About me, and my conditions.

This has been a long time coming, but I've wanted to do something like this for years, not just for myself, but for others as well. I'm doing this more for mental and disabled health awareness than anything else, and certainly not for pity. I've had many questions over the years however, and many misconceptions, so I hope this can help in any case.

I've had many chronic issues since my early teenage years, and perhaps even before that, but I'd say that's when the majority started. I developed depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia some time over my teenage years. I don't think I was always introverted as a kid, but a combination of nearly always being a straight A student, being picked on a lot for it, being poor, and my general interests differing from most; though never physically bullied just because of my height and size, plus issues developing since the 4th grade with concentration issues and having major trouble writing my thoughts to paper and not wanting to do any kind of public speaking things like science or social studies projects or reading things I actually did manage to write, led to all of these worsening unchecked over time. I remember before that, having two main roles in the 2nd and 3rd grade Christmas plays and choir, the latter being the main singing solo (in which I had a cold, ugh,) so I wasn't always stuck in my own shell. I had a few friends, but they never stuck around more than a couple years, as it seems their interests always differed from my own after a short time where they changed but I didn't seem to. This just got worse the closer adulthood came, especially around the area I grew up.

Most of school just seemed to come easy to me, with those exceptions, to the point I just didn't do projects and most reports that required presentations because of my growing phobias. I still had good grades, and would have graduated just fine with a C being the lowest grade I would have gotten even with those zero scores, but my senior year, I finally had to drop out because I just couldn't stand to be around people, and I couldn't get the single remaining required credit in English that I needed. I went back for one more year to try to get it, but ran into the same issues, so I just decided to get my GED instead. I remember feeling inanely disappointed over this, because I felt like I had really learned almost nothing in my last years of school, as everything on the test had pretty much been covered by everything I had done in middle school by the time I had left there with some of the advanced courses I had already taken. At least that was all behind me, but a lot of damage with no help had already been done, and I just didn't feel like I fit in anywhere. This was the mid-late-90s.

During this time I was put on Prozac as my first anti-depressant, and even then I don't remember it doing anything to help me. Besides being overweight, I also developed my first physical issue that still bothers me to this day, a kyphosis in my back called Scheuermann's disease that I ended up getting diagnosed from developing some rather severe back pain that started just days after a simple hop off the back of a pickup truck that either caused my spine to go out of place or just exacerbated this condition I may have already had. Thanks to my aunt's help I ended up going to the chiropractor, but everyone thought it was teenage growing pains, and x-rays I had didn't show the condition until it had already grown into there really being no way to try to correct it. I still have a lot of back pain to this day, but it honestly seemed to be worse in my teens and twenties. It also left me with a slight bit of a hunchback.

About a year after getting my GED, myself and a couple of the friends I still had from high school at the time got recruited together to go to an accelerated university for computer programming. At the time I was thrilled because even with my troubles, I had still managed to receive enough of a scholarship and grants which covered tuition and living expenses, and was out on my own, so to speak. Things started out well enough, a new area with new people, without any of the grade school bullshit, but a few months later things would take a terrible turn for me that I couldn't recover from. I somehow got a really bad case of Hepatitis A, which no one else did in the entire city area, but I was quarantined and ill for an entire month with this thing attacking my liver. I fell too far behind in my schoolwork and had to drop to save my grades and chances at my scholarship, which I could get back upon completing the next semester. I didn't have money to live on any more however, and had to take a job along with the schooling.

I couldn't handle it. After three more months, unable to work a good paying physical job because of my back, and unable to handle a job doing phone internet tech support and the schooling at the same time, my entire life just crashed. I couldn't really sleep well, and was tired all the time, even after sleeping. I didn't want to be around anyone, and my concentration worsened even more, and finally I just had to call it quits and move back home. I felt like an absolute failure for having to do this, and thought I had let everyone down, even though I hadn't, and had been trying my best. I only realized many things about this entire year's experience after returning home, and would soon find out other problems I didn't even know I had. It was only some time after returning home that I found out none of the friends I had went to this school with had finished either. One had left long before me and is probably the most successful of my actual friends, amusingly enough. The other tried to stay longer but had medical problems of his own causing issues and eventually ended up following his dream of joining the Air Force.

