As the Road Winds

Mac is amazing;  I constantly marvel at his energy and capacity for enjoying life.

In many ways, my life only began a couple of years ago.  I had spent a good fifteen years or so in the haze of medication and behaviors bordering on self-destructive.  My wife and children never really knew me, because I wasn’t “there”.  I was constantly going from one medication to another, having been diagnosed as clinically depressed, then bipolar.  One doctor I saw a little more than two years ago said my problem was simply that I was “thoroughly unpleasant” (his words).

It took a mental breakdown in January 2007 to help me get to where I am today.  I took two weeks’ short-term disability, during which time I was in an outpatient program at a local clinic.  The doctor treating me said he saw no signs of bipolar disorder and proclaimed me (stealing Mac’s thunder here) ADD—mostly because he had it and recognized the signs. He took me off the Lithium, which for three years had been sapping my energy and destroying my capacity to think,  put me on Adderall, and sent me on my way.  I also left with a fistful of handouts explaining various stress-management techniques which I had no desire to implement.  After all, MEDS ROCKED!

The Adderall had me bouncing off the walls, so the doctor prescribed a sedative to offset it; the combination put me in an emotional tailspin that caused me to (literally) lose my balance and to go into either a  crying spell or a rage at the slightest provocation (or none at all).  By this time I had had enough of the meds, so I fired the entire clinic and found a clinical counselor who worked with ADD adults. 

After meeting with her for an hour, during which she put me through an intensive,  computer-based  survey, she stated that I had the signs of Asperger’s Syndrome.  I had suspected this for some eight years already, but could find nobody who would listen to me.

I got off the remaining meds, was put on a mild dose of anti-anxiety medication, and began to “wake up”.  Several months of therapy, abandoning some of the more detrimental behaviors, and educating myself about AS followed.  I even found a use for some of those coping skills I had picked up at the clinic.

I still battle depression, and am (finally) emerging from a six-month funk which has taught me the importance of respecting myself and managing my stress.  It has also found me questioning much of what I had been taught about myself before I was old enough to know any better.   Though I had never formulated any sort of identity, instead relying on the opinions of other people, I am becoming more clear regarding who I am.

My story is in many ways one person’s discovery of his own soul, after a lifetime spent not knowing that he even had one.  Like many in my family, I had nurtured the intellect but neglected my heart; I now honor both, and they support one another.