Probably Incomplete Autobiography Because Life's Still Happening
For most of my life, I sat there accepting a possibility that I was neurologically disabled. More or less drifting through a system from which I had an opportunity to meet so many people... all deemed somehow broken... often hurting, sometimes addicted to various drugs, very frequently addicted to nicotine and alcohol. I was a latchkey kid in constant summer programs so most of my social life was pretty much planned for me.
This could explain why I reacted as I did as a kid in certain unplanned situations. In Kindergarten I chased a kid with the teacher’s scissors because he took my toy before Show n Tell when the teacher’s rule were strict… no touching other people’s toys.
I mean... I feel like I'm faking an illness every day. I'm under the legal purview of a complete stranger, as my court appointed guardian... who was pretty clearly and communicably upset with me for having worked a few months last year, almost canceling my disability income.
They receive my disability income and send my rent to pay for living with my roommate. They’re pretty relaxed with this, but they were still very upset that my earning 3k/mo had the government requesting money back. I don’t know their thoughts on this or reasoning but I’m aware it’s easier to maintain fixed income than deal with fluctuations. I’m also aware of how upset they were when I kept checking in weekly with life updates, bills updates, work updates and living situation updates.
My parents claimed disability at 15, against my mother's vehement insistence he could pay, when my father met with his lawyer and an outside psych professional to up an unspecified diagnosis, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) or Otherwise Specified, to one which qualified for disability, Asperger's Syndrome after dad’s insurance limit was met paying for a place called Children's Home of Detroit (CHD - like a mini correctional facility, a step below juvie because I shoved my mother off me from laying in bed in an attempt to scare her away and let me stay home from school during the confusing experience of post-pubescent teenage social life)
Pushing and scaring people away wasn’t entirely new to me. I had chased a babysitter away with a bat so I could keep watching cartoons on the TV in mom’s basement. That’s the same basement I had a secret closet under the stairs and a giant cardboard box to hide in for hours, imagining different worlds next to my LEGO table. In that house I also used a steak knife to put a hole in the couch behind my sister because she wouldn’t let me use the TV when mom said I was allowed to watch.
During my teens I would regularly write dark poetry and “practice suicide notes” to remind myself who’d miss me and sometimes sketch very dark images of myself decaying… listening to depressed music and entertaining suicide. I even carved emotional words into my dresser hoping to feel them every morning. It wasn’t until later that I attempted it… eventually finding myself at a wake up moment, literally waking up with tubes being shoved down my throat at Henry Ford Macomb on 19 mile road. My parents were in the room with me; mom encouraging me to drink this sweetened charcoal mixture. I’ve envisioned myself in various methods of suicide most of my life.
Interestingly, PDD was a loose diagnosis given by a professional based in Mount Clemens named Doctor Ryan after dad hired him to assess some of my anxieties and attention deficit issues. After a few weeks of heavy testing, he claimed PDD or otherwise specified with a “low ego strength” note meaning I didn’t respond very confidently.
He presented the results to mom and dad, letting them know if they want a more solid diagnosis they’d have to see another professional because nothing was particularly clear to him. He’d also noted he wasn’t certain the cause of anything because it could just as well have been home issues which were pretty prevalent in particular places while nonexistent in others. Outside the house I was pretty socially healthy with neighborhood friends, working on and playing on dirt tracks for mountain bikes, playing street hockey, getting invited to play video games at friend’s houses and having sleepovers.
Mom hosted a ton of sleepovers which integrated well with every Friday’s pizza and a movie. You all remember Blockbuster, Family Movie and the like? Yeah… they’re places where you’d once be able to pick up physical copies of movies on some archaic media storage called VHS and DVD. Seriously, though. I know my Scout friends, Sara, Logan… heck everyone who’s ever spent a Friday with mom remembers movie and pizza. They may also remember silver dollar pancakes in the morning and the dreaded Sunday Mass if you were lucky enough to weekend with us. Mom loved and welcomed everyone like she was unabashedly obligated.
It’s true I’ve been reliably diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety and depression. Whether contributing factors were ever clear, these were easily supported diagnosis and due to their rapid, often poorly considered turnaround my childhood psychiatrist, Doctor Pezhman frequently rebalanced meds after hospitalization. I’ve been prescribed a great many drugs with adverse side effects and negative reactions.
I’ll definitely say I was more awkward around dad’s place. I think dad only ever met one of my girlfriends and only once in passing through the house… he complimented her looks and said her eyeliner was a little weird. Understandable… she had a spiderweb and spider hanging from one eye. The previous year, I had been dating Paige, a twin who’s house was around 5 miles from ours and I walked that each and every day during that summer… hopped in the pool and shared her size 0 clothes… ‘cause I was skinny… and never wore a bathing suit so my clothes always hit the dryer.
We enjoyed hanging in parks, attended Warped Tour where Paige had a panic attack and I carried her from the MCR crowd, then our friend, Corky ran off to get some water and a Monster Energy sample… there's a photo of us all sitting on the pavement at the Silver Dome somewhere out there. I think Corks took it.
We ran into some other friends including the indubitable Dinda, a hardcore Maggot (Slipknot fan) dancing under the spray of a fire hose and had a beautiful time together… she did a photo shoot with me when her sister Lily had an acting role in a church play… I still have one of those photos. I was wearing her The Cure shirt… amazing music taste, that family.
Sex was never something I was super comfortable with and I was constantly walking away from teenage boys because their “boy talk” about girls and intimacy were way beyond what I was comfortable with having been primarily raised by women. By my teens I found myself more comfortable with female friends and people in the GSRM(gender, sexual, romantic minority) community… or LGBT community at the time. It may have simply been the obliviousness of clear aego-demisexuality.
Then again, it could also be extreme anxieties related to intimacy rather than autocorrisexuality or aegosexuality. Still, I prefer identifying as demi. However, I was a Cub Scout, then continued through a decade of Boy Scouts… good role models, yet not family until mom married Scout Master Bob. Throughout this time, monthly camping trips away from family and consistent volunteer opportunities kept me sane… I felt more whole than I’d ever been alone simply offering my time for people.
After our parents divorced my sister and I were traded back and forth weekly… learning in completely different ways on a polarized spectrum with dad hiring nannies, Tara and Marilyn to do most of the caregiving and him popping in for punishment and play… or boating for the most part, which I was never fond of. Dad also frequently dropped us off with Aunt Maria, Uncle Brian and her kids. He'd also sometimes just drop me off for a few days so I could hang with Cousin Justin and B. It wasn't a blood relation, but Maria was married to Uncle Tiger and I'll always consider them all family. Dad would also let us stay summer weeks and random weekends with Gramma Ro and Grampa Hal, his parents at their house on Columbia.
I did live with mom for about a year while her friends, Debbie & Andy and their son, Logan lived with her... lived with us. She did this for a few people including Andrea's friends. I had a few lovely pseudo-sisters including Sara. Andy had been laid off and was between jobs… Logan was a couple years younger with similar interests. It was kinda rad… we both had an RC car fetish so eventually bought matching Traxxas T-Maxxes.
Say that a few times fast… matching Traxxas T-maxxes, matching Traxxas T-Maxxes…
I definitely didn’t take mom and dad’s divorce very well, finding myself at Havenwyck psych hospital age 7, assigned to the resident ADD/ADHD specializing doctor… therefrom, pretty much every month of my life was spent in therapy and following the domestic abuse shelter, I had a case worker at St. Lawrence to meet with me every other Wednesday until I was dismissed from the school halfway through 5th grade. Officially, I was disruptive for shooting soap at the ceiling with a broken dispenser in the boy’s bathroom… unofficially it was the constant therapy appointments and daily Ritalin then Adderal from the office.
