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Tumblr Post: Anon Asks About Me Part 1
So I was asked a question on Tumblr.
Anonymous Asked: Hey! I read that you've been having a few bad weeks :( Are you ok? I've read a few of your fics before but I didn't even know you had a tumblr/ao3 so when I saw that you hadn't updated Rewritten In The Stars in awhile (which happens ofc) I got worried lol, I hope I'm not being obnoxious! xx
I might as well answer here too.
Hi! You’re not being obnoxious. It was nice of you to be concerned. Thank you! The rest of this post might be TMI for you, so feel free to ignore it, then wait just a bit and I’ll be posting more fic :)
I don’t usually lay all my personal shit out for everyone to see online. My close friends and family know when I’m having a hard time because they’re very supportive, but I don’t like to do the attention seeking “woe is me” routine. I hadn’t meant to post off anon, but when I reread my post at the kink meme, I realized it was rather vague, so I just left it.
I’m a high-functioning schizophrenic. I was diagnosed when I was a toddler, so I’ve dealt with this all my life. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t hear, see, feel, taste, or smell things that others didn’t. My family is awesome and raised me with a good sense of humor about the whole thing, never taking myself too seriously. I’m nearly 100% certain that I have them to thank for the fact that I’m high-functioning. I own a (successful) business, drive, own my home, etc.
I deal fairly well with it most of the time, but I have a hard time with change and not knowing where I stand. That happened in the last few weeks in multiple aspects of my life (and the stupid part is a lot of those changes were GOOD!), and it set me off toward a psychotic episode. I didn’t actually get to a full-blown psychotic episode because I’ve learned over the years how to see when it’s coming and do something about it, which is knocking myself out for about three nights in a row. It doesn’t always work, but this time I think is one of the times it does work.
When I get overstressed, my senses all become hyper, and even gentle touches or soft lights hurt. The hallucinations ramp up to more than “normal,” and lucky me, I hallucinate with all my senses (which is very rare, the docs say), not just vision or hearing. I get to the point where I’m sleeping 1-3 hours a night, some nights not at all (once I didn’t sleep for four nights and five days). Knocking myself out so I get some good sleep for a few nights usually resets my brain. If it doesn’t, I have to resort to antipsychotics for about six weeks. That’s only happened a handful of times in my life.
My hallucinations are drug-resistant. Which means that, even though antipsychotics can get me through a psychotic episode, they never stop the hallucinations (in fact they get worse for the first week I’m on the antipsychotics), which is why I don’t bother taking them all the time. They’re strong, do a lot of damage to your brain, and I become zombie-like when I’m on them (and that’s not living your life), so if they’re not gonna stop the hallucinations, why bother?
I deal with hallucinations all the time. The guys at the shop (and most of the people in my life) know I’m schizophrenic (because I like to be open about it), and as soon as they see me and my family laughing about it, they join in because it’s refreshing. The first few times I say something like “are the lights flickering for anyone else or just me?” some people look a little worried as to how to respond, but soon enough they’re laughing along with the rest of us. I’ve never been violent, and any damage I’ve ever done was to myself (cutting, not eating, etc.). So people don’t HAVE to be scared of me.
In fact a lot of people like that I’m brutally honest about things. I’m not emphathetic or sympathetic, which makes interpersonal relationships rough (and that’s also why I’m up front about being schizophrenic), but I have very high intelligence, am very analytical, and can make decisions without emotions getting in the way. Many of my family members are very emotional, but they’re also logical thinkers, so we all balance each other out and we work together well.
The depression/pre-psychosis I’ve been going through over the past few weeks actually helps my writing. I’ve written somewhere around 80k words in just a few weeks. But when it comes to posting and interacting with people, it’s overwhelming. Most of the time I laugh off flaming or bullying assholes, but when I’m doing the depression/pre-psychosis thing, it can set me off/shut me down. I tend to first get thrown into a manic stage, where I’m intense and talk a lot, can’t stop moving, and don’t sleep much at all, but then when the psychotic episode gets fully going, I’m catatonic, staring at nothing, just lying in my bed with hallucinations loud and bright all around me, twitching, shallow breaths.
And yes, I know “psychosis” is pretty much what I’m in all the time by definition, but I have to have some way of defining episodes that aren’t my normal.
I’ve not told anyone online in fandom before because it’s a scary thing to most people, mostly because they don’t know a lot other than what the media shoves down their throats, and it seems that when people are told face-to-face and can see how I deal with it, how well I handle it, that I have a sick, twisted, sarcastic sense of humor that’s gotten me through this, then they don’t pity me or feel awkward about it, or worse yet, fear me. Online, people can’t see that, and it feels like a shitty move on my part to lay that on somebody.
Having had hallucinations all my life and taking everything lightly has allowed me to not be a slave to them. A hallucination tells me to do something evil? I laugh. I see a dark thing floating around past the doorway? I laugh. I smell/taste crayons when there isn’t a crayon in the building? I laugh. Then I share what I’ve “heard” or “seen” with family and friends, who then get a good laugh as well.
So this weekend I’m doing the knocking-myself-out thing. It’s working so far. Writing is not only an escape for me, but it’s a positive way to use my overactive brain (which never fucking shuts off). Even small things can give me millions of ideas, and focusing them into a fic is kinda like therapy. Once I’ve gotten some sleep, I should be able to handle good and bad comments from people again soon, so I’ll be posting quite a lot of what I’ve been writing.
