2022/12/19


Wow. Long time no see, huh? Does anyone read this stuff? Well, apparently so,
but whatever. New entry. Woo.  Fair warning, this one might be a little heavy. I
don't have the energy to put on a happy face this time.

Didn't update the blog because I didn't feel I had anything to say. I've been
dealing with a lot of personal stuff. Dunno if putting it out here in full is
reasonable but I'll give a rough breakdown, I guess.

>Depression relapsed pretty hard, although I don't think my dysthymia ever left.
>Housemates stealth-evicted me.  Had (having?) a pretty big health scare.  Money
>has been really tight, so I've been (unsuccessfully) looking for work.

I'll go through and expand on each of these items in the next few sections as I
see fit. Feel free to skip over anything you don't care about -- promise I won't
be offended. The depression segment in particular is... kind of rambly and
autobiographical. Sorry.

So, depression -- it's been a thing for most of my life. I think I was first
diagnosed with major depressive disorder around age seven, but I've exhibited
the symptoms of it since at least age five. Since around age eleven, I've also
exhibited the symptoms of dysthymia (or persistent depressive disorder), a
lesser-known depressive disorder that can be comorbid with MDD. In a shellnut,
PDD is characterized by less of a low mood and more of a lack of high mood --
things just don't make you happy. Nothing seems to have a purpose. You feel like
you're just a passive observer, listing aimlessly through life. If MDD knocks
you down, PDD keeps you down.  For future reference, comorbid MDD and PDD is
commonly referred to as "double depression".

I think my MDD stems primarily from a persistent lack of social connection and
severe childhood abuse, and my PDD from a sense of learned helplessness that
formed after years of enduring abuse from my parents and peers. At first, my
parents mostly just neglected me. My progenitors both serve(d) in the military,
and as such were often too busy to spend time with me -- we also never had
enough money to afford babysitters. It wasn't unusual for me to return to an
empty home after preschool. I tried to spend time with other people my age, but
I've never been able to click with most people, so eventually I just stopped
trying. Around that time was when I really got into PCs and the net.  Online,
nobody knows you're a retarded four or five year old, you know? For once I
actually found people who got me.

For a period of time, I was happy, but of course, I can't have anything nice. My
progenitors, in their infinite wisdom, decided that I needed to be "socialized";
when I entered kindergarten, I ended up being flagged as gifted, and my parents
were told that at the least I should skip to sixth grade. They refused, and
that's probably when things started going really bad in my life. Around that
time they also confiscated my PC, and a younger sibling was brought into this
world, so what little social interaction I had and what little attention I
received both vanished.

I tried to substitute both with time at school, but as usual, I just couldn't
fit in. I was regularly ostracized and bullied, and eventually I developed a
hair-trigger personality, so I got into regular fights by the time I was in
first or second grade. At that time, I was transferred by court order to a
specialized education facility (the alternative was homeschooling, which was, of
course, not an option). Here, things became even worse.

There were only ten students max at a time enrolled in the program, which
usually lasted for one year. I was involved for three. The students were not
segregated by grade level or age, so students were exposed to wildly
inappropriate material for their level (eighth graders learning the
multiplication table, second graders about sexual health, etc). Everyone
enrolled in the program had some sort of behavioral issue, and the staff were
undertrained and underequipped, so outbursts from others were common and usually
violent. While I was there, my ostracization became even worse; I didn't go a
single day without being harassed by someone, despite my best efforts. For the
record, when I say "harassed", I don't mean menial shit like being called a
shithead or stupid or whatever -- I hate people who complain about having
someone be rude to them as if it's the end of the world. No, people would steal
anything I brought to class, break what they couldn't get away with stealing,
and regularly corner me behind the school to beat me. At the end of each day,
staff would routinely engage in what I consider to be a particularly degrading
and cruel measure: they would ask you to rate how your day went on a scale from
one to ten, and justify why you felt that way, before proceeding to deconstruct
your statements before the entire class and assigning you what they felt was a
more accurate number. I would never rate my days particularly high, but never
particularly low, either -- maybe a six or a seven. The staff would, in
contrast, routinely rate my days much lower, citing "lack of enthusiasm",
"disagreements with classmates", and other milquetoast bullshit reasons as to
why I must have had a bad day. Incidentally, this is why I spent so long in the
program -- you needed to regularly reach a ten to be discharged from the
program. Another degrading measure the staff routinely engaged in was forced
isolation in a padded, locked room. This was the standard method of defusing
situations -- any time a child misbehaved in any manner, they were quite
literally dragged to and thrown into a small padded room, and left there, alone,
until the end of the day.  On a number of occasions I had to manipulate the
mechanism of the doorknob directly (the handle on the inside was removed in
place of installing a lock) to let myself out to use the washroom, or to look
for someone to take me home, because I was simply forgotten.