For about a decade, mom and dad would park their cars a space apart, never leaving their vehicles in a Big Boy parking lot at the corner of 21 mile road and Van Dyke while my sister and I hauled our stuff from one car to another. This was to prevent things like my stepmother’s outburst of choking mom on the doorstep of dad’s house when they didn’t follow protocol.
There were pretty consistent insults against mom in that house. Dad maybe held some resentment after mom had us in a domestic abuse shelter during the divorce and he had some calls from child services from various schools. Let’s be honest, tossing your kid into the backyard wearing only underwear’s not going to go over well. I get it. His life was stressful and my reaction to a new pill was making him late for work.
I love my father and respect each of his monumental accomplishments with cars, boats and engineering. I respect his influence on community. I also understand the effect shaming, name calling and bullying had on his life, having lost all his hair from alopecia at 7 had to be tough.
I also remember how ashamed dad was of his disabled older brother, Ricky… he’d tell mom not to mention him at family gatherings to a point that some family members didn’t even know about him until everyone was gathered and Grandma and Grandpa Nucich’s condo during Grandma’s final days and I, myself made the apparent mistake of mentioning him. I think that’s when Cousin Nathan learned about Uncle Rick… because I mentioned him.
None of this shame or even my behaviors excuse some of his, “corrective behavior” like tossing me in the direction of doors when he wanted me to go somewhere, roughly holding my hand where he wanted me to focus, wiring my bed frame with a car alarm or pouring buckets of ice water over my head to wake me up. I can guarantee that’s counterproductively encouraging me to stay asleep… just to avoid being conscious to the experiences. I did have more trouble in the morning at dad’s place and I wet the bed more often there… yeah… I did wet the bed. Last time I did that was at 15 my first day at CHD.
I once missed half a year of high school due to a massive panic attack which I had never had before. The school counselor delivered my work to the door… each day asking if I was okay and whether I was ready to return. I respect the heck out of teachers and education professionals and this is one very specific reason. I’d always appreciated teachers… volunteering for my 7th grade English teacher with transcribing after school and offering a hand to teacher’s aids when I finished classwork early. In 9th grade, my home room teacher’s aid nominated me for student of the year because according to her, my “selflessly helping other students was admirable” but they denied anyone in special ed classes so I got a pin instead… still have it somewhere.
Am I disabled? I don't act like it. I don’t know. I don't feel like it and I’m never anxious around “healthy” strangers. I have been known to feel extreme anxieties around family. I had a high def brain scan around 2018 which showed no signs of autism or neurodivergence. In fact, the disc is chilling in a box after I requested a copy. Still couldn't tell you... but a ton of people have told me I'm not and sometimes aggressively told me I'm cheating the system. I’ve still lived under the restrictions of disability income in AFC homes, hospitals and the like… tastefully dancing around substance abuse and avoiding “unhealthy connections” by playing video games and keeping to myself in pretty constant fight, flight, freeze, faun, flop mode… switching between most of those with excessive nervous system activation… often every single day.
I’ve been in cortisol doused survival mode for awhile. I’ve been punched by someone while playing video games, bitten, follow through body punched (that’s the best way I can describe someone punching me with their entire body while I sat alone watching TV in a psych ward) over the back of a couch which tipped with us, held against a wall for mentioning the sanitary concerns of wiping boogers on a pay phone and punched by an elderly twin because he was known to be wildly unstable (whoa with the twins, have I been lucky or have I met so many people it’s statistically sound)
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure my father was entirely convinced I’m disabled either. When I was 17 years old, he raged up the stairs, scaring me out the second story window toward a few friends including my girlfriends, Kate who were luckily still in the driveway… I had stayed with some of those friends overnight either having not told him or done something wrong in the process. Nobody was into drugs. I was with my girlfriend, her sister and their friends. It was actually a pretty innocent oops.
Andrea was at college in K-Zoo and dad didn’t let me return home. He had some cops pick me up from math class, then driving me to Havenwyck for the final time as an adolescent where they just told me exactly what my father and I had already made clear… I wasn’t going back to dad’s. Sorry the cops kept your spikes and adornments, Shlee. Thanks for letting me wear them to cheer me up.
Dad bought me a motel room for a week, then I lived with some friends and eventually my girlfriend, Samyang Anonomystic (a while ago she asked not to be tagged so I'm not sure what her stance is on these sort of posts. I have photos of her while we lived together tastefully excluding her face on socials) and her family for about 8 months until my 18th birthday.
I didn’t really spend time with people who were significantly into drugs that I was aware of, even weed until the apartment dad co-signed for on my 18th birthday. Sure, I met some people who smoked weed and had it around me for the first time in my life at 15 years old and sat in a van at 17 with someone who would soon roomed with me in said apartment but that place was really it. I offered my one bedroom to a few other people my friends knew, being told they were down on their luck. One had been apparently homeless for a few years, he had another friend who came with him.
We shared that space with me as the sole earner of disability income. We had a couch, futon, clear glass kitchen table, an Xbox and TV I never used. A roommate would occasionally play PlayStation on my mini TV and I just spent a lot of time on the PC with photoshop, Aheron’s Call and Command & Conquer.
It was during that time I attended my first party with alcohol. While I’d been in a house (a trailer) with people smoking weed at 15 and a “rave” at 17 in a community friend, Grant’s basement/house where people were into cough syrup and some other things, this was my first alcohol party to my knowledge. Kate had invited me to meet her friends. I tried being cool and downed half a bottle of cold vodka when someone said it was impossible. This was something for which I paid dearly in the form of vomiting in my hand and slumping over the arm of a love seat until PJ arrived to drive my car home on his learner’s permit. I hounded him the entire time about traffic safety and rules.
Mom and I helped one of these roomies find his social security number, birth certificate and get an ID while I drove him to his first work position with Michigan Works after he was arrested for vagrancy and couldn’t give his real name or share his ID. He wasn’t in the system it seems and they didn’t believe him so he spent some time in jail. I won’t speculate the officer’s initial motives for stopping him but I know someone else was running around breaking into cars and stealing people’s belongings. Figured that out when they emptied a backpack on our futon then cops showed up shortly after.
Let’s be honest, man… real growth comes from truth and you’ve got kids now. They deserve a fully healed and authentic dad. Everyone wanted you out of jail and some people even wanted to steal a truck in which they found a spare key to get you out. It wasn’t just “overnight.” My mother loved you, trusted and believed in you. So do I. Your kids deserve a good example, not a person who gets defensive against questions and clarifications. Show them honesty is okay... don't just tell them to tell the truth.
After a fight in the courtyard with our mutual friend’s boyfriend/ex-boyfriend/suitor/person in competition with another friend for her hand, I made sure to kindly as possible, tell Rich he’s not allowed to live there anymore. He respectfully positioned his fist firmly within the foundations of the wall, behind the drywall at the door and threatened my life.
As for my later years in underfunded, adult psychiatric facilities… well…
I bounced from AFC home to hospital to AFC home when standard residency was up or someone flagged me as too “able” and my guardian needed to transfer me. One of these homes was called St. Clair AFC home. I’ve mentioned a few things which happened here during one stay or another but this happened during my first stay… there was an older gentleman name John who looked and acted a little unusual (I hate myself for judging him. I could see he was also trying to be very sweet in hindsight) who would occasionally make dirty remarks to my mother and I’d overheard some staff talking about him, mishearing something about “a list” and my mind assigned that to pedophilia since he always took a walk around the time buses arrived for school kids.
I had asked him a few times not to make comments to my mother, asking the staff to reinforce and requesting a meeting with he and staff one day. The day prior, I sat with him on the front porch staring into his eyes as I lit and burned out a few cigarettes on my hand, leaving permanent scars and telling him not to make any moves on my mother… yeah. Come on, therapy is important people. You can’t make people reasonable with meds. You can only treat or cause imbalances.
