#But.. All things considered: my autistic ass family was pretty good at making me feel fine

[cripplecryptid]

Thinking about how amazing my parents actually were at accommodating my autism when i was a kid even tho they didnt explicitly realise that's what they were doing

Like even when i got past the age where it was deemed normal to still have 'fits' or stim the way i did

[rainbowlack]

THINGS MY FRIENDS AND I LEARNED/REALIZED WHILE RE-WATCHING MAMMA MIA (and other assorted thoughts):

Bill is into BDSM

They did a good job at making a pretty explicitly gay character despite it being 2008

Harry is actually a pretty sad character because he didn't get to have the family he wanted, due to being closeted and/or repressed

Bill likely figured out Harry was gay before Harry did himself—which made that scene all the better because I only remembered it as the "Bill's ass" scene

Sophie and Donna inexplicably know a lot of British people

The movie has a really awesome view on older people's sexualities, especially women's. Donna is not once treated as lesser for having had sex with three men in a short timespan, and when she shames herself for it, her friends (and eventually her daughter) immediately come to her side and cheer her up and reassure her that she is no less for having a lot of sex

Furthermore, while Tanya is very openly a sexual character and a comedic one, it is not the idea that a woman is sexual that makes her funny. She has autonomy and power and she is very loving. She's never treated as a has-been, but rather a woman with a lot of experience and stories, who is still unashamedly sexual.

ABBA are gods in this universe. I mean it. In the credits scene, the characters look up to the sky and see Björn holding a lyre(?) and wearing a wreath. The island is considered to be blessed by Aphrodite—or perhaps Anni-Frid. All the characters inexplicably know the tunes and lyrics to the same songs, as if they're hymns passed down through generations.

No seriously I really like that interpretation and it answers a question I've had about this universe for a while

And again I cannot emphasize how much I love the celebration of older people's sexuality!!!

This movie came out when my friends and I were 3–5 years old, so to me, 20 seemed like a perfectly fine age to get married... but now that I'm an adult myself, I absolutely see how it's very young and I understand Donna's concern

The somewhat strained relationship between mother and child hits hard for me. The arguing and lack of understanding but always being there to cuddle or help get ready... my mom went through that with her mom, and I went through that with her.

Colin Firth has a really sweet singing voice and Pierce Brosnan's is very nice too

The clothing used in the credits scene is (apart from Sophie's outfit) clearly heavily inspired by the clothing worn in the Waterloo (and Ring, Ring) music video. But it's like... Waterloo MV Requiem. You thought ABBA didn't have enough sparkles and sequins? Behold these swaggy-ass outfits.

As an autistic person, the Voulez-Vous scene hits really close to home. The sensory overload is palpable and I get stressed when watching it—and that's a good thing. The movie is incredible at making its viewers feel what the characters are feeling.

good movie

[reynie-muldoons]

'Depends on the Wagon' liveblog!

I saw someone do timestamps in their liveblog and it was absolutely lovely, so I think I'll try that too

1:55 why does Curtain sound like an mlm ceo LMAO

2:07 WOW ASSHOLE 😂😂 waving off your own teacher when he was complimenting you is not the vibe

2:17 so Dr. Curtian is only available through chain emails. Got it.

2:27 he seems like the kind of asshole to say that people on welfare are lazy and exploitave but then like, not pay his taxes

2:42 I DON'T LIKE HOW HE SAID THAT, THAT WAS CREEPY

2:47 oooooh Constance, always asking the right questions

3:05 Kate, why are you yelling, it's literally past curfew 😂

3:35 oh hai Jackson.. gtfo

4:22 oh yeah, the best way out is through the hallway that Jackson just entered. Good plane, babe.

4:25 soooo Kate Depending On Friends arc :)

4:59 AYYY HI RHONDA!!

5:13 why do I kinda fucking love then all deciphering the Morse code together

5:20 so the kids use the gemini riddle? Not the adults???

5:36 his face when he figures it out 😭😭😭

5:46 Nathaniel? Guess that's Dr. Curtain's name now. Less ridiculous than Ledroptha, but you dont get the badass Let Drop the Curtain reference

6:53 okay so no one knew he had a brother? But he did???

7:21 his faaaace 🥺

7:29 AWWW HE COULDNT BRING HIMSELF TO SHARE 😭😭😭 okay I'm kinda on board with the change if they can make it work in the long-haul

7:42 hi Milligan, good timing 😂

7:56 "not the time.........I'll take a dozen" Number Two my LOVE

8:23 interesting. I dont think Mr. Benedict was adopted in the books? He certainly didn't let Violet's family, the Hopefields, because he knew their financial troubles would be even worse. So who?

8:54 ohhhh dear, stages of grief at work. Maybe don't do that

9:05 I talked about this in the MBS discord server, but I think the show is really nailing Mr. Benedict's feelings. He's always been an emotional person, but he has to be so careful. Bottling up your feelings only leads to bigger feelings later. It makes so much sense for Mr. Benedict to be a whirlpool of strong, repressed emotions.

9:11 MILLIGAN'S FACE JAHAHS

9:34 RHONDA'S FACE HAGSKDGDJ

9:40 Mr. Benedict, sweetheart 🥺❤

10:01 "brothers stick together" why does it sound like he's talking about Reynie here 😭😭😭😭

10:12 that is a good ass point, Mr. Benedict already lied to them once

10:21 it makes sense for Sticky to be the one questioning the most because of his anxiety, but damn

10:46 AWWWWWW

10:56 KATE MAKING A BED FORT KATE MAKING A BED FORT KATE MAKING A BED FORT

11:00 I dont like how aggressive Kate is but it makes sense considering she's been in the circus for years, taking care of herself for far longer than she hasn't. She's not good at depending on people, and she's not good with difficult people.

11:10 Yeahh, Constance gets it!

11:40 Yeahhh, Constance gets it

12:55 that teacher seemed pretty nice last episode, nice to see that they're not what they seem just the same as Dr. Curtain lol

13:28 CONSTANCE I LOVE YOU 😂😂

14:00 "check again" okay so Krista from the tests and Martina give off the same vibe.. perfect 😂

14:16 "yeah......hang in there :D"

15:05 all of the apologies to the general class.. he's such an anxious sweetheart. He's really reading as autistic to me.

My sister just called me 😑 it's like 8 am, I answered her like "did you ever consider that you might be waking me up?" She did not consider that 😂

15:22 Martina's face just growing more and more annoyed and disgruntled HAHA

15:29 that was CORRECT?? WHAAAA

15:51 throwback to when I compared Dr. Curtain to an mlm ceo.. definitely like a cult

16:44 ohhhh Martina

17:30 CONSTANCE HEARING VOICES HELLOOOOO

18:22 ayyyyyy helper man

18:40 he seems too cheery to be a helper .-. The helpers all being super sad made [redacted]'s story make a whole lot more sense

19:35 aaaand now we get to it. You know, it really does seem a lot more cultish on screen than in the book

19:53 WAIT CONSTANCE GOOD JOB PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER 😂😂😂😂

19:53 that cut to Milligan making that exact face was INCREDIBLE

20:05 was he tryna leave? Yeah, good fuckin luck bucko

20:10 "critical papers at home" my ass, they packed everything up

20:24 the stages of grief back at it. 🥺

20:38 their relationship >>>>

21:00 "located in the..?" *description of envelope* "located in the....?" *more description* "located in the????" 😂😂😂😂

21:34 ohhhhh Thursday must be the student ranking day

21:56 Martina seems like the kind to throw out "pick a god and pray" as a crit quote 😂

22:07 I don't see any of the Society'a names on the list. Maybe they havent been there long enough

22:17 OH SHIT JK THERE THEY ARE

22:25 ohh Kate and Constance

22:55 the combination of the ferry horn and the bell makes it weirdly grim

23:55 them bringing Kate up and reminding her that she's needed 😌✨

24:29 hi Milligan bb ilyyyy

24:35 real good lookout guys, y'all are so well hidden

24:52 AYY HE'S DOING IT KATE STYLE

26:31 "visionary" is a word for it

26:31 I really kinda love that Number Two and Rhonda are going to such depths to try and help Mr. Benedict figure this out for sure

26:56 Mr. Benedict fully walking away while they talk about his brothers accomplishments 😂 I'm laughing, but poor guy

27:08 his FACE 🥺

27:28 HERE'S THAT TANTRUM FROM THE TRAILER

27:28 take your guesses how many times will he fall asleep

27:50 "he just has to work through some things" you dont fuckin say

27:55 you mean to tell me he had a full blown meltdown and they didn't show him falling asleep once??

28:35 like father like daughter 😌✨

29:10 ayyyy secret desk compartment

29:19 honestly I'm surprised there were actually papers he needed and it wasnt an excuse to go confront Dr. Curtain

29:32 oh shit, how'd they manage to get that far inside? No one was there to guard it, but the maze itself is a security measure

29:42 KATE STYLE STRIKES AGAIN

29:47 ooooh I like Dr. Curtain's office

30:01 WAS THAT SQ AND DID HE JUST CALL DR. CURTAIN HIS DAD

30:41 birds have careers. Got it 😂

30:50 JOURNAAAL

31:02 the fox?? Reynard the fox???

31:27 ohhh here we go, Dr. Curtain sees himself in Reynie only to resent it later

31:37 Mr. Benedict called Reynie a leader once too.. the parallels have ✨begun✨

32:12 is this the "keep your enemies close" conversation??

32:15 I'm honestly surprised he called him Sticky and not George

32:42 IT IS SQ IT IS SQ IT IS SQ

32:59 sooo that starts by not letting his caution down with you

33:11 Dr. Curtain congratulating himself mid-conversation on saying something deep is so in character

33:20 "I was betrayed by someone very close to me" so that was Mr. Benedict. Who the fuck else would it be

33:23 WHAT DID I SAAAAY

33:31 oh noooo Reynie starts doubting Mr. Benedict here? Is that the move?

33:43 that transition was so pretty stoppp

33:53 again how hasn't he fallen asleep

34:55 ayyyy journal snooping

35:05 Constance, my love, you are cut throat

35:11 Milligan is in the DRYWALL? ohh buddy be careful

35:21 omfg are they talking about water polo 😂 I love that that's the sport of choice

35:51 ayyyy they put the Milligan dots together too. Shame the guy's not with them rn

36:36 so Mr. Benedict brings up cheating first? I really like how we get to see the adults riddling out what to send back, we didn't get that at all in the books

37:46 I LOVE THAT THEY KEPT "don't get caught"

38:51 Kate riddling out the island schematics engineer style is so like her

39:07 they're just walking out the door?? Huh???

39:29 babe... turn off your flashlight

39:33 AND THAT'S WHY

39:58 is that the precursor to chuckroot?

40:38 the papers were from his orphanage 🥺🥺🥺

41:14 why does that break my heart

41:19 Dr. Curtain and SQ doing shit together it just.. so heartwarming

42:00 HAHA

42:16 okay, so show!Curtain is a kissass 😂

42:35 wait wait wait so Dr. Curtain is actively trying to contain his brother? That would explain why the Recruiters were looking for him and weirdly not the kids

43:25 "power wants to be free" sounds more like a personal mantra than a conversation between engineers

43:41 YES A LETTER TO MISS PERUMAL

44:02 more voices. Poor Connie girl 🥺

44:36 he loves her so much 😭😭😭

44:45 SHE TRIED TO SEND HIM A CARE PACKAGE

45:13 WORRIED MOM TIMEEE

[amysnotdeadyet]

Giant Meteor 2020

So I’ve been hinting in other posts, but why not, let’s explain the shiny new hell I find myself in...

