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I've been wondering for a long time if I could explain this in words, if I could put it down, and have it make sense, and have it not be ... stupid, childish ramblings, that kind of thing. I've no idea. I figured I might try.
WARNING, WARNING, WARNING. Triggery things! Bad things, triggery things.
WARNING, WARNING, WARNING. Triggery things! Bad things, triggery things.
Okay. You know how personalities have layers, right? There are things you do/say/show to strangers, things you do/say/show to friends and/or family, things you do/say/show to those few extra special someones, things you only show to your own self. Even, too, things you don't even show to you, things you lock away and keep secret even from yourself. Layers, right? And quite a few of those layers (the top few, the bottom one) are defensive. Protecting yourself, usually, sometimes other people. Put up to fit in, to conform to or function within wider systems, to keep safe private parts of yourself from other people. That kind of thing.
Right. So. Um. I ... have problems doing that.
Lets ignore the aspie thing for a minute. Early on in the last major crash (I've gone through two cycles in the last decade-odd - couple of years up, really bad crash so couple years down), when I was with a different psychiatrist, I was ... trying to explain what I thought was happening. Trying to explain what it felt like, trying to explain the rationale I was sort of desperately building across it. And what it felt like was that I'd lost the outer personality. Lost the shielding, in one fell swoop, like it was a levered scaffolding that had become too heavy to keep up. That the ... the part that deals with people, the part in which you put the knowledge of how to deal with people, had collapsed, and broken beyond retrieval.
And he said (paraphrased), well, then that part obviously wasn't very good at its job, if it was too heavy to keep up, it obviously wasn't well suited to you, so ... maybe you should try to build a different one. One that works better.
Which is ... perfectly logical, and sensible, and I appreciate it, but ... well, how?
Thing is, I'm pretty sure he was basically right. The next three years were spent having a rather more comprehensive (and nearly fatal) breakdown, so the advice obviously didn't help too much in the short term, but ... The advice was simple enough, and neither of us were aware of certain pertinent factors at the time, things I will have to keep in mind if/when/now, but ... Yeah. Probably basically correct.
I want ... I want to explain that. I want to explain the sensation of that. I want to explain what the thing I lost felt like (what I remember of it), what it felt like to be without it, what the fuck it feels like to be facing the prospect of having to build another, better one ... And. And. What it feels like to look at the past two attempts, the results of the past two attempts, the cycle of ... and then look forward, project that forward, for the next one, two, twelve attempts that don't work (they might, they might, maybe next time I get it right, but what if I don't), and think ... well, how long can I survive that? How many times could I survive that process? How many times does Sisyphus roll a rock up a hill before he decides fuck that, let the bloody thing crush me?
Yes, defeatist, depressive attitude. Oh, trust me, I know that. I'm working on that. But ... In the moments of weakness, in the small crashes, that's the thought that ... that breaks me open. You have no idea. That's the thought that gives me fucking existential panic attacks, how stupid is that, who the fuck has those, but I did, I did, and it terrified me, it carved me right open, and that's stupid, but it just took me two days to start functioning again around it, so, forgive me, but.
Sorry. Sorry. I'm ... It just happened. Crash I felt coming. That was it. Fuck. Forgive me, I'm sorry. Coming ... coming back, moving on. Moving on. Fuck.
I've ... been having these a long time, I think. I've spent the past ten years riding the loop, building something that looks like it works, looks like it works, something that gets me through secondary school first, breaks, then something that gets me through college, breaks, now ... well. Now, we've got to figure that one out, haven't we? And it sounds easy enough, rinse, repeat, didn't you learn anything the first two times?
Which ... okay. Sort of. Not helped by ... I'm missing years. Memory-wise. I'm missing years. And ... possibly more than that. I can't tell. How much memory are you supposed to have? What quality of memory? Hard to tell. But ... okay, missing a lot of data. Hard to learn, when you're missing that much. But, yeah, there are some things that don't work.
Don't blanket-ban, being the main one. It doesn't work. It's too big, heavy, cumbersome. Looking back, listening to the descriptions of what my old faces looked like (public faces, people faces, the outer layers), they were ... pretty blank, I think. Pretty neutral, fairly unresponsive. Which, you know, I didn't know. I thought I was doing pretty damn well, actually. But. Not so much. The old faces, the collapsing faces ... they blocked. They stood still, and let whatever it was whistle right by, or bounce off, and hid whatever damage it did underneath. Blanket-ban, I'm pretty sure. Which ... yeah. Internally, I'm pretty sure those were the rules. Don't get angry. Way, way too many things get unpredictable when you're angry, we can't even predict ourselves when we're angry, don't fucking do that. Don't provoke people. People provoked are unpredictable. Which is fine, you know, true, but how the fuck do you avoid provoking people? You don't interact with them, that's how. Anything else, it could do the job, for a range of reasons you can't see. Don't react. That too. Reactions feed and fuel responding reactions. Don't do that. You don't know where it will go. Except, you know, a lack of reaction is a reaction in and of itself, and apparently a pretty rage-inducing one, depending on circumstances. So.
