note, "Growling Big Dogs Fight Animals", where the first letter of each word ("G B D F A") corresponds to the left-handed note on that line. So the second word of the acronym is "Big", which starts with a "B", so a sheet music note on the second line from the bottom for the left hand is a "B". I would go through the music, repeating the acronym over and over, and writing down for each left-handed note which note it is on the paper before playing it (in practice I didn't have to do this for every single note because some notes are right next to each other and in that case I knew which note it was without writing it down). For some reason I was able to learn the right handed notes and know what they were just by looking at them, without needing an acronym, but for the left handed notes no matter how much piano I played or for how many years, I was never able to learn (if I had to guess why I think that maybe it has something to do with the fact that I learned the right handed notes at an earlier time, but I really don't know). By using the acronym and writing down the notes, I was able to play lots of advanced pieces of classical music by the great composers like Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach. People just assumed that if I could play all these advanced pieces of classical music, that I could also read sheet music, but at least for the left hand I could not. And one might assume that because I was able to memorize the correspondence between the lines on the sheet music and the notes for the right hand (for the right hand the noted on the lines are "E, G, B, D, F" instead of "G, B, D, F, A") that I could do the same for the left hand, but I could not. No IQ test or other neurocognitive test would have predicted this. For various tasks I developed specific workarounds. For example, while reading, I may constantly lose focus and lose my place, but if I underlined each word as I read it (or at least followed along with my finger) and I lost focus, I could resume reading from the last underlined word (or from where my finger is). Or I may forget the names and identities of characters, but if every time a new character was introduced I put a box around it and a star on the side of the page, and I saw that character's name again, I could go back to the star on the previous page, reread the introduction that I put a box around for that character, and be reminded of who they are (I think some novels have a section that explains who the characters are, which would be immensely helpful to me). Some of these workarounds only work if the text is on paper because if the text is on a computer screen, I can't mark it up, which can result in me having trouble. Workarounds are great, but sometimes those workarounds can be made unavailable to me, which can cause unexpected problems. For example, the college entrance exam (the SAT) and the graduate school entrance exam (the GRE) have pretty much identical questions for the math and the reading sections, the main difference is the SAT is (or at least was) on paper and the GRE is on a computer. When I studied for the GRE (which was after a couple years of working - around the time I was losing my ability to do my job), I did practice tests that were on paper. When I got to the actual test, it was on a computer. This significantly worsened my score. Like if you just saw how I performed on the paper practice tests, you would predict a similar score on the actual computer test, and your prediction would have been wrong. This is the issue with neurocognitive testing, where they try to predict how you would do in the real world based on tests that are different from the real world. And sometimes those differences are small, like putting text on an electronic screen instead of on paper, but they can produce unexpectedly large effects. Or sometimes certain brain issues of mine are significantly worse on one day than on another, and the test just so happens to be on a good day (for example on some days my pseudo-seizures which resemble simple partial seizures are significantly more intense or frequent than on other days). When I took the tech company coding tests, specific cognitive issues popped up, where slight differences in the test between one company and another (for example which coding tools, text editors, programming languages, etc. were allowed) made a massive difference in my score (partly because I had developed specific workarounds using specific tools, text editors, programming languages, etc.). I did fantastic at Amazon's interview, but the interview tasks were not the same as the actual job, and there were things they didn't test at the interview that I had serious problems with at the actual job, and nobody predicted those problems. Ultimately my cognitive issues got to a point where I could not work around them anymore (and to be honest I even had problems that I concealed from management before then in order to hold onto my job for as long as possible). From what I've seen, it is in an employer's best interest not to make special accommodations for specific brain issues, especially in the interview stage, because people who need special accommodations for one brain issue (like a specific tool or text editor) tend to end up needing special accommodations for other brain-related things or be unable to do other things using their brain that employers weren't expecting them to be unable to do. Employers want people who can do the job regardless of what gets thrown at them and who can serve as perfect replacements for the person who did the job before them. And yeah, there are special laws in place for people with disabilities, but they are mainly for physical disabilities, like needing a wheelchair. Brain disabilities are less obvious and harder to predict and make accommodations for. Sometimes people with brain related disabilities need unique accommodations that take time, money, and effort to provide and other people are unwilling (or just don’t care enough) to provide those accommodations. People tend to assume that other people's brains work like their brains. For example I heard of someone who could do calculus but couldn't do two digit arithmetic in their head or tell time by looking at a clock with hands for the minutes and hours. Like if they had to get the slope, or derivative as it's called in calculus, of the function "y = x7" (y = x to the 7th power) they could take the derivative and get "slope = 7x6" (slope = 7 times x to the 6th power) by multiplying x by the exponent, 7, and then reducing the exponent by one (changing the 7 to a 6), but they needed to use their fingers to count out the numbers. Personally, I would have never guessed that a person who is unable to do "23 - 15" in their head would be able to do calculus, but it's possible. Like when it comes to brain disabilities, things aren't obvious or predictable the way physical disabilities can be. I didn't have to take any neurocognitive tests when I originally applied for disability and I personally am afraid of having to take one to prove my disability because neurocognitive tests can't predict real world performance the way a real job can test real world performance because the test and the real world are not the same. I have tried multiple real world jobs before and been unable to do them, and I don't believe that looking at an IQ test score or other neurocognitive test score would have resulted in expecting that. Ultimately the best test for ability to do a job is to actually be put on the job and to see, at the actual job, how you do, and when that happened to me I did worse than everybody else (in a group of about 20, including a few people who were hired after me) despite what any test predicted. I’ve done multiple jobs before and I was bad at all of them despite what the SAT test or any other test would have predicted.
Sleep Issues
Exiting the tangent where I wrote about cognitive issues, the second reason I can’t work is my sleep schedule, which (without any apparent trigger or logical explanation) stopped responding to daylight beginning some time toward the end of year 2021 I believe (I don't remember exactly when). My sleep schedule is not precisely predictable, but I tend to go to sleep and wake up each night later than I did the night before, resulting in me sleeping around the clock. For example, each day, when I sleep naturally, I sleep about 9 hours (if my sleep is uninterrupted), but on January 4, 2022 I woke up at 2PM. The day after that I woke up at 4:30PM. The day after that I woke up at 7:40PM. The day after that I woke up at 7:45PM. The day after that I woke up at 11:10PM. The day after that I woke up at 11:20PM. The day after that I woke up at 10:13PM, so my sleep time doesn’t necessarily get later each and every time, but the general trend is for it to get later. Just laying in bed in a pitch black room at night doesn't make me tired or go to sleep. Normally the sun regulates the sleep wake cycle, but for me it doesn’t - I sometimes feel like it’s the middle of the night when it’s actually the middle of the day and the bright Florida sun is shining on my face. I tried to normalize my sleep by taking sleeping pills (I’ve tried three different sleeping pills: over the counter Unisom Sleeptabs, Benadryl, and prescription benzodiazepines) in the evening but they only make me fall asleep when I already feel tired and oftentimes I don't feel even the slightest bit tired even at 2, 3, or 4AM. I bought caffeine pills but I never took them because caffeine might trigger a manic episode and it's not good for my health (and then my parents threw them out). I also tried making the lights dim at night and exposing myself to sunlight during the daytime but that made no noticeable difference. There is something wrong with my circadian rhythm. If I worked a nine to five job, I would probably fall asleep during my job. I don’t know why my circadian rhythm is messed up, only that it is messed up. Neither my previous psychiatrist (Dr. Alexander Pushka) nor my current psych doctor (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Edgar Matamoros) take issue with it as long as I’m not in a state of bipolar mania (bipolar mania usually includes getting less sleep, but my number of hours of sleep hasn’t changed). Oh, and this is an update written on 10/7/2022, but I did some research and this phenomenon of tending to go to bed and wake up later each day than you did the day before is called Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder (or Non-24-Hour Sleep/Wake Phase Disorder) and the only FDA approved drug for it, brand name Hetlioz, is only approved for the blind and I'm not blind (this disorder usually happens to people who are completely blind and cannot see any light), fails 80% of the time even on the completely blind, and costs over $25,000 a month, so I think I'll probably just be living like this. I made an appointment to see a sleep specialist, Dr. Boris Betancourt, for January 19th 2023. Anyway, I'll see what Dr. Betancourt says and maybe try something but if it doesn't work I might just be like this for life - Wikipedia says this condition has a duration of "lifetime". This is an update on Jan 21, 2023, but after talking to Dr. Betancourt (who didn't even recall the name of this condition until after I showed him some articles) I started taking 3mg over the counter melatonin tablets at night and exposing myself to extra light during the daytime. I don't think the light makes any difference and I'll see if the melatonin works. Update on Feb 11, 2023 - I’ve been waking up between 7AM and 2:30PM these past 3 weeks, so maybe it works (I sort of get the impression that it gets a little later on average but not by as much each day as it used to, but I haven't run the numbers yet) - I’ll have to give it more time and then run an A-B-A-B single subject design experiment (I’ll talk more about what that is later) to make sure that the melatonin consistently produces this effect and that it’s not some sort of coincidence or false impression. The quality of sleep definitely is worse than when I let myself sleep when I naturally felt tired without melatonin. When I was consistently sleeping around the clock I would have a moment when tiredness just hits me, I would put my head on the pillow, fall asleep quickly, sleep without interruption, and wake up feeling refreshed (even if the wake up time was like 10PM), but on melatonin now none of those things are true for me. I often find myself in a state where I feel tired but cannot sleep while using the melatonin (and this is without using an alarm clock, if I used an alarm clock I would get even less sleep and feel even more tired, and lack of sleep makes me feel depressed and worsens my cognitive functioning even more). Also on the melatonin bottle it says "limit use to two months with a break of one week" and if taking melatonin becomes a permanent thing for me I will not be doing that, and I don't know what going against the warning on the bottle will do. Oh well. This is an update on my sleep: I last woke up at 7:24AM on 3/12/2023 and I've been awake ever since even though it is now 4:20PM on 3/13/2023. I've been awake well over 32 straight hours and this isn't normal for me. I look the 3mg Melatonin last night but I didn't fall asleep from it. I don't even know anymore. I can't guarantee my attendance or RSVP ahead of time because of unpredictability in my sleep schedule. This is an update on 3/24/2023 but after my sleep got significantly desynchronized from the 24 hour cycle the melatonin stopped working so I stopped taking it, and honestly, I feel much more alert and well rested this way, sleeping at abnormal hours the way I do naturally, so I'm just going to keep doing that. This is an update on 4/15/2023, but I started taking the melatonin at 10:30PM each night again, and I slept at night for several nights, but then last night I took the melatonin at 10:30PM and didn't fall asleep until after 7AM this morning, so the melatonin really isn't reliable long term. Now my sleep is desynchronized again after having been asleep all day and there is no use trying to sleep at night tonight, even with melatonin. The overall impression I get is that it kinda works, but not well.