The next day, during the meeting we scheduled, I rushed him but one of the staff pulled me off, letting my leg swing up and hit his jaw. The related paperwork’s been stored and shared for anyone to see along with all my legal history documents. I feel its extremely important to emphasize the insufficient therapy and heightened anxiety in many facilities; even “high end” ones.
Officers were called so I sat on my bed, realizing I had just royally fucked up. From there, they acted on their training… it was a mental health case with violence implied and it didn’t matter how calm or cooperative I was, if I didn’t do things exactly the speed they hoped for, responding exactly as they wanted… my body went limp at the door and they carried me to the car, tearing at my clothing in attempts to hold pretty much a ragdoll. I was then checked into Henry Ford East’s floor 1, transferred to 4, then long-term on 3 for a few months and finally back to 1.
On the "long-term" floor at Henry Ford, we were allowed a CD or MP3 player if it was checked in at night. So, naturally... I danced with it. A few months in, I decided to tap an Exit sign while air drumming and was immediately tackled to the floor and given a sedative.
The next morning I was transferred to the lower floor, where another few months passed by; writing poetry, sketching and drawing... many of my 2009 art pieces were drawn during that stay.
At the end of my stay at Henry Ford, I was having a conversation with a young man playing with his shoes, flipping them off his feet with boredom. After a times, he grew bold and curled his foot flick, sending his shoe careening toward the ceiling and bounding off... after which he was immediately dragged away and sedated.
I was appalled, heavily medicated and had no idea how to communicate this injustice so I just went, fuck it... started jumping up toward each and every light, smashing them down the hallway yelling, "He did nothing wrong!" "You guys want a reason to tackle somebody!" "Mother fuckers!" I still have permanent scar tissue in the plexi light cover grid on my knuckle from this.
So yeah... jail time. I even had a cop man-handle me against the wall and whisper into my ear, "You like breaking shit?" with his elbow in my back.
I spent about a week in the D block with a dozen other people. First, I needed to spend a while in the mental health ward. Unfortunately, there was consistently inconsistent med distribution in this time-frame with excessively powerful stuff from which my body suffered some messed up reactions already.
From Henry Ford, I was transitioned to what people call the "Bam Bam unit." It's the psych unit in which we wear a large, padded plastic-like gown. The theory is you can't kill yourself with it... yet the unit was overcrowded and I slept on the floor with a mat.
There are many reasons I advocate for Nonviolent Communication; not the least of which is my personal experience in a system which clearly perpetuates the cycle of violence. When our emphasis is on personal development, conscious empathy, self-awareness and therapeutic healing of insufficient education, problematic conditioning and trauma we actually do stand a chance of creating a better world.
Not all my life, hospital and group home experience has been bad. I honestly loved all of my friends and cherish the fun we had; all those amazing connections and learning experiences, stripping for Kate and her friends, skinny dipping(ish in my boxers) with Tata’s friends in the neighborhood across from Utica High, right behind Wiley... true bliss. I still have a kandi bracelet from someone I met at a football game there… people are amazingly beautiful and their capacity for joy and emotional giving are incalculable. We’re always evolving our communities with personal sharing, emotional enrichment, compassionate effort and simple, resounding laughter.
I do sort of feel at home with those who are hurting while I'm extremely anxious around drugs and alcohol, even cigarettes. I’m always curious and show whatever support I can. I'm grateful for every conversation and shared experience; every perspective. In those facilities, we’re pretty constantly reminded not to touch each other and I love hugging. Embracing hugs where you feel one another’s hearts. That’s the sort of affection we all need, I believe. It’s been heavily discouraged in my life. This has probably had an effect on meeting my community needs and affection needs.
I still met and spent time with quite a lot of amazing people and even befriended a fellow gamer from St. Clair Home. His name’s Justin and I wish him well. We were gamer friends for a good while. Things shifted, priorities changed and I hope everyone’s on a path of personal growth. He stuck with me even when meds weren’t right and brain wasn’t braining. Everyone has their struggles and its rarely if ever explicitly their fault.
We’re raised in a poorly designed and executed structure of punishment and reward which somehow encourages its own perpetuation with little consideration for individual needs. I’ve played video games with people, had long conversations about love and life, shared books and music, had singing sessions, played board games, assembled puzzles, colored, cried and laughed with some genuinely beautiful humans.
I remember feeling human for awhile in my teens… being accepted into a huge group of friends and their branching friend circles in Utica. Around 10th grade, Tata, an amazing girl with a million friends saw me sitting on the rear steps waiting for a ride from dad. She said I look lonely and invited me to a party in her back yard where I found dozens of kids between middle school and high school ages. It was a paradise of chaos with so many hugs… so… many hugs. Free Hugs, you might say. It was great. Mom had always brought us to festivals, striking up random conversations with strangers and offering a hand so this was magic to me.
It was at another party here that I saw Chelsea and Reggie break up and amid the chaos all I could do is think to comfort a crying girl I’d never previously spoken with… maybe once or twice. I held her in a hug for a minute and asked if she just wanted to talk so we both laid down on the trampoline where she cried herself to sleep in my arms. Not many words exchanged between us but I could hear the conversation with and about Reggie, centered around the slide at the back of the property.
When Chelsea awoke, I let her know I wasn’t looking for a relationship but I’d check in with her. From there I went home and sent her some messages on Trillian (either Yahoo! or AIM) with a poem I’d written, letting her know life’s only beginning and there’s so much more opportunity and beauty. That tended to be my MO… it was all I really knew having journaled and written so much poetry for myself.
People are often trying to heal without the words to express themselves or a genuine understanding of feelings and sometimes explaining things to people who are too busy to listen or simply refuse to hear. Many of us are still trying to heal from childhood experiences the rest of our family didn't feel the same way. Sometimes, inadvertently gaslighting and dismissing the very things we need... and I mean NEED to embrace in order to process them and truly heal. We’re often meticulously ignoring our needs for being heard, seen, and understanding... pretty much all identity needs.
What’s more, publicly funded psych facilities almost always choose pills over processing life. That means we drop in for a week, doc fills a rehearsed and sometimes sponsored prescription, we chat with some people and we’re out… always discouraged from sharing hugs, phone numbers and contact info. Still, so many people make unhealthy connections in these places… some even have sexual relations inside the places. Lots of people sneak in cigarettes, weed, vape pens… probably worse drugs and nobody is actually getting legitimate therapy.
Some of the homes I lived in were pretty wild, as well… Beacon Specialized Living Services was filled with people around my age and I connected with a few, related to others. I also had someone I thought I might relate to, connect his fist with my face while I sat in my room playing Asheron’s Call with a bunch of friends. Wasn’t much clear motive there… I hadn’t actually spoken with him before. It could have been that I was the only person there with internet and a laptop as well as being one of very few with a TV and game console.
There was a somewhat younger kid there named Andrew who was obsessed with video games and had some aggression issues. He’d toss the controllers and break TVs then get upset with himself. I was a gamer so I tried helping him chill and gave him someone to talk to. He once jumped on the driver of our transport van on the highway and tried choking them so I hopped from the second row seat to pull him off and hold him. He bit my leg and I had to check into the South Haven hospital for a human bite wound. I can honestly say I have human bite wound in my medical history… take that zombie apocalypse preppers. I’m one up. Andrew was actually a really cool dude I had the pleasure of introducing to PC gaming and console commands. He gained a bit of chill with those.
We need to understand and share the wholeness of our history and every individual influence and experience is equally important. We can become addicted to anything which reduces the pain of confusion and grief or marginalized heartache. Gabor Maté offers quite a bit of personally relatable insight with his book about ADHD and its possible origins, Scattered and the thus far pretty insightful The Myth of Normal. He has also written in depth about addiction with In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts… though I’ve only viewed the related content on streaming services. When we're encouraged to repress, we're also discouraged from being our authentic selves... or even standing comfortably in a room of equals.
