A life of self destructive choices.

It occurred to me recently that is what I've been doing. Probably most of my life. At least from my teen years. Some of it simply from undiagnosed and untreated depression and anxiety. Some because I'm pretty sure like my son, I am autistic. More just because, well, I don't really know. I don't think I ever learned how to not be that way. It just became my normal. In every aspect of my life. 

When you see a person with an addiction problem it's usually obvious. People tell them "get help", there's rehab, there's "interventions". When it's subtle people don't tend to notice. Or they just think you're an asshole (I am, but that's not the point). Maybe I'm having a late term midlife crisis or something but lately I've spent a lot of time thinking about things. And boy, the things I've come to realize about myself. Ouch. 

After years of therapy many years ago I did figure out what caused some of it. All the moving, the being the new kid in school, being large, being poor, wearing glasses, having a name that was so easy to ridicule. I withdrew into myself at a very young age. Climbed into the nearest book and did my best to ignore the world around me. And hey, for a long time that worked. Until adulting happened. And then it didn't. 

I was told so many times in school over the years that I was "wasting my potential" and at that point in life I didn't understand what it meant and I didn't really care. I figured I'd be dead by 20, either by my own hand or doing something stupid. It often felt like that was the goal. Actually it's felt like that was the goal for most of my life. Thus the subtle self destructive behavior. Though admittedly there was a few years where is wasn't very subtle. Drugs, alcohol, the wrong people... Because I simply never learned or understood how to be around people and I decided very young there was no point in establishing any kind of relationship with a person because either they'd go away or I would. Being drunk and high helped open the wall I built around myself, at least for an hour or two. It was the only way I knew how to do it. Obviously it was always the wrong kind of person who came through the wall. More self destructive behavior. When the drugs and drinking stopped working I turned to food and bad relationships with codependent narcissistic women who knew I was sad and lonely and used it to their advantage. Learned some expensive and hard lessons there. Well, kind of. Seems to have taken a lot more years for me to figure that out. 

Self sabotage seems so stupid doesn't it? I mean, if you sit and think about it just what is the point of this behavior? There's a line from a movie that often pops into my head: Get busy living or get busy dying. You know, pick one. Me, I just seem to exist. But the problem is when I do it I don't consciously realize I'm doing it. That's the hard part. Sitting here now thinking about all my life choices it's pretty obvious, but in the moment it never is. In the moment it often seems the best choice to me. Because there's a part of my brain that knows that choice is the worst one so obviously it's the one to go with. And so I do. With jobs, relationships, education, food, health.... And then years later it's suddenly "oh, that was a stupid choice", right before making another stupid choice.

So how the hell do you stop it? I don't want much from life, not really. I'm honestly a pretty simple person. What I do want though is to stop just surviving until tomorrow. That's been my life. That and bad choices. My shrink once asked me if I felt I didn't deserve to be happy. Deserve isn't the problem, it's that I have no idea how to accomplish that. I can't think of a time in my life where I was genuinely "happy". I'm not even sure I know what that means. Miserable is my default setting. Frustrated, angry, annoyed, sad, depressed, stressed out. These things I understand. I'm excellent at those. But "happy"? I don't know that. Not for longer than 15 minutes at a time anyway. I inevitably make a subconscious yet deliberate decision to fuck that up. Every single time. Is there rehab for that? Can I check myself in? 

At least I've finally become aware of it, so there's that. I finally understand why my brain works (or perhaps doesn't?) the way it does. Apparently the cool term for it is "neurodivergent"? Or something like that. Growing up it was just "having a bad day" or "he's just hyperactive" and the solution was to cut out sugar or throw Ritalin at them. "High functioning autistic" wasn't a thing. Kids didn't have depression, nope, never ever. Unless you sat in the corner stemming and drooling on yourself it was "more exercise, less sugar" and "just go outside, you'll feel better". Never could understand why I didn't ever seem to feel better. Didn't figure that out until I was 30 something. Didn't understand autism until my son was diagnosed. Filling out all the paperwork and questionnaires for him was rather interesting. Not that becoming aware of it really changes anything. I learned how to "mask" at a very young age. Externally. Internally I just built giant walls and shut off. I purposefully alienated people because it was safer than losing yet another friend. I avoided people because they never really understood me and I certainly never understood them. And no one ever understood why, least of all me. That's one thing about my son that I appreciate, people get it now. You tell people he's autistic and they go "oh, ok, makes sense". I didn't have that. I got ridicule and aggravation so I just avoided people. Survival mechanisms that worked when I was young but not so much anymore. 

OK, so I've become self aware. Cool. Now what? So I've accepted that I deliberate make absolute shit life choices. Now what? How to you change some an integral part of yourself at 48 years old? Is it even possible? When just making it through today seems like an insurmountable struggle how do you think about tomorrow? Or next month? How do you realize it's a self destructive choice before making it? Especially when that's the norm for you. When I decide to do a thing should I just automatically go with the exact opposite? Brain says go left and I go right? Or would that just take me a circle?