Transportation Issues
Having finished the section on sleep, the third reason I can't work is transportation. I gave up driving after I got in three (at least I think it was three - I don't remember exactly) car accidents that were my fault in a roughly six month period and one time I almost died due to almost getting hit on my driver’s side door by a vehicle going highway speed. The most common error I make is not turning at the right time or with the right angle when making a sharp right turn from a side road with a stop sign onto a main road - I end up going partly into the lane one to the left of the rightmost lane and hitting a car driving on the main road or turning too early and hitting the curb because I don't have a mental concept or picture of how my vehicle is positioned relative to things around it like road lines or the curb (if there’s no curb I fear the side of my vehicle will hit the stop sign, so in practice I usually end up turning too late and hitting a car in the lane one to the left of the rightmost lane). In addition, because I don't have a mental concept of how my car is positioned relative to things around it, changing lanes in traffic is risky for me as I don't have a good sense of whether I am going to hit another car while doing the lane change (and yeah, I try to look in my blind spot but that's also risky as I don't have good peripheral vision with thick glasses and end up turning all the way to the side to look in my blind spot and can veer off my lane while doing that). Also, for some reason I have never had a sense of direction or navigation (some of my brain issues might have to do with asymmetry in my brain's hippocampi visible on an MRI, which might explain why I was the only one who couldn't escape a corn maze on their own, but honestly I don't know why) so I have to constantly be looking at Google Maps instead of looking at the road while driving, which is dangerous for me. This was without Google Maps (the person in the passenger seat was telling me which turns to make), but one time I ran a red light because I just wasn’t paying attention (the person in the passenger's seat pointed it out to me). Also, I have pseudo-seizures (non-epileptic seizures) which resemble simple partial seizures (I talk about them more later in this essay) and the epileptologist Dr. Alberto Pinzon told me not to drive with them, even if they’re not epileptic seizures (the difference between epileptic and non-epileptic or pseudo-seizures is that the latter don't show up on an EEG) because they could cause an accident, although in practice the cognitive issues like missing red lights are more dangerous than the little seizures. Also, Dr. Boris Betancourt, the sleep specialist, said not to drive with my sleep disorder. Even when I'm not sleepy, my attention isn’t good and there is something off with my brain which makes me a danger to myself and others on the road - and yes, I have gone to driving school and I even went through an advanced bus driving training program after I (years back) applied to be a bus driver, but the instructors determined that I was unteachable, and they previously bragged that they even managed to teach someone who had never driven a car before. I remember with the bus driving instructors they would manage to make some progress with me and then the next day or the day after the progress was undone, and at first one instructor believed that if I just tried harder than everyone else I could do it but she eventually changed her mind about that. Anyway, because of my inability to safely drive, I rely on Uber and my parents (who I live with due to my mental illness) to drive me places because I don’t live in a place where many things are within walking distance. That includes jobs. I mentally am not able to do the high paying work that I used to do, so if I did work (assuming that anyone would accommodate my unpredictable sleep schedule and hire me with a three year work gap due to being on disability for schizoaffective disorder bipolar type and cognitive difficulties) it would have to be at a job that does not require much cognitive facilities, which would be some minimum wage job. The cost of the Uber to and from work would take up almost half of my paycheck if I worked minimum wage. The public transportation system in suburban South Florida, where I live, isn’t good, and transportation is an issue. Like the buses come once every 30 to 60 minutes and usually don't head to where I need to travel. In a state where there are almost as many cars as people (source: https://www.valuepenguin.com/auto-insurance/car-ownership-statistics), I can't compete job commuting wise with people who can drive. The average commute in the US is over 25 minutes by car one-way; I can’t commute to places that other people can commute to.
Social/Interpersonal/Personality Issues
The fourth reason I can't work is social. I have issues with forming or sustaining human relationships and I have social issues. I have no real friendships (I like the idea of being a normal person, but I am fine living with no real friendships and I don't even experience loneliness except for occasionally missing the company of my mother). Like on 11/14/2022 I was in Washington DC on a trip and my uncle who lives there asked me if I was seeing any old friends in the area because from December 2016 to August 2018 I lived there for work, and the truth was that even though I had Facebook friends from my old work and from the board game club that I used to attend there, there was nobody who I was actually close with, who I actually kept in contact with, or who I was interested in talking to - I don't sustain interpersonal relationships (I don't know if I briefly form a real connection when I first meet someone but don't sustain or strengthen it over time or if there is never any real relationship from me to them in the first place other than the relationship one might have with a temporary acquaintance - I believe it's the latter). I can meet people and interact with them, but there is no real relationship there - they are nothing to me even if we have interacted repeatedly in the past. It's sort of like I'm able to interact with people but unable to truly have or sustain a real relationship with them - they're just someone who I happened to interact with in the past, an acquaintance. I cannot date (and I tried my best for over a decade but was never in a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship despite being straight). I tried everything I could to get a girlfriend - I put myself on between 4 and 6 dating apps for over 10 years, I went to club activities, bars, and nightclubs, I read self-help books, I consulted with multiple dating coaches, I lowered my standards for things like sexual attractiveness to zero, I went to hundreds of events, many of which were singles events, I even posted personal ads online and tried to seek out a long distance relationship, but was still never in a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship. Like you'd expect real relationship formation to happen naturally but for me it doesn't. My online interaction also has problems. On March 3rd to 5th 2022 I tried messaging a young woman online multiple times but I had to unsend the message each time because it was making me crazy and ultimately I gave up trying to message her and had to block her to preserve my sanity. I previously had to give up contact with a young woman because I had a panic attack every time I replied to her, and yes I've tried meds for that and nothing can prevent it. On 4/26/2023 I liked an Instagram post that said "your job is not to be liked by everyone, your job is to be and love yourself", and I was considering sharing it, but I was afraid to give off what I call "Relationship Forming Vibes" which can trigger my panic response, but I shared it anyway and then I had the panic response, so I had to delete the post. I recall a time when I canceled a date because I had constant and recurring panic attacks that wouldn't stop until I canceled the date and then never talked to her again. I can't control the panic response, it's like an automatic, involuntary, almost allergic type reaction I sometimes have to relationship formation where the only solution is to delete or unsend my communication or end the interpersonal relationship (I call this panic response my "Relationship Destruction Reflex"). This is a recurring thing for me. I anticipate never having a girlfriend or wife even though I have always wanted one (or at least thought that I wanted one, or at the very least liked the idea of having one). Like if there were a button I could push to have a girlfriend or wife I would totally push that button - I don't even care much about her race, her weight, if she has mental illness, how poor she is, if she's below average looking, etc - I have always had a desire for a girlfriend or wife but have never been able to make it happen. Social relationships are important for many jobs and leadership positions but for me that aspect of life is severely hindered. Even getting a job requires going through a job interview, which requires leaving a good impression on a hiring person, which is a social barrier. Many jobs also ask for recommendations from past coworkers and managers, and those people have witnessed my shit work performance and personality. Also, one time I tried emailing a human relations person and had panic attacks after every email I sent, which made work related functioning difficult. When I'm not having panic attacks after messaging someone, I tend to lose interest and not reply anymore - I can be sort of "asocial" or "not social" towards other people in that regardless of how I'm doing, I never want to smile at anyone and tell them that I'm doing well, and also I pretty much never ask people who know me well "how are you?" or "how's it going?". I don't care. I don't care to hear about other people's Christmas or whatever. I'm not interested in whether or not they slept well last night. If they're interested in me I can share things (or sometimes over-share things) about myself with them, at least initially, but I'm not really interested in them (I mean maybe I am interested in a new person initially when I learn basic things about them like what they do for a living, but that sort of interest runs out of fuel eventually). When me and my mom spent time with my cousin Karina and her husband, I noticed that her husband was asking me a bunch of questions but I wasn't asking him any questions, and that was normal or natural for me. Like I might text someone new or someone who liked me on a dating app the copy-pasted message "hey, how's it going?" because I'm sexually attracted to them and I want to get the conversation started, and then they might reply "good, how about you?" but the conversation ends there - I just stare at their message and never reply and am not interested in replying. Sometimes instead of not replying I overshare (ex. by writing "I feel depressed and have issues when I try to walk"), causing them to distance themselves from me (I tend to do this with women more whereas with men I'll usually just stop communicating, although sometimes I will overshare and then later stop communicating if they haven't blocked me, like by writing someone a massive letter about myself where I over-share, which is what I'm doing now by writing this essay). Like sometimes I will send a woman on a dating app a reply containing a massive essay containing way too much information about myself, causing her to unmatch me or block me, which is basically the same end result as if I never replied to her - no more interpersonal relationship (I think maybe this almost automatic oversharing that I do is part of my Relationship Destruction Reflex or is an involuntary, subconscious effort to get them to go away because it results in the destruction of relationships or at least helps avoid their formation, which perhaps is what I subconsciously or involuntarily want). Perhaps one reason I over-share my distress, sadness, or unpleasant experiences or feelings with other people despite the fact that it is unpleasant for them is because I don't care about how they would feel in response to seeing or reading what I'm putting out. With men, I've had people who could have been good friends tell me "text me any time" and I just never text them or communicate with them in any way ever again - I guess I'm not interested. My childhood next door neighbor who I used to play videogames with as a kid gave me his new number at his little brother's wedding that my parents and I attended and said "don't be a stranger - talk to me some time" and I never talked to him other than texting him my name when we traded numbers - I guess I became a stranger to him despite him telling me not to be a stranger (I am Facebook friends with his little brother but I don't interact with his little brother either). This is an update on April 8, 2023, but yesterday I did text my childhood next door neighbor an article about how the latest version of ChatGPT AI passed the US medical licensing exam because he passed the US medical licensing exam and I thought it would be relevant to him, and he replied "I saw!", but I didn't ask him how he's doing and really I have no interest in that. A woman once messaged me "what are you doing today?" and I saw her message but never replied, I guess I didn't want to talk to her (which is pretty typical of me, at least after the initial meeting where I may ask a new person what they do for a living, their hobbies, stuff like that, but I lose that interest after I sort of know who they are). In early 2023 a guy who knew me before and was listed as a friend on my Facebook and Instagram saw me in real life and tried to interact with me in public and I didn't ask him how he or his mom were (he was with him mom), I just sort of waved and shook hands with them both and was like "I have something that I'm going to do" (even though I had nothing but free time) - I didn't want to talk to them and I wasn't interested in how they were doing or their day or anything. I have a lack of real relationship formation or sustainment (at least beyond the initial introduction where I may use copy-pasted messages or ask them pre-defined questions about themselves). Maybe at some point some of these people who know me thought we were friends but really, at least to me, we were just temporary acquaintances (I am not really anyone else's friend even if someone else believes for some time that they are my friend). I don't hate anybody and I'm not intentionally mean to anyone, that's just how I am. Sometimes I form one-way parasocial relationships, where I get obsessed with a near stranger or minor celebrity (this has caused me to cyber stalk in the past, Googling their names and combing through all their social media and contacting them repeatedly despite them not being interested. Sometimes I will feel and believe that I am in love with them, and think about them all the time, but after they ignore and block me for long enough it dissipates and I realize that there was never actually anything there relationship wise), but real, lasting, close, two-way relationships with personal emotional caring or emotional response are an issue for me. Therapy can't help me because I don't want to tell anyone, including a therapist, how I'm doing and if I forced myself to see a therapist, after spewing my backstory in my typical over-sharing manner, I would be like "I have nothing to say to you anymore - can I please not see you?". I don't really see the point of saying things to a therapist because there is nothing I would say to them that I wouldn't say somewhere on the internet or to some former acquaintance or something. Some people form relationships with their therapist, but I can't even form a relationship with a therapist despite the fact that they are paid to get me to form a relationship with them. One time a therapist refused to see me because he could tell that I didn't want to see him, even though I wasn't aware that I was giving off that impression. I mention this later on in this essay but I've seen four or five therapists before (who didn't refuse to see me) including one in group sessions and I never felt that I benefited from therapy - in fact in the past I did outpatient behavioral health at Larkin Hospital and the longer I did it the worse my depression got, and then it gradually got better after I didn't do it anymore. In practice I don't think the outpatient behavioral health caused my depression to get worse, I think it naturally just so happens to get worse and better on its own and the timing just so happened to coincide with when I went to outpatient behavioral health, but I also don't think outpatient behavioral health made it any better either (this is the case with a lot of treatments I have tried). I don’t want to talk to a therapist, even if it were free. Socially, even with my current psychiatric doctor Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) Matamoros, I've gotten to the point where I don't want to have a two-way conversation with him - I would rather give him an update about what is going on with me by leaving him a typed letter, sort of like this essay, or a written message in the MyChart medical records system (which he never responds to and I don't even know if he checks). Real relationships are two-way, where there is closeness between both of you and a real relationship exists, whereas leaving someone a typed letter is one-way, where the person who wrote the letter (me) is oversharing information about myself with you, but there is no information exchange or closeness in the other direction (and there is not necessarily a real relationship in existence between the person leaving the letter and the person reading it), and often after I've left or handed the other person the letter I don't want to see them or communicate with them again, or at the very least I have nothing to say to them anymore. I honestly don't want to see a psychiatrist (or in my case a psychiatric APRN) anymore, but I've heard of people on SSDI for psychiatric reasons who don't see their psychiatrist being asked to see Social Security's doctor during a Continuing Disability Review, and I've heard of Social Security's doctor writing unfavorable, copy-paste reports from templates after a very brief visit that sometimes say things like "can button shirt" even when the patient's shirt didn't have any buttons, so I'm kind of forcing myself to see my psychiatrist to avoid ending up in that situation. If I didn’t worry about a Continuing Disability Review, I wouldn’t see a psychiatrist or APRN anymore - I do not believe they help me. This is an update on 4/16/2023, but I really, really do not want to see APRN Matamoros anymore, but I have to see him, and it is psychological agony for me. I think I might find myself being a dick to him (not on purpose) just to get him to drop me without me dropping him first.