So. The old faces, the old public personas ... I'm pretty sure they were insupportable because they were simply too heavy, too cumbersome, too encompassing. They functioned on blanket-bans, because ... because I can't track nuance ... And blanket-bans don't work unless you actually decide to blanket-ban people. Which, you know, I've ... been so tempted, but ...
So. So. The cycle runs like this. I put up a face, to protect myself. That face functions reasonably well for a certain amount of time, until it becomes too unwieldy (provokes too many bad reactions?), until it becomes insupportable. Then that face will collapse. And what follows ...
What follows are the bad places in the cycle. What follows are ... I think most of the bits I can't remember. What follows are the times when every other person around me feels like a threat, when every person around me is a threat, whether they mean to be or not. When I can't see, and can't hide the not seeing, when I can't block damage, can't see it coming, can't ... When I'm afraid, terrified, guilt and shame and pain and confusion, when I can't even retreat behind a face to try and think it through, when there is no defense.
And when there's no defense, what damage you take is damaging direct to base-code. So. I've ... lost memory. Lost functioning. Lost ... things, I don't even know what. There was a time ... I ... Time stops tracking. Things concertina, lose definition, run into each other. I start to physically degrade, because do you have any idea how hard it is to keep up things like eating, sleeping, hygiene, when you're not even tracking time, when you can't hold a memory for more than a few hours at a time? I ... Um. I'm not sure what happened, with that. I have ... a lot of auto-processes running, a lot of things I can shunt to autopilot, which was possibly the saving grace, but ... I don't remember. I don't even remember how long it was. There are two years missing. I've no idea how functional or not I was for most of that. (I wasn't hospitalised, though, so obviously I was functioning, ish. Autopilot. Autopilots are wonderful. I have the best damn basecode in the universe).
I've had ... When you come out, then. When you start the upswing on the cycle. Most of the start of it is, I think, basecode repair. Restore base functionings, remove the self-destructive programming that's perpetuating damage. Try to pull out shame, guilt. Suicidal urges. Stop damage repeating. Then build back in memory storage, time recognition. Shunt things off autopilot and back onto active processing (which does wonders for memory-retention, apparently). Simple things. Animal-time, I call it. Just the basics. Forget people, forget faces, forget all of it. Work on the basics. Build a day-programming. Get up at this time, eat, run errands, function, sleep.
Next step up, you can go to task programming. That can run a long way. I finished college almost entirely on task-programming. Forget people, forget defenses, forget yourself, just do this job. Devote all runspace to accomplishing specific jobs, in specific timeframes. I got through college on that because I had so much support. I had people to run interferance. I had task-designated people, to whom I explained particular difficulties relating only to the tasks that needed doing, who would help me solve them, and enable me to finish the task. People were job-related factors, that's all. It worked. I have a degree. It worked.
But. But. The next step, after task-programming, is face-building. *rubs face* That's where I am now. Next step, you have to do face-building, rebuild defenses, because ... Well. Because people are still fucking terrifying, and you can't go through life with that always there. Task-programming will only get you so far, and only if you have a task that ... well, that will take up all available runspace. Less than that, the fear will take more, and then more, and we're back where we started.
Okay. So. Factors to keep in mind, for this phase:
- If possible, we're going to try to drop back to task-programming, in the event of failure, not animal-time or ... or the part under it. The cycle is not survivable longterm. We can't do the ... The last two times around the cycle, the crashes got worse, and the last one almost killed us, either through neglect or active suicide. That ... would not be good to go through again. Drop to animal-time, if we have to, but ... not the other. I don't know if we'll survive the other next time.
To accomplish that ... Most of the damage last time was shame and fear. Not much we can do about the fear, yet, but shame ... Shame probably. Shame was because I was failing, because I was visibly failing, because I couldn't do what other people did, and they knew it, and I knew they knew it. But. Okay. I can't do it. I am not as other people are. I'm weaker, at least in that specific sense. Fair enough. That's just a fact. And facts are there to be worked with, or around, and that's all. This is a fact to be worked with, to factor into the life-choices we make. Shame has nothing to do with it, and no reason to be involved, when you're not hurting anyone.
