Hello! I haven't posted here much lately, but I often visit.

[hunter]

I'm a huge fan of Tobin S because he writes so clearly about his own experiences. Myself, I'm not so good at that. Maybe I've posted some good stuff in the lounge or my journal.

When my meds are not right I suffer major depressive disorder.

Yep, just like this. The artist got the hair right too:



Except if it was really, really bad, I'd just freeze to death. Forget the fire.

Fortunately I'm not the sort to kill myself because the OCD gets in the way. If I'm dead I can't do the stuff I need to do, right? That would be INTOLERABLE! So I can cruise along in a dark nightmarish world for a long time, doing only those things I need to do. It used to be running and writing computer code. Sometimes during those dark times I'd be "asked" to take time off college. So I'd be living in my car in a church parking lot (a very nice pastor said it was okay), running, and starving to death while writing code in the University computer lab. And oh, I also have a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, but I fake normalcy pretty well, which is why it's so hard to catch me when I'm in my blackest places. Meds weren't so good thirty years ago, but now they are. I'm married and have two college age kids, and I'm faking normalcy a little bit better than I used to. At least here on DU.

Anyways, I noticed mopinko is the only host here while EFerrari is on hiatus, and I was thinking I could be a host too because now that I'm on MIRT I'm always here on DU.

Is that okay?

[Tobin S.]

1. Thanks, hunter.

It's okay with me. I think I know you well enough from your posts to know that you genuinely would like out help out here. Let's see what a few others say as well.

[mopinko]

2. i am very happy to add hunter as host of the mental health forum.

welcome aboard.
sad that eferrari is absent. maybe i will track her down.

[hunter]

3. Thank you, mopinko. I want MHS to be a safe place for anyone who posts here.

I'm not any kind of professional, but I've got plenty experience.

[fizzgig]

4. you've got my support!

good to see you

[libodem]

5. I think you would be nice to have around

I am okay socially in real life. I think I have some type of internet Aspergers. I'm such a flop at making friends and I don't think I come off very well as a personality. I have been reckless in a few places with the anonymity. I think I might be seen as a bitch because I've defended the right to see it used in print here at DU. Mind you not to name call with it, but as a concept in context.
I really am not a debater or an arguer so I'll scram if there is a fight. I've smart mouthed my way into making some people not like me very much. Then I have the gall to feel sorry for myself about it later.

I know. I know. I'm working on it.

[hunter]

6. In "real life" I don't talk much.

That's a problem I was working on in my last round of therapy.

My secret on DU is I can write slowly and think a long time before I post something. I often write things I never post.

I'm still a master of the socially inappropriate and awkward comment. I've been that way since childhood so mostly I've learned to keep my mouth shut. For my middle and high school years keeping my mouth shut and being invisible was actually a survival mechanism. I suffered a great deal of bullying of the worst physical sort, so I quit high school as soon as I could.

Maybe one of the things that saved me as a weird kid in a "Lord of the Flies" school environment was that me and my pack of siblings were pretty much feral children. There were too many of us for my perpetually disorganized parent's to devote much attention to beyond feeding, clothing, sheltering, and teaching us the basic "facts of life." By the time we were teens we were self-sufficient wild things. I felt some obligation to my youngest siblings so I wasn't one who flew the nest when I was sixteen.

There are shortcomings to that kind of childhood but maybe that's how I escaped the crippling self doubt that seems to torture so many people. As a kid I may have been neglected a bit, and there was a whole lot of crazy in our household that was reasonable to run away from, but I was never rejected. Because of that all the bullying I suffered at school was something outside of myself. I always had a safe place to retreat to in my head even when someone was smashing my face into the mud or holding me down as my homework burned.

A quote Buckaroo Banzai used is Wherever you go, there you are.

That pretty much describes my sense of the world. Wherever I go, there I am. This might be an unfavorable autistic trait that has interfered with my "success in life," but it does keep me sane even when I'm hurting.

Well, that's more of my story, and thank you for the support!

[libodem]

7. You seem like a kindred spirit

I had a tough childhood, too.