In this current phase of self-discovery I am seriously beginning to close the door on the battles that I am discovering were within my headspace. I now chose to discontinue the battle that I was choosing to fight for nearly four years and take what I need to do seriously.
The battles are what I have had to fight with negative and challenging thoughts and thoughts about thinking that I don’t need a certain medication to thrive in the world. In my best moments I have learned that medicine does what it needs to do, as has been standard practice for over two decades. I have to stop having the battle within my headspace along with other battles thinking that I cannot do things because of this reason and that reason. These were stories that I was telling myself and entertaining them, even though they were not in my best interest.
Others have been a victim of what I have had to endure even though I “masked” through not being properly medicated and not taking care of myself. I entertained many myths that I continue to bust time and time again and instead of accepting the fact that I needed to move on, I still let the cycle repeat because of pure ignorance and disregard for being outside of an environment that I could control.
In fact, many of the things that I wanted to do I was doing in the early years, yet I disregarded it based off of the trauma it surrounded and not seeing what it could provide. While I am a grown independent adult, I am realizing that it comes with responsibility to not only myself, but those around me whether it be program staff, co-workers, supervisors or fellow colleagues. While I have accepted what I did was wrong I need to put it in the past and move on from the mistakes I made and ensure that safeguards are in place to minimize them from happening again to make myself prone to opening up the vicious cycle and the battle to repeat.
My ultimate goal in life as it is right now is to not only be well, but do things I know I can do. I feel the reason I was not being as serious as I needed to be about putting this issue to rest was the fact that I entered fight mode and increased anxiety as is often the case when doing things that are new to me or may sound scary. Heck, I looked at two other apartments before moving into my first one. It is surprising how I was able to move in my current one with as little hesitation as I had in the past. At that point, I feel that it was a state of desperation to get back on my own that made it happen and became a necessity and a true gift.
Sometimes we have to accept that we cannot live the way we are because it is making us the person who we do not want to be, even though it may feel good to us because I was opening myself up more. While things with a steady regimen are at a slower speed, they are easier to manage and predict and I am not all over the place as I once was. I am in a healthier mindset and while I am recognizing my need to practice additional self-care as a result of standard autistic burnout, I do know it is easier to manage life as a whole because of the medication and I am a more lovable, enjoyable, mature and pleasant person because of it.
I want to close by saying that while I do recognize that medicine is not everyone’s forte, this medication in particular has been a long-standing ordered medication since I received my latest autism diagnosis over two decades ago. While I have endured some side effects since then as a result for following the regimen, all things considered, I have to see things optimistically as being in a better frame of mind is more and having to endure some of the things that weren’t as bad as I had to endure over the past four years a I did in over twenty. While the side effects from not taking the medicine were turning around, my well-being and state of mind was worsening and now that I realize that for almost four years I was battling this all in my head and finally realizing that I can still do the things I love and take the medicine that I have found necessary for decades and has been proven to work is no-brainer for me, but medication effects everyone differently and should be treated as such.
Dustin's Dynasty 