Fear ... Fear is questions like, is something like me supposed to work in a world like this at all? Fear is a moment of raw clarity, the knowledge that systems do not work, that there exists no pure, self-contained system immune to outside influences, that whatever model of human behaviour you throw up in front of yourself will, eventually, fail. Because that's all they are, models built without understanding of what's underneath the processes you're apeing, and sooner or later, someone is going to see that.
Can't touch fear yet. Well. Sort of. I ... pulled that back, from the panic attack. No system is immune. All of them will fail, because they're only apeing order themselves, because order and chaos are the same thing and there is nothing, nothing in all the universe you can put in front of that, and expect to hold. So. Your system has as much overall value as any other, really. Which is to say, not an awful lot, cosmically speaking. Heh. There is some comfort, in that.
- Don't blanket-ban. Which is ... a problem. Because blanket-bans are what I put in front of behaviours I don't understand, that appear to potentially have bad consequences. Which, in the realm of human behaviour, is sort of most everything -_-;
Also, not helped by the fact, that a lot of previously-learned rules no longer apply. School behaviour is no longer appropriate, apparently, the rules for social interaction in a school setting no longer applying. The models I've been using (attempting to use) are apparently now obsolete, which ... you know, doesn't help.
What I've been doing lately is ... attempting to do person-specific defenses, tailored at specific people close to me. I am ... still running without defense. Almost everything people are seeing from me right now is coming from basecode, beyond your more basic social-programming (things like, don't go out naked in public, for example - I'm talking the really basic stuff). I'm ... showing reactions, now, which apparently I didn't do before (because I was either behind a face, or not really interacting with people at all outside of task-functioning), and ... Um. A lot of those reactions are garnering bad responses. Partially, I think, because they're new, as far as people outside me are concerned. "Why is this bothering you, when it never did before?" It did, I just didn't show that. "Why do you care now, when you've never cared about me before?" I did. I just apparently never showed that either. *flinches* "Why don't you understand this, you did before?" No. I just nodded in the right places. Rather well, apparently.
I am ... asking questions, now. I am attempting to ... blanket-banning doesn't work, it's way, way, way too unwieldy, it collapses. Which means I have to start learning nuance. Which .. fuck. Seriously? Fuck. I don't know how much of that I can do, and people don't react well to a 23 year old asking questions a fucking three year old knows the answers to. *rubs face* I don't know how much I can do. I also don't know how much I can afford to do, because doing it takes runspace, and that runspace also has to allow me to run task-programming AND face-building, and ... Shit, I've a lot of processing power, but nowhere close to enough, you understand? Nowhere close.
Task-programming has to get priority. It has to. Task-programming runs things like day-to-day life, like having a future, like getting a job. It's also my first line of defense against the bad places in the cycle, if I have no face to hide behind. I cannot drop runspace from task-programming. Even shunting stuff off active task-programming and onto autopilots, which is doable, has bad consequences like memory-loss (or, really, stopping of memory acquisition of any process running on auto), so ... Not unless we have to, okay? It doesn't end well.
Face-building is a necessity, too. I need something to hide behind, otherwise I'm walking around psychically naked and terrified of everyone who passes (yes, I realise dealing with that fear would eliminate a lot of the necessity, but I've even less idea how to stop being afraid of things than I do how to build defenses). Living without a face puts me into the bad places, and we are going to avoid that, we have to avoid that, next time we might not survive that. So. So.
The only advantage with face-building (or disadvantage, I'm not sure yet), is that it and data-acquisition on social programming possibly feed each other. Devoting runspace to ... well, to the latter, might eventually help reduce runspace needs on the former. Unfortunately, the major cons on that are a) that data acquisition takes mindboggling amounts of time and runspace, and while I'm doing it, I'm defenseless, and b) that data acquisition involves dealing with people, and if I'm running it before I run face-building, I'm essentially dealing with people while defenseless, which ... usually goes bad places, remember? I could try run them simultaneously, but again, seriously, I do not have that much processing power.
I have to work out how to do this. I have to figure out how to fit all of that into the runspace I have, while not crashing myself, and also accomplishing task-programming and day-to-day functioning. *rubs marks into face* I've got to reduce runspace needs on them. I've got to minimise the amount of processing required on all of them, if I'm to have any kind of hope of managing to run them.
