#*​autism brain screeches like a gremlin*

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Listen I’m still gd feral about Cang Lan Jue but I think the biggest thing is that for the majority of the show, Xiao Lanhua is disabled. Her damaged roots / the spell that disguised her both left her emotionally stunted, and I’d argue it also affected her ability to even speak. Half the time I’m railing at the screen JUST SPEAK!!

Listen, listen, I’m autistic and when I’m redlining toward a meltdown, I’ll feel like words are boulders that I have to heave out of my chest. It’s fucking gd difficult (and if I’m then forced to speak when I get like that, it only shoves me even faster into *glitchtext* Meltdown(tm)). The executive dysfunction? The emotional dysregulation? Holy shit, check and check. It’s really gd frustrating being locked inside my body and mind railing against all these feelings, internally shrieking JUST SPEAK!!!!

But in that moment? I can’t.

I really wish the show spent more time with her post-ascension, bc I can only imagine how disorienting it must have felt for her, to finally have a brain and nervous system that weren’t frequently fritzing out. Omfg.

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Oh shit y’all, I have to have alarms every three hours to remind myself to snack / drink water / stretch / think about the bathroom. I also have to have an alarm to brush my teeth and when to start cooking dinner. If I don’t? I won’t. When I used to work in the office, I’d be takk-ing away on my computer and then the lights would shut off… bc they’re motion activated and everyone else had left for the day, and whoops it’s now sixteen minutes past when I was supposed to be done ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ or forgetting to eat until it’s now dark out. There have been w a y too many days where it’s bedtime and I realize I hadn’t had a single drink of anything since my morning coffee.

My least favorite is when my internal sensor wires get crossed and I don’t feel hunger as ‘oh yes let’s eat food’ but rather its opposite: where the very thought of food makes me sick. And it sucks so gd much bc I know that the cure is to just gd power through, and I choke down a bowl of ash my safest food at the time.

There is a REASON a lot of autistic gals get misdiagnosed with eating disorders instead (not necessarily bc they ~don’t~ develop disordered eating habits, but bc their ‘tism expresses itself that way. Yaaay comorbidities).

For years I would look at posts and questionnaires about neurodivergence that takes about being so focused on something that you forgot to eat and be like, "Couldn't be me. Being hungry is so uncomfortable! Your stomach is growling and cramping? How do you ignore that?"

Then someone informed me that neurotypical people have a whole bunch of "hungry" sensations before they get to that point.....

[themothsnest]

For as much shit as i (privately) give the local kids due to experiencing more than 12 overstimulation meltdowns due to screeching children in the past 3 years after going most of my life with only 1 or 2 every few years due to being a very indoorsy autism creature

One of the 4 is loud but not a dog whistle squealer and we found out he's moving soon and earlier on got confirmation that he has ADHD so I'm a bit more tolerant since he's a good kid who just puts the hyperactivity in ADHD a bit too much

He also gets bullied by the squealers a lot cuz they are bratty kids

Anyway!

I recently got some Pokémon cards cuz I'm a gremlin that likes to collect things and am finally in a position where i can occasionally indulge the crow braincell and my autistic ass forgot to brain to mouth filter while the kid's mother stopped by for a quick chat not long after i opened my first elite trainer box cuz she mentioned he struggles with making friends due to being seen as weird (due to being neurospicy we all know this story too well) and i ended up piping up about how she could probably get him to talk to me about Pokémon as a last resort since we both liked Pokémon and were both neurospicy (granted its opposite ends of the spectrum)

Fast forward a few days to today and ive completely forgotten this interaction happened cuz i had a dentist appointment and some strong painkillers

8:20am theres a knock on the door and it turns out that it was the kid coming over to drop of a little stack of Pokémon cards for me since his mother obviously mentioned it to him and had wanted him to do a little organisation of his cards before they moved

I decided to keep these cards separate from my tiny collection so they dont get lost as the collection grows since im planning to treat myself to 3 more elite trainer boxes this Christmas and organise my cards in small stacks based on the card type (item, trainer, energy etc)

The funny thing? I never mentioned which mons were my favourites and Bulu is my favourite of the four Tapus due to it's lore (Koko and Fini are a close tied second due to their shinies) so it's pure chance that a Tapu Bulu GX was in the stack

Hopefully life treats the kid better cuz secondary school bullying is nasty around here if you aren't one of the "in crowd" with being neurodivergent resulting in it being even worse and he's already had some shit due to bullies going way too far

Might see if i can find some new Bluetooth headphones before the end of this month to replace my 8 year old pair though because the footballs hitting fences and all the squealing is very unpleasant for me due to my sensitive hearing and i quite like the idea of not having to deal with yet another set of 4 overstim meltdowns this summer

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Brain: oh this weighted blanket? That’s niiiice.