For 3.5 years I had a really great roommate, we got along in that introvert way, we shared some things but not others, he loved my weirdness and I loved his minimalism (hah) and honestly it was great. But he got his dream job with Blizzard doing art for WoW (yes really) and they paid for him to move, so with the Bay Area being what it is, he took the opportunity and escaped. Good for him!

However, that left me with a whole Bay-Area-priced 2bd apartment and no roommate. During these times of woe, it’s hard to find someone new, and by the time the 29th rolled around I was pretty much desperate, though thanks to the efforts of a lot of good friends & clients, I did have one whole month’s rent ready to go.

Enter Creepo (nicknamed to protect the crazy). This guy shows up presenting himself as a 50something (I am 47, this seems fine) professional, nice clothes, nice everything, got his check ready to go and smells of nothing more than a smoke on the way to calm his nerves. He comes off as nerdy/awkward, maybe autistic, but whatever, no worse than many of the other nerds I know. So, I sign the sublease and let him move in on the 1st.

The moment Creepo moves in, he starts drinking.

He has not stopped drinking since then.

The drunker he is, the more his hidden mental illness comes out! He talks to invisible people, and thinks he’s “the one true god.” No, really. Sometimes he talks REALLY loudly, at 3am. Also, he is apparently really not employed and spends his days shuffling around downtown, drinking and smoking. He smells like the floor of a bar in the 90s, has passed out in the bathroom twice, and is generally WAY more than my tired, anxious/depressed ass can handle in this the year of our satan 2020.

He absolutely refuses to even consider getting help.

He also will not leave.

Creepo is so far not dangerous, but, he is also really, really manipulative. He makes sideways almost-threats, he behaves better in front of strangers, he tries to gaslight me about his previous bad behavior, he pretends he doesn’t understand stuff in order to get away with not doing it (like locking the doors when he leaves at 3am for a smoke, but locking them just fine when he’s the one inside).

ANYWAY, I was already planning to move! In... 2022! When we would all be in a better position to get a bigger house in the little town where my found family lives, etc, etc.

Soooo... the move has been moved up to early December.

Since Creepo’s on a sublease, that becomes void the moment the master lease (aka my real lease) is terminated, so once I go he’s just summarily out. Otherwise I have to go through a very long, expensive process to evict him and, if I’m leaving in 5-6 weeks, why bother?

But this means all of a sudden paying for a $$$$ move across the country in... a month!

I’ve got a ko-fi, etsy, and patreon under amysnotdeadyet (not linking for tumblr reasons) so if you’d like to drop me a few pennies, please do. If you don’t have them, just send me some good thoughts or whatever is appropriate for you. I’m on Amazon with some novels, which you can find via the previous post, though that money will come in like January because royalties. My commissions are closed because, you know, moving.

I have a lot of feelings about society and support and addiction and mental health, but the real truth is, Creepo lied to me and I did not consent to be this guy’s whatever, and so, no, I cannot and will not give him the support and community he needs to become a better person or whatever. Please do not bug me about whatever your opinion is on this matter, the reality is that Creepo is awful and I am not obligated to put up with his lying, gaslighting, horrible bull.

[transsexualhamlet]

so about norman’s ethics

The thing that a lot of people don’t understand about Norman is that he doesn’t believe in the like, political sentiments that he acts on in the slightest. Yeah, this doesn’t make it ok that he did a bunch of shitty stuff, but it’s a misconception to say norman like, genuinely believes fucking eugenics are a good thing.

And yet, he decides to act on the idea to degenerate and genocide the demons and seems not to understand why Emma wouldn’t agree with him. People’s explanations of this seem to be pretty much one of two minds, either:

His morals are corrupt: Norman wants all the demons dead because what they did makes him think they’re all bad and don’t deserve the respect humans get, which is understandable but still wrong, or

His morals are intact but he ignores them: Norman feels bad that he’s doing a bad thing and does it anyway because he can’t find a better way out, which honestly makes what he did worse, though Tragic.

The second one is more accurate, but still doesn’t completely explain his ideas.The truth is that, in my opinion, he just barely understands the concept of morals in general, and what’s ‘messed up’ is simply his priorities. That sounds like I’m saying he’s a twisted cycle path but I swear I’m not, it’s just like him having low empathy. This is another, autism thing, and it’s another thing that I have, so I’ll try to explain it as best as I can?

Personally, I understand and try to follow sociatal expectations for moral things like, you know, do not kill people and what not. Because it’s bad or... whatever. And although I can cognitively understand the reasons why people think so, I don’t value it in the same way. Obviously I wouldn’t kill a person, there’s no need for me to in a world like this, and it would be inconvenient and probably make me feel bad despite not understanding why it is bad. But I’ve known from a very young age if I had the power and reason to kill someone, I absolutely would, no questions asked. Not even the necessity, just a logical reason. Most of the time this means nothing and isn’t applicable in the real world, because most of the people around me would be negatively affected by it. But it means nothing to me personally, and if prompted I could change at the slightest reason.

This is what I think we’re dealing with in Norman’s situation. 

Norman, in grace field, has no reason to violate any intagible laws of right and wrong, in most cases, until the escape arc happens. Yeah, I do believe Norman probably lied significantly more than the average child, because he didn’t see any reason not to, but I doubt it hurt anyone bad, they lived in, well, basically a neverland. He’s just a slightly off white little man. But when he is faced with a risky and dangerous situation, he might look Correct on the outside but the closer you look the more you realize his actions are directly impacted by the situation around him, completely independent of any internal moral compass. 

Ray wants to only escape with those three, because although he feels extreme guilt for being the way he is and completely understands it’s a selfish and terrible thing to do, he’s too cynical to accept any other options. Norman initially agrees with him, because Ray explains the risks. Emma then insinuates she wants to bring the other kids, giving ideas as to how. Norman then switches to Emma’s plan because he believes it can be achieved and he wants Emma to be happy, not because it would be wrong to do otherwise. At the same time, he later ships himself out, without much consideration to the others’ wishes against it, because now that it’s gotten impossible to have both, Emma’s and Ray’s safety is more important now than their happiness. Though he can understand that they’d not like that, it’s not that important to him in the long run. He will choose the path that offers them the greatest chance, if the one his friends want isn’t good enough.

When he was shipped out and taken to lambda, what happened is he was put in a situation where the stakes become much higher. There’s a different kind of situation, and the idea of simply running away from the demons is obviously not an option. When he escapes, and basically adopts the lambda kids- now he’s surrounded by people with the opposite morals and ideas as Emma. These kids want revenge, they would be happy to kill the demons, their ideal situation involves that and trying to reach any compromise would be unsatisfactory. The overwhelming majority of the kids agree with killing the demons, and that idea makes him seem stronger and gives him more certainty and control over the situation, even if it’s difficult and hurts him personally, making him a “Bad Person” to Emma. 

Norman harbors no personal hatred towards the demons, nor any specific desire to kill them. He just doesn’t see any viable reason not to, and killing them provides both him and the people he cares about with a more beneficial situation. Emma is now the minority, and even though she provides an idea that could work, Norman, after seeing so much pain and suffering, is no longer willing to take the risk for her, like he was in grace field. He is incapable of understanding why she values a sense of right and wrong more than the actual statistics of how well one or the other could work- yes, they had different experiences, but she lost other people because she decided to take risks, and she still believes in it? It simply doesn’t fucking compute.

An important aspect to consider is that it still does make him feel bad not to follow a more traditionally accepted route. He might have low empathy but he’s not an emotionless robot. Not understanding morals doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a concience, though it’s much more ambiguous and generally equates to any other thing, such as the actual convenience, details, or certainty of a plan. It’s not of any more importance, and he is in a situation now where it’s inconvenient to pay attention to, more so than in grace field. So not following a Nicer route does take a toll on his Feelings TM, same as it takes a toll on his literal body, but that’s a sacrifice he’s fine with, it’s a sacrifice that’s significantly smaller than the chance that someone he cares for could die.

Generally, most Lukewarm Takes on Norman can be disproven with this idea (pretty much anything that insinuates he would see the demons as less or like, he’s doing it because they did awful things to him, understandable but hey this isn’t tokyo ghoul and he’s not that kind of character), though everyone is obviously free to have their own takes and I doubt Shirai took his autistic coding into consideration, so it’s obviously my own idea.

Although Norman’s actions have correlation with Ray’s before, Norman isn’t disregarding his physical needs and trying to sacrifice himself out of any idea that it would make up for what he did, he’s doing it because it gives him more control over his own situation, he values his own well being less than his family’s, and he doesn’t understand why it would be Bad to do so. If we’re really digging deep, it’s likely he doesn’t want to have to experience any real consequences for his actions. He understands that they’re Bad, but this isn’t important to him, more than anything else. He doesn’t want to see Emma’s disappointment because it would complicate things.

After Emma and Ray, well, complicate things, ie face him and force him to see there are real consequences to his actions past Ambiguous Moral Obligations (ex. “you’re Taking Advantage the lambda kids” means nothing until he sees that it’s stopped them from being able to grow as people and forgive, “you’re neglecting yourself” means nothing until there’s an idea brought up that could fix him, “you’re trying to kill so many fucking people” means nothing until he sees that it’s hurting the human kids.) and that there’s a valid flaw in his personality past that- that it’s not a strong but a cowardly move, he can move forward and attempt to change things, possibly give himself a fucking break. 

In that situation, with other solutions that Emma and Ray have opened up actually seeming to work, he no longer finds it necessary to Be Terrible and hurt himself. This makes him feel better, because he doesn’t want to be Incorrect, it’s just a difficult thing for him to understand, when most other things come to him naturally. I think in the future he can be more cognizant of the fact that he’s more suceptible to doing generally, unacceptable things, and vows to lean more on Emma and Ray so he doesn’t end up going down the wrong path again, because to him they all look the same color.

Yes, this is my long ass way of telling Shirai why the fuck did you let Norman be a CEO. That’s a terrible fucking idea, he’ll become capitalism, guys?! Don’t let him do that. He needs to be in a job where like, he can use his skills without having to make Ethical Decisions like... an engineer or something. Computer scientist. IDK. Just not a fucking CEO, not in a management position for anything.

Honestly, it’s difficult for me to even use the alignment chart because I don’t understand morals enoughto put anyone in the Evil category because the idea of ‘evil’ doesn’t exist for me. So yeah, I’m projecting, but in conclusion I just have a bone to pick with anyone who wouldn’t call norman lawful neutral. 

[sobdasha]

i’ve been rereading a lot of my favorite stuff for months now

since I'm lacking in spoons for library trips

And when I was cottoning on to the fact that I have, in fact, been autistic all along, one of the things I realized is that the connecting thread between the kinds of stories and kinds of characters that I like is in fact that they display autistic or autistic-adjacent traits. I had realized this, come up with a lot of examples. I knew this.

