Dear Dr Lauer,
This is for you too, but please pass this
on to Dr Holden. When will he be listed here so I don't need you as a go
between? It's amazing the things you think of at 5:30 AM. I'm up this early
because of back pain caused by falling off my kitchen stool and an ongoing
invasion of fruit flies. For the pain, I'm taking 400 mg of Advil PM or
Ibuprofen every six to twelve hours. For the fruit flies, I just cleaned my
place some more and I'll have an exterminator Friday. Being this time of
night, I had one of those thoughts like, my life has been so terrible, why
haven't I drowned myself in booze, pills or some other form of self-medicating?
The problem, as I see it, is that I still have hope, but is that hope really
rational? As I look back at my life, I graduated high school in 1975, and then
it took me TEN YEARS to get a degree in ENGLISH LITERATURE!!!!I I then
spent the next thirty years trying to start a career that never really
happened, despite some occasional fits and starts.
One of the best things that happened to
me in this time was that, in 1994, I had a nervous collapse consisting of a
massive case of chronic depression, which eventually got me into something
called the Skylight Center, a club house for people with mental disabilities,
which got me into Special Tees, which worked, for a while. Also, I
got a great new psychotherapist, Ms. Christine Murphy, who diagnosed me as
autistic. I had a great time with her for about twenty- five years. What a
shame she couldn't last. I'm now sixty- two. I'm still looking to start a
career when most people my age are looking to retire. I'm still as financially
dependent on my mother as any child, even now, six years after her
passing. So, is my hope completely irrational? Wouldn't be more sensible
to dive into a bottle of booze or pills and somehow kill myself?