This is probably a shit-ton more than you thought you’d be getting when you messaged me, and I apologize if it’s all shit you didn’t really want to know, but there ya go. I’m really excited you like my fics, and thanks again for your concern :)
~Maya
Anonymous Asked: Hey! I read that you've been having a few bad weeks :( Are you ok? I've read a few of your fics before but I didn't even know you had a tumblr/ao3 so when I saw that you hadn't updated Rewritten In The Stars in awhile (which happens ofc) I got worried lol, I hope I'm not being obnoxious! xx
I might as well answer here too.
Hi! You’re not being obnoxious. It was nice of you to be concerned. Thank you! The rest of this post might be TMI for you, so feel free to ignore it, then wait just a bit and I’ll be posting more fic :)
I don’t usually lay all my personal shit out for everyone to see online. My close friends and family know when I’m having a hard time because they’re very supportive, but I don’t like to do the attention seeking “woe is me” routine. I hadn’t meant to post off anon, but when I reread my post at the kink meme, I realized it was rather vague, so I just left it.
I’m a high-functioning schizophrenic. I was diagnosed when I was a toddler, so I’ve dealt with this all my life. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t hear, see, feel, taste, or smell things that others didn’t. My family is awesome and raised me with a good sense of humor about the whole thing, never taking myself too seriously. I’m nearly 100% certain that I have them to thank for the fact that I’m high-functioning. I own a (successful) business, drive, own my home, etc.
I deal fairly well with it most of the time, but I have a hard time with change and not knowing where I stand. That happened in the last few weeks in multiple aspects of my life (and the stupid part is a lot of those changes were GOOD!), and it set me off toward a psychotic episode. I didn’t actually get to a full-blown psychotic episode because I’ve learned over the years how to see when it’s coming and do something about it, which is knocking myself out for about three nights in a row. It doesn’t always work, but this time I think is one of the times it does work.
When I get overstressed, my senses all become hyper, and even gentle touches or soft lights hurt. The hallucinations ramp up to more than “normal,” and lucky me, I hallucinate with all my senses (which is very rare, the docs say), not just vision or hearing. I get to the point where I’m sleeping 1-3 hours a night, some nights not at all (once I didn’t sleep for four nights and five days). Knocking myself out so I get some good sleep for a few nights usually resets my brain. If it doesn’t, I have to resort to antipsychotics for about six weeks. That’s only happened a handful of times in my life.
My hallucinations are drug-resistant. Which means that, even though antipsychotics can get me through a psychotic episode, they never stop the hallucinations (in fact they get worse for the first week I’m on the antipsychotics), which is why I don’t bother taking them all the time. They’re strong, do a lot of damage to your brain, and I become zombie-like when I’m on them (and that’s not living your life), so if they’re not gonna stop the hallucinations, why bother?
I deal with hallucinations all the time. The guys at the shop (and most of the people in my life) know I’m schizophrenic (because I like to be open about it), and as soon as they see me and my family laughing about it, they join in because it’s refreshing. The first few times I say something like “are the lights flickering for anyone else or just me?” some people look a little worried as to how to respond, but soon enough they’re laughing along with the rest of us. I’ve never been violent, and any damage I’ve ever done was to myself (cutting, not eating, etc.). So people don’t HAVE to be scared of me.
In fact a lot of people like that I’m brutally honest about things. I’m not emphathetic or sympathetic, which makes interpersonal relationships rough (and that’s also why I’m up front about being schizophrenic), but I have very high intelligence, am very analytical, and can make decisions without emotions getting in the way. Many of my family members are very emotional, but they’re also logical thinkers, so we all balance each other out and we work together well.
The depression/pre-psychosis I’ve been going through over the past few weeks actually helps my writing. I’ve written somewhere around 80k words in just a few weeks. But when it comes to posting and interacting with people, it’s overwhelming. Most of the time I laugh off flaming or bullying assholes, but when I’m doing the depression/pre-psychosis thing, it can set me off/shut me down. I tend to first get thrown into a manic stage, where I’m intense and talk a lot, can’t stop moving, and don’t sleep much at all, but then when the psychotic episode gets fully going, I’m catatonic, staring at nothing, just lying in my bed with hallucinations loud and bright all around me, twitching, shallow breaths.
And yes, I know “psychosis” is pretty much what I’m in all the time by definition, but I have to have some way of defining episodes that aren’t my normal.
I’ve not told anyone online in fandom before because it’s a scary thing to most people, mostly because they don’t know a lot other than what the media shoves down their throats, and it seems that when people are told face-to-face and can see how I deal with it, how well I handle it, that I have a sick, twisted, sarcastic sense of humor that’s gotten me through this, then they don’t pity me or feel awkward about it, or worse yet, fear me. Online, people can’t see that, and it feels like a shitty move on my part to lay that on somebody.
Having had hallucinations all my life and taking everything lightly has allowed me to not be a slave to them. A hallucination tells me to do something evil? I laugh. I see a dark thing floating around past the doorway? I laugh. I smell/taste crayons when there isn’t a crayon in the building? I laugh. Then I share what I’ve “heard” or “seen” with family and friends, who then get a good laugh as well.
So this weekend I’m doing the knocking-myself-out thing. It’s working so far. Writing is not only an escape for me, but it’s a positive way to use my overactive brain (which never fucking shuts off). Even small things can give me millions of ideas, and focusing them into a fic is kinda like therapy. Once I’ve gotten some sleep, I should be able to handle good and bad comments from people again soon, so I’ll be posting quite a lot of what I’ve been writing.
This is probably a shit-ton more than you thought you’d be getting when you messaged me, and I apologize if it’s all shit you didn’t really want to know, but there ya go. I’m really excited you like my fics, and thanks again for your concern :)
~Maya