Haha yeah as I'm actually rereading the things the evidence is damning that I did not come even close to understanding the full depth of it.

~ Taucris Ithesta is Autistic and Other Adjacent Things re: Leckie's Novels ~

Actually let's start with The Raven Tower because you can't actually argue with me about autistic Siat.

Siat actively avoids eye contact, is """shy""", speaks too softly, has an excellent grasp of humor, likes rocks as a special interest, likes to collect rocks, likes to sort rocks, likes to line up rocks, has one (1) bff to conduct social interactions for her, notices patterns, is good at learning, and is considered disabled by society's standards.

Ughhhhh all that talk about rocks makes me sad all over again that I pitched my rock collection when I moved out (I saved the best fossils, though).

(ETA: I have since bought more rocks because polished gemstones with carvings on them make for great stims, I am very pleased with me)

Okay so now that that's been established, let's talk about Strength and Patience of the Hill.

Because this rock gets me. Originally I figured it was probably, y'know, like with Ancillary Justice Leckie's given me an ace-aro main character and I can identify with that as an ace-aro. But unlike Breq, who very much loves people and wants to take care of them and found family etc, Strength and Patience of the Hill doesn't give much of a shit about people. With some exceptions of people that are it's people, how dare you mess with them, Strength and Patience of the Hill will kick your ass. Although even then I'm not sure Strength and Patience is all that great at taking care of people. Also Strength and Patience of the Hill is very much absorbed in its own selfishness, very much consumed with his own internal world, and I am also a jerk like that so it was very relatable.

(Yes I am using multiple pronouns because one of my many favorite parts of the book signing was watching everyone scramble over pronouns for a rock because "It never came up so I never figured it out" and I'm pretty sure Strength and Patience doesn't even use pronouns because why would you need a gendered pronoun to refer to yourself??? You don't even need a name to refer to yourself, actually I'm pretty sure Strength and Patience doesn't actually consider itself to have a name.)

So it made sense that this rock just really gets me. I know it's bad when the majority of representation for ace-aro characters is stereotypical robots or rocks or aliens (oooh or sentient space rocks wait wAIT now that I've said that I've just realized the Myriad is the definition of a Crystal Gem, pffft) or whatever but honestly I don't care because I just really identify with the robots??? So I really liked it, YMMV.

(It's probably also bad if the trend for autistically-coded characters is just stereotypical robots or rocks or aliens or whatever too but like honestly a big autistic #mood is feeling like you are a robot or an alien or whatever so maybe that's why I'm not offended???)

My point being that Strength and Patience of the Hill displays a lot of autistic traits and is therefore very relatable, in this Ted Talk I will.

Strength and Patience of the Hill processes things slowly. She will come up with the perfect retort and tell you 5 years later with absolutely no context.

It loves daydreaming, staring at things, noticing patterns, and enjoying quiet and solitude. It loves thinking about why things are the way they are. Look I have fantasized about what if I could exist as just a pair of eyeballs and a mind floating around in space, observing things, thinking things, and not having to actually interact with the world, and I'm pretty sure this rock is living that life. (Until y'know it gets told life doesn't work like that.)

Despite his slow processing speed, and taking a while to learn language, Strength and Patience of the Hill is good at learning things, and I feel like it's the kind of sort-of-sideways, context-based accumulation of knowledge that I learn through as well.

Strength and Patience of the Hill has one (1) friend, and through the Myriad it benefits from the fact that the Myriad has an actual social circle, without having to put forth any effort of maintaining friends on its own, which is 100% the way to do it.

Strength and Patience of the Hill tends to attract the other "quirky" kids--that is, my impression is that the people who become his priests tend to be those people who look at the world a little differently, those people on the fringes. Trans people, autistic people, people with other disabilities.

Strength and Patience of the Hill trying to explain the state of affairs in Vastai to Eolo: "Okay so my first memory I can recall is…" No, okay, no, I know, it's just literally how the narrative has to be told, I'm not criticizing, but that doesn't make it any less reminiscent of "autistic person trying to explain a simple thing but starts in with 10 pages of context first to ensure the over-explanation makes sense" (haha that's why I consistently got stuck training endless new hires, I'm literally so bad at it that I'm the best in the department and I hate life).

Difficulty understanding other's feelings/points of view/circumstances (I know it's because he's a rock and a god but that doesn't make it any less relatable), hmmm what else…

Oh right, a typical interaction with Strength and Patience of the Hill:

Person: (gives offering) Strength and Patience: (offering is accepted because the transaction literally occurred, no need to respond) Person: "(asks petition)" Strength and Patience: ... Strength and Patience: wait Strength and Patience: what Strength and Patience: wait was I supposed to do something else Strength and Patience: did you ask something of me? Strength and Patience: I don't understand what you asked????? Strength and Patience: it's been an entire year now it's too awkward Strength and Patience: i'm sure it's. Fine. Strength and Patience: It's fine. (rinse and repeat)

Like I said, this rock gets me.

(Haha I was reading through my notes from the book signing and I found "Strength + Patience doesn't give a shit about balance, Strength + Patience is just selfish, which it manifests as apathy, which is why this rock gets me. All of my best interpersonal traits also spring from not giving a fuck and waiting ppl to go away faster lol" and why is that, oh because ~I'm~ ~autistic~ pfffft)

I started this post a while ago and this was as far as I got and I don't remember if I had more??? Time to talk about Taucris probably!!!

(I'm skipping Ancillary Justice etc for now because I do want to make a post about that but like there's just. So much. In those books. It's masking all the way down. So it can be its own post. One day.)

Because I waited so long I forgot what I was going to write so I'll just grab the book and flip through and comment as I see things.

To start off with: Taucris and adulthood. I've seen other people pick up primarily on the gender aspect of it--that Taucris waited until almost 25 to take her adult name because she she never figured out what her gender was (non- uhhhhhh what's the word for binary when it's three and not two? Non-tri-something Taucris in a society with 3 options but all 3 options are gendered? I'll go with that.) What really resonated for me was that Taucris waited until almost 25 to take her adult name because she never felt like an adult. And I get that ~everyone feels that way~ but I feel like it's Different for Taucris in the same way it's Different for me. Anyway I feel like no matter which aspect you choose, it's probably an autistic vibe.

Also Taucris seems to have a bit of a flat affect? She seems very serious (both in body language and in speech), and kind of intense sometimes when she talks, and Ingray notes how Taucris usually doesn't smile (she smiles with Ingray because Ingray makes her comfortable) and has always been """shy""".

Also Taucris...talks strangely? I am not sure exactly how to explain it. It's not written badly or anything, it's...you know how sometimes you suddenly sit back and look at dialogue and go no one speaks like this and it throws you out of the story because you dropped your suspension of disbelief? Taucris kind of gives me that feeling, and only Taucris. Almost like her speech is a little bit stilted? Awkward? She's very serious and matter of fact and says things like "You've always been so kind to me" with a straight face. But it doesn't feel like a """bad writing""" (quotation marks for subjectivity) thing. But I notice it every time I read her dialogue… I think it's just that Taucris is autistic and awkward and that's how she speaks. Also I think she's adorable.

Police work is Taucris' special interest. So much so that that's the entire reason she became an adult, so she could engage in her special interest better. She's ~weird~ for her single-minded interest and her interest in a job below her ~status~ and she doesn't care, she set her heart on this anyway, volunteering and interning so on.

Oh that was something else I was going to talk about--Taucris mentions feeling like she doesn't have her shit together, not like Ingray (who also doesn't feel she has her shit together. Kind of like "no one really feels like an adult). But Taucris seems quite calm and capable in Planetary Security. I don't know if this is just masking, but...I really hope that she does feel that way in her job. That because it's her special interest, that helps balance out the stress of being alive and simultaneously employed full-time. That because she's been volunteering and interning here so long, she's been familiar with the office and it wasn't a stressful transition. That she acts confident because she feels competent and respected. Taucris may look calm and cool and collected on the outside and be screaming on the inside but I hope she actually feels pretty good on the inside too.

I would also like to say that I like Taucris' nother. Despite what Danach implies, I get the picture from Taucris that e is supportive of Taucris' personality and interests even when e doesn't get it. E indulged her interest in police work, e didn't understand why Taucris wasn't taking an adult name but tried to be patient about it...so I assume that also means that e was understanding of all of Taucris quirks and stims and particularities. E's been a good support system while Taucris' peers have not.

(Except for Ingray, Taucris' one (1) friend.)

I like Taucris' relationship with Deputy Chief Veret too--the way Taucris quietly manages breakfast so e doesn't have to think about it or be put out (this is The Love Language to me, not being inconvenienced, and I feel that this is part of my personality because my personality is autistic, so). I don't know why specifically Taucris does this, but all the reasons I could come up with feel very wholesome. Taucris respects Veret as her boss and as a person. Taucris is empathetic and thoughtful (she doesn't like Danach but she tries to consider and understand where he's coming from; Taucris isn't Hatli but she considers Veret's fasting etc to be valid rather than a choice of superstition). Taucris' situation is different but she knows that it doesn't feel good to be treated as weird, to be sneered at because you don't act the way people expect you to. Taucris, being autistic, maybe has a lot of experience with "perfectly good foods" she won't eat. Taucris strikes me as someone who observes quietly, and considers carefully, and maybe takes a long time to make up her mind but when she moves it's deliberately and not carelessly. Which is, to me, a masking trait.

In the quantum version of this post I was going to write everything so polished and lay out my points so nicely but clearly that didn't happen and I don't know where to end this and I'm sure I didn't even explain things that well so I'll just say, I feel it was very autistic of Taucris in the last chapter to just be like "well IDK what you want from me and rather than expending massive effort trying to suss it out and guessing wrong I'll just be direct: I know you can't talk about what happened so I won't ask you about what happened unless you want me to ask you about what happened in which case you should say so and I will ask but I think maybe you just need to watch a movie with me instead."

[stimmypaw]

stimmypaw reads the apprentice’s quest, a blog post

A big one, just a bunch of thoughts as I’m reading it, of course, lots of spoilers for the first book in the Warrior Cats series A Vision of Shadows. This will be covering just the first book tho, it’s all in the Read More, let’s gooooooo!!!!

Vision Of Shadows time

Lots of new cats!!! I don't remember these guys as kits or anything wrow!!! I like their names but itll take a while to get used to them

Also cant believe they printed stormcloud's dead name

Omg there's a cat named beepaw

I love these cats all of them so much im going 2 cry

All new names are perfect

I FORGOT HOW GORGEOUS THE CAT VIEW IN THE RECENT BOOKS WAS, LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT

I'm glad leafpool smokes weed

I love reading from Jayfeather's point of view, his grumpiness hasn't grown on me ever but thats just me, I still enjoy it lots he's great and its fun

Firestar and Leopardstar's characterizations are On Point i love it

OOF i feel so bad when jayfeather is mean to others, poor kestrelflight, I love those two

Lovely Jayfeather moments now its time for the first chapter

I like this duo! Also I didn't think I'd ever say this but shut up squirrelflight one can have fun AND learn with their mentors

Sparkkit sounds nice she makes jingling bell noises when she walks around

Alderkit is chadphobic /j

I can see Alderkit taking deep breaths to relax its rotating in my mind its beautiful

God this first chapter feels so good and comfortable, like eating noodles and chicken nuggets. I am so so deeply in love with it, its gorgeous!

