It is only 2 days before my 26th birthday. The prior month I was just asked to move out by the current roommates I was living with at the time. They saw me getting withdrawn, distant, cold, and even isolated towards them. I know full well that played a major factor in being asked to leave. I was depressed, and unwilling to do much other than come home, go to my bedroom, play a video game or write something up on the computer. I also gather they were not happy with the lack of effort being made to help keep the place clean, but I have to be fair here and say that they weren't the best at it either. This was back in January of this year. Work was also getting stressful as I had not had any real vacation since I started working there in the last 17 months. I was only going to be getting two days off at the end of the week to go back home and visit some friends and family and just relax.
I was driving to work on a Monday morning, and I was running a little bit behind that day and I was already stressing out and screaming. The traffic was backed up and I was just getting more upset. Realizing that I was getting out of control, I pulled out of the traffic and pulled into a nearby Wal-Mart parking lot to calm down. I lit a cigarette and called work and told them I would be late because of a meltdown. I then got on the phone with my mother who was doing what she could to calm me down. I could pretty much hear my dad's voice in the back of my mind screaming "Get over it and get to work." I of course started to break down into tears. After a few minutes on the phone, I was on my way to work and I went to the reception desk when I got in and was asked if I wanted to go to work or talk with the operations manager first. I told them I can talk with him and I can go from there. During this meeting the manager got me to reveal what was going on. There were other setbacks at the time, I had dealt with an infection and the anti-biotics I was on may have started the chain reaction of events that lead to the depression. I was not faring well meeting new people, and I had also spent Christmas day in bed because I poked myself in the eye by accident and it hurt for a few days. Life was not going well for me to say the least. After talking a little more, I revealed that I was an Aspie and to my surprise, my manager knew full well what it was. I was told that he understands that Aspies have a harder time snapping out of a funk and it takes away all their energy and we just don't feel happy about ourselves. I revealed that I had two days off at the end of the week, but was told I can take my birthday off as well since it was on the Wednesday as well. I had one condition for that though, I had to attend and Aspergers meeting that evening.
I did attend the meeting and the topic was depression. Some people in the room did seem depressed and to my surprise, I felt like the most normal person in the room until I started talking with some. I looked around the room and I did find that some people were shaking back and forth or were just clicking their hands. This body language was telling me that they were high strung or nervous. Some people seemed extremely relaxed as well. It was also clear that some thought they had Aspergers but weren't diagnosed. After this meeting, I remember talking with my employer the next day about it and I was free to travel home for my birthday. I thought this helped me a little bit because now I truly understood that I was not alone in this world.
I got around to thinking that this meltdown was caused by a chain reaction of events. I mentioned it with the employer. It seemed that the second I got away from one problem, another one came up and it just made things a little worse for me. I didn't know when the problems would end. I also came to realize that I may have gone through Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) around this time due to the lack of sunlight and the stress caused by three major events in this time period that historically never go well for me: Christmas, New Year's and my Birthday, all within a four week period. My birthday I feel to be the worst and the funny thing is once the final event is over, things start to look up for me afterwards for some reason. There is no more worrying about being disappointed, and no more worrying about anything after. Actually, the only thing I did have to worry about now was finding a new place to live.
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