And ... I'm phrasing this very ... very neutrally, you might have noticed. Very ... factually. And that's because, if I don't think of it in those terms, if it's not just raw system-requirements, then it's ... Fear and terror, and oh gods, how do I make this work, and oh god, oh god, oh god, I don't know HOW, and shit, shit, can't I just die instead, can't I please just STOP, just not be, that would be .... It's sitting in the shower for two hours hitting my hands into the wall over and over again, thinking that systems don't work, and no model is good enough, and everything fails, and wanting to rip out the part of myself that sees things, the part of myself that consciously knows how things work, wanting to claw into my chest and my head until there's nothing left that can see how hopeless this is, nothing left that knows, until I just AM for however long I have left, and I don't have to feel afraid. *jerks brokenly* I have to programme this straight to task-programming, because all that's under that is ...
Is the thing that sees, and knows, and fears. Mostly fears. And ... And shit, fuck, also the thing that loves. The thing that looks out, and sees how it works, and thinks, my gods, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, do you know how much I would GIVE to be part of that? Under that, under task-programming, there's nothing except me, except the thing that feels and sees, and how the fuck do you live like that? What do you put in front of that, how do you blunt that, so that you can live through a fucking day without ...
It's so big. It's so big. Do you know how many processes even the smallest, tiniest thing is running, is part of? Do you know how deep it does? How connected it is? This is why systems don't work, why models don't work. This is why order and chaos are exactly the same thing, and those little models of order we build are ... just that. Models, apeing a thing they don't really understand. It's ... Gods, god, it's huge, it goes without end, up and down and in and out, around and around. Every single point you touch is connected to everything, through a net of process and consequences and cause and force and scale and construction, and it doesn't stop, it just goes out and out and out, and how are you supposed to draw a meaningful functioning from that, how are you supposed to do anything in the face of that? How do you blunt that, what do you put in front of it?
*shakes self, shakes head* I ... I slip too far, sometimes. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, but I slip too far, I see, and ... And I don't know how to live with that much fear, that much awe, that much ... Gods, it's beautiful, but how do you live with it?
There are times I want ... to rip out the part of me that sees, the part of me that does, the part that has to act, to see, to think, I want to rip it out, to claw myself open until it's gone, it's gone, and all that's left is some thing that simply ... drifts, and feels, until the universe destroys it. Something that just reflects. Something that just is, and doesn't have to do. Something that could live and die, and not have to know it. Something that could let itself be touched, and not have to feel it, not have to have it matter. Something ... something ... Not hollow, just ... Just there, to be used and not understand the using, to be hurt and not understand the concept of pain, to love and not understand the meaning of love. Something that doesn't have to know, that doesn't have to see.
Other times, of course, I just want to die. *shrugs absently* It'd be easier to accomplish, for a start. But ... well, no knowing what happens then. Somewhat of a risk, for all it seems initially easier. Also, too much chance of failure. But. But. You know. Good back-up, just in case. *shrugs*
And then ... Then, there are the times I want to live. To understand enough to be able to function, to understand enough to ... to build reactions, to build a system, to be one of those beautiful things that make, and react, and cause reactions, and build into the complexity, build into the chaos, those flaring things that go up and down and in and out, always out, spreading out to touch the universe, I want to be that.
And then, times when I wish I could blunt all of that, every part of that, and just ... just run task-programming. Scale it down to functional processing, scale it down to just what matters to most people, just the smaller systems that run day-to-day on the visible scale. Just exist that much, and only that. Just be ... simple, and not see, and be ... Human. Like that.
Gods, I hate crashing. I hate the stripped-bare-ness of it, the rawness of it. As much as I love it. As beautiful as it is. I hate it, because there's nothing I can put in the face of it, and I need to function, dammit! I need to act.
There are too many scales, too far up and down you can go. I need to stop fluctuating up between them. I need to run task-programming, I need to figure out how to get sufficient runspace to get both defenses AND information, I need to figure out how to blunt fear and dismiss shame, I need to figure out how not to hurt people, I need to figure out how to be safe, how to ignore the knowledge that I never am. I need to resolve something coherant out of the wall of information. I need to figure out how to process.
And, fuck, I need to do all that manually. Because awesome and all as my basecode is, it's absolute shite at knowing what should be automatic and what shouldn't.
*shakes* How do you live, like this? How do you look forward, like this, and see cycle after cycle repeating themselves? How the fuck do you get up, and build system after system that might not work for what they're designed for (and can never work completely, no matter how brilliant), and risk them collapsing, and risk seeing, and ...
How do you do this? How do you do it?
*breathes, breathes* Okay. Fuck. You start with task-programming, that's how you do it. You start with a baseline desired functionality, and you task-programme to that end. You drop extraneous information (no matter how beautiful, how terrifying), you drop as much risk-knowledge as possible for functionality. You focus instead on processing-data, on how to do this job. You focus, you build a level of resolution that does not involve all that terrifies you, allow in only what knowledge, what fear, is necessary for the job. You don't look too far, in any direction. You just build enough to function now.