Sparkkit is so perfect too, and Graystripe remembering Firestar aaaaaa

DUSTPELT SAID WHAT? PHDHAHAHHA OH NOOOO I don't remember their relationship much, must have been fun, I love young little creature squirrelflight I MISSED HER SO BAD WOW

I started reading the second chapter and died, I think ill take a break now 2 sleep heehhee

I love them describing twoleg stuff its always so fun and alien, like watching an animal planet show about funny sea creatures.

Also I have determined sparkpaw is my favorite, might be my favorite cat ever next to hollyleaf??? I really identify with her and also she's autistic i have decided that

Alderpaw baby noooo hhhh their mentor at least is trying to show its okay, he seems very emotionally distant so far and alderheart feels very emotionally needy, actually both of them do, did I mention I love Sparkpaw??? I might be imprinting myself 2 much on her

I love how like, its clear both of them are absolutely anxious and worried about others opinions on them, which is clearly something they got from being Firestar's grandkids, deputy kids and leader kids. And bramblestar too, I recall him being quite the anxious lad ahhah. Sparkpaw will be showing confidence and being loud but the second anyone isn't approving of her or she does something "wrong" she gets small and quiet, and she ended up setting a high bar for herself by being good at hunting and fighting so I'm curious to see how that will go. Also there's nothing wrong with being guided through a crowded place to meet others Sparkpaw!!! I bet the two of them would be stuck without not knowing how to talk to others had Needlepaw not shown up. I love them, my gf is mocking me saying I'm a Sparkpaw kinnie.

Apprentices will like learn about a thing and tell everyone about it all the time and assume its always true in every situation and thats valid I love kids like that. Also in my head Needlepaw kinda looks like a porcupine. Oh boo she's fatphobic >:(

I love apprentices they are so fun and silly, just making fun of the leaders like its nothing. The way they are clearly learning and absorving everything their warriors say and do like sponges its just ***chefs kiss***

Omg shadowclan is just full of 12 year olds help

And then the old person said "it sure is hard being old!" And everyone clapped

Shout-out to pretty Riverclan apprentice #481977 I love her

Leafpool: 👁👁

Alderpaw: I knew it im cursed and awful and terrible and I will never amount to anything

I wish the cats didn't seem to be giving up on him so easily though

Ah yes the classic thunderclan move "you suck, into the medicine hole you go"

The way sparkpaw changes the things she says and how she does when it isn't the status quo around her oooooooooooooyeaaaaaaa I love 1 autistic cat

Alderpaw considering your problems lesser than other cats won't help you deal with them better bro

I love Needlepaw's excitement about Alderpaw being a medicine cat apprentice, and her sarcasm, she feels like a preppy teenager

Ahhh this is so good, I am so thirsty for family moments like this, just Alderpaw bonding with grandma, I’ll definitely want to draw this one it’s so sweet.

Oh to be young and silly.

I really am enjoying like, Alderpaw’s struggles to seeing how he fits in the clan, how he fits in himself, how he wants to be seen and what he wants to be, it’s really good. I Am Engaged(tm) With This Plot.

SPARKPAW NOOOOOOO but also Yes I want her to be shown vulnerable and weak please 

POP, god watching this stuff always awful, the cats must have thought he broke her ahahah

Also, really great that they learned from Dovewing and now like leave choices and discussions about prophecies between adults

And plus Brambles seemed to take the time to explain stuff to him, seems he wont be going alone either the 1 thing is that he will be the only one knowing what the journey is really about, why though??? I didnt read Firestar's Quest or whatever why does Skyclan need to be secret??? Seems quite silly really!

YESSSS SANDSTORM GET HIS ASS FIGHT FIGHT LOVE THIS LOVE SANDSTORM

I could feel squirrelflight nearing explosion here, this was very fun, i wish they werent hiding this though!!!

The secret thing is showing to be a plot point so I am once again Very Engaged

Also, wonderful dialogue bit, someone asked Bramblestar why an Elder is going and:

Lovely perfect perfect

I miss you dovewing

SQUIRRELFLIGHT LOVE YOU

Oh boy this is it

Traveling book moment

Graystripe: Soooo you're excited to go on the journey to the old territories and Skyclan?

Sandstorm: Yes! It's been ages and-

Graystripe: I'm sure the tribe will love the visit too

Sandstorm, groaning: Oh noooo I forgot about how the tribe is in the way of every journeyyyyy noooooo they're such a racist caricature, please tell me you have a plan

Graystripe: Yes don't worry about it the writers forgot about the tribe in my comic book so you can just use the excuses i did to actively avoid it

Sandstorm: Oh thank Starclan

Sparkpaw's desperation to prove herself oof, her anxiety with understanding the prophecy, oh boy, and Alderpaw feeling too overwhelmed by the questions and not managing to talk!!!! I am so glad they are both autistic

Hoping "Being Leader" wont mean theyre putting nonsense responsibility on the apprentice again

Ah good Sandstorm is on the lead again, as she should, she should have been leader she would have been great

I can't believe Alderpaw thinks I look stupid and diseased :( /j

Everything about this twoleg scene was scandalous I loved it, Sparkpaw just toppled over a trash bag and they are eating from it, iconic, also did those twolegs throw out a whole turkey? Damn

Its not that Sparkpaw is freakishly good at hunting she is very hungry and constantly on the watch for things to eat

BRO Ive never been in a road where the drivers are this wild, throwing bottles out of the car????? Ive seen Fruit being thrown like once or twice, what the fuck!!! I'm glad they are going to wait until the morning to continue

Okay I was not expecting Needlepaw to show up this girl is chaotic I love her

ACTUALLY YEAH WHY DIDNT THEY TELL THE OTHER CLANS ABOUT THIS SINCE THE PROPHECY IS ABOUT ALL THE CLANS???

Needlepaw is like Rono from Bambi 2 if he wasnt a mean bully and thats very epic

Very curious character though, how come her mentor isnt teaching her the warrior code properly? Is that an issue with all apprentices?? Is the clan overwhelmed by 12 year olds and they won?

Having lots of fun trying to play the game "what animal are they describing this time" the erins made here, im glad they're in a farm. Worried about Sandstorm though :c

Fuck im worried about sandstorm a lot, her wound hurt on Me

Yeah water is good youre right sandstorm

Aw man I hope she's okay let her at least survive to meet skyclan please

NOOOOOOOO SANDSTORMA A AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Sandtteooonrjrbbbmmnnnnnnnnnn

I am so sad

Alderpaw denying it, Starclan shining upon their vigil, everything crushed me i cried

Alderpaw considers Nihilism

Haven't seen a cat thank starclan for prey in a while its

Oh look they time skipped a journey! They don't tend to do that thats nice

I'm so excited to be meeting The Skyclan that everyone in the fandom knows now

So far they seem kinda mean but thats most clans at first glance really

Okay somethings up

I uh have heard of Darktail pretty sure he's a bad guy so yeah something really bad happened to Skyclan

Am worried

Darktail sounds like an evil himbo* i may be enjoying him actually

*himbos are usually nice by default so he's just evil and stupid and strong

Does needletail know these cats already?????

Ah

Shit

Oh okay fuck

I've been quietly reading the rest because I am just concerned and I want them to be okay as quickly as possible

Waterfalls are a classic nice

Oh boy time for our unlikely duo of Alderpaw and Needlepaw to get out of a Mess!

I did not expect this to end up with the two of them journeying into parenthood, but I'm happy it did

Well actually I'm very unhappy theyre so lost and there's no sign of Skyclan I am very worried for everyone involved Sparkpaw must be feeling awful!

Twigkit is a great name

Yeah this ended terribly

Overall! Frigging loved it this book was GOOD and a great start for the series I am very excited to read the rest, SO WORRIED ABOUT SKYCLAN THO AAAA the characterizations were great the characters were great the pacing was fun and I didn't get bored once!

I think o only wish I had read this sooner really so I could look up others thoughts without getting heavily spoiled about the last books, I can watch a few videos already though thats a start ahhaha. But yeah it was great and it felt very good to read, haven't swallowed up a book so quickly in a very long time!!! Very happy I finally got my hands on this 💕💖💕💖💕💖 cant wait 2 start the next one

If you read all this, hope you had fun hahaha, ill be making more of these cus theyre fun and I like talking about warrior cats thats just my thing

Til next time

[autisticsidesau]

Hi, I really love you guys! Can you add more to Remy becoming a good person?

Hi anon im so sorry this took so long to be fair we’ve been playing minecraft so like- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -Max

(i kinda hyperfixated three days away lol ~Remi

So this actually starts with, Dee not Remy

And what you need to know is that it’s been a real bad sensory day for Dee

Bad enough that he can’t stand textures at all and everything's to much

So he stays home from school

And Virgil goes to school, and his moms go to work

So he’s home alone

And Dee does have Virgil use his phone to text Remy for the homework before Virgil leaves for school since they share a lot of classes

(And is pretty much the only person Dee feels comfortable asking anyways)

So Remy being the awesome fantastic amazing magnificent A-Class bffff (best fucking friend forever) that he he is 

Goes to all Dee’s classes and picks up the homework.

(Again- Remy’s a nice guy. He’s uneducated, but he’s learning. And he’s a good friend)

And he’s nice enough that he brings Dee’s hw to his house

So after school he shows up at dee’s house and finds the family’s hide-a-key and lets himself in.

And he’s met with an empty house because Dee??? Isn’t anywhere??? 

So he heads upstairs and checks out Dee’s room to find it is Dee-less

He checks Virgil’s room but still no Dee so he heads to the sensory room which he knows about but has only really been in once or twice 

(He’s kinda been avoiding it tbh? He subconsciously avoids the Sensory Room

b/c for him in a way it kind of solidifies his bff's autism

And Remy’s seen the room before

He thinks it’s pretty childish but he’d never say that out loud to Dee or Virgil

And by proxy makes them see more childish and this childishness bugs remy for some reason

Probably because of the societal expectations of autistic people

So he opens the door and greets Dee in his normal kind of loud volume 

“Hey Babes what’s up?”

And Dee is there

Which a good sign

But remy doesn’t know how to describe what’s going on better than “Dee looks like shit and is freaking out”

Bc Dee’s rocking back and forth and making these miserable noises and covering his head and is also butt ass naked

So Remy’s thrown off completely bc what is happening but he’s also very worried abt his friend

Remy takes a minute, but does quickly come to the realization that nothing is physically wrong with Dee, he’s just incredibly overwhelmed

(And he thinks there’s a word for that? Dee and Virgil have mentioned something? But Remy can’t remember Shit so…)

But Remy does remember that they said being overwhelmed sucks

And that stim toys help

And well, remy doesn't want his best friend to suffer

So he grabs a stim toy from one of the baskets of stim toys in the room as well as a pair of noise cancelling headphones because he also remembers the twins saying those helped

And remy averts his eyes while handing Dee the headphones (which dee takes) and the stim toy(which dee doesn’t take)

Now this is weird 

Because Remy remembers them specifically saying the stim toys helped but??? Dee???? Isn’t taking it??? 