Before I go on to the fifth reason I'm not working, I'm going to go on a little tangent where I clarify a misconception about how I am socially. In the previous paragraph, I wrote "I can be sort of 'asocial' or 'not social'" towards other people. This is not the same thing as being "antisocial". The word "antisocial" is used in the phrase "antisocial personality disorder" (ASPD), which is the phrase that psychologists use instead of "sociopath" or "psychopath". I am not a sociopath or a psychopath. I saw a person with ASPD and self-described sociopath talk about how she would do bad things, like in childhood push another kid down the stairs or in adulthood break apart another person's relationship with no regard for other people, just because it excites her, thus bringing her joy. I never do that kind of stuff. I do not enjoy hurting people, and I am sometimes altruistic, like to homeless people. This person with ASPD was female so a lot of the bad stuff she did was more sneaky and less openly violent than the stuff a male person with ASPD would do, but I'm not violent - if anything I do everything I can to avoid a fight. This person with ASPD talked about how it ran in her family and how she had a very charming male family member who brought about the death of another family member to collect an inheritance. I would never do that. That being said, as an asocial person (I don't know if "asocial" is the right word), I'm not really close to my family (except for my mother). Like I remember visiting my grandpa while he was dying and just knowing that this was the last time I would see him and not caring - I didn't feel sad or cry or anything. I didn't have a desire for him to die, but it also doesn't bother me in any way that he died. I mean I guess death is sad, but so is the death of a cute animal. It's just an inevitable part of reality. On Dec 13, 2022 a thought reminded me of my grandpa for the first time in a long time and then I was like "oh yeah, he's dead" and I didn't feel any emotional response one way or the other - no response at all. Recently my parents went to visit his grave and I didn't care enough to go - he's just not that special to me (also I was getting tired due to going to bed while the sun was out due to my Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder). Next I'll talk about my relationship with my dad. I live with my parents now, so I'm forced to interact with him, but when one of us is out or on a trip I don't miss him at all or feel like my life is any worse without him in it. In November 2022 I went on a week-long trip to Washington DC with just my mom and I didn't call my dad - I just wasn't interested. When I didn't live with my parents, like when I was in college or working, I never called my dad. I don't hate him or anything (he regularly gets food specifically for me when he's at the grocery store), I just never experienced a desire to call him and it never crossed my mind when I was living on my own. Third I'll talk about my relationship with my mom, who I also live with. My mom regularly checks up on me by asking me things like "how are you?" or "how's it going?" (when I was at university she called me every day and would freak out if my phone battery were dead when she called), but I don't check up on my mother that way. She's also constantly asking me if I ate and offering me food items like cucumbers even when I'm not hungry, but I never ask her if she ate or randomly offer her food items (I think if she's hungry she can figure something out). Sometimes she tells me about her mysterious arm pain and I might rub it or give her a hug. She's constantly bugging me about my appearance, trying to get me to be better groomed, and honestly if she didn't do that I would look like a caveman with a long beard, long nails, long unwashed hair, and a wrinkly shirt. I am aware that I would look bad, I just don't care. I am appreciative for my mother for being there for me after everyone who isn't a blood relative abandoned me, like during times of most severe mental illness. I regularly enjoy my mother's company, like during meals or cuddling on the couch, and I would say I like my mother's company more than the company of any other person I know. My mother appears to be the only person I can actually be with long term (other than myself). When I was a little kid, before I developed my mental illness, I loved my mother so much that I said "I love you" to her every night before bed and made her name my computer game password, but when I first developed (non-ADHD) mental illness (around the age of 13) my personality changed and I don't feel the same love for her that I used to (I guess the love for my mother eventually was replaced by a sort of narcissistic self love), but my mom and I are still close. Like there was a point where I changed from going by "Michael", the name my mom gave me, to going by "John", the name my dad gave me, and sort of went from being mom-focused to self-focused. Anyway, finally I'll talk about someone who used to be a friend to me for years (I say she used to be a friend to me but I don't believe I was an emotionally caring or true friend to her). Her name is "Ally" and she was on the same dating app as me (OkCupid) and was looking for a guy who would be her boyfriend despite her being asexual (a person who experiences no sexual attraction and doesn't care about sex). We matched (I like every female profile because it's faster and gets me more matches). When it came to initiating extended back-and-forth conversions, I never texted her first (except for rare little things like to write her "Happy Hanukkah" if something reminded me to), but she texted me every few days for years, beginning (according to the dates on our texts) in November 2020. I tended to just sort of play along with her texting conversation, just sort of matching her energy. Sometimes I would see her text "hey" (this was usually her first text) and respond if I was in the mood to chat, and at other times I would ignore her and a few days later she would try again. Eventually because I hurt her self-esteem (I wasn't trying to be mean, I just shared my honest belief about her cognitive abilities) she stopped communicating with me (this happened on 11/8/2022), so at that moment she broke up with me interpersonal relationship wise (I wouldn't say I broke up with her because I never had a relationship with her beyond the relationship one might have with a random acquaintance) and that was the end of us knowing each other or ever communicating again (other than me texting her "Happy Hanukkah" the next month because something reminded me of her, but she blocked me on Facebook and deleted my number). Actually after that I tried to text her about an "autism awareness" event near her because she told me she is on the autism spectrum, but she never replied and I didn't get a read receipt, so I think she's gone permanently. She flunked out of high school without graduating and was unable to get her GED despite being in her 20's, and also she couldn't figure out basic things like how to use Google Maps on her phone or how to see just one move ahead in chess (we played chess online once or twice), so I don't think it was a lie for me to tell her that I don't think she's smart after she asked me for my input on her attempts at math, but it hurt her feelings (I suspected it might), and yet despite that, her feelings have no impact on me, so I guess not caring about other people's feelings is a flaw of mine. In a text she expressed that she believes I think lowly of her, and that is 100% true because she is one of the most unintelligent, socially unskilled, undedicated, useless people I have ever met. Anyway, as a teen I've been told that I have "no filter" when it comes to what I say out loud, like in class, which has resulted in classmates laughing despite me not trying to say anything funny, and sometimes, especially over text or writing, it appears that I am blind to other people's feelings (I think this is what prompted some people who saw my texts with women to ask if I have autism, but as a child I saw doctors and was never given that diagnosis, and after reading through the symptoms as explained by autistic people on the internet I don't believe I have autism). I've been told that I "don't seem to care" what other people go through, and I guess when it comes to Ally's feelings (or really any other person's feelings) that is true. I guess she sort of broke up with me interpersonal relationship wise because of that, but I genuinely don't mind. You'd think I'd feel some sense of loss at having lost the only person other than my mother who communicated with me frequently and regularly for years, but I felt no sense of loss. Never even missed her (although I did think of her or was reminded of her a couple times, like when I passed by her Jewish synagogue that I attended with her once after she invited me). You'd think I would be sad that someone who talked to me for years permanently stopped talking to me, but I didn't feel anything, again because there was never a real, close relationship from me to her. Despite all this, maybe a year or six months before our platonic breakup happened, she started telling me about this guy who she was hanging out with one-on-one (I thought to myself at the time "how come she was hanging out with this guy one-on-one and not even asking me to hang out with her?"), a guy who eventually became her first ever boyfriend, and while hearing about this I felt a little bit jealous - why did she end up in a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship and not me? Well I don't think it is possible for me to end up in one given how I am with people; I don't form or sustain real relationships. There have been people who commented on my Facebook posts and were nice to me but I don't think it would work out even if I tried because I don't care about them as people like with a care about their feelings; they're just sort of an accessory in my life. That being said, people with ASPD (AntiSocial Personality Disorder) aren't necessarily asocial (I don't know if "asocial" is the right word to use, maybe a better word is "self focused" or "narcissistic" although I don't have explosive rage, easily hurt self-esteem, or abusive behavior the way people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder do) the way I am. Like the person with ASPD who I mentioned earlier said on TikTok that she has a tier of friends who she cares more about than other people and who bring value to her life and a higher tier of friends who she is fiercely loyal to and would do anything for (she said she would help them bury a body and give them an alibi). I never even keep secrets for other people (if you tell me a secret I will probably reveal it to someone or maybe reveal it somewhere on the internet). I basically have one tier and it's "acquaintance" or "person who I used to interact with because we both wanted to play a game of pool or a board game or something". Like (excluding my relationship with my mother) there's nothing special to me about any interpersonal relationship that I've had since my early teens with maybe one or two exceptions (well I have had penis-in-vagina sex with a woman more than once when I was 18, but it was a short term thing brought about by her promiscuity due to a brain injury and/or mental illness, but we don't have a relationship. I kind of caught infatuated feelings for her or experienced a crush where I felt that I wanted a relationship, but it didn't work out. Also once when I was 22 I had a sort of platonic partnership with a woman named Kristian because my Relationship Destruction Reflex was in remission for a few months, but then it came back and I destroyed that relationship with my anxiety and panic which made me really clingy, ultimately causing her to dump and block me. The platonic partnership with Kristian was actually a really unusual period in my life because my panic attack response, or "Relationship Destruction Reflex" as I called it, wasn't just in remission - I actually had the opposite response which actually felt good and made me look forward to communicating with her in the future, as there was a time where every day while we were apart she called me at 9PM and I looked forward to that, but as I said before eventually the chemical response I get from interacting with her or sending her communications changed and the relationship became impossible to sustain. I guess I haven't had any close interpersonal relationships with other males since my early teens except maybe for this one guy who I used to walk on the beach with in high school, and the couple close interpersonal relationships that I've had with women were flukes that didn't last). When it comes to all these people who I mentioned in the previous sentence, we don't talk anymore (later on I tried to create an email list of my social media posts and include them on it, but they didn't want to receive my emails). Sometimes I stalk or cyber-stalk people, especially women, who I think I feel a strong attachment to (maybe I think I want them to love me or that I want to be their boyfriend), but again there's no real, close, lasting, bidirectional relationship with emotional caring there (although sometimes in a stalker-stalkee relationship, the stalker will think they have a real relationship with the stalkee, but the stalkee, or person being stalked, will not believe this, and typically the stalkee is right). There were many times where I believed I loved a (usually sexually attractive) woman who I knew for maybe two days, but looking back it was more of an obsession or a delusion/illusion of love and I never really loved her, and honestly I don't think I even ever truly cared about her, although I did believe that I cared about her and felt attachment during the time I believed I loved her (and I went through a very mentally and emotionally intense breakup in my mind after she stopped responding to me and basically told me that I have to stop trying to contact her and move on). What I described in the previous sentence happens pretty regularly for me. Anyway, I remember one time when my mood was up I thought that if I were the only person on Earth and there were robots to keep everything including all the restaurants and websites and stuff working, I wouldn't be any less happy than I currently am. Like I mean sometimes I feel like playing a game of pool, and I might play a game against myself, but I would also be down to play against a real person, but playing a game of pool with a person doesn't bring me closer to them. If anything, playing a game of pool regularly with the same person for long enough results in us gradually playing together less and less often over time, eventually not playing together anymore (this happened with a neighbor I used to know). Everyone is just sort of an acquaintance or stranger to me, and the relationships fade or the interpersonal distance between us increases with time (or perhaps there was never a real relationship there to begin with and this fact just sort of materializes into apparent reality with time despite the fact that when we first met I said something like "hi, I'm John, what's your name?" then shook their hand after hearing them utter their name that I will probably forget). It's kind of hard for me to explain what I mean by "asocial" because there's no such thing as "asocial personality disorder" and it doesn't mean that I have anything against people or want them to hurt themselves or anything like that (some people I actually have a positive opinion of or like), it's just sort of how I am. I don't think it's obvious to other people, and even to myself, that I am asocial because I still go through the basic social gestures like making eye contact, introducing myself, and shaking hands, but these behaviors are just sort of an automatic initial thing and almost every time I forget their name (sometimes I get around this by sending myself a text with their name and description immediately after the introduction, but sometimes in a group even this isn't enough). Identifying as asocial (or someone who doesn't form and sustain real relationships with other people) also doesn't mean that I'm introverted, that I'm particularly shy, that I have autism, that I never enjoy activities that involve other people, or that I don't know or perform basic social gestures like shaking hands and asking you what you do for a living. I actually sometimes want to share information about myself and over-share information about myself, like what I'm doing in this essay. Because everyone is just sort of a stranger or distant acquaintance to me and always will be no matter what, I don't have a problem with just dumping personal stuff on people and then never talking to them again. More recently, like in April 2023, I switched from identifying as "an asocial person" to "a self focused person" or "a self-centered person" or "a narcissistic person" (who doesn't meet the typical characteristics of a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder) because I still write to people and post on social media, but all of it is about me or appears to show a lack of mental awareness of or care about other people's minds or what their feelings would be in response to reading my posts. I might have some sort of personality disorder. There are these people who call themselves "empaths" because they feel and experience other people's emotions very strongly, and