Oh. And you also stop having existential panic attacks in the shower. If for no other reason than electricity and water costs, and the fact that repeatedly hitting the wall hurts, dumbass.
Fuck. I wanted to explain this. I ... don't know if I managed. But. You know. Okay.
Shit. Just do the job, hon. Just do the job.
Right. So. Um. I ... have problems doing that.
Lets ignore the aspie thing for a minute. Early on in the last major crash (I've gone through two cycles in the last decade-odd - couple of years up, really bad crash so couple years down), when I was with a different psychiatrist, I was ... trying to explain what I thought was happening. Trying to explain what it felt like, trying to explain the rationale I was sort of desperately building across it. And what it felt like was that I'd lost the outer personality. Lost the shielding, in one fell swoop, like it was a levered scaffolding that had become too heavy to keep up. That the ... the part that deals with people, the part in which you put the knowledge of how to deal with people, had collapsed, and broken beyond retrieval.
And he said (paraphrased), well, then that part obviously wasn't very good at its job, if it was too heavy to keep up, it obviously wasn't well suited to you, so ... maybe you should try to build a different one. One that works better.
Which is ... perfectly logical, and sensible, and I appreciate it, but ... well, how?
Thing is, I'm pretty sure he was basically right. The next three years were spent having a rather more comprehensive (and nearly fatal) breakdown, so the advice obviously didn't help too much in the short term, but ... The advice was simple enough, and neither of us were aware of certain pertinent factors at the time, things I will have to keep in mind if/when/now, but ... Yeah. Probably basically correct.
I want ... I want to explain that. I want to explain the sensation of that. I want to explain what the thing I lost felt like (what I remember of it), what it felt like to be without it, what the fuck it feels like to be facing the prospect of having to build another, better one ... And. And. What it feels like to look at the past two attempts, the results of the past two attempts, the cycle of ... and then look forward, project that forward, for the next one, two, twelve attempts that don't work (they might, they might, maybe next time I get it right, but what if I don't), and think ... well, how long can I survive that? How many times could I survive that process? How many times does Sisyphus roll a rock up a hill before he decides fuck that, let the bloody thing crush me?
Yes, defeatist, depressive attitude. Oh, trust me, I know that. I'm working on that. But ... In the moments of weakness, in the small crashes, that's the thought that ... that breaks me open. You have no idea. That's the thought that gives me fucking existential panic attacks, how stupid is that, who the fuck has those, but I did, I did, and it terrified me, it carved me right open, and that's stupid, but it just took me two days to start functioning again around it, so, forgive me, but.
Sorry. Sorry. I'm ... It just happened. Crash I felt coming. That was it. Fuck. Forgive me, I'm sorry. Coming ... coming back, moving on. Moving on. Fuck.
I've ... been having these a long time, I think. I've spent the past ten years riding the loop, building something that looks like it works, looks like it works, something that gets me through secondary school first, breaks, then something that gets me through college, breaks, now ... well. Now, we've got to figure that one out, haven't we? And it sounds easy enough, rinse, repeat, didn't you learn anything the first two times?
Which ... okay. Sort of. Not helped by ... I'm missing years. Memory-wise. I'm missing years. And ... possibly more than that. I can't tell. How much memory are you supposed to have? What quality of memory? Hard to tell. But ... okay, missing a lot of data. Hard to learn, when you're missing that much. But, yeah, there are some things that don't work.
Don't blanket-ban, being the main one. It doesn't work. It's too big, heavy, cumbersome. Looking back, listening to the descriptions of what my old faces looked like (public faces, people faces, the outer layers), they were ... pretty blank, I think. Pretty neutral, fairly unresponsive. Which, you know, I didn't know. I thought I was doing pretty damn well, actually. But. Not so much. The old faces, the collapsing faces ... they blocked. They stood still, and let whatever it was whistle right by, or bounce off, and hid whatever damage it did underneath. Blanket-ban, I'm pretty sure. Which ... yeah. Internally, I'm pretty sure those were the rules. Don't get angry. Way, way too many things get unpredictable when you're angry, we can't even predict ourselves when we're angry, don't fucking do that. Don't provoke people. People provoked are unpredictable. Which is fine, you know, true, but how the fuck do you avoid provoking people? You don't interact with them, that's how. Anything else, it could do the job, for a range of reasons you can't see. Don't react. That too. Reactions feed and fuel responding reactions. Don't do that. You don't know where it will go. Except, you know, a lack of reaction is a reaction in and of itself, and apparently a pretty rage-inducing one, depending on circumstances. So.