And now Remy’s Concerned because why isn’t dee supposed to take the thing that’s gonna help him

Remy runs his hands over the different textures on the stim toy and-

And that's when he realizes how much texture it has

And remy doesn’t quite get it- but he’s learning that there’s a lot of textures Dee can’t handle

And that’s when it clicks for him, Remy scooches across the room back over to the boxes and takes off his sunglasses in the low lit room 

And he notices one of the boxes of stim toys is purple and the other is yellow

And the toy he grabbed was from the purple box, so remy puts it back and goes over to the yellow box

Where all the stim toys have a lot less texture

And he grabs a small cube that clicks and has a bunch of different sides but no main Textures

And so he goes back to Dee and offers up this weird cube thing

And Dee takes it!!

And remy counts this as success and just sits there in the dark room with Dee for a while

Dee still isn’t talking and hasn’t acknowledged Remy, but he doesn’t seem nearly as distressed anymore which Remy considers a good sign

Eventually though, Remy has to leave

So he says a quiet bye and gets up

And as he going down the stairs, he nearly runs into Virgil

Virgil: “Is he upstairs?”

Remy: “Yeah.”

Virgil: “How’s he doing?”

Remy: “Mostly fine now, he’s not wearing clothes-”

Virgil: “Yeah, on days like this clothes are impossible for him. The texture is bad”

Remy: “Oh. Well that sucks.”

Virgil: “Yeah it does. Um thanks by the way.”

Remy: “thanks for what?”

Virgil: “Staying with him and helping him calm down. You could’ve just left after dropping off his homework.”

Remy: “Well I mean it was kind of my fault he started freaking out again in the first place-”

Virgil: “That’s not important what matters is that you stayed with him and tried to help him calm down-”

Remy: “well yea but I gave him the wrong stim toy one with lots of textures-”

Virgil: “Again you still stayed and helped him, and honestly, that’s not something I thought you’d be willing to do. Look, what i'm trying to say is you did really good. You’re a good friend to Dee. You’ve more than proved that.” 

Remy: “Uh yeah no problem. Shoot my mom just texted me, I gotta go but I’ll see you around?”

Virgil: “yeah, sure. See ya.”

Bonus:

Later Dee texts Remy in a panic and apologizes for having a meltdown and for “stripping”

Remy just tests back “np” and also sends a vine

Dee clicks on it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwAajOtfNT8

And he just starts l a u g h i n g 

So yeah, Remy’s making progress. He’s relearning behavior

Because he’s Dee’s friend. And he isn’t going to lose that.

[lifeisbooksandcats]

Since posting on tumblr feels like just screaming into the void; where maybe someone might throw a glance your way to see if maybe you’re both screaming about the same thing, but at the end of the day, no one is really paying attention to you..and I feel like that’s what makes me feel like I can post this. Because it’s not something I can say out loud, not really, not yet. Except to my fiancée because it’s something we’ve talking about for a while. This is going to be long, I’m certain of it, and it’s going to be rambley because I’ve been trying to put my thoughts into words and those words into coherent...anythings...and it just isn’t going to be in any sort of order. I’m not expecting anyone to read it and I’m hoping the read more button actually works on mobile. If not, then I’m sorry, you’ll be scrolling for a while.

I don’t know how valid people feel self-diagnosis is, but I honestly feel like I fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. And that’s something I’ve thought about myself since my first year of college. Someone in a communications class I was taking did a presentation on autism, and throughout the entire thing all I could think was how much everything resonated with me. So that’s, since the fall semester of 2009, this has been something I’ve quietly thought about myself and wondered and honestly just been pretty sure of. That’s 12 years this fall, and I still can’t bring myself to say it?? And I think it’s a good bit because I’ve been asked so many times throughout my life if I’m autistic - by family members, by friends, by a college roommate, by people living on the same floor as me at college - and it’s ALWAYS been (or at least felt like to me) in some sort of negative way. And I don’t want to apologize for being myself, but fuck it’s just hard sometimes???

When I walk into a room, especially one I’m not familiar with, my first instinct is to look for the exits and figure out how I can get out of there if it gets too loud/too hectic/too EVERYTHING and I start to panic. And if I’m in a situation where I can’t leave, I have this little clear stone that I play with in my hand, just something to focus on to help keep me just a little bit calmer. When that doesn’t work, it’s like my mind just...goes. I don’t know how to explain it; physically I’m still there, but mentally...even if I wanted to pay attention to something, I literally could not. It happens the most when there’s too many sounds/voices/conversations happening at once, they all blend together, I can’t understand anything and after a second it feel like it’s all just muffled and I’m not there anymore, I feel so disconnected from my body, like there’s someone else controlling my brain and I’m just there watching. It happened at the zoo just recently, when we went into one of the restaurants for lunch. I was already panicked because of the number of people inside without masks on. From the second we walked in, everything from the number of people inside, to the volume, to the lights being too bright (but looking back, I feel like they were probably an appropriate brightness? It just felt too bright with everything else going on), to the lack of masks, everything was too much. My fiancée and I stood in line with one of our friends, waiting to order our food, and I stood there rocking slightly on my ankles and fidgeting with that little stone, just trying so desperately to calm my internal panic and to not “check out” mentally and to just appear “normal”. I stood there waiting for our food, rocking on my ankles, running my thumb along my fingertips, listening to the conversations all around me merging into one unintelligible mess and on the inside, full on panicking while hoping that from the outside, no one could tell. I got our food, set it on the table, and stepped into the bathroom to wash my hands, the quiet welcoming me like nothing else. I closed my eyes and just stood there, breathing, letting the warm water run over my hands like some kind of magic balm bringing me back down. I opened my eyes again, a woman with a toddler smiled at me like she knew - which made me worry again because it’s not something I want people to know because I don’t want to be different, I don’t want anyone to look at me differently. But at the same time, I do. I want to be able to stand up for myself and say “I literally physically cannot go into this loud, crowded restaurant because I’m autistic and it is so auditorily overwhelming in there.” And maybe that wasn’t even what her smile meant. Because I literally never know how people are feeling and I try to figure it out but honestly 90% of the time it’s just guesswork.

But it’s not just that. It’s not just the panic that sets in when it’s too crowded and the sounds are too much. It’s the fact that as a kid, I was never “just” a fan of something I liked. I either didn’t care, or it was an all-consuming obsession that basically became a personality trait. I was a fan of Aaron Carter, but god forbid anyone ask me a question about his music or anything — because whether or not you were interested (and unless you flat out told me you were uninterested, I literally could not tell), I was going to info-dump everything onto you. I could tell you what time he was born, how many minutes were between him and his twin sister, which concerts his sister Leslie sang at (because she also had a small music career), at what point in his career he actually started singing live instead of lip syncing most of the time...

And speaking of info-dumping. If I couldn’t info dump to someone, I would write it. As a child - second, third, fourth grade...- I wrote essays upon essays on things I was interested in just because I could. Just everything I knew on the topic, thrown out into words either handwritten as a younger kid or typed as I got older. When I was in about fifth or sixth grade, when Harry Potter was HUGE and all my friends were also into Harry Potter, I couldn’t tell everything I knew to my friends because they already knew a lot of it...and so as a kid, maybe a fifth grader, I wrote a six (maybe seven?) page essay - single spaced - with everything I knew about the series/the author/everything. Before the last book came out, I filled an entire spiral bound notebook with my theories for how the series would end and WHY I thought what I thought.

My first NOW That’s What I Call Music CD was Now 14. I was in 7th grade and I could tell you exactly what order the songs were in. That was something I did to calm myself down back then; listing the songs on that album over and over and over again, always in the right order.

From about 7th grade until high school graduation, I brought and ate the exact same thing for lunch every single day. I said it was because I liked it, but I really didn’t. I didn’t like the Oscar Mayer precooked bacon that I would put on my BLT. I didn’t like the texture, half the time I couldn’t bring myself to eat it and picked it off my sandwich. But the thought of changing it??? That wasn’t even something I would have considered because somehow in my mind, changing it was worse than eating it. Make that one make sense.

I love routines and schedules and things staying the same, and get annoyingly stressed out when things/my schedule changes. One little change or one little thing out of the ordinary and it’s like I forget how to function for the day. Everything seems off. And I hate it. Because I KNOW that it shouldn’t matter, but it does. Half days and two hour delays at school growing up?? Those stressed the FUCK out of me because the order of the day would be different. I loved school and loved learning, but those days I felt physically ill over the thought of going to school. Field trip days were okay though because I knew they were coming and I had plenty of time to mentally prepare myself. I remember as a child asking my teachers (on multiple occasions) for the itinerary for a field trip so I could memorize it and know exactly what to expect and when for the day.

There are times that my fiancée will turn on the tv for “background noise” while she watches videos on her phone, and I wish I could describe what I mean when I tell her that there’s “too many sounds”. Because between the tv, her phone, the hum of the refrigerator in the other room, the neighbors, cars driving by, the cats playing, the ceiling fan...I don’t know how else to describe it other than exactly that — too many sounds. And it gets to be too much. So I have to put headphones in and listen to music to drown it all out and refocus.

I’ve only just recently been able to put a word to what I now know is poor executive function. As much as I loved school, I could NOT do assignments until the day they were due. I could start on something days before it was due, but I couldn’t work on it. I couldn’t focus on it. I couldn’t get myself to work on it. But the morning it was due??? I could whip up a paper that I knew would earn an A just hours before needing to turn it in. I prided myself on that ability, but looking back it was most definitely poor executive function. If I couldn’t finish something that morning, which was a rare occurrence, I would lie - I’d look “everywhere” for my assignment and “panic” because I “couldn’t find it” and because I was a good student, I got away with it. Every. Single. Time. Even with the hard-ass teachers who no one could get away with things on. And magically by the end of the day, I would swing back by that teacher’s classroom to give them my assignment that I had finally “found”.

I remember sitting on the kitchen floor of our apartment as a kid and tracing my fingers along the lines on the floor where the tiles met. I remember the pattern was brown/white/brown/white, but there was one spot on the floor that made me so irrationally frustrated because two tiles were swapped; instead of the same pattern as the rest of the floor, this one spot was brown/white/white/brown/brown/white. I remember pointing it out and my mom asking me why I had even paid any attention to that. I didn’t know why, I just did. I remember her telling me that it was stupid to let it bother me and to just let it go, but I couldn’t. I stopped mentioning it, but right up until we moved out of that apartment, I couldn’t even look at that spot on the floor without getting frustrated by it. There’s more than that. But that was one of the first things I thought of.

I’ve been watching a lot of Yo Samdy Sam’s videos on YouTube, and especially her videos “Autism symptoms in GIRLS” and “Could YOU be autistic? (and not know)” and I just... I feel that. Everything she says, I feel that. I watch them just thinking “that’s me. That’s me.” the entire time. She mentions sucking on her hair as a kid, and I did that CONSTANTLY. My hair was forever in my mouth. And now that I’m an adult, I don’t suck on my hair, but my sweatshirt strings are always in my mouth. Obviously there’s more than that, but that was one that hit me hard because I didn’t realize that wasn’t just something everyone did as a kid. I didn’t realize not everyone couldn’t stand still and always had to be fidgeting or moving slightly, whether it was rocking on my ankles, running my thumb over my other fingers, crossing and uncrossing my toes inside my shoes. I didn’t realize not everyone had the same shitty executive functioning skills as me.