There's one phrase I truly believe would benefit the world should we all learn it and honestly believe it when we say it... "Are you okay? You seem distracted. It's okay to tell me anything. I mean anything. I promise." We may hear things about a person’s life which completely surprise us… even change our perspectives about another person we know… but to be heard, feel trusted, be believed… it meets our identity needs and validates our experience. Gaslighting is the opposite of this… it’s telling a person their perspective is wrong or selling their experience short… perhaps in favor of another person’s reputation or the resources they offer our life. Gaslighting can be telling a person their memories didn’t happen, inviting shame, doubt and insecurity.
We may not always be able to offer advice and may even find things hard to believe but we are all able to listen. What we're doing when we honestly take in another person's perspective is validating their reality and offering them a way to process their experience verbally... no matter what we've heard to the contrary, it's allowing people to express themselves. This is essential for our mental health and developing how we process the world and our experience within it.
With all those pieces known of a collective puzzle, we're able to understand a whole more deeply. We're able to assess relationships and see whether our values truly align with a person or we're simply relying on them for some sort of resources... maybe for fun, leisure, relaxation... whether they're just bringing us joy.
These are superficial things but they can often tip us in favor of a person with money, toys and resources to share... because that superficiality is pleasant, wondrous... and addictive. The more stressful our life is, the more we'll align with people who can make our lives more fun as a leisure resource and escape from the stress.
It’s still so very important to understand stress does not give us an excuse to discount anyone’s experience or deny our own wrongdoing. If anything, accountability reduces stress and strengthens our bonds with good people. When we share our mistakes, people learn how to live from them. We may think they’re about to judge us but the reality is… we hurt people with our secrets. We hurt many more people than ourselves.
Once mom passed away on Mother’s Day, May 12, 2019… I realized how important truth was. She had been working for the Autism Society of Michigan for a decade, shortly ago retiring and once dad took over guardianship… he pretty much isolated her. She’d previously been keeping up with paperwork, saving documents and doctor’s notes, checking in with my guardian and encouraging college along with independence… then dad just cut her off. Her paperwork filing became recording conversations and saving texts… in which dad was pretty unengaged, saying, “I’m taking care of it” and avoiding questions.
A few years ago, while he was my legally appointed guardian, dad’s health started spiraling… he fell into a diabetic coma and started having stroke-like episodes, sometimes in front of family. He seemed to hold himself together for the most part at holiday gatherings and family dinner but at home… he was growing dismissive and sometimes aggressive. Not like the usual, “God damnit!” when he dropped a tool or something went wrong in the garage… I mean wow.
At the time I wasn’t spending much time at home. I was getting back into skating, biking and visiting local book stores, libraries, comic shops, game stores and malls to get a refreshed feel for life. I had actually started volunteering for a local church just a half mile down the road. We painted the inside of it… we helped a few people with their yard work… I got some green shirts… then I got some paint on one of those green shirts… smiles, laughter and paint all around.
There was one particular night I had confronted dad when he started slurring his speech… I sat down beside him, setting my hand on his arm to let him know I wanted to connect and he immediately jumped up yelling, “Don’t fucking touch me!” and he stomped around the couch, up the stairs where he slammed and locked his door.
I had previously seen this sort of behavior in him before I found him naked on his bed, slipping into his first diabetic coma… mumbling and blurting, “Go away” “Fuck off” “Not me” and “No.”
I was scared for him. Very… so I waited a few minutes, checked in with him and heard the same angry comments… until a few minutes later when I came back to the door, he yelled a final, “fuck off” and fell silent.
After waiting what felt like an eternity, but probably 15 minutes to a half an hour I knocked again, waited for an answer then unlocked his door to peak in on him. The second I did, he burst through the door and shoved me against the wooden lined closet outside his door where he sort of lifted me upward with his hand at the base of my throat. I could see in his eyes this confused rage, then childish panic as he dropped me and rushed back into his room, trying to slam the door and apparently catching his foot, yelling, “fuck” then successfully slamming it closed and yelling, “Leave me the fuck alone.”
The next morning I rode my bike to the Shelby Twp Police Department for a report. I didn’t want to press charges but I didn’t want this to happen again or not be believed if it did. An officer got a few photos with a pretty nice camera… which I actually mentioned because I was looking for a new one... after I filled in the report with my already ridiculously horrible handwriting and at the time, shaking hands because I couldn't quite come to terms with what I was doing.
Dad has since been telling people I broke into his room and attacked him because I guess he fucked up his ankle running back into the room… for what? His health was already clearly suffering and our entire family was aware… so was the rest of his community and friends. I’m sure they’d give him a ridiculous amount of love and attention if he just owned up to his emotionally dis-regulated outburst. That, and I wouldn’t have been isolated from my beautiful family.
Lies can destroy communities for the sake of one successful person or protect our kids from uncomfortable truths. We hurt a lot of people simply trying to keep up an image. We will always hurt someone while trying to look impossibly perfect… sometimes its the people closest to us… the ones who would gladly offer their soul simply to help us heal and show us love.
It had already been a year or so since doc’s agreed to reduce and remove prescriptions so I’d been off everything and frequently volunteering while dad pretty much stayed home. In fact, a lot of my social media presence documents life from that point along with a ton of journaling. It was important to me having access to my thoughts from the point of being taken off all pills. Unfortunately I also began practicing radical honesty and getting in touch with authenticity since mom had passed.
Since the incident with dad, my guardianship switched to a public lawyer with dozens of cases connected to a pretty significantly conservative Christian organization. Radically polarized support for any individual organization, political party or faith can be pretty frightening. During our second meeting, they mentioned their goals for me include getting married and having kids. I’m just not about that right now and I’m hoping never on having my own kids.
Terry, my new guardian did say they work with the Wertz Warriors which is the winter branch of the Water Warriors supporting Special Olympics Michigan so there’s a mild tie-in which I support. They’ve been a little subtle with their intentional contact, and I’ve only met with Terry twice… which can be a good thing. It’s given me plentiful opportunity to seek therapy and develop a deeper understanding of self and where I feel safe in society… along with pursuing A/V and photography once more.
It does suck not having the support of family. I miss them all… but everything we experience is an opportunity for learning and growth. It also means going it alone sometimes, when the only places you have to go aren’t the healthiest or safest environments. Music has always been my safe space... and art and goofiness of course but mostly music.
If it’s in your heart… and I mean compassionately, productively and authentically… if the truth in your heart needs to be known. Please share your experience with me. Your mind would not be experiencing the thoughts were it not integral to your understanding of survival and thriving.
The works of Marshall Rosenberg and Yvette Erasmus have opened me up quite a bit with communication, accountability and authenticity along with Gabor Maté. Nonviolent Communication fundamentals adapted by all… and rightfully so. NVC has been instrumental in not only comprehending myself but developing a healthy desire to connect with others in authentic, empathic ways.
In terms of work ethic, while volunteering I found Simon Sinek’s TED talks and eventually bought Start With Why on Audible audiobook. Adam Grant then graced my life as his “worthy rival” or rather more appropriately, companion educator… they share so many perspectives in different ways it’s hard to separate them once you know their individual work.
Something I’ve noticed through depression, anxiety and overwhelming fear of my circumstance is that we’ll always keep learning and nothing is ever forgotten. It’s only absorbed into our consciousness and adapted into our lives. We are everything we know. We are everything we've seen. We are a part of every person we've ever met as much as they are part of us. Acknowledge your experience and learn from it all.
Each and every one of us shares intrinsically driven, divine needs... inalienable biological and psychological requirements which must be interdependently nourished in subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation, creation, identity and freedom. We may suppress these needs in unhealthy ways then seek their fulfillment in even less healthy ways... but these internal craving are always subconsciously within us.
You’re a worthy human being capable of amazing things. You deserve credit where it’s earned and grieving when you suffer. You deserve to be acknowledged, believed and understood… and to learn and live every day with passion.
