Just over a couple weeks taking a 2 night stay in Keene, my grandmother started to develop her issues that resulted her untimely death in late September. For more than 1/2 of August, she had stayed at the nearby hospital. The 2nd stay was for 2 straight weeks going into September. Then not only 4 days later, she got brought via ambulance, then was basically on her death bed, unbegntost to us, then about a week later (would’ve been a day earlier but due to the alleged storm that was Hurricane Lee, the homebound trip via a private ambulance, and little would I know that it would be three days later she’d be gone.
This narrative is not about my grandmother, but I am not also trying to come off as a victim or whining. This story is what happens when you have no one else to fall on, but then you become someone else’s “rock”, being the default manly figure, to a guy that’s already been depleted. Hence, why I refer this to being “on reserves”.
Loosing my grandmother was one thing, the other thing that occurred was loosing benefits only because my mother neglected to look at the specific details that had changed over the last redetermination period a year before. Because my mother had taken FMLA leave with her work (starting with the second stay), to essentially spend 1/2 the day at the hospital, what didn’t help was the rash of good-nurse, bad-nurse, one saying since COVID, they were more leanant to visitors; while crass trucker mouthers said “we can’t allow anyone after 8PM”, but the night before her last stay ever, they reluctantly allowed my mother to stay.
In between the second and third stay, I gotten anxious. I wasn’t really allowed to discussed this (and I slipped on my YouTube channel in late August). Things were getting so bad, I started to get highly anxious, and even posted a seriously hopeless video, of which I tried to reach out to a former support, whom of which didn’t know what to do, and called the local police for a welfare check and then decided to go no-contact.with me Apparently mental health and developmental disabilities are two separate issues.
Are you fucking kidding me?
My then-new therapist the night before just made me highly uncomfortable because I was getting so confused by her direction of the things I was brining up (ironically was attachment theory, co-dependency, etc.) In fact one of the triggering moments was she was characterizing my view around me in general as “cognitive distortions”. My grandmother never knew anything about the 12 hours of hell from me reaching out to that support, to the police welfare check, to her actually coming home that afternoon.
Going back to the benefits, it was in mid September where my benefits were suddenly not coming in, and I had a credit card bill due, with the assumption of money coming in. The financial part of my life, the operational part, was starting to get halted. On September 18th we tried calling DHHS, but being hopelessly on hold. But unlike the Bud Light Super Bowl ad
https://youtube.com/watch?v=azCNwGnxq0s%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR01dRSKvZcaCm66anqzGJUc8t9Dw7gXmAc7gyLrcjWv8os2YbUbhXsPPQg
…we didn’t have a Bud Light! we didn’t have the time. Not to mention the arguments my mother felt she was talking to an agent, thousands of miles away despite that infamous on hold music being the default hold music for Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager, which is the primary phone system at the largest agencies in the State of NH.
Not to mention from Labor Day weekend to late September, I was unable to get groceries. Other former supports in my life were alienated. It was getting the point my most important meal of the day (breakfast) was now on Pop Tarts, and 1/2 of the store bought Frappachino, so it could last. We didn’t really need to go grocery shopping for another week following her funeral and refreshments, where we took so much home.
As October rolled around, my mother’s ups and downs was becoming more evident as it appeared she has gone through significant amounts of guilt, My mother not the best documenter, so as a result lot of foggy thoughts just made me really anxious. At least by this point she copied the message that calling me her “rock” was a bit too much of putting me on a pedestal.
Unfortunately the few people in my life had codependency issues too, and felt that me and my mother are equal like some weird married couple. No one really felt that I was already at the breaking point the days following my gram’s passing. That was a very lonely feeling. My frustrations wasn’t because I couldn’t go into the pool, or that these inconveniences I knew would get carried out and my life would halt in other ways, no I have to essentially simp for my mother while others were putting her on a pedestal.
As I did with my mother, you gotta validate, and show acknowledgment. Doing academic style challenging during a really challenging moment shows a shallow level of narcissistic traits, you are taking away what the vulernable individual (that is me) is going through.
It is really important to make sure the planes are landing and departing on or close to schedule (the infamous phrase used on New York media for transit status, other markets say “at or near schedule” but that phrase sounds strange.) During this moment of my life, things were not even close to an on or close but months and weeks apart. It’s crucial for me to have redundant supports, contingency plans, and continuity schedules, if the latter two layers (supports and plans) fail. The idea that very few autistics even talk about not. having point of failures as a way to describe their structure in supports is surprising.
In fact while I was dealing with that narcissistic manager, this followed my Gram’s first heart issue, that creeped out of nowhere, and it was that point I realized she was on severely borrowed time. I started to think about her death much more, and started to get really concerned. I started to realize if the crap was to hit the fan, who was going to help clean up? Would the Londonderry circles be there? Only through the Blue App of course! What about my other circles? Of course not!
I am not a prophet, I just can see these underlying cracks that I knew if not addressed or course-corrected, I’d be screwed. And sadly I was right yet again without any attribution to my own self awareness.