And it’s like... I’m so sure that’s me. I’m so sure that I am autistic. I know it. But it’s like...is getting a diagnosis at this point in my life going to change anything? I mean no, probably not, other than giving me that validation that I crave. I would feel valid when the world is too much/too big/too loud. I would have a reason for feeling the way I do and doing the things I do. So much of my life would make sense. But. I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ll try to get a diagnosis and have someone, some doctor or therapist or psychologist or someone tell me that I’m not. And then what? Then what is everything I’ve felt throughout my life? That’s what I’m afraid of, really. Because if I’m so sure of this and then some professional says “no that’s not it”, then what?

[whatwashernameagain]

My fangirling about female representation, ethnic diversity and relationship models in Steven Universe

The knowledge that children will watch this show and learn that it is okay to be gay, autistic, polyamorous or a proud big, butch, non-binary or black girl is marvelous to me. I’m sure this has been done before, but I want to share my love for this progress in storytelling with my fellow famders (because I have to tell someone.right.now.)

Steven Universe, (created by the non-binary angel Rebecca Sugar) in short, features the (actually genderless) aliens called ‘the crystal gems’, who are almost exclusively considered female and raise a boy that represents the opposite of toxic masculinity.

Steven:

He embodies healing, nurturing, protection, acceptance and friendship - all usually female traits, and relentlessly tries to befriend villains and mosters alike. Wonderfully, he is allowed to make silly mistakes and learns that he is still loved.

Pearl:

She is the epitome of a caring and nurturing female that sacrifice themselves for their charges, portrayed with grace and beauty. At the same time, the struggle of this sacrifice and threatened loss of self are shown. Pearl comes from a background where she is taught servility and prettiness (as women have been for centuries), yet she has learned to re-invent herself and became a master-swordfighter. She’s also a lesbian in canon.

Amethyst:

She’s a bombshell. A loud, small, roundish troublemaker with issues and a dirty, immature humor. She suffers from anxiety over expectations of physical standards she cannot live up to, since amethysts are expected to be a certain way she cannot achieve. An example for the damage of impossible beauty standards.

Ruby and Sapphire:

An example for a relationship that grew over time with work and effort and is based on mutual respect and love of the things that make their partner different. Additionally, while they are not only a mixed-race lesbian couple, they come from different classes of society. Their union represents the way a healthy relationship can create something greater than the sum of its parts. 

Garnet:

A kick-ass, huge woman of color who loves herself and loved being herself. A counterpoint to the lesson we have been taught for too long: to be humble and unobtrusive. My favorite character of the show. She’s the result of the fusion of Ruby and Sapphire and combines all of their awesome lesbian love vibes. No one would ever dare to make this black goddess feel like she’s anything less than amazing, as no black girl should.

Click for more enthusiastic rambling.

Connie:

Steven’s best friend. Their friendship is the purest thing, based on communication and mutual consideration. She’s the nerd. Smart, bookish, hard-working - and a fierce fighter who does not let anyone stand before her, despite the fact that she has no powers. As she was intruduced, she was just another girl in a dress. Her arc shows what girls can accomplish when they demand entrance to circles usually closed to them.

Stevonnie:

One of the most liberal and creative uses of gender I’ve seen. They are the fusion of Steven and Connie. At no point in the show is there any conflict about the fact that a boy and a girl have fused to create something new - with a femaleish form. This non-binary person is considered something especially wonderful, perphaps because they embody characteristics of both. they are even refered to as them in the show by Pearl. (notice how Connie dips Steven? Awesome)

Smoky Quartz:

The fusion of Amethyst and Steven. A chubby, black person with self-esteem issues handled with a lot of good-natured humour. Wonderfully, their weight is never the issue for even a moment, because they are awesome and we need more big angels being cute and beautiful! They’ve also been referred to with they/them pronouns.

Peridot:

This tiny nerd has overcome a lot of prejudice and has had to learn to co-exist peacefully with her new friends. Due to what I would interpret as autistic tendencies, she has trouble reading emotion and reacting accordinly. Technology is easier for her to handle, which is therefor used by Steven to bridge the distance between them. She now lives in a cute and domestic lesbian platonic partnership with Lapis where they grow crops and create art with their ‘dog’ pumpkin.

Lapis:

She is the victim of abuse in different ways. After being locked away for a long time, she closes herself off or lashes out and requires patience and understanding to heal, thus representing the violence women often suffer from. Unfortunately, she soon gets entangled with Jasper, ending up in another abusive relationship as victims of violence often do.

Jasper:

The abuser. Female violence is a topic not often portrayed, yet one that definitely exists. She represses and uses Lapis (who binds her as well) and yet becomes a victim of their relationship herself, since toxic relationships hurt both parties. The damage done to her by her obsession with Lapis, and by extension her desperate need to be in a partnership, is represented by a corruption that eats her up.

Bismuth:

Isn’t she wonderful? Flat-chested, rainbow-haired, broad-shouldered alpha bitch with a loud and brash humor that you cannot help but love. This lady is a perfect example for the way women are allowed to be butch in this show and still be unquestionably beautiful. With her occupation as a blacksmith and her violent anger when hurt, she pushes relentlessly into traditionally male characteristics in storytelling.

Fluorite:

“How many gems are you now?”

Fluorite: “Six. Or more, if we find the right gem.”

This gentle rainbow giant is another example of the way fusion represents relationships - a polyamprous one in this case. As in our society, they are cast out and misunderstood for being different, but kids will simply see it as normal and that is awesome!

Rose:

The mother. Though she has been a bad-ass war criminal before, feared and hunted and a brave and inspiring leader, she has sacrificed everything once she became a mother. Portrayed as a traditionally nurturing female form with round, fertile lines and pale rose colors, she represents the mothering aspect of femininity. The fact that she is twice the size as her partner Greg and can easily pick him up once again shows that being feminine doesn’t make her weak. She shows the self-negating and sacrificing tendency many women display for their family in a very drastic way, since she literally disappears as Steven is born and becomes a part of him.

This is where I’ll stop this already too long post, even though I could say lots more about the insecurity Lars experiences because of toxic expectations of masculinity, the modesty of Sadie that makes her allow others to walk all over her, or the appreciating way the show deals with Greg, who is arguably a bad provider but still a loving father. I just adore the caring and supportive tone of this show so much and I hope everyone will give it a chance.

Love you all

[arabellaflynn]

The Eccentric has started a non-profit. It is not going well. He has hired me as one of two "operations managers", but won't let either of us handle any of the actual operations. Which is unfortunate, because it turns out that he is rubbish at small business administration. His main issue is that he has no relationship of any kind with the linear flow of time, and consequently no useful time management skills. He has no idea how long anything will realistically take, and, per the famous equation, no idea how much it's going to cost. This is bad under most circumstances, but ruinous when running on a shoestring budget. He is going to flame out spectacularly. It will be very sad. He has resisted every piece of advice everyone has ever given him about how to avoid this, so there is nothing I can do. I have resolved to let him pay me an hourly wage to watch the desk of his beloved debacle until our current engagement ends or I find a better job, whichever comes first. The two of us are friends for unconnected, mainly bachata-related reasons, so I'm not worried on that front; it is going to hit him very hard, though, and I'm well aware that I'm now part of the support system that will have to help him pick up the pieces. A lot of people who have known him for a very long time have come out to give him moral support, which is a good sign for the aftermath. One of them hugged me and told me I was "doing God's work" babysitting him and the project until it imploded. Ah, well. More interesting, and considerably less depressing, is the other ops manager the Eccentric scared up when the job was originally slated to be full time, and I said I could not do 40+ hours a week by myself. I keep wanting to call him the "new kid", which is really unfair of me. He is an adult, albeit a young one -- old enough to buy liquor, not old enough to rent a car. The Novyi is a newly-minted film school grad who turns out to have a number of quirks in common with the Eccentric, although mercifully he is far more laid-back in conversation, and seems to have a mailing address on Planet Earth. He also turns out to have an Asperger's Syndrome tag from before that diagnosis was revised out of existence. I've been giving him the tl;dr guide to Dealing With The Eccentric, which is mostly down to 'I love him to bits but he is not neurotypical, best be as blunt as possible when talking to him, and here is a handy quick-translation phrasebook'. A lot of the things I have brought up that other people find difficult to deal with are things the Novyi sees in himself, although in much milder form. This bodes well for the Novyi being part of the interface layer between the Eccentric and the outside world, assuming the Eccentric ever stop hoarding all the contact info for everybody and actually lets us do that. One of the most surprising ones was when I mentioned that the Eccentric had a friend radius of about five inches, and the Novyi basically just nodded and went 'yah, it me'. That got me curious. I had a hunch while I was stuck on the train home that night and typed 'autism spectrum disorders personal space' into Google, and holy smokes, I did not know that was a thing. Interpersonal distance is an important social signalling channel. It stands to reason that if one of your symptoms is a difficulty deciphering social signals, you'd be irregular in your handling of personal space. I had no idea that the skew was that consistent, though. There's one particularly striking study where the relative differences between comfortable distances for various conditions were almost identical between variable-matched autistic and non-autistic participants, but the absolute distances reported for the autistic participants were universally much closer. It's marked in the trials where the experimenter walked toward the participants, but even more so in the trials where the participants controlled the distance between themselves and the experimenter. The data for one autistic participant were discarded as an outlier when they literally got nose-to-nose with the experimenter without reporting any discomfort, which is a little bit yikes. [Similar results have been reported for trials measuring comfortable clearances around inanimate objects like coat racks. The experimenters spin that into a hypothesis about miscalibration in the amygdala-controlled 'let's maybe don't run into things' warning system, but that honestly just sounds like they're slapping around for a plausible guess. The results are interesting enough without the ass-pulls. Also not doing anything to dismantle my argument that the Eccentric has a really solid case of Weird Brains.] This may never come up with the Novyi again, outside of random chit-chat. It's only been a couple of weeks, and I've no idea how much friending he is interested in doing with a co-worker who is 15+ years his senior. On the other hand, I've already been asked point-blank whether we were at 'handshake' or 'hug'. If he does work substantially like the Eccentric here, he will give at most 2% of a shit about social convention, and the other 98% will be given over to figuring out where he wants to be standing vs. where I have given him permission to stand. I am inclined to think it is probably okay, question mark? I find the idea of an environment where people hug me and are glad that I show up to be quite pleasant, which automatically makes me suspicious, on the grounds that nothing I want could possibly be a good idea. It seems to work out all right with the Eccentric. Hanging on him like a fashionable scarf has never stopped me from saying no when he's being unreasonable, and I can honestly say that my 'no' has never prompted him to withhold affection. It may be an odd dynamic, but seems to be functional. The Novyi has seen me do it, so he knows I do have platonic friends who get clearance. I feel like I'm supposed to be skeptical of the Novyi's ability to know what he's about on the grounds of his youth. That seems unfair as well, especially inasmuch as he's got a good grasp on the 'ask first' part. He got a handshake the first time, which passed without note. The next time I saw him I reconsidered and decided hug was fine; I found out later, and then only in response to a comment I made about it, that he's pretty much always on the side of 'hug', to the point where it is a running joke among his friends. The implied universality of that is reassuring. It seems to be a class feature rather than a targeted thing. I gather from what he's said that it's not that he wants to loll on specific people so much as he kind of wants to do it to everyone in the 'friend' category. The ones who are actually subject to it are just the ones who have given him permission. People who zero in on me make me nervous, especially if they ask over and over and are obviously disappointed when I decline. So far the Novyi is on solid ground. I'm sure I'm overthinking this times a million, but the Eccentric took me by surprise, and to be honest, these are things of great significance to me. Affection was not really a thing my family got into, and I had to learn it from scratch as a teenager when I finally made some decent friends. I have a special sympathy for the idea of someone going through life knowing that standing on someone else's shoes is what feels like friendship, and also knowing that they can't ever do that, or their friends will feel crowded and run. It sounds like a special kind of hell. No wonder I got the Eccentric's attention so quickly when I decided to quit standing so far away. from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Vac7P9 via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

[bitchesgetriches]

Hello! I have a question if you don’t mind answering 😊 (please bear in mind, I’m autistic and don’t really understand the social nuances in talking about money so if I come off spoiled or stuck-up I’m so sorry) So! Backstory: my family is pretty well off, and doesn’t really have to worry about money, and both my parents are very religious and like using their money to help others in need, anonymously when possible. So I’ve never really understood the negative connotations with receiving a (1/?)