So. The old faces, the old public personas ... I'm pretty sure they were insupportable because they were simply too heavy, too cumbersome, too encompassing. They functioned on blanket-bans, because ... because I can't track nuance ... And blanket-bans don't work unless you actually decide to blanket-ban people. Which, you know, I've ... been so tempted, but ...
So. So. The cycle runs like this. I put up a face, to protect myself. That face functions reasonably well for a certain amount of time, until it becomes too unwieldy (provokes too many bad reactions?), until it becomes insupportable. Then that face will collapse. And what follows ...
What follows are the bad places in the cycle. What follows are ... I think most of the bits I can't remember. What follows are the times when every other person around me feels like a threat, when every person around me is a threat, whether they mean to be or not. When I can't see, and can't hide the not seeing, when I can't block damage, can't see it coming, can't ... When I'm afraid, terrified, guilt and shame and pain and confusion, when I can't even retreat behind a face to try and think it through, when there is no defense.
And when there's no defense, what damage you take is damaging direct to base-code. So. I've ... lost memory. Lost functioning. Lost ... things, I don't even know what. There was a time ... I ... Time stops tracking. Things concertina, lose definition, run into each other. I start to physically degrade, because do you have any idea how hard it is to keep up things like eating, sleeping, hygiene, when you're not even tracking time, when you can't hold a memory for more than a few hours at a time? I ... Um. I'm not sure what happened, with that. I have ... a lot of auto-processes running, a lot of things I can shunt to autopilot, which was possibly the saving grace, but ... I don't remember. I don't even remember how long it was. There are two years missing. I've no idea how functional or not I was for most of that. (I wasn't hospitalised, though, so obviously I was functioning, ish. Autopilot. Autopilots are wonderful. I have the best damn basecode in the universe).
I've had ... When you come out, then. When you start the upswing on the cycle. Most of the start of it is, I think, basecode repair. Restore base functionings, remove the self-destructive programming that's perpetuating damage. Try to pull out shame, guilt. Suicidal urges. Stop damage repeating. Then build back in memory storage, time recognition. Shunt things off autopilot and back onto active processing (which does wonders for memory-retention, apparently). Simple things. Animal-time, I call it. Just the basics. Forget people, forget faces, forget all of it. Work on the basics. Build a day-programming. Get up at this time, eat, run errands, function, sleep.
Next step up, you can go to task programming. That can run a long way. I finished college almost entirely on task-programming. Forget people, forget defenses, forget yourself, just do this job. Devote all runspace to accomplishing specific jobs, in specific timeframes. I got through college on that because I had so much support. I had people to run interferance. I had task-designated people, to whom I explained particular difficulties relating only to the tasks that needed doing, who would help me solve them, and enable me to finish the task. People were job-related factors, that's all. It worked. I have a degree. It worked.
But. But. The next step, after task-programming, is face-building. *rubs face* That's where I am now. Next step, you have to do face-building, rebuild defenses, because ... Well. Because people are still fucking terrifying, and you can't go through life with that always there. Task-programming will only get you so far, and only if you have a task that ... well, that will take up all available runspace. Less than that, the fear will take more, and then more, and we're back where we started.
Okay. So. Factors to keep in mind, for this phase:
- If possible, we're going to try to drop back to task-programming, in the event of failure, not animal-time or ... or the part under it. The cycle is not survivable longterm. We can't do the ... The last two times around the cycle, the crashes got worse, and the last one almost killed us, either through neglect or active suicide. That ... would not be good to go through again. Drop to animal-time, if we have to, but ... not the other. I don't know if we'll survive the other next time.
To accomplish that ... Most of the damage last time was shame and fear. Not much we can do about the fear, yet, but shame ... Shame probably. Shame was because I was failing, because I was visibly failing, because I couldn't do what other people did, and they knew it, and I knew they knew it. But. Okay. I can't do it. I am not as other people are. I'm weaker, at least in that specific sense. Fair enough. That's just a fact. And facts are there to be worked with, or around, and that's all. This is a fact to be worked with, to factor into the life-choices we make. Shame has nothing to do with it, and no reason to be involved, when you're not hurting anyone.
Fear ... Fear is questions like, is something like me supposed to work in a world like this at all? Fear is a moment of raw clarity, the knowledge that systems do not work, that there exists no pure, self-contained system immune to outside influences, that whatever model of human behaviour you throw up in front of yourself will, eventually, fail. Because that's all they are, models built without understanding of what's underneath the processes you're apeing, and sooner or later, someone is going to see that.
