How to lose friends and manipulate people / Thirty days on sertraline truth serum / In the raw

This is what you should do:

Grow up in the country
socially isolated
with much older brothers
and undiagnosed autistic boomer parents
who are extremely repressed
and fearful around sex education

Get sexually abused by someone you trust
and then get
—repeatedly—
shamed
for being abused.

Internalise that shame.
I AM BAD.

Live for 45 years not knowing you are autistic
and actually
quite good.

Raise four neurodivergent children
not realising that they and you
and their father
and their grandparents (all sides)
aunts, uncles, cousins &c
are all
neurodivergent af

Be bullied, often
and
further shamed in the family;
ridiculed, set apart,
whenever you experience
emotions:
particularly
strong emotions
or
mental ill health.

(Why can’t you just calm down/
act normally/
be sensible/
do that inside/
so that the neighbours can’t see?

Why do you always have to be so
EXTREME?)

After many years
struggling with the kids
then you ofc should
leave your husband
who (let’s face it) hasn’t been much help—
and you should blame him for all of it,
not recognising that he’s autistic too.

Now of course the breakup will make the children suffer and
make them also
harder to cope with
but (for some reason?)
it has to be done.

Let him keep the house
because he bullies you into
giving him more than his share
(and you’re scared of him)
and let him also
pay less child support
than he’s s’posed to
but also
it’s fine that he’ll
continue
—with his mother—
(who he’s still scared of)
to shit-talk you to the kids
(that’s what exes do, right, particularly men
and mother-in-laws, even ones who
seemed to like you more than their sons
and you—you just try to be the bigger person ok—
or it will kill you inside)

Skip forward a bit
to the relevant bit for today,
post-diagnosis;
now you have autism, some of the kids have autism—
most of the others
are still in denial

and you chose polyamory
and you got involved with
some doozies let me tell you
and one of these
was this chick who
became homeless
and that sent some ripples
and set you to not sleeping much
for several weeks
and then you got scabies
which made that worse,

and then, cos you’re manic
AS ALL GET OUT
with that energy that wants to fix everything
for everyone
for all time
and all at once
RIGHT NOW!
you decide (of course you do!)
when you go to the shrink
(who’s so lovely btw, very calming, respectful)
to get sleeping meds
that you’ll take this chance too to finally
get off the venlafaxine
which doesn’t work now anyway
and you and he hatch an ambitious plan
that leaves you more manic than ever
for just one more month!

But it’s enough time
to alienate a whole lot more people
(and do a whole lot more good)
to cry many fresh tears
and to finally feel
the sting of compassion
for strangers.

i fuck up
a lot
and i’m sorry