Once I returned home, my life for some time was a complete mess. I couldn't handle being around people but didn't want to really tell that to anyone. That and my back pains kept me from getting a job. I had never been suicidal, but even with the couple of friends I still managed to have at home at the time, I was miserable all the time and felt worthless because of everything society and school had driven into me at this point. It was around this time that my aunt once again was my biggest help, helping me to get started on the process of getting disability. Not to say that the rest of my family wasn't a help, as my mom and other immediate family have always been greatly supportive of me, but we've always been in extreme poverty, I grew up on a small farm and our only source of income was essentially selling firewood, and whatever small amount we would get from the farm, but to me it always seemed like it was a money sink, though we were never hungry. They just never could take me places I needed to go, even in school times, and they definitely couldn't afford any kind of health care. They were in that poverty level at the time where they made just enough that they couldn't get any free health care coverage, and had no money to afford any.

To even get the disability process started when I did, I needed to be sent to doctors to get things checked out. The main reason I started the disability process to begin with was because of the pain I was in much of the time, but the chances it was bad enough to actually qualify me were slim. I was denied on my first attempt, as is pretty standard for anyone out there, but it was thanks to my aunt paying for these medical appointments, and my denial, that I was able to get my case accepted by the disability lawyer. It was thanks to her that I was able to get actual visits to start with mental health specialists and started to find out all the problems I really did have. I found out I had sleep apnea, probably for years at this point, which was the main cause of my second semester college woes. I officially got diagnosed with my major depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia, and apparently was also told that my IQ was on the borderline genius level as well, which in my disability case, could actually be a bad thing for me.

To this day, I use a CPAP machine for my apnea, probably around 20 years now, and I can't really even sleep without it. Even so, I don't really ever get good rest, and I haven't had dreams that I remember since my childhood, so I really dislike sleep in part because of it. I wouldn't wish not being able to dream on anyone, and it's one of the things I dearly miss, as they were so vivid in my childhood.

After some time my hearing finally came, and I guess a combination of everything I had wrong with me ended up getting my case approved. It was a huge relief for me, and thankfully, the biggest help has been having the Medicaid health insurance because of it, even though it's far from perfect. This was around my mid-twenties, and I thought things would turn around for me, but it ended up really only being the start of my health issues.

Part of the requirements of my case, was that I needed to seek treatment for some unspecified time, and have some group counselling, amongst other things. I was more than happy to start all of this, as all I wanted was to get better, or at least try. As the months passed, I was put on different SSRI and antipsychotic medications to try to help, one of those being Zyprexa. My family has always had a history of type 2 diabetes, and unbeknownst fully at the time I had started it, the Zyprexa accelerated the condition in me, and one day while I had routine blood work done, it was found that my blood sugar was sky high, and I was called in to discuss this, and taken off the medication, as it was found out around this time there was a connection, but the damage had already been done. Thankfully, I have had really good control over it until the last couple of years when I finally had to go on insulin, but we're hard at work trying to figure out what has changed and why I'm not responding much to medication or even the insulin.

Throughout my 20s I was put on pretty much every medication treatment for depression at the time, and nothing seemed to help. In fact, many, such as Welbutrin, which works well for many people, made it worse for me. It turned me into a very angry person that lashed out at people just trying to help me, including my own brother, and I still hate those days because of it. Things started to seem hopeless by this time, as I was just taking medicine after medicine, feeling like a slug and not wanting to do anything most of the time, the group therapy didn't seem to do much to help in the overall, and the few times I had single therapy was beyond useless, as the only thing they were concerned about at the time was trying to get me working, instead of trying to help with any actual issues. Worse, I lost my aunt, my effective second mother, during this time to a complication to her diabetes, so for years, I was just in this miserable, doped up state of nothingness. It was around when I was 25 that a breakthrough happened, thanks to my family doctor at the time, and my mom.

Until my 20s, I'd had the same family doctor my entire life, since birth, until he retired from family practice. He's still a family friend and asks how all of us are doing whenever we see him. The doctor that replaced him I only had for a short time because he ended up leaving the area, but he ended up being a great help to me, thanks to my medical history, and what my mom had found out, just kind of by chance. At the time my parents were friends with a pastor that had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and through some random discussion she was having with them, mom ended up telling them that what they were describing are things I had been complaining about for years, since at least my teens, if not even before then. After she told me this, we went to my next appointment and told my doctor this information. After looking back through my records, he agreed it could very well be the case and started me on medication for it.