Can't touch fear yet. Well. Sort of. I ... pulled that back, from the panic attack. No system is immune. All of them will fail, because they're only apeing order themselves, because order and chaos are the same thing and there is nothing, nothing in all the universe you can put in front of that, and expect to hold. So. Your system has as much overall value as any other, really. Which is to say, not an awful lot, cosmically speaking. Heh. There is some comfort, in that.
- Don't blanket-ban. Which is ... a problem. Because blanket-bans are what I put in front of behaviours I don't understand, that appear to potentially have bad consequences. Which, in the realm of human behaviour, is sort of most everything -_-;
Also, not helped by the fact, that a lot of previously-learned rules no longer apply. School behaviour is no longer appropriate, apparently, the rules for social interaction in a school setting no longer applying. The models I've been using (attempting to use) are apparently now obsolete, which ... you know, doesn't help.
What I've been doing lately is ... attempting to do person-specific defenses, tailored at specific people close to me. I am ... still running without defense. Almost everything people are seeing from me right now is coming from basecode, beyond your more basic social-programming (things like, don't go out naked in public, for example - I'm talking the really basic stuff). I'm ... showing reactions, now, which apparently I didn't do before (because I was either behind a face, or not really interacting with people at all outside of task-functioning), and ... Um. A lot of those reactions are garnering bad responses. Partially, I think, because they're new, as far as people outside me are concerned. "Why is this bothering you, when it never did before?" It did, I just didn't show that. "Why do you care now, when you've never cared about me before?" I did. I just apparently never showed that either. *flinches* "Why don't you understand this, you did before?" No. I just nodded in the right places. Rather well, apparently.
I am ... asking questions, now. I am attempting to ... blanket-banning doesn't work, it's way, way, way too unwieldy, it collapses. Which means I have to start learning nuance. Which .. fuck. Seriously? Fuck. I don't know how much of that I can do, and people don't react well to a 23 year old asking questions a fucking three year old knows the answers to. *rubs face* I don't know how much I can do. I also don't know how much I can afford to do, because doing it takes runspace, and that runspace also has to allow me to run task-programming AND face-building, and ... Shit, I've a lot of processing power, but nowhere close to enough, you understand? Nowhere close.
Task-programming has to get priority. It has to. Task-programming runs things like day-to-day life, like having a future, like getting a job. It's also my first line of defense against the bad places in the cycle, if I have no face to hide behind. I cannot drop runspace from task-programming. Even shunting stuff off active task-programming and onto autopilots, which is doable, has bad consequences like memory-loss (or, really, stopping of memory acquisition of any process running on auto), so ... Not unless we have to, okay? It doesn't end well.
Face-building is a necessity, too. I need something to hide behind, otherwise I'm walking around psychically naked and terrified of everyone who passes (yes, I realise dealing with that fear would eliminate a lot of the necessity, but I've even less idea how to stop being afraid of things than I do how to build defenses). Living without a face puts me into the bad places, and we are going to avoid that, we have to avoid that, next time we might not survive that. So. So.
The only advantage with face-building (or disadvantage, I'm not sure yet), is that it and data-acquisition on social programming possibly feed each other. Devoting runspace to ... well, to the latter, might eventually help reduce runspace needs on the former. Unfortunately, the major cons on that are a) that data acquisition takes mindboggling amounts of time and runspace, and while I'm doing it, I'm defenseless, and b) that data acquisition involves dealing with people, and if I'm running it before I run face-building, I'm essentially dealing with people while defenseless, which ... usually goes bad places, remember? I could try run them simultaneously, but again, seriously, I do not have that much processing power.
I have to work out how to do this. I have to figure out how to fit all of that into the runspace I have, while not crashing myself, and also accomplishing task-programming and day-to-day functioning. *rubs marks into face* I've got to reduce runspace needs on them. I've got to minimise the amount of processing required on all of them, if I'm to have any kind of hope of managing to run them.
And ... I'm phrasing this very ... very neutrally, you might have noticed. Very ... factually. And that's because, if I don't think of it in those terms, if it's not just raw system-requirements, then it's ... Fear and terror, and oh gods, how do I make this work, and oh god, oh god, oh god, I don't know HOW, and shit, shit, can't I just die instead, can't I please just STOP, just not be, that would be .... It's sitting in the shower for two hours hitting my hands into the wall over and over again, thinking that systems don't work, and no model is good enough, and everything fails, and wanting to rip out the part of myself that sees things, the part of myself that consciously knows how things work, wanting to claw into my chest and my head until there's nothing left that can see how hopeless this is, nothing left that knows, until I just AM for however long I have left, and I don't have to feel afraid. *jerks brokenly* I have to programme this straight to task-programming, because all that's under that is ...