I consider myself the reverse of that because even though I can determine what feelings other people give off, I don't experience those emotions at all myself. There are some disadvantages with being the way I am like being unable to lead despite wanting to (I once ran for President of the United States in a manic state for maybe 6 months and the only person who donated to my campaign was my mother despite me spending thousands on political ads on social media) and being unable to get a girlfriend or long term female sexual partner despite wanting one, but that's just my reality. This is an aside, but as a non-famous, not particularly good looking, not particularly charismatic straight man with no real relationships (except for the familial relationship with my mother), it is also a pretty rare event for me to get sex. Straight women usually want to get physical with their husband, fiancé, boyfriend, or at the very least a friend with benefits who they feel a real connection with, not some random distant acquaintance or stranger like myself. One time after having sex with a woman in the missionary position she told me (I don't remember her exact words) that it was like there was "nothing there", like as if I were looking "through her rather than at her" - "no connection" (I don't think she used all these exact words but that was the idea). That's not what women want. Women want to talk about themselves more than they listen to a man. Women want a man who remains genuinely interested in them and their life and who cares about them and their feelings, who wants to hear about their Christmas and know if they slept well last night and is interested in texts from them that say what they're doing today, and none of those things are true for me, at least beyond the initial meeting(s) or introduction(s). Straight women want a man who truly loves them as a person and doesn't just get infatuated or obsessed with them. I regularly go years (sometimes about half a decade) at a time with zero sex of any sort despite being open to almost anyone with a vagina under 45 who I'm not afraid might try to kill me for not committing to her (just speaking loosely based on personal experience). I am almost always open to it when a woman expresses sexual interest, it's just a very rare thing for me as a guy with no real non-familial relationships for a woman to do that, and when a woman does randomly express sexual interest in me there is usually something wrong with her like some form of mental illness, homelessness, or brain injury (and yes, I have engaged with such women before, I've even made out with one homeless woman and was rejected by another who I took out to dinner after I saw her begging outside a restaurant, so my standards are extremely low). More often than a real woman expressing sexual interest in me, a catfish or scammer on a website like Instagram or TikTok does so by impersonating a woman and then trying to get me to invest in her crypto scam or receive a "donation" from a famous billionaire or pay for her nude cam website or something like that. It's a very rare, very random thing for a real woman to express any sort of sexual interest in me, either online or in person. Most young-ish straight men who don't get sex with women often don't actually know exactly why this is the case and tend to start by assuming superficial things like that women want a taller man with more money, but women aren't as superficial as men and, if they're in the mood, will have sex with a guy who isn't particularly tall or rich if he is her boyfriend who has a real, close, caring, truly loving, two-way relationship with her or she's fallen in love with him, like with attachment. Also, before my muscle rigidity caused my back to hunch over, I was 5'11" and making $86 an hour on W2 and got zero sex or girlfriends for years, so I don't think height or money was my problem. I once saw a hot woman married to a small, deformed, crippled man (who I admit had a good sense of humor) in an electric mobility scooter who presumably was like that before they met, I've watched a women hold hands with her partner who is significantly shorter than her, and I've seen a man with an ugly face (who appeared very caring and loving) with an average looking woman, so I know women aren't that superficial. I am worse at attracting women into a relationship with me than a small, deformed, crippled man in an electric mobility scooter and an ugly-faced man because of permanent differences between my personality and theirs which I never consciously chose. I have never been anyone's husband, fiancé, or boyfriend, I don't have real, close, two-way relationships, and in almost every case where a woman has fallen in love with me, she has been severely mentally ill as usually only mentally ill or crazy people fall in love with random people who have no real relationship with them (sometimes people think they've fallen in love with a celebrity but that's not real love with a person and there is no real relationship there). As an example of a crazy person who believed they fell in love with me, one time a woman a couple years younger than me named "Deanna" who I knew for like an hour or two beforehand at this sort of group therapy place told me that she would have sex with me if I introduced her to everyone I knew as my girlfriend, and I basically said "no" (I felt literally nothing for her at the time and just wanted to fuck her in my dad's old SUV after the group therapy session), but some time after I was like "I change my mind, come back" and she was like "now that I know you, I wouldn't have sex with you if you were the last guy on Earth". Oh well. Anyway, I have met lots of very nice, good people, and maybe if I actually wanted to hear about their Christmas or genuinely and in a healthy, non-obsessive, non-stalker-ish way wanted to hear about their day or something like that we could be real friends in a bidirectional way, but to be honest I'm not interested and I can't even fake it so real relationship formation will never happen. If I really forced myself to have a connection with someone, it might trigger my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" that I talked about in the previous paragraph, causing me to have panic attacks or feel that I can't breathe until I destroy the relationship.
It is 11/19/2022 and I thought of some additional stuff related to being someone who doesn't have real relationships (I used the word "asocial" before but now I use the phrase "self focused" or "self-centered" or "narcissistic but without NPD"). Some people may have different notions of what a "real" relationship is. I previously mentioned the stalker-stalkee relationship. A stalker-stalkee relationship is not a real relationship the way say a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is a real relationship. The person being stalked has, while they are ignoring, avoiding, blocking, or trying to get away from their stalker, no real relationship with their stalker as a person despite what their stalker might believe. Maybe one or even both of them believed they had something in the past, but at the time the stalking is happening there is no real relationship there other than what the stalker believes exists, what the stalker imagines in their head. Some people (especially stalkers) believe that they can obtain a real relationship with their stalkee, the sort of relationship they imagine exists in their head, by obtaining more information about their stalkee, but having information about someone doesn't necessarily mean you have a real relationship with them, even if you believe otherwise. For example, a stalker may Google someone's full name and find their email or online username and then Google those things to find all their social media, past blog posts, or podcasts, and binge through all of these sources of information about their stalkee to try and develop or feel a connection with them (something that I have done multiple times in the past), but doing these things does not cause a real relationship to exist, and the connection is uni-directional (from the stalker to the stalkee, but not the other way around). Real relationships are bidirectional and a stalker-stalkee relationship is not bidirectional. Conceptually it's very similar to the relationship a random US citizen might have with a US President who they have strong emotional feelings about, or a fan might have with a celebrity. They like the celebrity and consume all their social media, but there is no real, close, bidirectional relationship with genuine emotional caring there - the relationship only exists in their head, just like the stalker's relationship with their stalkee, and is more of an obsession or parasocial relationship than a real relationship. I have been the stalker before and I have even had someone who was very attached to me in their mind who I couldn't get rid of (I would say they meet the definition of a stalker but they're a mostly harmless mentally ill woman). In my experience the best thing to do about such people is to ignore, avoid, and block them, and try and make it so they can't find you, get to you, or interact with you. Engaging with them or interacting with them can just cause them to stalk you more, and doing things like sleeping with them can just increase their belief in the existence of a relationship between you two, and when it doesn't work out like they imagined it in their head they can become vengeful and might do something crazy like find your address on WhitePages.com, go to your house, and try to light it on fire or something like that. Stalkers may truly believe they love their stalkee, that they care about them and that there is a real relationship there, but it is a delusion because someone who really loves you as a person, cares about you with genuine feeling, and supports you would not do something like trying to burn down your house while you're sleeping in it (I'm just using this as a hypothetical example, but you get the idea). There's a certain danger in someone else believing they currently have a close relationship with you when that relationship does not actually presently exist. I used to believe I had relationships with people, especially certain women who I liked and wanted to have sex with. Time and time again, reality proved to me that the relationship I believed existed and might exist in the future did not actually exist and would not exist in the future. And I'm done with it. I'm done with trying to get into a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship. I'm in a relationship with myself and that's the only relationship I'm able to be in. I used to search for board game events listed on websites like meetup.com and eventbrite.com to meet women who occasionally enjoy playing board games like I do in hopes of developing a relationship with one of them, but I don't do that anymore because it's futile - it's not like I'll ever talk to or hang out with anyone who I play board games with at one of these events outside of the event or form a real lasting friendship or relationship with anyone. Heck, I'm done with even trying to learn and remember other people's names. I don't actually (and will not in the future) have a real relationship with you, why should I bother asking for and remembering your name (as if I even could remember it without checking my phone)? When I go to a board game event and meet people I've never met before, I smile and shake their hands, but I'm not actually happy to see them; that smile is automatic or fake, it's just politeness. I have no interest in those people and they don't matter to me and never will matter to me. It's fake (as in the relationship is fake - I'm not really close to anyone, except maybe my mother, relationship wise, and while I may develop obsessions with people, I don't truly and genuinely, in a healthy pro-social manner, want to hear about their Christmas or their day or whatever). Or perhaps a better word than "fake" is simply that in reality there is "nothing there" with another person, and there never will actually be anything there. Like once a woman who I thought I fell in love with and who agreed to go on a walk with me told me after the walk that there was "nothing there" with me other than what I at the time imagined in my head, and I think that description of "nothing there" kind of applies to my relationships with everyone else. All of my relationships are temporary (except for the closeness I have with my mother). I do not have the ability to have real, close, bidirectional relationships with other people. I have the ability to stalk people (especially women), but a stalker-stalkee relationship is not a real relationship, and it's not good for anyone. I learned the hard way that I cannot stalk my way into being a woman's boyfriend, fiancé, or husband - it will never happen and I'm done with that. I'm done with trying to be someone I'm not. I am asocial towards other people (or perhaps I'm just completely self-focused, self-interested, self-centered, and/or narcissistic, I'll talk about that more in the next paragraph), and I have been that way for a long time, for at least as long as I've had discernible mental illness. That's just how I am. If I had the power to become a "normal" person, with real two-way friendships and intimate partnerships with other people, I would have made that choice in a heartbeat, but I can’t, and no psychiatric drug can fix me (and I have tried over 10 different ones including Lithium, Lamictal, Depakote, Carbamazepine, Topiramate, Saphris, Risperidone, Invega, Haldol, Latuda, and more). The initial and true reason I went on psychiatric drugs was not for primary symptoms of mental illness like mania or depression (even though when I went to my first psychiatrist I said that was the reason). The true reason was to try and change my personality and get a girlfriend, and it never worked. Before I developed mental illness (not including my childhood ADHD), when I was about 12 or 13 years old, there was this girl named "Cathy" I used to eat lunch with each day in an outdoor area behind the school, just the two of us, but then I developed my initial mental illness and changed and things didn't work out with us (in high school I wanted to go with her to the senior prom, but before the prom, when I asked her to join me on my regular walk on the beach, she said that she was "not interested, never interested", which I still vaguely remember over 10 years later because it fucking hurt. I ultimately ended up going to the prom alone after multiple other rejections). After I graduated from that school (I went there for both middle and high school), I wanted to use psychiatric medication to fix me to make things work out interpersonal relationship wise in the future, but it never worked. Years after things stopped working with her (perhaps the reason things stopped working with her was because I became distant and/or completely self-focused/self-interested/self-centered/narcissistic), Cathy blocked me for stalking/harassment. Even more years later, in 2019 (according to the Facebook messenger logs), from another Facebook account I used to go around her first Facebook block, I apologized to her and reminded her of us with a photo of the two pages she filled in my middle school yearbook where she wrote in a friendly manner about how we first met, but then she blocked that second Facebook account of mine as well. From high school on I had similar experiences (as my experience with Cathy) with many other women who I also felt I had fallen in love with, although she was the first. Cathy has since gotten married (from my second Facebook account I saw a profile photo of hers where a man was proposing to her), but my experience with her was one of the most emotionally painful and formative experiences of my life (I still to this day have a small teddy bear holding a heart that says "love" on it which she gave me on Valentine's Day when I was maybe 13 years old) and what happened set my future objectives in life. I wanted to correct what happened, but maybe with another woman. I had dreams of marriage and I wanted one day to have children with a woman who I had fallen in love with (it's not unusual for me to fantasize about a future with a child with a woman who I had fallen in love with), but I don't see either marriage or children ever happening for me. I hate mental illness for ruining my life, but I'll hate my life even more if I get kicked off SSDI. As an atheist who believes in biology (I never chose to be an atheist, I'm just kind of hardwired to not be religious in the same way some men are hardwired to be gay), I see life pair off and reproduce itself, and I believe that's the purpose of life, or at least of my life as a straight man, but I don't believe I'll ever be able to achieve my purpose as a lifeform. I've heard LGBTQIA+ people like Lady Gaga say things like "God makes no mistakes… I was born this way", but I think that's a load of overly nice bullshit people say to spread positive feelings and make other people feel good. When a horse has a baby with a visible birth defect, it is not uncommon for her to kill her baby after it's born (in some other species the mother eats the unhealthy or deformed cubs). Like the horse born with a birth defect, I am defective, a mistake, and I believe I as a human being at least deserve the right to put myself to sleep forever in the manner of my choosing, in accordance with my personal beliefs.
