I woke up in a full on panic attack this morning, sweating profusely, yet freezing cold, shaking like mad and unable to breathe. It took me an hour to stabilize, and later, I told my mom about this, and she shared that she’d had some odd dreams as well.
She started sharing hers, and it was surreal how much our dreams lined up. They both took place in the past, 90’s I think, but we were both in our younger bodies. In her dream she was about the age she’d have been when I was the age I was in my dream, and in mine, I knew she was from the future too, so she was the only one I could talk to about the weird nostalgia things that no longer exist.
In both our dreams, we were surrounded by our family members, which included my dead grandmother (her mother). And we both felt deeply unsettled which, for me, was because I was a child again, even though I remembered the future, I still had my kid brain, and so everything was just extremely terrifying, hence the panic attack.
The strange thing is, upon waking, I was able to look back on the dream and realize how fucking stupid everything was and how incredibly not frightening most of it actually was… however…
My anxiety, which has only finally been treated in my adulthood, was so strong when I was a little kid. Crippling. I would have panic attacks at school and have to be removed from class because I would cry so hard I could barely breathe and was completely incapable of speaking.
Sometimes, when I have to miss multiple doses of my medication due to circumstances outside my control (being stranded out of town, for instance), it comes back at full strength, and I feel exactly like a little child again, helpless and terrified, and memories of my childhood run through my head as though I never aged at all.
Looking back on my dream last night, I was acting just like my normal self, but was extra aware of what an annoyance I was to everyone around me. It got me thinking that maybe I never really did grow up. I just aged into this disgusting old hag that I am now, with the brain of an idiot 5-year-old because autism. We mentally age more slowly than NTs, which explains why we tend to alienate others with unrealized immaturity.
I saw something recently that said something like… when you’re hurting, you don’t act the age you are, but rather the age you were when the wound was created. It put so many things into perspective for me, which unfortunately also made me realize that I’m mostly masking. I’m acting the way the world wants me to act, playing house, pretending I’m an adult until someone triggers that terrible anxiety that makes me notice my mental age… makes me feel small, helpless, afraid…
And I just lash out and say immature stupid bullshit, which makes me look like a fucking insane person, when really, I’m just a scared little kid trying to run home.
The truly horrifying part is that I know I’m just one missed dose of medication away from losing someone else I treasure… and I can’t handle that. I can’t handle rejection and ghosting because of how much I was bullied by literally everyone in my childhood. Kids, but also teachers. Family. Close friends. No one has ever just accepted me for who I am, and I have only been able to mask who I truly am with medication and escapism, but I’m only ever playing pretend.
And I just can’t live that way anymore. Do you understand what it’s like to never mature? To live your whole life with nightmares and sleep paralysis and people deciding they don’t want to be friends with “that weird kid?” To have to live each day as a terrified little girl, hiding beneath a carefully constructed mask of who everyone wishes you were? To never be good enough?
I try to justify my existence, to assuage my own guilt for my idiot actions, and try to tell myself that I have the right to take up space, to breathe the air I waste, to exist at all. And I can’t keep doing it. It has grown too hard and too many people have thrown me away, so how can I possibly believe that it’s okay for me to live here in this world with all these people who’d rather I was gone? It’s never going to get better. It’s never going to work out. No one is ever coming back for me, so I have to just go away. I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry for every stupid and regrettable thing I’ve done out of shame and fear and the fight or flight need to run away as quickly and easily as possible.
I know some of you did try to work things out, and I declined the invitation because I was the coward. Sometimes I just need time. But that’s not a good excuse, I guess. My needs never matter because I don’t matter.
It’s over. I can’t do this anymore.
You think you know me? 
Leave a comment