The worst possible place to have a breakdown is at work. I was 20 years old and not ready for college yet, but one year removed from high school. Yes, it took me an extra year to finish high school. I worked at Wal-Mart in my hometown, and was unloading trucks from 3:30 pm-midnight. A lot of nights, the minimum hours required was not good enough for the management, even though there wasn't really any work left for me to do, or they just felt like dumping more work on me. I was booked to work many days at a time without a day off in between, or only one day. I usually worked weekends, and found myself letting my life pass me by. I was getting more and more pissed off as each day passed working there. Each day I was putting up with more and more bullshit, and any day off requested was usually rejected outright. I had two months until I visited my older brother who was living in Rotterdam at the time. I requested the time off and I am sure I would have been rejected if I stayed there that long and they would have given me the ultimatum right then "If you don't show up, you will be fired." I was living with my parents and mom bought me the ticket, my response would have been "Who do you think I am more afraid of right now? You for possibly firing me when I get back, or my mom for wanting to kill me because you wanted me to work instead?"
One day it happened at the end of the shift. Our work was done and me and my co-workers just kind of went to the lunchroom quickly. One co-worker clocked out and went to the bathroom. A couple minutes later, me and another co-worker punched out and the night manager decided to tell us how wrong we were for clocking out in the fashion that we did. The manager did not like the fact that we wasted 5 minutes of company time doing nothing in the lunchroom before clocking out. This was the only time it happened, and he could have just said "Guys, I don't appreciate this, don't let me catch you doing it again." Instead of that, he wanted to waste 5 minutes of time telling my how I committed "time-theft" and stole the company's time and got paid for it. Who cares, it was only pennies or a fraction of a dollar. As he kept going, i was getting more agitated, and I knew what I was going to say. When the manager finished, I just muttered the words "yeah, whatever." The manager then asked me to come and talk to him right there. I thought about it for a second and yelled right back "No, fuck that. I am off the clock, I will leave now." He was taken aback by it, but not intimidated and said "OK, fine I don't want to deal with this right now." On the way out, there was another exchange of words, and he just reminded me that I would be speaking to management tomorrow.
Well, tomorrow did come and it was approximately half an hour into the shift when I was called to the manager's office. The store manager and another assistant manager (not the ones on duty the night before) had me in there for a talk, and hopefully to get me to conform once again. I had a meeting the month prior and I was working in a hostile environment with someone that was doing what they could to get me fired. I was rejected a transfer to a different department. I asked for one again and was outright rejected again. I didn't know how to communicate with people what I wanted, which further added to my frustrations with working at Wal-Mart. After the conversation was over, I was told that my attitude had to change, because it was getting worse and I would be written up. This meant that management was now going to look for a reason to fire me as well. I then looked at the Store Manager with a tear in my eye and said "I guarantee you, this will never happen again" I grabbed my Vest and punch-out card, and looked at it, and then handed them to the manager and walked out of the office. The manager was disappointed partly because he lost a good worker, but he knew it was better for me as well. He was kind enough to say to me "Have a good one, Mike." I then went home and finally cried which I did not do the night before for some reason. But the tears were soon gone and I started to breathe a little easier now that I wasn't as stressed out.
There were plenty of other mental breakdowns that happened between the age of 13-20. But there weren't many ones that helped shape my life or just weren't that memorable for me. This one really stuck out in my mind because this was where it was evident that I was bottling up my emotions for long periods of time and then letting them out at the strangest time. To add to what was causing these emotions to be bottled up was my inability to properly express myself. I had no idea how to communicate how I really felt to people, and could never really tell people what I wanted. As my brother said to me once "Michael, you always choose the path of least resistance". It was cowardly, yes, but it came from not knowing how to do things that came natural for NTs. Over the last few years, I feel I have significantly improved in these areas. I still need work because there are times when this happens again. I am just thankful now that I have an employer who understands AS and can help me if needed.
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