           (cont’d.) receiving a gift that was something you needed but couldn’t afford. My parents have always done things like choosing a family in need to buy gifts for Christmas kind of thing, and I like doing the same when possible. Cut to now, and my current boyfriend has finally saved up enough money to move out of his abusive ex’s house. However, since he was trying to do it as quickly as possible, there are a lot of things he doesn’t have yet that are essential, like a mattress. His plan is (2/?)   

           (cont’d.) is to buy a blow-up mattress for now, until he can save enough for a real mattress. However, I think it’d be much better to just get a real mattress now, especially considering he has back problems. I know he can’t afford it, but I can. I really want to buy one for him as a gift, no strings attached (not uber-expensive, just in the $200-300 range for now), but I’m afraid he’ll get upset about me paying for such a big purchase. So my question is: what’s the reason behind negative (3/4)       

           (cont’d.) negative reactions to big/expensive gifts when you can’t afford them yourself, and do you guys have any input on whether you think I should buy it? Thanks so much! (4/4)            

Wow, what an interesting question! First of all, dearest, it sounds like you were raised by very generous, caring parents to be a generous, caring person. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You should be proud that your family strongly values charitable giving and looking after the less fortunate members of your community. I don’t know what religion you are, but pretty much ALL of them say “take care of poor people and don’t be an asshole.” So you’re doing just fine.

I relate a bit to you in that I was raised in a financially solvent family. I also relate to your boyfriend in that after college, I was completely financially independent, saddled with student loans, and responsible for all of my own living costs. I lived with 5 other people in a shared house owned by one of my roommates... whose wealthy father had bought the house for her. She lived there rent-free and the rest of us paid her rent.

My rich friend was definitely doing the rest of us a favor. It was very kind of her to rent to her friends at below-market value. But inherent in that kindness was the understanding that we all owed her. That we couldn’t have afforded to live in the city without her generosity. And that kind of financial power imbalance can lead to resentment. And resentment is the WORST roommate.

When poorer people accept the generosity or charity of richer people, it stings. It can lead to shame and resentment because to accept such charity is to say “I’m not strong enough/wise enough/capable enough to support myself.” Even if NONE OF THAT IS TRUE, it’s hard to accept charity without feeling those things. We all want to be strong and self-sufficient and independent. To accept charity is to admit failure in that department... or at least that’s the internal perception of many people. We can tell ourselves accepting charity doesn’t have to be a bad thing, that there’s nothing wrong with the generosity of those who have enough to give. But it still can be a huge blow to one’s pride.

I take a lot of fucking pride in how good I am at running my financial life. I’m a strong, capable, bad-ass bitch and I take care of my people. At this very moment, I’m paying a friend who just lost her job to clean my house. I’m perfectly capable of cleaning my own fucking house, but she needs money! And I know that she feels much more comfortable accepting work from me than accepting a “handout.”

Yes, a real mattress will be better for your boyfriend’s back. And yes, you can afford to buy him this gift. But his pride might dictate that he work for the purchase himself, rather than relying on your generosity and, thus, admitting his own failure and weakness. That’s the root of this issue.

All that said, this is a very thoughtful idea. I recommend that you bring it up with him as a discussion. Suggest buying him the mattress because you care about his back pain and his quality of sleep. If you plan on sleeping over at his place, you can frame it as a romantic first big couple purchase! (Literally, a mattress was the first thing my husband and I split the cost on when we were 21. Super romantic. We definitely got our money’s worth...) If he protests the gift, suggest that you buy him the mattress now, and that when he has enough saved up, he can pay you back for it (since he had planned to save for a mattress anyway). If he still doesn’t want you to buy him a mattress, drop it. Don’t bring it up again. Allow him to do this his way and don’t criticize his choice.

Good luck, vanilla bean. We’re really proud of you for being so thoughtful and sensitive to your boyfriend’s physical and emotional needs.

And while we’re on the topic of relationships and charity...

How Dafuq Do Couples Share Their Money? 

Judging Charities Like Judgey McJudgerson: How Can Your Donation Make the Biggest Impact? 

*Neither of us is autistic. Happy to field follow-up questions if anything was unclear in the way I phrased the above.

[intj-confessions]

1/ Okay so my younger brother got diagnosed with autism when he was 2 and I was 7 years old and everything was great. But over the years more and more things that I would consider rational and relatable behaviour in my brother, others would consider very obvious autistic traits. And then I came across some studies saying that siblings of autistic people tend to have autistic traits and I was like "this makes a lot of sense" and didn't think much of it.

2/ Recently, I have come to the conclusion that my older also undiagnosed brother definitely has autism. He 100% agrees even if he doesn’t like saying he does because he spent years conditioning himself out of as many traits as possible in order to fit it. In the last week, upon much reflection, I’ve come to further realise that as a girl who was brought up with very strict gender roles and obviously will not present with the same behaviour as my other two brothers.

3/ Especially when it terms of socialising because the only reason why the idea that I was autistic was never even in the realm of possibility is that I am a goddamn psychologist. My job relies on my being good at picking up social nuance and without tooting my own horn I like to think, and have been reliably informed, that I’m pretty good at it. Except as a psychologist, I know that that’s not necessarily how autism works. So now I’m at a loss. I don’t want to try to get a diagnosis.

4/ I don’t think I need formal services or supports or stuff like that. More importantly, I don’t want to see myself or have others see me through an autism lens. I want my quirks to be quirks unique to me and not another yes on a diagnostic checklist. Apart from my older brother, no one has ever brought up the fact that I (we) may be on the spectrum as well and I want to keep it that way. I’m a lot of things that aren’t typical especially where I’m living.

5/ It’s already difficult moving through the world; I don’t want to add to that. But I also desperately want to be told that I’m right because it would explain so much of my life and maybe a diagnosis would enhance the way I see my life and not diminish it. But also how does an adult go about getting a neurodevelopmental disorder diagnosis? Talking to my parents about this isn’t really a possibility, if it was I wouldn’t be here. (Sorry about the length, didn’t think it would be this long).

6/ Now just realised that maybe your INTJ blog wasn’t the best place to send these asks? Maybe your mommy problems blog??? I’ve just followed you for a long time and I felt that you were the best person who’s not in my personal life to ask at 03:00 in the morning. Ooooh I regret everything about this now. 

Just an FYI, you can always PM me off anonymous. If you don’t want a public response you can just say so, and I’ll respond privately. Bypasses the “oops wrong blog” thing. But seriously, don’t worry about it.

There are a couple of quizzes available online, though I don’t know if you believe in those. Many people find them helpful, and people with a formal diagnosis do score high on these things. 

Personally, I don’t find validation a good enough reason to seek a professional diagnosis. It’s really expensive, and it can be potentially harmful in stuff like custody/CPS cases to have that kind of thing on file. You could always try having another psychologist buddy give you an informal diagnosis, but I don’t know if they’d be willing to do that, and they’d need to be familiar with all the traits of an adult female autistic, which most people are not.

As one therapist told me, even if you don’t have enough traits to qualify as autistic yourself, they’re still there and they’re still valid. They don’t cease to exist because you lack a diagnosis, or because you don’t have enough. It was really important for me to hear, and I hope you take it to heart as well.

It definitely runs in families. I can’t tell you how stupid I feel as someone who breeds animals, and totally understands that personality traits are heritable, yet I totally dismissed a lot of my own quirks as environmental. A lot of this was due to not having the names for things like Sensory Processing Disorder or Social Anxiety, but I totally expected NT kids despite my husband and I having weird-ass brains. I mean:

Him: ADHD, Anxiety, Depression

Me: Autism (probably), Anxiety, SPD

Kid 1: Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, ADHD (possible, we will find out once we start medicating the rest)

Kid 2: Autism, SPD

Kid 3: Quirky with a speech delay. School says autism and the psychologist says no. So we’ll see.

Going further up the family tree, my sister is bipolar, as was my grandmother. My husband’s mom has anxiety, and some other shit (her mom was also whacky). My cousin’s kid appears to have SPD. Several family members have told me they think my other grandma might have had ADHD. So yeah, there is ND all over the family tree. It pisses me off so much when people go on about the autism “epidemic,” because all you have to do is look back through history and it’s everywhere. There are autism spikes in areas where certain industries are prevalent (like tech), because when a couple engineers with autistic traits marry, they will have autistic kids.

Here are some links for you.

Autism Spectrum Quotient.

Aspie Quiz

Tony Attwood - Aspergers in Girls (video, I have not seen but it’s supposed to be pretty accurate)

Whether or not you seek a diagnosis is up to you, but if you don’t, like a lot of us you’re going to be torn on the issue for a while. Remember that you know your brain best. You’ve just got to make peace with yourself. A diagnosis does not change who you are.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 99

Unfortunately for me, on my first day of work, I was invited to see Okkervil River play down in Boise with Josh, Melissa and Whitney. I couldn't skip my first day of work however unlucky it was that it fell on the same day. So Allison ended up going instead. I ended up really liking Okkervil River later on when I was given more exposure to them and have always been sorry I didn't get to see the show. Allison got to meet Will Sheff the lead singer. She also got to know Whitney and Josh and Melissa better. Their connection to Zack ultimately was very limited. Whitney was his sister, but nobody was really involved with Zack since he had gotten into harder and harder drugs, and for the most part Josh, Whitney and Melissa  had chosen to cut down. They all seemed to love Allison too, admiring the fact that she played music and wrote her own songs, was cheery and enjoyable overall. Allison felt idolized by people, potential friends who were older than her, who made her feel mature. This really became a huge deal for her. She felt she had found her new family I think. Whitney and Josh became somewhat of an obsession for her in particular. When she got back she could talk about little else but them. She now had friends, and it meant more to her than anything in her young life. It meant she was differentiated from me, and could get away from whatever she found awful about me. It meant that she had finally found acceptance after pining for friendship for so long.