It is 3/19/2023 and I thought of one more social/interpersonal thing that is wrong with me. I've heard it said that if you just be yourself, people will gravitate to you. When I just be myself, people describe me as "exhausting", "obsessed with myself", "like a cross between autistic and narcissistic", or actually seem to want to get away from me or unsubscribe to me, or at the very least don't like the interaction with me (the most success I've ever had while online dating was actually by pretending and faking interest, which may have given them the impression that I love them as a person, but that put me in an immense amount of distress by setting off my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" that I talked about before). In high school my nickname was "Sheldon Cooper" from the TV show The Big Bang Theory because of how I was in my social interactions (I didn't watch this show until after I graduated from there but when I did watch it I became aware of how insulting that nickname is). I think the phenomenon of people not liking me being myself or not liking interacting with me is most evident in people's experiences with my social media, especially my Facebook, where I express my inner self. In "normal" people's social media, they seem to want to appear friendly, welcoming, and happy, and share the good feelings. It seems that they want to invite the viewer in. My social media seems to be the opposite of that. Whereas a normal person's social media might include photos of smiling people and say something like "had a wonderful time with my beloved <INSERT_PERSON>" and get lots of likes, my social media might say something like "I hate my life and wish for euthanasia" (where a doctor puts me to sleep forever) and get no likes despite having some views. Like I look at my social media and it's horrible (it's not uncommon for people who see it to unfollow me on Facebook or unfriend me). Or my social media will share way too much information about myself in a one-sided manner such that nobody cares to read it (except for maybe my mother). To give you an idea of the kind of stuff I post on social media, I have in the past taken quotes out of this essay/journal and posted it on social media. My cousin Karina ("Kara") doesn't have a Facebook, but I wanted to share my posts with her because I wanted to be close to her, so I started emailing them to her and some other people who I like or who were significant in my life, and she replied telling me to stop emailing her (which I guess is not surprising because it was mostly me ranting about how I can't get a girlfriend, making educated guesses about what is wrong with me that is the reason, and ultimately saying "I've kinda just accepted that I'm going to die alone"). I thought her telling me to stop emailing her was brutal because if she wasn't relatively close family I wouldn't have shared my inner self with her, but apparently she didn't like my inner self, and from personal experience nobody does, but that's the natural, authentic me. Another person, my neighbor Willy, responded to my email list by writing "John, I appreciate that you thought of me enough to add me onto this email list, but I don't use gmail to read people's navel-gazing rants. Please remove me. Thank you." I realized that nobody wanted to read me express my inner self, so for like a day (on April 13, 2023) I tried to pretend to be a different person, and tried to show love, care, and interest in others (even though in reality I don't care), but pretending made me hate myself and ultimately I ended up taking out those feelings on my mother who I live with (she was like "maybe we need to raise the dose of your medication because you are acting really moody and antisocial towards me"), and then I realized that no making people who don't matter to me like me is worth destroying my relationship with my mother, so I stopped that and then went back to normal. I am who I am and that's who I will be. Going back to my Facebook, I get very little interaction with my posts on social media. One person who I used to play pool with (Willy, the guy who unsubscribed to my emails) told me that when he sees a Facebook posts of mine, he reads it and silently judges me without interacting with it (as do other people), and he said that I should keep the stuff I post on social media in my head. He said my posts show no awareness of other people, they're often like I'm thinking out loud. My mother looked at one of my Facebook posts on May 12, 2023 and read it out loud with me and the impression I got from it was that it was like I showed no mental awareness of other people, I guess I'm sort of mentally blind to other people, especially when I am writing or posting to the void. One guy who I sometimes used to eat lunch with in high school told me over Facebook messenger that I "overshare my distress" on social media. My mother told me that I provide way too much information about myself on social media and that other people don't care. She said that I shouldn't just dump my personal shit on social media, but I do it anyway. One woman with a traumatic brain injury and mental health problems who I had sex with a few times in college when I was 18 (I kind of became obsessed with her and wanted to become her boyfriend but she told me I would "make a horrible boyfriend", which fucking hurt) but who later cut off all contact with me (she sent one or maybe two short email replies after blocking me on social media and blocking my phone), before cutting off contact with me, told me in an email that she could not call me a friend (despite me believing that she was my closest and most enduring female friend) and that "you don't know what people are going through [mentally], and based on my interactions with you and on what I've seen of your social media presence [which is mostly self-focused/self-interested/self-centered/narcissistic ranting on Facebook], you don't care." I don't know, but I guess that makes sense given that I never ask people I know (or used to know) how they're doing (perhaps I don't care). She used to be the only person other than my mother who regularly liked my posts on Facebook, but I never looked at her Facebook posts unless I developed an obsession with her and was sort of cyber-stalking her (which was when I would go on her Facebook wall and her Instagram and go through all her old photos/posts at once, and then chat with her to try to pull her back to me). Switching to a different woman, one time I matched with a woman on a dating app and she asked me "how are you?" and I replied that I wanted to kill myself, and she was like "I can't handle this shit from a stranger" and unmatched me. I don't know. I really didn't mind at all that she unmatched me. I don't really know why I am the way I am. Maybe I am mentally unaware of other people (I mean I'm aware that other people exist, I can see them with my eyes, but maybe mentally it's like I am all there is)? It's okay, I don't feel that I really need any friends. I guess I write about what is significant to me and what I care about, and really all that is is me and my personal struggles in life. Like I generally agree with the Democrats on most issues, but I don't care about the world being destroyed by global warming because only 4°F of warming is predicted by year 2100 and by the time year 2100 rolls around I'll be dead. Like at this point in life my greatest desire and greatest source of happiness is food that I want to eat. Like I might feel like "I want a chicken sandwich" or maybe a chicken burrito or something but there is no cooked chicken in the fridge, so I struggle despite my muscle rigidity to get to the nearest restaurant to my house to buy food (sometimes I can't walk but I can scooter so I use that), and if I manage to make it and eat the food I feel happy, and really at this point in my life that is my #1 source of happiness and my biggest concern. I am concerned that if my disability benefits get cut I won't be able to get food. My mother already told me that if my disability benefits get cut she won't give me any money and I have to pay her rent to sleep in the bedroom I grew up in (I get a great deal on rent relative to what a stranger would charge), so I would really be in a predicament if I get kicked off benefits.
It is 4/16/2023 and I noticed something interpersonally different between myself and other people that I wanted to add to this essay, but I didn't know where to add it, so I'm adding it here. Sometimes people on my Facebook make posts that say things like "I feel like I'm going insane" or "I feel very depressed today" or "feeling very not good today 😢" or something like that. I've noticed that most people, if they respond to these posts, they respond by long holding on the "👍like" button and then selecting the "sad" emoji (😢) or maybe the "care" emoji (🫂) or perhaps writing a comment asking "why?". I know I could select one of those responses, and I know that if I wanted to show sympathy I would select one of those, but instead I just give it a regular "👍like", which to me is sort of equivalent to me commenting "cool". I mean it's not like I want them to feel sad today, but I also don't care that they're feeling sad today, I just like that they're sharing their feelings publicly and I'm letting them know I saw their post. Like I am aware of what the sympathetic response would be, it's just that to me it seems like everyone is so distant from me that the emotional distance makes me not care (or maybe I just don't feel their feelings). Like if I wrote a post on Facebook that said "feeling very depressed today" and one person responded with the "😢" emoji and another person responded with "👍like", I would get the impression that the first person cares about my feelings and sympathizes and the second person doesn't care and doesn't sympathize. My normal response is like the second person. There is some ambiguity as to what "empathy" or "sympathy" is, like what exactly is a person who lacks those things. Like if I informed you about a person in central Africa with the same name as yourself who has clinical depression right now, your response would probably be "I don't care" or at the very least "none of my concern". That's not a sign that you have a lack of empathy (you are aware that clinical depression sucks), your response is just a result of great interpersonal distance, so you don't sympathize as much. That being said, if your loved one (who you are close to) had clinical depression, you would probably care. If you didn't care about that, then that would be a sign that you lack sympathy (some people would use the word "empathy" in this context, but empathy is more about the ability to put yourself into someone else's shoes through mental projection while sympathy is more about feeling their pain or suffering yourself). Like to me it just feels like every other human (except maybe my mom) is so distant that they're like that random stranger on another continent, if that makes any sense, so I don't sympathize with them. Like I can tell if someone's voice sounds happy or sad or if their face looks visibly depressed or whatever (I may not suck in their sadness like some sort of empath but I can recognize that a person is depressed). In that regard I have social ability, and I can mentally project between them and myself, indicating that I have empathy (which is like "theory of mind", which I'll talk about later), I just lack sympathy. Like some people think people with autism lack sympathy, or that people with Antisocial Personality Disorder lack sympathy, or that a military leader lacks sympathy, but really these are different things. Like people with autism have trouble determining whether other people are interested in their speaking or are showing certain emotions, but once they do determine those things, they may have the same response as a neurotypical person, so perhaps a better way of describing what they have is a lack of social awareness or ability rather than a lack of sympathy. I don't have autism. A person with Antisocial Personality Disorder may take pleasure in and have no remorse about beating the shit out of someone they don't like or aren't friends with, or breaking up their marriage or something like that, but part of the reason they take joy in those things is because they know it hurts the other person. Like it's not like people with Antisocial Personality Disorder aren't aware that punching someone in the face hurts, they just enjoy causing pain. Like what they actually have (in many cases) is sadism. I don't have that. Lastly, the military leader. A military leader has to give orders that result in people getting killed. When people inevitably do get killed, they don't cry over it. Is this a lack of sympathy? I think it is. In that regard I think I have the same lack of sympathy that a military leader would have. Like I feel like I could give orders that would result in many deaths, no problem. I mean I don't want people to die, but I also wouldn't cry over it, if that makes any sense. That being said, I'm still a nice person to strangers. I enjoy giving money to homeless people. When I shake someone's hand for the first time I automatically and involuntarily smile. When a stranger on Reddit asks a question about something that I know I can help with I like providing that help. Like just because I don't personally care about or feel your feelings doesn't mean that I'm not going to be nice. One therapist said that it seems like I have issues with "theory of mind", which is like visualizing other people's minds, but I don't think that's correct, and here's an example of why. I can visualize you as the person reading this as being very bored (you don't care, this is not interesting to you). I can visualize how excruciatingly long this read is for you (and it will only get worse as this body of writing drags on). I just don't care. I am aware of how dismissive that previous sentence is of your feelings and how asshole-ish it comes off. I am able to put myself into your shoes; I have theory of mind, which is closely related to empathy. It may seem like I don't have conscious awareness, but I do, I just don't give a damn about how incredibly bored you are by reading this (you probably gave up reading before getting to this point). What I lack is not theory of mind or empathy but sympathy. I can visualize your emotions, but I am not sympathetic to them (they are sort of separate from me). Pretty much everyone (except maybe my mother and myself) is nothing to me. Perhaps that is why I have no relationships to other people (I use the word "to" rather than "with" because it's possible for someone else to have imaginary attachment to me in their mind without having a real, bidirectional relationship with me as a person, and it's possible for me to have the same sort of thing towards like a crush or minor celebrity or something). It's not other people; it's me (well in rare cases there is something wrong with the other person, but the vast majority of the time there is nothing wrong with the other person and something wrong with me).