You deserve to hold on. You deserve to create. You deserve to sing and feel. You deserve to be known, supported and feel safe. You deserve to feel loved... because you are. I love you... every one of you beautiful weirdos. We all deserve to dance.
Elephantshoe <3
This could explain why I reacted as I did as a kid in certain unplanned situations. In Kindergarten I chased a kid with the teacher’s scissors because he took my toy before Show n Tell when the teacher’s rule were strict… no touching other people’s toys.
I mean... I feel like I'm faking an illness every day. I'm under the legal purview of a complete stranger, as my court appointed guardian... who was pretty clearly and communicably upset with me for having worked a few months last year, almost canceling my disability income.
They receive my disability income and send my rent to pay for living with my roommate. They’re pretty relaxed with this, but they were still very upset that my earning 3k/mo had the government requesting money back. I don’t know their thoughts on this or reasoning but I’m aware it’s easier to maintain fixed income than deal with fluctuations. I’m also aware of how upset they were when I kept checking in weekly with life updates, bills updates, work updates and living situation updates.
My parents claimed disability at 15, against my mother's vehement insistence he could pay, when my father met with his lawyer and an outside psych professional to up an unspecified diagnosis, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) or Otherwise Specified, to one which qualified for disability, Asperger's Syndrome after dad’s insurance limit was met paying for a place called Children's Home of Detroit (CHD - like a mini correctional facility, a step below juvie because I shoved my mother off me from laying in bed in an attempt to scare her away and let me stay home from school during the confusing experience of post-pubescent teenage social life)
Pushing and scaring people away wasn’t entirely new to me. I had chased a babysitter away with a bat so I could keep watching cartoons on the TV in mom’s basement. That’s the same basement I had a secret closet under the stairs and a giant cardboard box to hide in for hours, imagining different worlds next to my LEGO table. In that house I also used a steak knife to put a hole in the couch behind my sister because she wouldn’t let me use the TV when mom said I was allowed to watch.
During my teens I would regularly write dark poetry and “practice suicide notes” to remind myself who’d miss me and sometimes sketch very dark images of myself decaying… listening to depressed music and entertaining suicide. I even carved emotional words into my dresser hoping to feel them every morning. It wasn’t until later that I attempted it… eventually finding myself at a wake up moment, literally waking up with tubes being shoved down my throat at Henry Ford Macomb on 19 mile road. My parents were in the room with me; mom encouraging me to drink this sweetened charcoal mixture. I’ve envisioned myself in various methods of suicide most of my life.
Interestingly, PDD was a loose diagnosis given by a professional based in Mount Clemens named Doctor Ryan after dad hired him to assess some of my anxieties and attention deficit issues. After a few weeks of heavy testing, he claimed PDD or otherwise specified with a “low ego strength” note meaning I didn’t respond very confidently.
He presented the results to mom and dad, letting them know if they want a more solid diagnosis they’d have to see another professional because nothing was particularly clear to him. He’d also noted he wasn’t certain the cause of anything because it could just as well have been home issues which were pretty prevalent in particular places while nonexistent in others. Outside the house I was pretty socially healthy with neighborhood friends, working on and playing on dirt tracks for mountain bikes, playing street hockey, getting invited to play video games at friend’s houses and having sleepovers.
Mom hosted a ton of sleepovers which integrated well with every Friday’s pizza and a movie. You all remember Blockbuster, Family Movie and the like? Yeah… they’re places where you’d once be able to pick up physical copies of movies on some archaic media storage called VHS and DVD. Seriously, though. I know my Scout friends, Sara, Logan… heck everyone who’s ever spent a Friday with mom remembers movie and pizza. They may also remember silver dollar pancakes in the morning and the dreaded Sunday Mass if you were lucky enough to weekend with us. Mom loved and welcomed everyone like she was unabashedly obligated.
It’s true I’ve been reliably diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety and depression. Whether contributing factors were ever clear, these were easily supported diagnosis and due to their rapid, often poorly considered turnaround my childhood psychiatrist, Doctor Pezhman frequently rebalanced meds after hospitalization. I’ve been prescribed a great many drugs with adverse side effects and negative reactions.
I’ll definitely say I was more awkward around dad’s place. I think dad only ever met one of my girlfriends and only once in passing through the house… he complimented her looks and said her eyeliner was a little weird. Understandable… she had a spiderweb and spider hanging from one eye. The previous year, I had been dating Paige, a twin who’s house was around 5 miles from ours and I walked that each and every day during that summer… hopped in the pool and shared her size 0 clothes… ‘cause I was skinny… and never wore a bathing suit so my clothes always hit the dryer.
We enjoyed hanging in parks, attended Warped Tour where Paige had a panic attack and I carried her from the MCR crowd, then our friend, Corky ran off to get some water and a Monster Energy sample… there's a photo of us all sitting on the pavement at the Silver Dome somewhere out there. I think Corks took it.
We ran into some other friends including the indubitable Dinda, a hardcore Maggot (Slipknot fan) dancing under the spray of a fire hose and had a beautiful time together… she did a photo shoot with me when her sister Lily had an acting role in a church play… I still have one of those photos. I was wearing her The Cure shirt… amazing music taste, that family.
Sex was never something I was super comfortable with and I was constantly walking away from teenage boys because their “boy talk” about girls and intimacy were way beyond what I was comfortable with having been primarily raised by women. By my teens I found myself more comfortable with female friends and people in the GSRM(gender, sexual, romantic minority) community… or LGBT community at the time. It may have simply been the obliviousness of clear aego-demisexuality.
Then again, it could also be extreme anxieties related to intimacy rather than autocorrisexuality or aegosexuality. Still, I prefer identifying as demi. However, I was a Cub Scout, then continued through a decade of Boy Scouts… good role models, yet not family until mom married Scout Master Bob. Throughout this time, monthly camping trips away from family and consistent volunteer opportunities kept me sane… I felt more whole than I’d ever been alone simply offering my time for people.
After our parents divorced my sister and I were traded back and forth weekly… learning in completely different ways on a polarized spectrum with dad hiring nannies, Tara and Marilyn to do most of the caregiving and him popping in for punishment and play… or boating for the most part, which I was never fond of. Dad also frequently dropped us off with Aunt Maria, Uncle Brian and her kids. He'd also sometimes just drop me off for a few days so I could hang with Cousin Justin and B. It wasn't a blood relation, but Maria was married to Uncle Tiger and I'll always consider them all family. Dad would also let us stay summer weeks and random weekends with Gramma Ro and Grampa Hal, his parents at their house on Columbia.
I did live with mom for about a year while her friends, Debbie & Andy and their son, Logan lived with her... lived with us. She did this for a few people including Andrea's friends. I had a few lovely pseudo-sisters including Sara. Andy had been laid off and was between jobs… Logan was a couple years younger with similar interests. It was kinda rad… we both had an RC car fetish so eventually bought matching Traxxas T-Maxxes.
Say that a few times fast… matching Traxxas T-maxxes, matching Traxxas T-Maxxes…
I definitely didn’t take mom and dad’s divorce very well, finding myself at Havenwyck psych hospital age 7, assigned to the resident ADD/ADHD specializing doctor… therefrom, pretty much every month of my life was spent in therapy and following the domestic abuse shelter, I had a case worker at St. Lawrence to meet with me every other Wednesday until I was dismissed from the school halfway through 5th grade. Officially, I was disruptive for shooting soap at the ceiling with a broken dispenser in the boy’s bathroom… unofficially it was the constant therapy appointments and daily Ritalin then Adderal from the office.
For about a decade, mom and dad would park their cars a space apart, never leaving their vehicles in a Big Boy parking lot at the corner of 21 mile road and Van Dyke while my sister and I hauled our stuff from one car to another. This was to prevent things like my stepmother’s outburst of choking mom on the doorstep of dad’s house when they didn’t follow protocol.