Also brain: PT homework = compression socks? I’m mean ok I guess, I can tell it’s helping.

*three days of compression socks later* I CAN HEAR THE ELECTRICITY IN THE WALLS AND FEEL EVERY SPECK OF CLOTHING, THIS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE GOOD LUCK REMEMBERING ANYTHING ELSE BC WE ARE SHUTTING D O W N

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It’s been almost three years since I got diagnosed and I’ve managed to build a life where I’ve accommodated so many of my sensory issues that I start thinking ‘It’s not that bad, and it’s not bothering me now, so maybe I was overreacting the entire time??’

NO.

Then I went the mall for the first time in… three years? (Has it been that long already? I can’t remember if it was before or after the lyme) IT WAS HORRIBLE. I got so far as where Victoria’s Secret faced off against Bath & Body Works and the clashing stank was so bad it physically hurt. I already did my time in the trenches of the Axe Wars, so no gd thank you. And THEN I went to ULTA bc I wanted to try a vamp lip but that store was like getting attacked, too. So yeah, nope, I am going to once again tell myself to stop doubting my diagnosis just bc I’m finally able to live my life in such a way that I rarely, rarely even edge close to a meltdown anymore.

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Yesterday while I was gassing up, I saw ravens raiding the garbages at the other pump station. So I walked over to my door, grabbed my phone to take a picture, and …. idfk, my brain realized I was standing next to my open car door and it was like *zzzip* Next Step: < sit in car > Initiated

Guess which bitch sat down, shut the door, started the car, and drove off with the gas pump still in my car 🤦🏻‍♀️

Now I have to wait for ‘oh don’t worry just give us your contact info, if there’s any damages we’ll let you know’ to drop. At least I got a sick pic of these ravens having a snack.

neurotypicals are so funny sometimes. “well, just don’t forget it next time.” holy shit. you’ve done it. you’ve fixed me. who knew memory problems could be solved so simply? i am no longer autistic, i am ready to join you at the social function. by god.

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I’m both a gifted kid and the kid that was kicked out of the gifted program for being a chaos gremlin* and then had multiple years of teachers Decide(tm) that I was being a troublemaker for kicks, and then have to listen to constant shit. Like one time we had a test on naming all the world’s seas. I actually fuckin studied for that one (because I love Categorization! You gotta be able to put everything in its box!) but partway through I realized the teacher just put everything as question 1) A. question 2) B. question 3) C. ‘Neat pattern!’ I thought, but I also didn’t trust her to start a pattern like that without twisting it up in the end to play Gotcha, so I answered them all based on the right name, not by knowing the alphabet. I finished before everyone else. She picked it up and in front of everyone (!) who were still working (!!!!) she said something like ‘I see you figured out what I was doing.’

Instead of, you know, acknowledging that I was doing what teachers are supposed to want: answering tests correctly.

Tldr, I got into a real dark place after years of that shit. Why keep putting effort into shit if it is only EVER going to get thrown back in my face? Thankfully by the time I got to 7th grade and started having one teacher per class instead of one teacher per day, I was able to have less exposure so they didn’t build up as much animosity. I didn’t graduate top ten, bc FUCK math, but I did finish 12th in my class, I did go on to a good college, and I did get a good job. But seriously, fuck every single one of those teachers who treated me like I was evil incarnate bc I couldn’t behave like everyone else.

* I didn’t get diagnosed autistic til I was 33. Now to be fair idk if my school ever did talk to my mom to encourage her to pursue a diagnosis back then, but this WAS the 90s in middle America and I WAS a girl, so it’s equally likely they didn’t even consider it.

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Tfw you go to a suuuuper chaotic crowded noisy Busy cafe but Suffer(tm) bc the food is just THAT good

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I am a person who likes to make my own decisions, plan meticulously, but altering on the fly is fine, bc when I plan, I plan for multitudes, and never be dependent on anybody else. I also acknowledge that I have a strong tendency to isolate myself, for ex: I have many friends and family members that live in the cities, but whenever I’m down there, I never want to reach out to anyone to try to meet up. Both bc I hate to be a burden by asking, and also bc I just genuinely get so overstimulated that it’s easier to Be Alone.