I don't remember how long it took, but there was suddenly a huge change in myself. I no longer hurt nearly as much as I always had until this point. I didn't realize it before then, but this terrible burning, painful sensation I had always had with my skin, was suddenly gone. I only realized how bad it actually was before this point when it ends up flaring up at random bad times now, or the few times early on when I had problems getting the insurance to cover it and missed doses. By this point I wasn't taking any anti-depressants as well, as I had run out of ones to take, with all of them being ineffective, but then I noticed after a while as well, that suddenly I wasn't nearly as depressed as I had been for years, either. The fibromyalgia medication was having a side-effect of actually reducing my depression symptoms, and I was just dumbfounded by how much of a change it really was.

Starting to actually feel somewhat better, I started to talk to more people online, and even try out dating possibly. I was a rather slow developer in general on this front, I didn't really start to want companionship until some time after I had come back from my college failure, but I didn't really want to meet with many people either while I was still rather taking the antidepressants and just generally feeling antisocial. I had been in the furry fandom for a while now, since the 90s, and truth be told, during much of this time I still had a dear friend and huge crush I wasn't willing to let go of either, a few people reading this may even know whom I allude to here. She'll always hold a place in my heart, but over time, as things often happen, we've lost touch, and I know she'd found someone long ago as well, and I hope she's still doing well out there. I had a few online hookups that I'd met with through my twenties, but it wasn't until I was closer to 30 I started to finally get comfortable in maybe wanting to meet someone for something more than just a casual sexcapade. I met with a few people I'm still friends with during this time, including my current GF of 12 years as of the time of writing this. Our relationship is now a non-sexual one, due to some of her own issues, but this is something we've come to an understanding on. I miss it a lot, but I was polyamorous to begin with, and made the conscious choice to be in a monogamous relationship, so the most important part is just having that communication.

My support network started to grow over my thirties, thanks to online friends I've made over the years, and while my mental problems are still there, they're usually manageable. My agoraphobia is always there, both offline and online, and while I manage it, it's always subconsciously there. I don't really know of many depictions of it out there in media, the best that I can recall is on the TV show Monk, the titular character had a brother with a severe case of it, and while mine is nowhere near that bad, it's still a problem. In public spaces, even doing everyday things, I can subconsciously just break out in a cold sweat. I don't really have full blown panic attacks unless I'm just completely overwhelmed, and I've managed to go to a few small anime conventions with my GF and her kid over the years and only really have one panic moment. I'm not sure I'll ever manage to go to a furry convention or not, between financial issues and the size that many of them are, and the fact my GF herself isn't a furry, but the opportunity may come up one day. I'm still only really comfortable around one or two people at a time, in a talking capacity, and even online I have to be really comfortable to use the microphone, as my long-time WoW guild could attest to by not speaking in voice for almost two years. It's pretty much the biggest reason there's very little jobs I can actually do though, because I just freeze up around others and public places way too often and too easily, and I still do terrible with any kind of conflict with another person.

My thirties have easily been the better parts of my life for my mental health, but with age comes other physical problems, and being over 40 now won't be any exception. The fibromyalgia still flares up, some days are fine and other days are just still crippling. I haven't developed neuropathy yet from having long-term diabetes, but arthritic joint pain is there. The medications I take for the fibromyalgia helps with both of those conditions, but I still have to be cautious about things. My back condition will always be there, and sometimes on more active days my entire spine can seize up. I've been overweight most of my life, and though I was losing weight for a while, and I'm still the lowest I've been in my adult life, I've hit a wall and I may have to have gastric bypass for my own health in the future, like my GF had to stop the damage her own diabetes was doing to her. It terrifies me though, because I've seen what foods she now can't eat, and while I rarely overeat, I absolutely love food and not being able to have a lot of things anymore I feel would take a very large toll on my already fragile mental health.

I'd say that about covers it. It's taken me a long time to write this all out, and an even longer time that I've wanted to, but if you've made it this far, thank you for reading. Feel free to ask me about anything else you want to know, either via the Twitter post, or a message if you feel it's more personal.