It is 4/16/2023 and I thought about some more examples of how I lack sympathy. There have been instances where people I know have died. For example, that therapist who said she thinks I lack "theory of mind" died of breast cancer. My high school biology teacher died of old age related reasons (I saw the post on Facebook, people other than me responded with sad 😢 emojis). My grade school football coach (I didn't take football or know him personally) died in a motorcycle accident. In all these cases, I was not sympathetic. With the therapist and the teacher, my response to their deaths was something like "good, I didn't like them" (the therapist insistently accused me of lying when I wasn't lying and the biology teacher gave me an F on my science project and did some other little things like ask for food from kid's lunches in exchange for extra credit and accidentally showed the same educational video two days in a row). Like I genuinely don't care that they died (maybe the therapist should have received physician assisted suicide to make her death painless, but other than that I have no problem with her death). With the school football coach my reaction was like "that idiot shouldn't have been riding a motorcycle at 2AM". During the football coach's in-school funeral that I was required to attend I vaguely remember Cathy (my first crush) sitting next to me (we were just friends) and saying something like "you're being disrespectful" because I was playing some game or doing homework or something in my chair during the funeral (which I will admit in retrospect was disrespectful), and I don't know if I said this out loud at the time but I was like "dude shouldn't have been riding a motorcycle at 2AM". Like I understand that death by motorcycle accident must be very painful and that normal, mentally healthy people don't desire to die, but you gotta take care of your life if you want to live. I dunno. Like if someone who diets and exercises all their life dies of heart disease at 50 that's unfortunate, but if you consumed lots of sweets, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola all your life (which I intentionally don't do ever) and that happens, what I believe is you kind of brought it upon yourself, and I have a similar attitude towards the football coach. No sympathy.
It is 4/21/2023 and this will be my last paragraph on social/interpersonal stuff before going on to the fifth reason I'm not working. I once saw Rick Scott, one of my two Florida state senators, say in a speech that he has five perfect grandchildren (I think the number is more now). Aww, how cute. I can guarantee you that they are not actually all perfect, and if that's not apparent at early ages, I'm sure one of them eventually will like maybe get addicted to drugs or develop a mental illness or something else that is definitely not perfect. That being said, people say stuff like "you're perfect, exactly as God made you" to show love. On Instagram, from the account @stayclosetoyourself_ , I saw a post that says "people that love you care about how they make you feel". They say things like "you're perfect just the way you are", or when someone (like Ally, who I talked about before) texts "how is my math?" they text back something nice like "you know, it could be better, but even Einstein failed at math" (which by the way is an untrue thing that she believes) instead of texting what I texted, which was more like "you are unintelligent and would be better off applying for jobs like being a bagger at a grocery store or a dishwasher", which I'm sure made her feel bad or inferior even though I believe it's true. If the quote "people that love you [as a person] care about how they make you feel", then I don't really love other people [as a person]. I mean I believe I love my mother (if I don't love her, then I don't love anyone on Earth). She is very loving (to me, and I'll refrain from saying anything bad about her because I guess I love her in the way I am capable of having love for another person, so at least we're close), but if she died and I had to pay for her death/funeral expenses I would spend the least amount of money possible (it's not like she would be alive to enjoy her own funeral). So yeah, mom, if you're reading this, set aside your own money for that stuff before it happens and make plans for that yourself. So yeah, that's kind of how I am. Multiple people who I have met in my college and adult life have told me that I'm nice, but the person in this essay is the real, inner me. Instead of telling people what would make them feel good or what they want to hear, I tell them what I believe to be factually true. I guess I can have like a feeling in my heart, but perhaps my love is like the sort of love one could have for an inanimate object, sort of like how "I love sushi" or the feeling I get when I see or pet cute animals, if that makes any sense. I don't care about sushi's feelings, but I love sushi, and I guess that's the sort of love I have. I can see other people's feelings, and I can sometimes even predict how they would feel in response to something (like I'll have a feeling like "they probably won't like this" just as I'm about to hit "send"), but I do not care about their feelings enough (i.e. love them enough as a person) to say something that I do not believe to be factually true to make them feel good or to boost their self-esteem. Like there was this one trans woman I followed on Instagram due to her leftist content, and in addition to that she also posts gym selfies on her Instagram story, and to one of the gym selfie stories I was about to privately reply "nice body for a trans woman", but I changed it to "very nice body for a trans woman" because I wanted to compliment her. She created a public follow up story screenshotting my response and writing (I don't remember the exact words but it was like) "WTF is wrong with some people, this is not a compliment 🤣". I thought it was a compliment because I am straight and biologically male features (which a lot of trans women have) disgust me sexually and I could not see any on her, and I said all that to her in a private reply to her follow-up story. She was very hurt by that and wrote something like "yeah, well you have female features and you're ugly and I would never have sex with you" and then blocked me. LOL. I'm sorry, miss. I mean I was a fan, but what am I supposed to write, "gorgeous 😍". Haha, I would never write that. I don't feel that. If I did write that it would just feel like I was lying or pretending, and it might trigger my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" that I talked about before. As another example, I was messaging with a religious woman on Instagram who publicly declared that she wanted a husband and kids, and I was like "omg I would like a wife and kids", and she started writing about how God fearing and Jesus loving she is, and my reply was "okay, I'm not religious but I don't care if someone else is religious" (which I felt was not what she wanted to hear), and she responded by blocking me immediately. Like what am I supposed to do, lie and say "omg me too, let's get married and make babies together"? I believe it is impossible for me to be authentic and also have and sustain relationships with other people. Like I have some form of empathy in that I can hear happiness in someone's voice or see sadness on their face (I have looked at a very depressed person's face and posture and been able to tell that they are depressed) and I can (at least sometimes) tell when someone is not going to like what I'm about to communicate to them, but I have no choice but to communicate it because the alternative would be to lie or pretend or have panic attacks (via my "Relationship Destruction Reflex"). I mentioned "Relationship Forming Vibes" before and how I can't give them off without triggering my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" panic response. Like even if I wanted to try and give other people good, positive feelings, like for example via my social media posting, I can't do it, and I have tried multiple times. If I made a social media post that gave off bad feelings and was sort of self-focused or self-centered and said something like "I'm hungry but can't walk to the nearest restaurant due to muscle rigidity in my legs, fuck my life", that would not trigger my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" and I would be fine posting it, but if I made a post that gave off good feelings and was you-focused or you-centered instead and said (for example) "your job is not to be liked by everyone, your job is to be and love yourself", it would trigger my unrelenting panic response and I would be forced to delete it (and I have tried to post this exact quote three times and had to delete it each and every time). The analogy I like to give is if every time you give someone a hug you experience a panic attack or a painful electric shock, you're going to stop wanting to give hugs. My "Relationship Destruction Reflex" is kind of like that, except instead of it being giving other people hugs it is giving other people love for them as a person which gives them good feelings (especially good feelings about themselves), which is what I call "Relationship Forming Vibes". This is an update on 7/17/2023, but I've been recording myself with my phone while interacting with people and I kind of get the impression that even though I understand that other people have wants, I really don't care about their wants because the only person's wants I care about are my wants. This works fine for transactional things like I want a sandwich and you want money so I give you money in exchange for a sandwich, but this mentality doesn't work for things like marriage and having children with another person. But yeah, by this point I've made my best effort in that area of life and I'm done with the whole trying to date and have relationships with other people thing - by this point everyone who used to be a friend to me in real life has left me or told me not to contact them anymore. Sometimes I see parents with children and think I would love that myself, and I have decided against getting a vasectomy because I actually want to have a child even though absolutely nobody wants to be the mother of my child, but yeah, I've basically given up at this point.
Motivation Issues
Anyway, finally going off that long tangent about my social issues, the fifth reason I'm not working is that I have no motivation (note: this fluctuates over time with my mood, which changes to a very large extent with no outside interface despite me taking psychiatric medication). I often don't enjoy doing the things I used to enjoy (reading, watching TV/movies, listening to music, playing video games, browsing the web, etc), a symptom called "anhedonia" (note: in the first half of year 2022 I had severe anhedonia and actively desired to die and thought about killing myself repeatedly, but this changed to some extent in the second half of 2022). It’s not uncommon for me to want to die, and I spend most of my time laying in bed or just hanging out with my mother, who is the only person I am close to due to my lack of close friends, a girlfriend, or other close relationships. At the time of writing I don't have the motivation or concentration to do much of anything (except maybe watch less than a minute long TikTok videos of hot young women called e-girls doing cute dances) - like I wrote earlier in this essay, even paying attention for the entire duration of a TV show is a feat for me. My life is so pointless and I wish I were never born so that I wouldn’t have to go through the effort and the pain of committing suicide. I am a worthless individual. To be honest, what I really want and have wanted for years is for a doctor to quickly and painlessly put me to sleep forever. I have never believed in God (well maybe God created The Big Bang and then allowed everything in the universe to happen on its own according to the laws of physics from then on, but I definitely don't believe in Hell) so I have no fear of upsetting God or any religious rules by killing myself, and also I don't believe God put me on this Earth for any special purpose, so I don't see me dying as a loss or anything like that. Anyway, I tried three different antidepressants (Prozac, Viibryd, and Wellbutrin) and they didn’t help. Talking to professionals might have actually made it worse. I have literally nothing to live for and no psychiatric medication or talk therapy can change that. Heck, even when I don't feel sad or depressed at all, I think to myself that I wouldn't mind if I died; I serve no purpose. I don't know why I exist. I'm a total loser - I have failed at every significant thing I have tried to attain, from career success to relationship success. I was a very ambitious kid; I wanted to go to Harvard or MIT, become a psychiatrist or CEO, get married, have kids, and become a politician. None of my dreams in life materialized as I envisioned; I didn't even get close. Some Christians believe if you commit suicide that's a sin and can impact your ability to go to Heaven, but I don't believe in that stuff. Wanting a physician assisted suicide is not something that I only experience when depressed or anhedonic - I truly believe that there is nothing for me in this world and my life basically now consists of passing time doing pointless things like scrolling through Reddit or TikTok on my phone before I eventually one day die alone, single, with no children, having accomplished nothing.
Additional Information Including Neurological Issues
Speaking of having nothing to live for, if I get kicked off disability, I anticipate making a suicide attempt. Please do not contribute to me killing myself. I feel trapped in my life and don't see any other way out. Also, being on disability is not fun for me (I mean it's better than being unable to get and keep a job and also not getting disability benefits, but I never chose this life). I hate my disabilities so much and deeply wish that I were a non-disabled, normal, functional human being (in both work and social life).
Also, it is of note that the core, positive symptoms of my form of bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type) are not what make me unable to work. In the past, I did my job while I perceived the walls were shimmering (note that this might actually be a neurological symptom and not a schizophrenic hallucination, see later paragraphs). I showed up to work depressed but still showed up (when I was 13 or 14 I had depression so severe that I couldn't move or get out of bed, but the severity of my depressions since that first one have been less than that). I got fired for delusional manic psychosis, but that didn’t stop me from finding another job in the past. These other things like the specific cognitive deficits, Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder, inability to safely drive myself, and social issues are what make me unable to work, not the core symptoms of my schizoaffective disorder (or maybe it's actually some form of bipolar disorder, I don't know). And my medication does not help with these non-core symptoms (in fact I don't even know if it helps with the core symptoms - I have so many symptoms and they all get better or worse or even vanish entirely all the time for no visible reason and with no intervention, so if I take a medication and then one symptom gets better or worse, or even goes away entirely, I don't know if that happened because of the medication or if the timing was a coincidence). Regardless of whether I take or don't take medication, I am still unable to work. To be honest the only reason I even bother with medication is I'm afraid of getting kicked off disability during a Continuing Disability Review if I refuse medication - my medication is (at the time of writing, before April 2023) in the form of a long-acting injection so it's not like a pill that I can just skip taking - if I refuse a nurse will note it and it can count as treatment noncompliance which can look bad during a disability case.