(Well ~hello~ childhood trauma. I wonder how YOU got here 😑)

My problem is that right now, I have put myself in a situation where I’m depending on someone else to make plans, I need to ask someone else for permission, and I’m trying to also coordinate plans with ANOTHER someone else, but the main person has. Not. Gotten. Back. To. Me. So now I’m stressing that Person C is going to think I’m flakey and I’m rather invested in making a good impression. All of this is cumulating into a thunderhead of worry that this is going to be Entirely Too Much and that I should just fucking back out now.

But at this rate, if I’m not careful, I’m going to turn into a complete hermit. And while it is tempting, I don’t want to completely isolate myself just bc I’m not brave enough to get out of my comfort zone.

Did I mention that this is all inter-family stuff?? God fucking preserve me.

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I’ve started paying more attention to whether I’m banging my ND head against what I’m now calling ‘Walls of Should’

Like, I feel like I should be enjoying big holiday get-togethers, and then I get disappointed with myself for getting absolutely thrashed by them. Nonverbal meltdowns after, requiring day(s) of Silence to recover. I should be having kids, but I KNOW that that degree of chaos would be intolerable. The list goes on.

But feeling bad for not actually enjoying all that shit is silly. I don’t enjoy them. Why should I honestly give a damn about whether I should?

as an autistic kid I got criticized for not making eye contact. so as an adult I trained myself to make very consistent eye contact (easier said than done). this in turn has led to some people telling me it's "kinda weird" that I "stare so much." the moral of this story is there is actually no pleasing neurotypicals

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I live my life in such a way that I can fairly effectively manage my autistic bullshit, normally, which then starts the maugrims like ‘but maybe I’m faking it, it’s not like it’s really been that bad though…’

I just spent several hours at a grad party in the lobby of a hockey rink, so it

A) smelt faintly but distinctly like Eau d’ Hockey,

B) was a cinderblock room with the most horrible acoustics: like, I get that ‘I can hear every word of every conversation everywhere at once’ occasionally but THIS time it was LOUDER, and

C) f̷̠͎̥̯̖͓̆̾o̵͎̺̹͈̞̬̟̻͙͕̟͚̗̦̅́͗͊̽͂l̴͓͚͓̟͓̯̱̱̮̺̹̙̈̿̆d̶̨̢̪̱͚̦̫̳̪̣͔͙̝̒̒̇́͊̊ï̶̛̛̳̪̙̤̲̲̣̞̺͍͎̦̺̈́̓̂̑͛͊̊̀̂̚͠ͅͅņ̶̗̫͙̤̥̱̰͕̰͎̮̄͂͒͛̈́̚g̶̼̻͆̆͐̔͐̄͂̐̒̾̈́̓͂͐ ̴͉̟̟̯̥̦̖̰̻̳̇̿́č̶̺̬̐h̸͙͕̜͓̝̮̬̘͚͌̂͝ͅa̸̢̝͖̞̮̩͚͔̰̮͓̠͒͋̄̈́̅̉̃̚i̴͎͑͌͗̎̋̌͛̐̃̌̓̄̇��r̴̛̜̘̱̻͕͔̱̬͖͓̯͕̽͛͒͐̊̈́̂̎̍͒̈́͜ͅs̵̞̉̾͊̉̀̿ …………………………………………………………. Oh and I spent the whole day swaying and slapping, so that was just fucking great.

I’m finally home, and I feel like ants are crawling on me, I have a hangover headache even though I don’t drink, and I need to take a week’s vacation in a deprivation chamber.

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The autistic rage of having to bathe this fucking meatsuit multiple times a week.

WHY. DO. I HAVE. TO SHOWER. SO OFTEN??

AUGHHHHH

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I’ve got, like, SUPER tinnitus playing tonight. Not only am I hearing the EEEE, but it’s got intricate beats AND the inside of my ear muscle keeps spasming, so I can’t even comfortably wear an earbud in that ear without being made FORCIBLY AWARE that it’s twitching like it’s trying out for quads

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*glares at my 7/8s-full bottle of water* …I hate you

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It’s been nearly 2 years but I’m STILL mad they stopped making my preferred pads, and every fucking month I have to go through the rage all over again 😤

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Me: Idk why they make grandfather clocks chime every fifteen minutes, with full bells on the hour, do people just not understand how to read clocks??

Also me:

🤦🏻‍♀️