In one particularly bad incident (I believe I was seven around the time -- this
was the impetus for my first MDD diagnosis) during winter, when the students
were let out to play during recess, I was climbing on a snow bank. I came across
a pile of rather sturdy-looking sticks, and as a young child interested in
fantasy RPGs (Final Fantasy is probably part of the reason I was such a
precocious reader as a young child) I, of course, wanted to pretend they were
swords. So, I picked one up and started doing my thing -- a moment later, as if
by magic, probably three quarters of the class appeared around me, led by the
class bully John. After a brief confrontation in which they tried to convince me
that I was "stealing" from them (a feeble excuse at best, which younger-Mid
promptly pointed out), they dropped all pretenses about just wanting someone to
hurt. From behind, someone pushed me over, and before I could register what was
happening the rest of the class had begun to beat me with sticks, with John
dragging me by the stick I was still holding out of sight of the rest of the
staff. Of course, between the screaming, shouting and surprise, I took a few
seconds to really register what was happening; by then I'd already suffered the
consequences of my actions.  All I recall after letting go of the stick I was
holding onto was pain and frustration -- my body ached from head to toe, and
even the slightest movement caused my body to erupt in pain. So, I simply laid
in the snow for hours, until I felt I could move again. By then, the staff and
class had left the grounds entirely - by fortune, I happened to catch the last
bus from the host school, returning to the bus stop near my home (the bus stop
was located in an MFRC -- military family resource centre, a sort of community
centre). I told my female progenitor what happened, and was inspected;
apparently, my back was covered in bruises and cuts, as was the rest of my body.

For a period of time after that, I was homeschooled; that period of time was
perhaps the least terrible aspect of my early childhood.  For the first and only
time in my life, my interests were encouraged -- at the time, I was particularly
fascinated by biology, immunology in particular. My female progenitor put me in
contact with someone she knew from her time in high school who was studying for
an MD, and we - for a time - regularly exchanged notes. I still have some of his
undergraduate textbooks.

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and eventually this, too, did. I
returned to the program, and the abuse resumed. A month after having returned, I
confessed to one of the instructors that I wanted to die; I even had plans laid
out to take my own life. Of course, this is highly unusual for a seven year old,
so I was referred to the in-school counselor for further discussion. Instead of
taking me seriously, I was referred to a psychologist for further evaluation,
where I was (mis)diagnosed with ADHD, ODD and moderate-to-high giftedness.  To
deal with my ADHD and ODD I was prescribed risperidone, an antipsychotic
associated with weight gain, metabolic problems, and other side effects.  I
believe this is part of the impetus for my health problems, as after starting
risperidone I gained an abnormal amount of weight very, very quickly, and I have
yet to reach a health weight since. I remember very little of my time on
risperidone, other than being constantly fatigued; stupefied, if you will. I had
no energy to even exert my own will, reduced to simply being able to follow
orders. After a few months (I believe it was around six to eight?) my female
progenitor refused to administer it any further, and had me re-evaluated.

During that evaluation, I was given what I consider a more appropriate
diagnosis; Asperger's syndrome, major depressive disorder, and a classification
as someone of moderate giftedness. Of course, this changed little in my life
long-term, but short term I was transferred to CHEO -- the Children's Hospital
of Eastern Ontario. For about three months I lived in their mental health wing,
with a brief period at home about halfway through. By the end of my stay, if I
had gone back to a loving, caring family, I would have probably been able to
recover.  The care I received at CHEO was excellent. Unfortunately, my family is
neither loving nor caring, and so within a few months I relapsed.

For the next few years the cycle continued, day in, day out: wake up, rush out
the door to get on the bus, go to school, deal with the bullshit that they made
me, go home, make dinner for myself, eat, sleep. Around age nine or ten I was
let go from the program, and attempted to return to regular classes in the fifth
grade. Unfortunately, given the trauma I had experienced during my time with the
program, I was utterly terrified about going back to school; despite that, I
gave it my best shot. Given my diagnosis with Asperger's, I was given a laptop
to do work on (I have fine motor control issues that makes writing legibly quite
difficult), as well as a TA to help ensure that any situations I became involved
in were handled correctly. Unfortunately, the teachers were less than
accommodating regarding my computer usage, and the TA was more concerned with
keeping me on track than preventing other people from giving me trouble.  About
halfway through the fifth grade I would routinely skip class or attempt to leave
the schoolgrounds, because the environment was simply unbearable. As such I was
put into another special education routine, where I would spend four (instead of
eight) hours a day at school, with a single teacher for one on one tutoring in a
quiet region of the school. I was taught the essentials of common core
education; English, mathematics, history, and basic science, one hour per
subject per day. I think I actually excelled in this environment; I would
routinely finish ahead of schedule, and at the end of the day I didn't feel any
particular anxiety, unlike regular schooling.

