I had an emotional breakdown today. Maybe around noon. Nothing in particular triggered it. No interactions with another person. No upsetting news or events. Just me, prisoner of my mind.

I was feeling lost and frozen, unsure what to be working on. I have a task system. I have work to do of different priorities. This is always the case, yet I still have moments when emotions take over and cloud the mind. Things that I would think of instantly, naturally, do not occur in this state. Then my wife who I don’t live with txts me to check in on my cough. I share what I am going through. Then I dive deeper.

I had a few days last week that were really good for me with high positive energy levels. Today was not a day like that. I wrote to her that I don’t understand why this happens to me, that my good days are so unpredictable. It’s not fair that I wake up each day and my mind either works that day or it doesn’t, without influence of any external stimuli; just on its own – a roll of the dice.

I started crying, then sobbing. She offered to speak on the phone and I accepted. We both knew, through no fault of her own, that she would not be able to help me. I continued, saying that my life has been so hard because I live these experiences that people either don’t understand or they don’t believe me. I get frustrated and upset about it enough on my own that this happens to me, to then add on top of that the people who are upset or disappointed in me. It’s just all too much.

I feel like what I am going through does not have a classification yet. How long does it take professionals to discover, research, and agree on recognized classifications for the DSM anyway? Autism was only included in the DSM 3 in its first form in 1980. In 2024, the CDC reports 1 in 36 children in the US have autism. For how many hundreds of years before 1980 was autism affecting people and being treated differently than it is today because the doctors back then knew much much less about it?

“Some men see things as they are and say why—I dream things that never were and say why not.” -Robert F. Kennedy in 1968

“Some men see things as they are and accept them—I suggest things need further investigation and say why not.” -Ian P. Pines in 2024

That’s how I feel about my experience. There is too much fluctuation here, in my mind, to fit one classification like a glove. There is definitely comorbidity of conditions and I have those diagnoses, but what I am trying to say is that this is not a black and white case. There are many shades of grey as Billy Joel sang, but there is no kinky stuff as found with that other grey.