There were pretty consistent insults against mom in that house. Dad maybe held some resentment after mom had us in a domestic abuse shelter during the divorce and he had some calls from child services from various schools. Let’s be honest, tossing your kid into the backyard wearing only underwear’s not going to go over well. I get it. His life was stressful and my reaction to a new pill was making him late for work.
I love my father and respect each of his monumental accomplishments with cars, boats and engineering. I respect his influence on community. I also understand the effect shaming, name calling and bullying had on his life, having lost all his hair from alopecia at 7 had to be tough.
I also remember how ashamed dad was of his disabled older brother, Ricky… he’d tell mom not to mention him at family gatherings to a point that some family members didn’t even know about him until everyone was gathered and Grandma and Grandpa Nucich’s condo during Grandma’s final days and I, myself made the apparent mistake of mentioning him. I think that’s when Cousin Nathan learned about Uncle Rick… because I mentioned him.
None of this shame or even my behaviors excuse some of his, “corrective behavior” like tossing me in the direction of doors when he wanted me to go somewhere, roughly holding my hand where he wanted me to focus, wiring my bed frame with a car alarm or pouring buckets of ice water over my head to wake me up. I can guarantee that’s counterproductively encouraging me to stay asleep… just to avoid being conscious to the experiences. I did have more trouble in the morning at dad’s place and I wet the bed more often there… yeah… I did wet the bed. Last time I did that was at 15 my first day at CHD.
I once missed half a year of high school due to a massive panic attack which I had never had before. The school counselor delivered my work to the door… each day asking if I was okay and whether I was ready to return. I respect the heck out of teachers and education professionals and this is one very specific reason. I’d always appreciated teachers… volunteering for my 7th grade English teacher with transcribing after school and offering a hand to teacher’s aids when I finished classwork early. In 9th grade, my home room teacher’s aid nominated me for student of the year because according to her, my “selflessly helping other students was admirable” but they denied anyone in special ed classes so I got a pin instead… still have it somewhere.
Am I disabled? I don't act like it. I don’t know. I don't feel like it and I’m never anxious around “healthy” strangers. I have been known to feel extreme anxieties around family. I had a high def brain scan around 2018 which showed no signs of autism or neurodivergence. In fact, the disc is chilling in a box after I requested a copy. Still couldn't tell you... but a ton of people have told me I'm not and sometimes aggressively told me I'm cheating the system. I’ve still lived under the restrictions of disability income in AFC homes, hospitals and the like… tastefully dancing around substance abuse and avoiding “unhealthy connections” by playing video games and keeping to myself in pretty constant fight, flight, freeze, faun, flop mode… switching between most of those with excessive nervous system activation… often every single day.
I’ve been in cortisol doused survival mode for awhile. I’ve been punched by someone while playing video games, bitten, follow through body punched (that’s the best way I can describe someone punching me with their entire body while I sat alone watching TV in a psych ward) over the back of a couch which tipped with us, held against a wall for mentioning the sanitary concerns of wiping boogers on a pay phone and punched by an elderly twin because he was known to be wildly unstable (whoa with the twins, have I been lucky or have I met so many people it’s statistically sound)
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure my father was entirely convinced I’m disabled either. When I was 17 years old, he raged up the stairs, scaring me out the second story window toward a few friends including my girlfriends, Kate who were luckily still in the driveway… I had stayed with some of those friends overnight either having not told him or done something wrong in the process. Nobody was into drugs. I was with my girlfriend, her sister and their friends. It was actually a pretty innocent oops.
Andrea was at college in K-Zoo and dad didn’t let me return home. He had some cops pick me up from math class, then driving me to Havenwyck for the final time as an adolescent where they just told me exactly what my father and I had already made clear… I wasn’t going back to dad’s. Sorry the cops kept your spikes and adornments, Shlee. Thanks for letting me wear them to cheer me up.
Dad bought me a motel room for a week, then I lived with some friends and eventually my girlfriend, Samyang Anonomystic (a while ago she asked not to be tagged so I'm not sure what her stance is on these sort of posts. I have photos of her while we lived together tastefully excluding her face on socials) and her family for about 8 months until my 18th birthday.
I didn’t really spend time with people who were significantly into drugs that I was aware of, even weed until the apartment dad co-signed for on my 18th birthday. Sure, I met some people who smoked weed and had it around me for the first time in my life at 15 years old and sat in a van at 17 with someone who would soon roomed with me in said apartment but that place was really it. I offered my one bedroom to a few other people my friends knew, being told they were down on their luck. One had been apparently homeless for a few years, he had another friend who came with him.
We shared that space with me as the sole earner of disability income. We had a couch, futon, clear glass kitchen table, an Xbox and TV I never used. A roommate would occasionally play PlayStation on my mini TV and I just spent a lot of time on the PC with photoshop, Aheron’s Call and Command & Conquer.
It was during that time I attended my first party with alcohol. While I’d been in a house (a trailer) with people smoking weed at 15 and a “rave” at 17 in a community friend, Grant’s basement/house where people were into cough syrup and some other things, this was my first alcohol party to my knowledge. Kate had invited me to meet her friends. I tried being cool and downed half a bottle of cold vodka when someone said it was impossible. This was something for which I paid dearly in the form of vomiting in my hand and slumping over the arm of a love seat until PJ arrived to drive my car home on his learner’s permit. I hounded him the entire time about traffic safety and rules.
Mom and I helped one of these roomies find his social security number, birth certificate and get an ID while I drove him to his first work position with Michigan Works after he was arrested for vagrancy and couldn’t give his real name or share his ID. He wasn’t in the system it seems and they didn’t believe him so he spent some time in jail. I won’t speculate the officer’s initial motives for stopping him but I know someone else was running around breaking into cars and stealing people’s belongings. Figured that out when they emptied a backpack on our futon then cops showed up shortly after.
Let’s be honest, man… real growth comes from truth and you’ve got kids now. They deserve a fully healed and authentic dad. Everyone wanted you out of jail and some people even wanted to steal a truck in which they found a spare key to get you out. It wasn’t just “overnight.” My mother loved you, trusted and believed in you. So do I. Your kids deserve a good example, not a person who gets defensive against questions and clarifications. Show them honesty is okay... don't just tell them to tell the truth.
After a fight in the courtyard with our mutual friend’s boyfriend/ex-boyfriend/suitor/person in competition with another friend for her hand, I made sure to kindly as possible, tell Rich he’s not allowed to live there anymore. He respectfully positioned his fist firmly within the foundations of the wall, behind the drywall at the door and threatened my life.
As for my later years in underfunded, adult psychiatric facilities… well…
I bounced from AFC home to hospital to AFC home when standard residency was up or someone flagged me as too “able” and my guardian needed to transfer me. One of these homes was called St. Clair AFC home. I’ve mentioned a few things which happened here during one stay or another but this happened during my first stay… there was an older gentleman name John who looked and acted a little unusual (I hate myself for judging him. I could see he was also trying to be very sweet in hindsight) who would occasionally make dirty remarks to my mother and I’d overheard some staff talking about him, mishearing something about “a list” and my mind assigned that to pedophilia since he always took a walk around the time buses arrived for school kids.
I had asked him a few times not to make comments to my mother, asking the staff to reinforce and requesting a meeting with he and staff one day. The day prior, I sat with him on the front porch staring into his eyes as I lit and burned out a few cigarettes on my hand, leaving permanent scars and telling him not to make any moves on my mother… yeah. Come on, therapy is important people. You can’t make people reasonable with meds. You can only treat or cause imbalances.
The next day, during the meeting we scheduled, I rushed him but one of the staff pulled me off, letting my leg swing up and hit his jaw. The related paperwork’s been stored and shared for anyone to see along with all my legal history documents. I feel its extremely important to emphasize the insufficient therapy and heightened anxiety in many facilities; even “high end” ones.