This only continued for sixth and seventh grade; eighth, it was back to the
usual, although this time without a TA at my request (really, a staunch refusal
to attend if I wasn't allowed to do so on my own). I actually made it through
the year without too many difficulties, as by this time I had moved to a new
province (hence the lack of a specialized curriculum), and I had actually done
fairly well thanks to one of my teachers taking the time to extend an olive
branch. After eighth grade, during winter break, I was looking forward to ninth;
unfortunately, between the excessive noise and much larger class sizes, I had
difficulty focusing and couldn't complete most of my work.

This was also around the time my parents' relationship began to decline, and I
think my mother took a lot of her anger out on me. The way I was treated very
quickly went from neglect to outright physical, psychological and emotional
abuse. If I angered my mother, she would smack or punch me, or beat me with
whatever she could grab at the time. If she wanted something done, or I asked
her for something, she would gaslight me, saying she had asked me to do
something when I hadn't, or that I hadn't asked for for something when I in fact
had. If I didn't immediately bend to her will, she would talk about how I
clearly hated her, how nobody in the family loved me, how I should have never
been born, and so on.

Thanks to all of these factors, as well as my lacklustre education thus far, I
barely passed ninth grade. My average was barely a passing mark (around 67%, I
think?). During winter break between ninth and tenth grade, the abuse from my
parents became particularly bad, and I began to binge eat in an attempt to cope
with things. This only exacerbated my physical health problems. Mid-December,
when I was thirteen, after a particularly bad time (I recall having to fight my
father to escape), I packed a bag with food, water, ID, my phone and a knife and
hitchhiked to the nearest police station, where I explained what happened. From
here, I moved to a nearby city, and spent the next few years drifting between
youth homeless shelters, where I was subject to further maltreatment. Few of the
shelters provided any sort of telecomms to the residents despite the
infrastructure being there (incidentally where I first began to learn about
network security), the food was extremely low quality (mostly carbohydrates and
low-quality protein), and most of what I had was stolen or destroyed by other
residents. I was semi-regularly assaulted by other residents, one in
particular. Of course, because they were a female and I'm a male, it was never
deemed serious enough to evict this other resident, despite being attacked on
*seven* separate occasions, leaving me with black eyes, a bleeding scalp (the
other resident would use my hair to control me, and rip chunks out because she
usually had no better way to harm me), cuts (I was attacked with a knife twice,
once successfully), and other injuries. Instead, *I* was evicted, for cracking
the network security of the shelter I lived in at the time.

The new place I lived in provided network access to residents under normal
conditions, but had recently revoked that, so I took it upon myself to install a
rogue AP. That nearly got me evicted again, but instead residential internet
access was restored after I convinced the staff that attempting to restrict it
was a futile endeavour. For a brief period things were okay, although the rooms
in that shelter were far from optimal -- they had converted one-bedrooms to
serve two people, and there wasn't even enough space in mine to keep a small
desk to work at. Still, for the first month or so stuff was alright... until the
resident from the last place showed up, because the restraining order I'd had
placed against her had been lifted without my consent by my social worker.
There was an uneasy peace for the first week, but on a Friday she (the resident
with a history of assaulting me) and I were in the shelter's kitchen, doing our
own things. I can't recall precisely what the impetus for her latest attack on
me was, but it was something along the lines of me having politely corrected
another resident's incorrect assertion, the problem resident misinterpreting
what I'd said, and assaulting me as a result for, quote, "opening my fat mouth".

She and I both were the only ones evicted for the night for violating a no
violence policy, despite the fact that I'd acted in self defense (she swung at
me, and in turn I restrained her in a headlock) and the other residents had
started a melee because, I assume, "oh my god a female is in danger we need to
protect her!111!!1!!".  After being informed by the other residents that they
were going to wait for me outside, I refused to leave, requesting a law
enforcement officer escort me to a cell for trespassing if they insisted on
sending me outside. That was the first night I spent in a cell. In the morning,
I returned, and was informed that I would be allowed to stay and that the other
residents were being disciplined on their own.