One additional thing that I'd like to mention. I have experienced all sorts of unexplained neuro-psychiatric symptoms over the years. For example, there was a point where for no reason, and without any emotional response, tears would roll down my face or I would randomly burst into laughter (this is called "pseudobulbar affect"). There was a point where parts of my body would shake or random muscles would involuntarily contract, but no seizure activity showed up on an EEG (Dr. Alberto Pinzon did a 4 hour video EEG in South Florida on 4/27/2020 and I pushed a button when I experienced weird stuff from my brain or partial-body shaking, but he didn't see any seizure activity in the readings, so he classified these phenomena as "pseudo-seizures" or "non-epileptic seizures", which is the new name for "pseudo-seizures" because people used to think that if they were "pseudo" that people were just acting out, but they're not). There was a point when my handwriting got small for no reason, like what sometimes happens with people with Parkinson's disease, but I didn't have Parkinson's Disease. There was a point where my speech temporarily involuntarily changed and it started sounding like I was talking in a foreign accent (called "Foreign Accent Syndrome"). According to Wikipedia, that syndrome is usually caused by strokes, but neurologist Dr. Howard Kreger ordered a brain MRI of me and it showed no sign of past stroke, brain tumor, or any other abnormality other than a little structural deformity around one of my brain's hippocampi which has no known cause and according to the person who wrote the MRI report may be congenital (although my mother and father's brain MRI's didn't have it). There was a point where light sources would suddenly start twinkling and my eyes would be pulled towards them, symptoms which resemble occipital lobe seizures, but again I never showed any seizure activity on an EEG. There was a point where I would be looking directly at an object, like a stop sign, and it would appear closer than it actually is or bigger and then it would appear the reverse, over and over again in a come-go-come-go or on-off-on-off pattern, a symptom called "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome", which according to Wikipedia can be associated with a variety of different things like brain lesions or migraines, but my brain MRI showed no brain lesions and this symptom didn't go along with any sort of a headache. Sometimes I hear a loud ringing in one ear that comes and goes repeatedly, and sometimes I randomly have double vision (where my eyes go out of focus without me wanting them to), often repeatedly going in and out of focus for a period of time. I honestly can't recall or even describe all the random weird brain sensations and symptoms that I have experienced, and I left some that I can out for brevity. Maybe every 2-10 months (starting in year 2017 or 2018) a new symptom or group of symptoms appears and an old one or an old set of symptoms goes away. Also, symptoms at a given point in time sometimes appear to all affect the same area of the brain, like there was a time when most of my symptoms resembled various kinds of simple partial seizures of the temporal lobe of the brain (ex. feeling of strange familiarity or deja vu, sudden very intense fear, smelling an unpleasant burnt smell), so they all affect that part of the brain, but the temporal lobe symptoms have since all gone away and my symptoms have moved on to a different area of my brain, so it's like the affected area of my brain moves over time. It's almost like whatever condition I actually have can produce almost any brain-related symptom (depending on which area of my brain it's affecting), from involuntary contractions in any muscle in my body or face to various sensations including pain (like in my fingers and toes). The symptoms appear in "clumps", though, like there was a time when the involuntary muscle contractions were happening mostly in my right arm, so maybe there is a part of my brain that corresponds to that part of my body, but again the affected area of my brain and corresponding symptoms "move" over time. I have no explanation for any of it and no doctor has ever been able to explain any of it. My diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type) doesn't encompass most of the stuff I go through, but "doctors don't really know" isn't in the SSA blue book, and since I have a history of mood issues and delusions, that's the closest diagnosis that I could get and it describes what was seen in the past. I do not believe that diagnosis is 100% accurate and it does not capture all or even most of the symptoms that I go through (and it might even be a misdiagnosis - for example some other rare, undiagnosed neurological disorder may have caused all or some of my symptoms or maybe I actually have bipolar disorder with some rare undiagnosed neurological condition). I suspect that it's some sort of rare evolution of bipolar disorder that changes over time, but nobody truly knows although they might make assumptions based on what they see during a snapshot in time. Anyway, doctors tend to avoid writing down in the medical records that they don't know, like when the epileptologist Dr. Alberto Pinzon put down "pseudo-seizures" in my medical records, the reality is that pseudo-seizures virtually always resemble whole body shaking or passing out or in rare cases staring into space, not the symptoms I've had which more closely resemble simple partial seizures or focal aware seizures (but without the accompanying readings on an EEG, so they're not "real" focal aware seizures), and I can't find any record of pseudo-seizures having ever resembled what I have, so I think he was just writing down the closest thing he could think of but I believe the reality is he doesn't know. These pseudo-seizures which resemble simple partial seizures also are disabling because they happen all the time (sometimes over a hundred times an hour, at least in year 2022), on most days of the week, and they are very distracting. They are part of my cognitive issues. I don't believe anybody actually understands internally what's wrong with my brain or knows how to fix it - the human brain is very poorly understood from a medical perspective in comparison to other parts of the body. Like in 2019 I went to outpatient behavioral health (a place called FHE Health in Florida) after a psychiatric hospitalization and a doctor there gave me a diagnosis of "conversion disorder" based on involuntarily partial body shaking (also at the time I needed a cane to walk), but conversion disorder, like functional neurologic disorder, is based on a diagnosis where no physiological cause can be identified - all the tests show up normal. Rather than writing "I don't know the cause of these symptoms", doctors like neurologists write down big words like "functional neurologic disorder", sometimes even in cases where the symptoms do not match the symptoms typically seen for this diagnosis, just because "I don't know" isn't something they explicitly write out. Instead of explicitly writing "I don't know", they do other things like refer you to someone else, who refers you to someone else, who writes down a made up diagnosis like "conversion disorder" or "functional neurologic disorder" that is not based on any real biological cause. With my conversion disorder diagnosis that I was given at outpatient behavioral health, the psychiatrist basically said "I can't treat this" and referred me to the therapist for treatment, and the therapist said "I can't treat this", and referred me back to the psychiatrist, so I was in a loop and nobody could do anything about my symptoms. According to the Wikipedia page on functional neurologic disorder, "neurological symptoms which are unexplained by organic disease are common in neurological services, accounting for up to one third of outpatient neurology clinic attendances, and associated with as much self-reported disability and distress as those caused by organic neurological disorders." Basically, when it comes to the human brain, stuff like this is not that rare and despite that, doctors really don't know, but it can be disabling nonetheless. Also, I found an online Reddit/Discord group for people with a conversion disorder diagnosis, and despite these people all having the same diagnosis, they all had different neurological symptoms - the only thing most of them seemed to have in common is a history of or concurrent psychiatric diagnosis. We are in many cases unfixable and unhelpable. We like to think that modern medicine is so advanced, but when it comes to the human brain it’s really not - doctors don’t even know how lithium works and it’s been FDA approved for classic type 1 bipolar disorder since 1970. This is an update on April 3, 2023, but today I saw Memorial Healthcare System neurologist and epileptologist Tarek Zakaria and after I showed him all this stuff, he didn't have any scan or blood test which I haven't already had that could show a visible, physical, biological cause, and he didn't know what my condition was based on the symptoms, and suggested maybe I try some sort of psychological, brain-performance testing, but I refused because I was afraid, given my high or even very high IQ test scores (like over 125) in the past, that such testing would show above average cognitive abilities in certain or even most areas and then I would have a Continuing Disability Review and these above average scores will be used to try and get me kicked off benefits, so I said I'll delay such testing until after my Continuing Disability Review. Also, I know I mentioned pseudo-seizures, but most of my old pseudo-seizures by this point have been replaced by involuntarily muscle contractions that come and go with similar frequency as the old pseudo-seizures, so I think they're linked in the same condition. Really a whole lot of my symptoms over the past 5+ years have all had a similar repetitive come-and-go or on-off-on-off pattern, so I think they're all linked in the same underlying condition even though the symptoms over time appear different, but I do not know the name of that underlying condition and neither does anyone else. This is an update on April 13, 2023, but while sleeping last night I was woken up by a flashing white light that I saw even though my eyes were closed, a loud ringing noise in one ear (like tinnitus) that came and went and then switched to the other ear, and a sensation of horror. Sometimes a sudden really intense fear is a symptom of a simple partial seizure. I don't know what the hell it is, but no drug I've ever tried appeared to have any effect on whatever condition this is, so at this point I just ignore it and don't talk about it.
Here's an additional thing that I’d like to mention. Some time in 2022 I believe I switched from seeing Dr. Alexander Pushka to APRN Edgar Matamoros for psychiatric treatment because Dr. Pushka was billing me each time I saw him for CPT code (insurance billing procedure code) 90833 - 30 minute psychotherapy - in addition to the CPT code for a regular office visit, but he never actually did any psychotherapy. Like each appointment basically consisted of Dr. Pushka asking “how are you?”, me saying “fine”, him injecting me with the antipsychotic medication Invega, and then me leaving. I think he was trying to squeeze extra money out of my insurance on each visit. Also, I don’t think it was an honest mistake because in the “psychotherapy” section of the medical records he would make stuff up and put it in there which gave the impression that actual psychotherapy happened. Oftentimes he would just copy-paste from a previous record. Edgar Matamoros’s medical records aren’t perfect (like one time he unintentionally put in that I was “noncompliant” instead of that I had a history of noncompliance, which is why I was on the monthly injection instead of the daily pill at the time, but in the next month's medical record he fixed that). This error concerned me because I heard of people getting kicked off of or rejected for SSDI due to treatment noncompliance, and I really don’t want to get kicked off because I genuinely can't work, but I think APRN Matamoros just made a transient little honest mistake where as with Dr. Pushka I think it was more consistent, intentional fraud. I wanted to record my sessions with Dr. Pushka using the microphone on my phone to prove that there was no psychotherapy and he was just making up the stuff in the medical records, but in the state of Florida it is illegal to record a conversation without everyone's consent and if I just filed a complaint it would be Dr. Pushka’s word against mine and he would get away with it and might have retaliated. I’ve seen about four or five actual therapists including two psychiatrists who did actual therapy in addition to prescribing medication (with Dr. Mark Root in Michigan it was one-on-one therapy and with Dr. Lewis Winkler in Washington D.C. he oversaw group therapy sessions with me in them) and I never made any progress in therapy or got anything out of it. I don’t have any desire to talk to or see a therapist, and if I were forced to see one I think I would just stare at them and not say anything or ask to leave or not see them anymore after I have given them my backstory. This sentence is being added on April 5, 2023, but basically today I was thinking of maybe going back to an old therapist to try and get treatment for my personality (I saw no change or effect from seeing her before), and I concluded that I do not want to say anything to her or see her (even if it were free), and that this isn't specific to just this therapist. By and large, the issues that I face have no cure and there is nothing I (or anyone else, I believe) can do about them - talking doesn’t help. My plan is to stay on Social Security until I either die of old age or commit suicide.