Officers were called so I sat on my bed, realizing I had just royally fucked up. From there, they acted on their training… it was a mental health case with violence implied and it didn’t matter how calm or cooperative I was, if I didn’t do things exactly the speed they hoped for, responding exactly as they wanted… my body went limp at the door and they carried me to the car, tearing at my clothing in attempts to hold pretty much a ragdoll. I was then checked into Henry Ford East’s floor 1, transferred to 4, then long-term on 3 for a few months and finally back to 1.
On the "long-term" floor at Henry Ford, we were allowed a CD or MP3 player if it was checked in at night. So, naturally... I danced with it. A few months in, I decided to tap an Exit sign while air drumming and was immediately tackled to the floor and given a sedative.
The next morning I was transferred to the lower floor, where another few months passed by; writing poetry, sketching and drawing... many of my 2009 art pieces were drawn during that stay.
At the end of my stay at Henry Ford, I was having a conversation with a young man playing with his shoes, flipping them off his feet with boredom. After a times, he grew bold and curled his foot flick, sending his shoe careening toward the ceiling and bounding off... after which he was immediately dragged away and sedated.
I was appalled, heavily medicated and had no idea how to communicate this injustice so I just went, fuck it... started jumping up toward each and every light, smashing them down the hallway yelling, "He did nothing wrong!" "You guys want a reason to tackle somebody!" "Mother fuckers!" I still have permanent scar tissue in the plexi light cover grid on my knuckle from this.
So yeah... jail time. I even had a cop man-handle me against the wall and whisper into my ear, "You like breaking shit?" with his elbow in my back.
I spent about a week in the D block with a dozen other people. First, I needed to spend a while in the mental health ward. Unfortunately, there was consistently inconsistent med distribution in this time-frame with excessively powerful stuff from which my body suffered some messed up reactions already.
From Henry Ford, I was transitioned to what people call the "Bam Bam unit." It's the psych unit in which we wear a large, padded plastic-like gown. The theory is you can't kill yourself with it... yet the unit was overcrowded and I slept on the floor with a mat.
There are many reasons I advocate for Nonviolent Communication; not the least of which is my personal experience in a system which clearly perpetuates the cycle of violence. When our emphasis is on personal development, conscious empathy, self-awareness and therapeutic healing of insufficient education, problematic conditioning and trauma we actually do stand a chance of creating a better world.
Not all my life, hospital and group home experience has been bad. I honestly loved all of my friends and cherish the fun we had; all those amazing connections and learning experiences, stripping for Kate and her friends, skinny dipping(ish in my boxers) with Tata’s friends in the neighborhood across from Utica High, right behind Wiley... true bliss. I still have a kandi bracelet from someone I met at a football game there… people are amazingly beautiful and their capacity for joy and emotional giving are incalculable. We’re always evolving our communities with personal sharing, emotional enrichment, compassionate effort and simple, resounding laughter.
I do sort of feel at home with those who are hurting while I'm extremely anxious around drugs and alcohol, even cigarettes. I’m always curious and show whatever support I can. I'm grateful for every conversation and shared experience; every perspective. In those facilities, we’re pretty constantly reminded not to touch each other and I love hugging. Embracing hugs where you feel one another’s hearts. That’s the sort of affection we all need, I believe. It’s been heavily discouraged in my life. This has probably had an effect on meeting my community needs and affection needs.
I still met and spent time with quite a lot of amazing people and even befriended a fellow gamer from St. Clair Home. His name’s Justin and I wish him well. We were gamer friends for a good while. Things shifted, priorities changed and I hope everyone’s on a path of personal growth. He stuck with me even when meds weren’t right and brain wasn’t braining. Everyone has their struggles and its rarely if ever explicitly their fault.
We’re raised in a poorly designed and executed structure of punishment and reward which somehow encourages its own perpetuation with little consideration for individual needs. I’ve played video games with people, had long conversations about love and life, shared books and music, had singing sessions, played board games, assembled puzzles, colored, cried and laughed with some genuinely beautiful humans.
I remember feeling human for awhile in my teens… being accepted into a huge group of friends and their branching friend circles in Utica. Around 10th grade, Tata, an amazing girl with a million friends saw me sitting on the rear steps waiting for a ride from dad. She said I look lonely and invited me to a party in her back yard where I found dozens of kids between middle school and high school ages. It was a paradise of chaos with so many hugs… so… many hugs. Free Hugs, you might say. It was great. Mom had always brought us to festivals, striking up random conversations with strangers and offering a hand so this was magic to me.
It was at another party here that I saw Chelsea and Reggie break up and amid the chaos all I could do is think to comfort a crying girl I’d never previously spoken with… maybe once or twice. I held her in a hug for a minute and asked if she just wanted to talk so we both laid down on the trampoline where she cried herself to sleep in my arms. Not many words exchanged between us but I could hear the conversation with and about Reggie, centered around the slide at the back of the property.
When Chelsea awoke, I let her know I wasn’t looking for a relationship but I’d check in with her. From there I went home and sent her some messages on Trillian (either Yahoo! or AIM) with a poem I’d written, letting her know life’s only beginning and there’s so much more opportunity and beauty. That tended to be my MO… it was all I really knew having journaled and written so much poetry for myself.
People are often trying to heal without the words to express themselves or a genuine understanding of feelings and sometimes explaining things to people who are too busy to listen or simply refuse to hear. Many of us are still trying to heal from childhood experiences the rest of our family didn't feel the same way. Sometimes, inadvertently gaslighting and dismissing the very things we need... and I mean NEED to embrace in order to process them and truly heal. We’re often meticulously ignoring our needs for being heard, seen, and understanding... pretty much all identity needs.
What’s more, publicly funded psych facilities almost always choose pills over processing life. That means we drop in for a week, doc fills a rehearsed and sometimes sponsored prescription, we chat with some people and we’re out… always discouraged from sharing hugs, phone numbers and contact info. Still, so many people make unhealthy connections in these places… some even have sexual relations inside the places. Lots of people sneak in cigarettes, weed, vape pens… probably worse drugs and nobody is actually getting legitimate therapy.
Some of the homes I lived in were pretty wild, as well… Beacon Specialized Living Services was filled with people around my age and I connected with a few, related to others. I also had someone I thought I might relate to, connect his fist with my face while I sat in my room playing Asheron’s Call with a bunch of friends. Wasn’t much clear motive there… I hadn’t actually spoken with him before. It could have been that I was the only person there with internet and a laptop as well as being one of very few with a TV and game console.
There was a somewhat younger kid there named Andrew who was obsessed with video games and had some aggression issues. He’d toss the controllers and break TVs then get upset with himself. I was a gamer so I tried helping him chill and gave him someone to talk to. He once jumped on the driver of our transport van on the highway and tried choking them so I hopped from the second row seat to pull him off and hold him. He bit my leg and I had to check into the South Haven hospital for a human bite wound. I can honestly say I have human bite wound in my medical history… take that zombie apocalypse preppers. I’m one up. Andrew was actually a really cool dude I had the pleasure of introducing to PC gaming and console commands. He gained a bit of chill with those.
We need to understand and share the wholeness of our history and every individual influence and experience is equally important. We can become addicted to anything which reduces the pain of confusion and grief or marginalized heartache. Gabor Maté offers quite a bit of personally relatable insight with his book about ADHD and its possible origins, Scattered and the thus far pretty insightful The Myth of Normal. He has also written in depth about addiction with In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts… though I’ve only viewed the related content on streaming services. When we're encouraged to repress, we're also discouraged from being our authentic selves... or even standing comfortably in a room of equals.
There's one phrase I truly believe would benefit the world should we all learn it and honestly believe it when we say it... "Are you okay? You seem distracted. It's okay to tell me anything. I mean anything. I promise." We may hear things about a person’s life which completely surprise us… even change our perspectives about another person we know… but to be heard, feel trusted, be believed… it meets our identity needs and validates our experience. Gaslighting is the opposite of this… it’s telling a person their perspective is wrong or selling their experience short… perhaps in favor of another person’s reputation or the resources they offer our life. Gaslighting can be telling a person their memories didn’t happen, inviting shame, doubt and insecurity.