Again, for a time, things settled down -- food here was scarcer, but of notably
higher quality, and because I had more freedom to leave the house I was able to
get more exercise. I had finally begun to get some of my health problems under
control when, again, I was evicted; this time it was because of my unwillingness
to cooperate with some of their more arbitrary rulings without questioning
them. As an example, there were mandatory "life skills" nights every week; the
first time this happened, a few days after I'd moved in, they brought an
undergrad in from a local university to lecture the... mostly white, mostly
male, homeless, hungry, undereducated, malnourished, underserved youth in the
shelter about how their lives were easier than the lecturer's and people like
her (she was black, female, and an international transfer student visiting
Canada on a scholarship; I only mention this because it's relevant to the
story. I swear to Yahweh, Zeus, Odin, Pan, and every other goddamn deity, don't
fucking dare try to turn this on me). There was another time when all male
residents of the shelter (the female residents were free to do as they pleased)
were forced to attend an interpretive dance display at the local playhouse,
themed around "male on female domestic abuse". This took *hours* of my time, and
served to demonstrate nothing but the sheer IGNORANCE and bad taste of the staff
at this facility.

Again, I moved, and again, things began to settle down and improve. The
residents at the new facility were mostly female and mostly younger than I, so
they didn't assault me at least, but they did verbally harass me regularly and
nothing was done about that. The facility provided telecommunications access for
the residents, with only a poorly-implemented captive portal standing between
myself and the Internet that was trivially circumvented. Things began to look
up; by now I was in tenth grade, having been held back a year for my abysmal
performance. However, I was allowed to take a handful of eleventh grade
electives to fill spaces in my timesheet (I had already gotten English and
science credits for that year). Given my record with tech, I was allowed to
participate in an early network security course (that, honestly, wasn't half bad
for the most part! I remain impressed that they did such a good job with so few
resources and so little time). That was probably the only class I enjoyed that
year; at the end of it, I had the highest marks in the class, a 97% (the highest
mark in the class, if you ignore bonus points -- and even counting them, the
only other student who exceeded my mark had an OSCP, so...). Of course, given my
poor attendance and failing mental health, I wasn't allowed to participate in
the second half of my tenth grade year, instead being transferred to an
alternative education program that existed mostly to allow underachieving
students to get diplomas. There, I "studied" for two hours a day, at my own
pace. For some time I dragged my feet, taking the time to study basic web
development and set up my site on SDF. This was late 2019, early 2020 -- I
figured having a diploma didn't much matter because I was supposed to start
working at a local laboratory as the director's prodigy. Of course, we all know
what happened in late 2019, early 2020 -- Da Vahrus:tm: emerged and humanity
collectively lost its mind. So that kind of derailed any chance of me working at
the lab, because it had to shut down. I also ended up stuck in my room at the
shelter, and as such spiralled deeper into depression. Eventually, though, under
threat of being kicked out from the government's permanent care program
(provides funding and resources to youth who cannot live with a family), I
stopped dragging my feet enough to finish school, and I proceeded to earn every
credit necessary for tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade in just under three
months. I maintain that I could have finished faster had I not been stuck using
LibreOffice, but at the time I didn't know how to use Emacs or LaTeX.

Anyway, I got my shitty diploma (was eighteen, almost nineteen at this time),
and had four days to decide whether I wanted to do four years of independent
self-study or a two-year program at a local college. For the first and last time
in my life I took the advice of my elders and went through a local college,
wasting two years of my life (but at least the government paid my way, so I
don't have student debt...). Despite barely showing up and nearly being kicked
out of the program as a result of that, I graduated with honors and near-perfect
marks in all areas (if you ignore the attendance penalty... for an... online
college...). By the time I finished, I was just barely twenty (this was about
eight months ago). Somewhere in there I moved out into my first apartment, then
I moved in with the friends I mentioned in my second blogpost. Since then, I've
been trying to fix my body and mind, and make up for my almost non-existent
education.

That brings us to today, my twenty-first birthday. I've lost a significant
amount of the excess weight I've gained thus far (although I'm self-conscious
about my body, so I'm not going to share any particular numbers) and my mental
state, whilst far from ideal, is... slightly more functional. While I haven't
found work, I've been interviewing at a lot of places, and I'm hoping I'll have
a part-time job soon:tm:. I've been speaking to a doctor about my health, and
regardless of the results of a test I've taken, there won't be many health
problems for me soon. I'm hoping after this initial test to speak with a
dietician and a psychologist, and I intend to renew (begin?) my remedial
studies.

In slightly less bleak news, I'm writing a small program some of you may find
useful: apportate, located at SDF's Gitea instance. It's a multiprotocol TCP/IP
client that currently supports HTTP, Gopher, and TLS, with basic redirect
handling capability for HTTP. I'll be rewriting it into a library for handling
such tasks directly in C programs once I've ironed it out; ideally I'll be
applying object-oriented principles to the program's layout, in order to allow
main to ignore *all* details of whatever protocol it's using.

Anyway, I don't have much more to say, so... I'll try to update this blog again
before the end of 2023.

Thanks for reading,
-Mid

P.S: I'll be rewriting my site soon to mirror my Gopherspace. Stay tuned.