Is the thing that sees, and knows, and fears. Mostly fears. And ... And shit, fuck, also the thing that loves. The thing that looks out, and sees how it works, and thinks, my gods, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, do you know how much I would GIVE to be part of that? Under that, under task-programming, there's nothing except me, except the thing that feels and sees, and how the fuck do you live like that? What do you put in front of that, how do you blunt that, so that you can live through a fucking day without ...
It's so big. It's so big. Do you know how many processes even the smallest, tiniest thing is running, is part of? Do you know how deep it does? How connected it is? This is why systems don't work, why models don't work. This is why order and chaos are exactly the same thing, and those little models of order we build are ... just that. Models, apeing a thing they don't really understand. It's ... Gods, god, it's huge, it goes without end, up and down and in and out, around and around. Every single point you touch is connected to everything, through a net of process and consequences and cause and force and scale and construction, and it doesn't stop, it just goes out and out and out, and how are you supposed to draw a meaningful functioning from that, how are you supposed to do anything in the face of that? How do you blunt that, what do you put in front of it?
*shakes self, shakes head* I ... I slip too far, sometimes. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, but I slip too far, I see, and ... And I don't know how to live with that much fear, that much awe, that much ... Gods, it's beautiful, but how do you live with it?
There are times I want ... to rip out the part of me that sees, the part of me that does, the part that has to act, to see, to think, I want to rip it out, to claw myself open until it's gone, it's gone, and all that's left is some thing that simply ... drifts, and feels, until the universe destroys it. Something that just reflects. Something that just is, and doesn't have to do. Something that could live and die, and not have to know it. Something that could let itself be touched, and not have to feel it, not have to have it matter. Something ... something ... Not hollow, just ... Just there, to be used and not understand the using, to be hurt and not understand the concept of pain, to love and not understand the meaning of love. Something that doesn't have to know, that doesn't have to see.
Other times, of course, I just want to die. *shrugs absently* It'd be easier to accomplish, for a start. But ... well, no knowing what happens then. Somewhat of a risk, for all it seems initially easier. Also, too much chance of failure. But. But. You know. Good back-up, just in case. *shrugs*
And then ... Then, there are the times I want to live. To understand enough to be able to function, to understand enough to ... to build reactions, to build a system, to be one of those beautiful things that make, and react, and cause reactions, and build into the complexity, build into the chaos, those flaring things that go up and down and in and out, always out, spreading out to touch the universe, I want to be that.
And then, times when I wish I could blunt all of that, every part of that, and just ... just run task-programming. Scale it down to functional processing, scale it down to just what matters to most people, just the smaller systems that run day-to-day on the visible scale. Just exist that much, and only that. Just be ... simple, and not see, and be ... Human. Like that.
Gods, I hate crashing. I hate the stripped-bare-ness of it, the rawness of it. As much as I love it. As beautiful as it is. I hate it, because there's nothing I can put in the face of it, and I need to function, dammit! I need to act.
There are too many scales, too far up and down you can go. I need to stop fluctuating up between them. I need to run task-programming, I need to figure out how to get sufficient runspace to get both defenses AND information, I need to figure out how to blunt fear and dismiss shame, I need to figure out how not to hurt people, I need to figure out how to be safe, how to ignore the knowledge that I never am. I need to resolve something coherant out of the wall of information. I need to figure out how to process.
And, fuck, I need to do all that manually. Because awesome and all as my basecode is, it's absolute shite at knowing what should be automatic and what shouldn't.
*shakes* How do you live, like this? How do you look forward, like this, and see cycle after cycle repeating themselves? How the fuck do you get up, and build system after system that might not work for what they're designed for (and can never work completely, no matter how brilliant), and risk them collapsing, and risk seeing, and ...
How do you do this? How do you do it?
*breathes, breathes* Okay. Fuck. You start with task-programming, that's how you do it. You start with a baseline desired functionality, and you task-programme to that end. You drop extraneous information (no matter how beautiful, how terrifying), you drop as much risk-knowledge as possible for functionality. You focus instead on processing-data, on how to do this job. You focus, you build a level of resolution that does not involve all that terrifies you, allow in only what knowledge, what fear, is necessary for the job. You don't look too far, in any direction. You just build enough to function now.
Oh. And you also stop having existential panic attacks in the shower. If for no other reason than electricity and water costs, and the fact that repeatedly hitting the wall hurts, dumbass.
Fuck. I wanted to explain this. I ... don't know if I managed. But. You know. Okay.
Shit. Just do the job, hon. Just do the job.