We may not always be able to offer advice and may even find things hard to believe but we are all able to listen. What we're doing when we honestly take in another person's perspective is validating their reality and offering them a way to process their experience verbally... no matter what we've heard to the contrary, it's allowing people to express themselves. This is essential for our mental health and developing how we process the world and our experience within it.
With all those pieces known of a collective puzzle, we're able to understand a whole more deeply. We're able to assess relationships and see whether our values truly align with a person or we're simply relying on them for some sort of resources... maybe for fun, leisure, relaxation... whether they're just bringing us joy.
These are superficial things but they can often tip us in favor of a person with money, toys and resources to share... because that superficiality is pleasant, wondrous... and addictive. The more stressful our life is, the more we'll align with people who can make our lives more fun as a leisure resource and escape from the stress.
It’s still so very important to understand stress does not give us an excuse to discount anyone’s experience or deny our own wrongdoing. If anything, accountability reduces stress and strengthens our bonds with good people. When we share our mistakes, people learn how to live from them. We may think they’re about to judge us but the reality is… we hurt people with our secrets. We hurt many more people than ourselves.
Once mom passed away on Mother’s Day, May 12, 2019… I realized how important truth was. She had been working for the Autism Society of Michigan for a decade, shortly ago retiring and once dad took over guardianship… he pretty much isolated her. She’d previously been keeping up with paperwork, saving documents and doctor’s notes, checking in with my guardian and encouraging college along with independence… then dad just cut her off. Her paperwork filing became recording conversations and saving texts… in which dad was pretty unengaged, saying, “I’m taking care of it” and avoiding questions.
A few years ago, while he was my legally appointed guardian, dad’s health started spiraling… he fell into a diabetic coma and started having stroke-like episodes, sometimes in front of family. He seemed to hold himself together for the most part at holiday gatherings and family dinner but at home… he was growing dismissive and sometimes aggressive. Not like the usual, “God damnit!” when he dropped a tool or something went wrong in the garage… I mean wow.
At the time I wasn’t spending much time at home. I was getting back into skating, biking and visiting local book stores, libraries, comic shops, game stores and malls to get a refreshed feel for life. I had actually started volunteering for a local church just a half mile down the road. We painted the inside of it… we helped a few people with their yard work… I got some green shirts… then I got some paint on one of those green shirts… smiles, laughter and paint all around.
There was one particular night I had confronted dad when he started slurring his speech… I sat down beside him, setting my hand on his arm to let him know I wanted to connect and he immediately jumped up yelling, “Don’t fucking touch me!” and he stomped around the couch, up the stairs where he slammed and locked his door.
I had previously seen this sort of behavior in him before I found him naked on his bed, slipping into his first diabetic coma… mumbling and blurting, “Go away” “Fuck off” “Not me” and “No.”
I was scared for him. Very… so I waited a few minutes, checked in with him and heard the same angry comments… until a few minutes later when I came back to the door, he yelled a final, “fuck off” and fell silent.
After waiting what felt like an eternity, but probably 15 minutes to a half an hour I knocked again, waited for an answer then unlocked his door to peak in on him. The second I did, he burst through the door and shoved me against the wooden lined closet outside his door where he sort of lifted me upward with his hand at the base of my throat. I could see in his eyes this confused rage, then childish panic as he dropped me and rushed back into his room, trying to slam the door and apparently catching his foot, yelling, “fuck” then successfully slamming it closed and yelling, “Leave me the fuck alone.”
The next morning I rode my bike to the Shelby Twp Police Department for a report. I didn’t want to press charges but I didn’t want this to happen again or not be believed if it did. An officer got a few photos with a pretty nice camera… which I actually mentioned because I was looking for a new one... after I filled in the report with my already ridiculously horrible handwriting and at the time, shaking hands because I couldn't quite come to terms with what I was doing.
Dad has since been telling people I broke into his room and attacked him because I guess he fucked up his ankle running back into the room… for what? His health was already clearly suffering and our entire family was aware… so was the rest of his community and friends. I’m sure they’d give him a ridiculous amount of love and attention if he just owned up to his emotionally dis-regulated outburst. That, and I wouldn’t have been isolated from my beautiful family.
Lies can destroy communities for the sake of one successful person or protect our kids from uncomfortable truths. We hurt a lot of people simply trying to keep up an image. We will always hurt someone while trying to look impossibly perfect… sometimes its the people closest to us… the ones who would gladly offer their soul simply to help us heal and show us love.
It had already been a year or so since doc’s agreed to reduce and remove prescriptions so I’d been off everything and frequently volunteering while dad pretty much stayed home. In fact, a lot of my social media presence documents life from that point along with a ton of journaling. It was important to me having access to my thoughts from the point of being taken off all pills. Unfortunately I also began practicing radical honesty and getting in touch with authenticity since mom had passed.
Since the incident with dad, my guardianship switched to a public lawyer with dozens of cases connected to a pretty significantly conservative Christian organization. Radically polarized support for any individual organization, political party or faith can be pretty frightening. During our second meeting, they mentioned their goals for me include getting married and having kids. I’m just not about that right now and I’m hoping never on having my own kids.
Terry, my new guardian did say they work with the Wertz Warriors which is the winter branch of the Water Warriors supporting Special Olympics Michigan so there’s a mild tie-in which I support. They’ve been a little subtle with their intentional contact, and I’ve only met with Terry twice… which can be a good thing. It’s given me plentiful opportunity to seek therapy and develop a deeper understanding of self and where I feel safe in society… along with pursuing A/V and photography once more.
It does suck not having the support of family. I miss them all… but everything we experience is an opportunity for learning and growth. It also means going it alone sometimes, when the only places you have to go aren’t the healthiest or safest environments. Music has always been my safe space... and art and goofiness of course but mostly music.
If it’s in your heart… and I mean compassionately, productively and authentically… if the truth in your heart needs to be known. Please share your experience with me. Your mind would not be experiencing the thoughts were it not integral to your understanding of survival and thriving.
The works of Marshall Rosenberg and Yvette Erasmus have opened me up quite a bit with communication, accountability and authenticity along with Gabor Maté. Nonviolent Communication fundamentals adapted by all… and rightfully so. NVC has been instrumental in not only comprehending myself but developing a healthy desire to connect with others in authentic, empathic ways.
In terms of work ethic, while volunteering I found Simon Sinek’s TED talks and eventually bought Start With Why on Audible audiobook. Adam Grant then graced my life as his “worthy rival” or rather more appropriately, companion educator… they share so many perspectives in different ways it’s hard to separate them once you know their individual work.
Something I’ve noticed through depression, anxiety and overwhelming fear of my circumstance is that we’ll always keep learning and nothing is ever forgotten. It’s only absorbed into our consciousness and adapted into our lives. We are everything we know. We are everything we've seen. We are a part of every person we've ever met as much as they are part of us. Acknowledge your experience and learn from it all.
Each and every one of us shares intrinsically driven, divine needs... inalienable biological and psychological requirements which must be interdependently nourished in subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation, creation, identity and freedom. We may suppress these needs in unhealthy ways then seek their fulfillment in even less healthy ways... but these internal craving are always subconsciously within us.
You’re a worthy human being capable of amazing things. You deserve credit where it’s earned and grieving when you suffer. You deserve to be acknowledged, believed and understood… and to learn and live every day with passion.
You deserve to hold on. You deserve to create. You deserve to sing and feel. You deserve to be known, supported and feel safe. You deserve to feel loved... because you are. I love you... every one of you beautiful weirdos. We all deserve to dance.
Elephantshoe <3