Here is the third-to-last paragraph of this essay containing the final reason why I’m not working, and it’s one that people often don’t talk about. I don’t want to. I remember working for Amazon as a computer programmer and waking up every morning not wanting to go to work. I remember struggling every day to do everything in my power to avoid getting fired for as long as possible. I was never good at any job I've ever had. I remember being slower and less capable than everyone else at my job, and needing help from a very kind, very patient, more experienced person (sort of like a mentor employee) on almost every task. A person who I was lucky to have helping me through the job, but who will not be there at every job (he and I don't talk anymore; I tried to reach out to him, no reply). I remember breaking the work rules during my most recent work attempt by emailing work from my work email to my home email to try and get ahead by putting in extra work at home, and being unable to do the work even with extra hours. It didn’t matter how many extra hours I put in because I literally couldn’t do the job beyond the level of an intern or new hire - other people learned to do it with experience but I didn’t learn. I remember getting fired for delusional manic psychosis without being told that I was crazy - I just got a text to meet my recruiter and bring my work laptop and keycard and he just collected them and that was the end of that job. No warning, no explanation. The Social Security Administration likes to talk about “financial independence through work”, but the reality is that financial independence through work really means financial dependence on private corporations and the loss of the federal government as a source of money. Once you start receiving money from the federal government, it is hard to completely cut you off. In order to get kicked off SSDI against your will, multiple people at multiple different levels have to come to that decision. You can hire a lawyer, fight it, and appeal repeatedly (something that I will do if necessary). You can contact a politician asking for help with a federal agency. With private corporations in the US on the other hand, you are an at-will employee and at-will employment is law. That means they can fire you at any point without ever specifying a reason. A manager or a manager of managers at a private corporation can fire you just because they don’t like you or because they like someone else more. They can intentionally hire more people than they need, measure each person's performance without them knowing, and then without warning fire the bottom people after an arbitrary amount of time (and in some industries they do this sort of thing, it's called "hiring with the intent to fire" or hiring extra people so there are "sacrificial limbs" to cut when higher management reduces budget as they are expected to). Some companies who need computer programmers will hire contractors, often through a third party, for some time duration specified in their contract and only hire them directly as full time employees if they're good, allowing their contracts to expire for the rest (this is called "contract-to-hire" and is something I've seen in the tech industry). While technically it is illegal for a private corporation in the US to fire someone because of their race, religion, or sexuality, private corporations have learned just to not give people a reason for their firing to avoid even the possibility of something like that being an issue - in many cases they leave you to figure out the reason you were fired. Like I assume that I was fired for delusional manic psychosis before I was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, but they never actually told me why they fired me, so I had to figure it out after the fact. Ultimately the federal government is a much more reliable source of money than private corporations, and it is much harder to get kicked off of SSDI against your will (especially if you can afford a lawyer and have sympathetic representatives) than it is to get fired from a private corporation, especially if there is something mentally wrong with you, and there is definitely something mentally wrong with me (even if my symptoms don't all fit into the box of a stereotypical mental condition). Also, I'm not good at keeping things concealed and potential employers can generally pick up that there's something wrong with me or that I don't want to work or don't care in the slightest about the company or the job. Like I could write a cover letter that says "looking for any job that will hire me - I don't care but I have impaired ability to pick up or learn work related things" (I didn't use these exact words when I actually was applying but I did indicate that the reason I was no longer seeking tech jobs was because of cognitive issues) and the general reaction was throwing my resume in the trash. After I was no longer able to do the job of a computer programmer but before I was awarded disability, I applied to virtually every job imaginable and in almost every case my application was ignored or rejected without even giving me an interview. According to the Wikipedia page for SSDI, SSDI was put into effect in 1956, at a time in US history when there were a lot of jobs like "nut sorter" or "bolt tightener on an assembly line", jobs where the work was completely menial and involved almost no brain work or human interaction. Those jobs have been replaced by machines or outsourced to poorer countries. There was a time in US history when someone with brain damage, no interest in seeing other people, and zero interest or passion could be employed doing something completely menial like tightening bolts on an assembly line (and make enough money doing it to buy a house with a few years worth of work), but that time is gone and is not coming back. Employers are looking for people where their job is more than just a job - they're not looking for someone who is seeking out any employer who will give them money in exchange for their time. On Feb 3, 2023 Joe Biden, from the Twitter account @POTUS, sent out a tweet that began with "my dad used to say, 'A job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity'." Well being recognized as officially disabled by the government and not just as a chronically unemployed loser who lives with his parents is in a way a form of recognition and dignity for me. When people ask me "what do you do for a living?" and I reply "I'm on disability due to issues involving my brain", that gives me a justification or excuse which is better than just saying "I am chronically/permanently unemployed". People who are chronically/permanently unemployed without being officially recognized as disabled are perceived as lazy, entitled, freeloading parasites who suck money out of their parents who earned it. That form SSA-1099 Social Security Benefit Statement that I get in the mail every year is more than just a tax form - it is proof and validation from the government that I am a real disabled person and not just some lazy freeloader. There is no dignity in begging for money. If I'm put in that situation I think I'd rather just kill myself.
It is January 5th 2023 and I had another thought, so now this will be the second to last paragraph. I have a representative payee, but I really do not believe I need one. I went on a manic bipolar spending and money giving away spree before I applied for disability, but I haven't since. I'm actually very financially responsible. While I could try to apply to no longer have a representative payee, I am afraid to do so because I heard no longer having a representative payee can trigger a long-form Continuing Disability Review which can result in being kicked off benefits, and that would be very bad for me because I have no other way of getting money (except maybe selling the fluid portion of my blood if I could convince my parents to drive me to a blood plasma donation place). Like I said, I tried everything from applying to every minimum wage job I could to applying to the armed forces to even applying to be a sperm donor - I can't make money (and I really don't want to have to sell the fluid portion of my blood for food money like some sort of blood cow, and selling as frequently as is allowed only pays a few hundred dollars a month anyway). There are some inconveniences associated with being assigned a representative payee, but I think the fact that the government has deemed me "not a competent adult" in this manner may be a good thing because if the government thinks I'm not competent to manage my own money, how can that same government think I'm competent to survive on my own without benefits? That's my thinking at least. Also, like I said before I don't really know if the medication I'm on, Invega, does anything other than give me sexual dysfunction (I was on Invega for about two or three months before my delusions that caused my psychiatric hospitalization went away, but my symptoms can go away on their own after a few months without any medication, so I don't actually know if that was a coincidence or not). In psychology and psychiatry there is this thing called an A-B-A-B test. From Google: "The A-B-A-B design represents an attempt to measure a baseline (the first A), a treatment measurement (the first B), the withdrawal of treatment (the second A), and the re-introduction of treatment (the second B)." If the condition gets better on every B and worse on the switch from B to A, it can be said that the treatment consistently produces the desired effect, but if it just so happens to get better from the first B but stay the same after the switch from B to A and then get worse on the second B, then the medication doesn't consistently make things better, so the improvement from the first B was a coincidence. I never had an A-B-A-B test with this medication. With some drugs like Adderall or Caffeine you don't need to do this sort of testing because the effects of the drug just hits you right away, but if it's a drug that takes weeks or months to work and symptoms come and go on their own in a matter of weeks or months as well then it's necessary to A-B-A-B test to know the effect wasn't a coincidence. My mother doesn't want me to discontinue medication, though, and my psychiatrist APRN Edgar Matamoros doesn't even want me to reduce the dose. When I first saw him I said the Invega I was on works well, but I never actually knew if it works well, I just said it does and stayed on the drug because I was afraid that if I went off the drug and had a Continuing Disability Review it would look like I didn't have schizoaffective disorder if I wasn't taking the drug Invega which is the only drug FDA approved for schizoaffective disorder. I imagine a Continuing Disability Review is sort of like a case and if I have the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder on my medical records and I'm taking the medication for schizoaffective disorder, that can build up the case that this is my disorder, but in reality I don't know if the medication works or if my diagnosis is even accurate given all the weird neurological stuff I also experience. I have some reasons to believe the diagnosis isn't accurate, for example from Wikipedia it says "the main criterion for a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder is the presence of psychotic symptoms for at least two weeks without any mood symptoms present", but in the past my delusions almost always went along with elevated mood, and also I never had schizophrenic style visual or auditory hallucinations like hearing voices or seeing angels and devils or spiders that aren't there or anything like that (I have heard a ringing noise that went along with my neurological symptoms but that's not schizophrenic auditory hallucinations and I have seen shimmering in my field of vision or lights twinkling but those are more like occipital lobe seizures or more properly occipital lobe pseudo-seizures, which is a neurological symptom, than schizophrenic visual hallucinations). Also I read that people with schizoaffective disorder have "disorganized speech and thinking" like people with schizophrenia do and I think based on the organization and clarity of my writing that this description does not apply to me. I was never the one who made the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, some psychiatrist at some mental hospital that I was involuntarily committed to (for thinking that the FBI was spying on me and threatening them if they wouldn't stop) made the diagnosis based on my symptoms at the time, and I don't know if the diagnosis he made is accurate, but I believe schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type) is what's on my medical records and is the condition I was granted disability benefits for (although maybe some other form of bipolar disorder was in there as well - I haven't actually seen any or at least most of the medical records that were sent over to Disability Determination Services when I initially applied for SSDI). The symptoms I've experienced over the years have all actually happened and there is definitely something wrong with me and my brain, but maybe my actual condition is something other than schizoaffective disorder. Anyway, I tried to tell my psychiatrist APRN Edgar Matamoros about the neurological stuff I also experience but it was hard for me to recall and describe most of the neurological stuff in words so I put it on paper and left the paper for him, but he was out that day so I left it to the front desk lady and told her to give it to him, but he never mentioned it so I don't know if he got it. I also tried to leave it as a note in MyChart (the medical records system) but he never replied to it or mentioned it or anything so I don't know if he read it. Even if he does read it, the neurologist Howard Kreger didn't know what my neurological symptoms were and again the EEG and brain MRI he ordered and the EEG epileptologist Alberto Pinzon ordered didn't show anything so I don't expect a psychiatrist would know either. I don't know. I think the right thing to do is conduct an A-B-A-B test on my Invega and settle the presence or absence of a cause-and-effect relationship between Invega and my delusions for sure (it would also clarify whether my difficulty walking is another neurological thing or an extrapyramidal side effect of the Invega), but again I imagine not taking psychiatric medication when I'm on disability for a psychiatric condition could hurt my case for my Continuing Disability Review, especially if the decision to go off medication goes against my psychiatrist's guidance. Honestly I'm so scared of my upcoming Continuing Disability Review that I saved this essay on my phone and I update it regularly. I also printed out short-form and long-form Continuing Disability Review forms and practiced filling them out to prepare for it. I'm so immensely nervous about it because I've never had a CDR before and if I get kicked off benefits I have no other way of getting money. My disability is not clear or obvious so I'm afraid about having to prove it.
It is January 26, 2023 and this is the last paragraph. I have recently been unable to walk more than a few steps, and even been unable to use my kick scooter for the last few days. In my neighborhood's gym there is also an arm bicycle for people whose legs don't work, but due to muscle rigidity I've been unable to use that either. I need some form of exercise and I have been unable to get any. Also, I can't get to the nearest place to my house that has food and my parents only cook one meal a day. I get hungry and can't get to food (also food delivery costs more than the food, although companies hide the full price by increasing the cost of the food and sneaking in fees and mandatory delivery driver tips at the end). These physical issues might be a side effect of my antipsychotic medication (a possible side effect is "extrapyramidal side effects" such as muscle rigidity, dystonias, muscle contractions, pseudo-Parkinsonism, etc). I just sent my psychiatrist, APRN Edgar Matamoros, a message on MyChart medical records system saying that I can't live like this and am discontinuing injections. I also let my pharmacy, health insurance, and the nurse who administers the injections know (just sent her a text, don't know if she got it). I have an emergency supply of Invega pills and I can go to the psychiatric hospital if necessary. Honestly, my biggest concern is that not taking psychiatric medication will be noticed during my Continuing Disability Review and could possibly negatively affect my benefits being renewed. I will still be seeing APRN Edgar Matamoros to keep him in the loop and to keep my medical records up to date. Update: APRN Matamoros called after getting my message and said he thinks my symptoms are caused by the medication and is allowing me to transition to a different formula (possibly the pill version). Honestly, I initially started having muscle rigidity before I started any formulation of this medication, even when I was on no medication, and it gets better and worse all the time even with no change in medication, so I don't know if there is necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship between the Invega and the muscle rigidity, but I'm not going to correct him for now. Honestly, nothing is known without an A-B-A-B test, which I talked about previously. Maybe there is some link to my weird neurological stuff. I sent APRN Matamoros a message on MyChart saying that I would like to be put on the lowest dose of Invega that they make, the 1.5mg daily pills, which is probably not a high enough dose to cause extrapyramidal side effects, but is enough to be able to show on my medical records that I am taking something for this schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type) which I don’t even know if I really have. The pill formulation would also save Medicare over $800 a month (the injections cost a lot more than the pills, especially if you buy the pills through celebrity entrepreneur Mark Cuban's https://costplusdrugs.com/ ). I’ll see what APRN Matamoros says on April 21, 2023. This is an update from April 21, but Matamoros sent the prescription for 1.5mg Invega (the lowest dose they make) to CostPlusDrugs, they received it, and I ordered it from there for a fraction of the price and plan to take it for the rest of my life. It came in the mail and I am taking it every day.
Sign Off with Date
John Michael Reed
Date this writing was completed: July 23, 2023