The Ever Deepening Rabbit Hole

     The worst part about this healing process is facing setbacks. I’m coming up on the three year anniversary of discovering that M. is a Narcissist. Rather than being a tree in full bloom, fully recovered from this betrayal, I feel more like a tree with dead, withered leaves. I had been healing. I was feeling pretty OK for the first time in three years. Then, another piece of my identity shattered as I began coming to grips with the idea that I have Asperger’s Syndrome. The newly sprouted leaves have suddenly become parched and threaten to fall to the ground.

     As I research Asperger’s, I have been questioning things that are so deeply rooted in my personality that I have never thought about being another way. I had mistaken  these “symptoms” for “personality quirks” and in many ways, these two labels equate to the same thing. For me the difference is in the fact that there are professionals out there who are more aware of my unique profile of abilities than I am. I only know that I am struggling with how to find a career that will allow me to have children and does not cause me a holy heart attack three times daily. I have been working at a gym because it is the most laid-back job I have ever had, yet it still stresses me out. People stress me out. Aggression stresses me out. The gym has this in loads. Yet, before I met M., I think I was better able to handle the stressors of that job than I am today. My theory is that I was a functioning “Aspie” (someone with Asperger’s) before I met M. and the trauma that he put me through resulted in me losing all of my coping mechanisms that had made me a “functioning Aspie.” One of many coping mechanisms that have been lost as a direct result of this trauma is weightlifting. This is something I had been participating in near religiously for the years prior to meeting M. When I met him, I was in the best physical shape of my life. He would often say he would like for me to take him to the gym and train him so he could reach his “genetic potential” but every time I invited him, he would decline. Over and over again he would mention us working out together yet he couldn’t make it happen even if I brought him to my gym for free. When he discarded me, I would end up in tears every time I went to the gym. EVERY TIME. I would think about him working out with me, which is something that NEVER TOOK PLACE, yet he planted the association just the same. If one assumes that a psychopath would do this intentionally, it would seem that he was hoping I’d get fat and depressed after he let. Maybe it was just an unfortunate side effect of his go-to seduction routine i.e. faking interest in one of my hobbies to gain rapport. Either way, I have yet to complete a successful week at the gym since all of this went down three years ago. He did this with renaissance fairs, novels, Game of Thrones, cooking meals in my kitchen, and countless other things. All of these have since become triggers which I have only recently begun to overcome.

     At this point in the process, I’m obviously over-analyzing ever single thing that is different about me according The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome by Tony Attwood (“obviously” because this is a trademark Aspie behavior) which is making me even more over-sensitive to the daily work drama, including seeing a co-worker blasting me as “the dumbass girl at work” in a Facebook instant message that they did not bother to sign out of before leaving their shift early. Thankfully, that co-worker is no longer employed, which is a great relief to me, because this just felt like another betrayal. I genuinely like the guy and I felt quite hurt to see that the “mutual respect” I thought we had for each other was yet another illusion that I fell for.

     So yeah, more betrayals, more triggers, new meds and I still don’t feel as if I have a firm grip on reality even after all this time. And here we go marching straight on in to my most trigger-ridden time of year. And I found out that my significant other is going to be in Ohio for New Year’s Eve. This essentially equates to an intense depressive attack around the stroke of midnight, if not for weeks prior. I know the protocol: make foolproof plans for that evening to ensure that I am with friends or family and not crying alone on my couch. Yet I feel as if I just can’t. I started a new medication to stop a two week long anxiety attack that showed no signs of lessening without aide, and my anxiety is down, but my motivation is near nonexistent. I feel like I’m just tranquilizing the silent agony I am in every day as my senses are barraged with the clutter of my home, the chaos of owning pets, extreme temperature fluctuations (due to poor insulation and no central heat/air), the daily noise of the gym, which includes the whirring of two dozen treadmills and loud satellite radio. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m hard of hearing or if the gym really just is that loud. I often cannot hear what a customer on the other side of the desk says to me on the first try. However, it’s nowhere near as bad as being a school photographer stationed in a loud, screaming child-filled cafeteria for four hours. That job environment was torture on the senses. Plus I usually had to work through lunch while smelling cafeteria pizza the whole time. Torturous!