Alex, Sarah's ex, finally moved to Georgia. He had stayed for the last few months to say goodbye to some of his work friends at Shopko. Sarah and I drove up to her family's ranch to say goodbye to him for the last time before he went on his way. I guess despite the mess of him and Sarah's relationship, they had spent six years with one another. It was an awful long time, and they still had a strange history with one another and connection that couldn't be erased. They didn't want to leave with mutual dislike for one another. It was weird because just as I had begun to make friend with Alex, him and Sarah had broken up and he was moving. In fact, Alex had reached out to me to see if I was okay after he found out about Sarah's decision to be with Zack. He knew Sarah and my friendship enough to know that I was probably mentally destroyed by the whole ordeal. I sent him a message telling him I gave them my blessing. It was weird as I the smoke from that spring cleared just a bit, that my attitude about Sarah and Zack had done a one-eighty. I no longer was all that supportive or sympathetic. I was still hurt, but the hurt was becoming something else. I was growing to accept certain parts of what happened, and no longer seeing every detail of what came next as being significant or having anything to do with me really. I had my own life to live. But back when Alex had asked me if I was okay on facebook, I hadn't been able to articulate that.

I remember we hung around in the hammocks and Sarah and Alex reminisced about the fun times they had had early on in their relationship, and how they had grown to bigger and better things. They avoided the topic of Zack. Alex might have said something about Zack being a drug addict, which made Sarah uncomfortable and change the conversation. For some of it, I went on my own and picked flowers. It was a pleasant and somewhat reserved goodbye. We all hugged one another and Alex left. He would be going to Georgia. Sarah gave him her truck that she had gotten from her mother, and he took their cat Gooboo with him and off he went to start his new life elsewhere.

I still having a terrible time, but the terrible time was changing into something euphoric. I could never manage to fully explain it to anyone. I felt like I was being driven and change into something that felt a little bit like hysteria. Reality was not grounded, but in a new way then the ungrounded reality of winter. In a way, this lack of clarity was more wild and vivid and involved action and feelings that needed to be expressed. I didn't feel the movements happening around me. I was the movements. I was the universe. I was connected to the vibrations of everything, and I became whatever I felt which could be anything at any given time. I felt invincible for weeks straight, and at random intervals I felt like death and I would cry. I couldn't show it much of the time at my new job – but I found ways to channel that energy when I worked, I couldn't act the crazy that I felt inside mostly, but I would go home some nights and I would still sob uncontrollably, or laugh uncontrollably. And internally, I began to wonder if there was something chemically off balance about me. I remembered getting diagnosed with chemical imbalance when I was in fifth grade. I remembered all the reactions I had had in my youth, all the strong ups and downs. I remember in the alternative school, Jenni telling me that Mike thought there was something psychologically off about me. It was hard to tell where circumstances made my behavior normal, and which parts of it were all me. Because life had been wildly unfair to me. I say this without self pity. I wasn't dealt the worst cards, but they were pretty shabby just the same. And no matter how crazy I was, had there ever been someone in my life who wasn't crazier than me? How could I gauge if I was well or not.

Looking at the diagnoses for bipolar disorder, I began identifying with a lot of it. I felt malleable and crazy and ready to take all manner of risks. I had started feeling anxious and euphoric at times when I was a teenager. And I had found ways to deaden this side to myself, but now there was no filter for those feelings. I felt euphoric and powerful, and fell into these dark irritable moods. I rarely took things out on people, but I had recently confused Allison by demanding that she start playing Ziggy Stardust the next time I started to cry, and when she did so I chastised her and told her she was being insensitive, and got in her face about it. Which was wrong on my part and I felt like an ass as I did it, but it annoyed me so much the idea that she could remedy my misery automatically. I had told her she could of course, but now I was finding myself insulted by her following the orders that I had put out. Of course I had no means of taking risks, at least not many – but if I had money I would have gambled. If there was some viable options for relationships of any kind, I could have found myself throwing myself out sexually as a means of self destruction. Fortunately, there were never many outlets for me to pour myself into.

Of course, I never got a real diagnosis for bipolar disorder, and my cycles didn't/don't always align with the cycles that are put forth by the psychiatric community. Over the years, I have monitored myself and I think what it comes down to is this. I probably have what some people consider, type 3 bipolar, Cyclothymia. My moods go up and down like bipolar, but the depression is generally not as low as it goes, and my ups aren't so destabilizing that I entirely lose it, but I still am on a very rocky boat, and my perception changes on me drastically. It's difficult to diagnose, and it's questionable if medication would be worth it in my particular situation because I have found ways to manage it almost – so long as everything is going somewhat smoothly in my life (no break-ups or deaths). However, if I am going through very troubling life circumstances, my symptoms start to look like type 2, and in these situations I really can fall. I begin to become delusional. Which is why I require a lot of self monitoring – more self monitoring than people probably recognize. It makes me seem self absorbed, but often times it's just there is a complex science to understanding myself and where I am at. It's hard because with a type 2 bipolar diagnosis, I would have something concrete to explain to myself and the world what it's like to be me, but since I don't generally and I feel mildly silly at times for self diagnosing (I fall as well in a low level autistic spectrum), I am hesitant to say anything about it to anyone. The summer of 2011, I could probably have used some therapy and medication. It would have done me a world of good I am sure. But of course, therapy and medication is for people who have insurance. Dishwashers generally don't get insurance.

Honestly too I guess, I am not always certain I really want to get rid of the ups and downs (mainly the ups). It's come to be a part of who I am – regardless of what I do or do not have. I worry mostly about the potential for spiraling out of control when stuff gets hard, and I have never really had any support with this aspect of my personality. I am completely on my own. I can never fully trust myself either – I have time periods when I need very little prompting to make terrible destructive decisions, and while I was doing it I didn't even know. I feel like I am addicted to life, and everything I do is intriguing and great, and then later on I have to deal with it. There is potential for disaster in me. I lack boundaries. Sarah has pointed out that I am very malleable. But I guess I could argue that if I am not to be trusted, then neither is anyone else. When you shift between perspectives often, you realize that people who flat line in one perspective sometimes lack the ability to realize that everything is perspective – and we are all doing the best we can from where we are at emotionally and psychologically.

One thing that is hard is that when your falling there is this unspeakable disappointment – like everything you believed in and are working on is a lie. I fill up with dread and shame and confusion. It feels like life is over. My whole body hurts and I lay in bed for days and just can't think. It lasts for about a month to six months straight, and everything I have to do like going to work is much harder and I feel ugly and ashamed and numb all the time. Writing helps me through because it reminds me that my thoughts are real and that I am a person of some kind. I have to take steps to get back on my feet – force myself to eat properly, do things for myself I don't want to do – shower, dress up, and when I finally do get on my feet I am fine for a few months, and then something sparks in my mind and I am ambitious and euphorically excited to be alive and everything gets crazy and magical again. This can be mild or really intense, depending on what's happening in my life, but the fall from grace is just horrible feeling. It comes on like when you know you are becoming nauseated due to the flu. You just have to brace yourself and accept that the gig of feeling really good is over for awhile.

I worry too that I will be seen as weak and this is ultimately the grand scheme of my personality. I feel defensive because otherwise, when I get comfortable in any given situation I know that my gauge and reaction to how I fit into the picture is skewed. Whether I am up or down, I don't have the kind of pragmatic middle ground that keeps me safe or levelheaded. I am not really exactly crazy in the sense that I am dangerous to other people directly, but there is a lack of level ground to go home to and if someone were to take me seriously I feel like I would burn them out pretty bad. I am to a degree, whatever state I happen to be in – and it causes me to seem chaotic, counterproductive, easily distracted and inconsistent so relying on me could potentially disappoint and confuse people who think they understood who I was before. I am always vulnerable at all times to whoever wants to take advantage of me for this reason as well. I am embarrassed and insecure when I am down, and when I am up I become easily flattered and obsessive and both manipulative and manipulated. I make decisions based on curiosity and don't think of the outcomes. I see myself as a chaotic and potentially damaging person who at times must be quarantined. So for this reason, I go between intense feelings of not trusting myself to be around others and not trusting other people to being around me, and then deeply wanting comfort and support and to be extremely intimate with other people and smothered – but then I resent that too because I want to feel independent and free, so there is no winning. I have to invent walls to make people not want to be around me, because I fear they will think I am crazy if they knew me. And what I need one day I do not need the next. I honestly feel guilty whenever I want to be closer to people.

The benefit is that I feel like I can reexperience childlike delight in living to some extent the way a lot of people around me cannot. I will always eventually be rewarded with a certain wave of euphoria and a heightened sense of being that always seems worth the sadness I previously experienced. I become very creative. I have a vision of what it is that I want and who I am. The fog clears. It's intense and real. I can take charge of things that were difficult before. It ends too soon, but in those times I feel very alive. I guess I wouldn't want to stabilize because this is the only way I know how to get things done. And in my middle points, I know what it feels like to be both up and down. With this perspective, I can grasp a lot of concepts. I can understand say, something entirely unrelated to myself, World War 1 for instance. I can look at it from multiple vantage points, and I can do so through the guise of knowing and seeing through the lenses and memories of my own angled vision. Which sounds really strange, but it has helped me write good papers so I think I am onto something.

Call it a mood disorder, or the change of the seasons, but I was beginning to emerge from the spell I was under, damaged permanently, but I walked out alive just the same. I had accepted that there was no going back to the old life. Whatever fate had dished out, it hadn't been what I had expected it to be. But through those difficult months (which I wasn't entirely over yet), I had found a sort of strength and knowledge of myself, and the longer I went on surviving, the more I came to trust my own instincts, to follow my intuition, and to be my own person. I didn't want to wait for things to happen to me. My entire life had been one long ugly wait for one thing and then the next. I wanted to make things happen for myself.

It was probably rather strange, likely influenced by The Dresden Dolls or Klaus Nomi, but I sometimes would go into the bathroom and paint my face up like a clown – not the typical clown one hires to do gimmicky stuff and laugh creepily at birthday parties, that isn't the type of clown I was. I was a perriot clown, something artistic and strangely pretty and ornamental and frightening. I felt internally like a shattered doll, something broken and upsetting and perfect in it's brokenness. Maybe to others I was just a minimum wage slave, maybe Sarah and Zack were too dull to fully recognize who I was internally in the ballroom theater of my inner life. And I was more than that. I could do whatever I wanted. I could be a painter, a musician, a performer, a writer. No doubt David thought of me as somehow a foul terrible person – and perhaps he had a point. Maybe I had just broken to the point where I didn't care anymore. In any case, I was happier and had more of a vision seeing myself through the lenses of my own imagination. I was more productive in how lived. I felt the preciousness of life in each breath I took. And really, I didn't perform most of the time or behave in any way that might seem as wild and as vivid as the self image I had of myself laid away in my mind, but it was there, and the outer world and my place in it was somewhat of a mask.

I let go of some assumed expectation, and instead I chose to be myself. Whatever was meant to be would be – my natural identity was my destiny and I was going to live so strongly as me that there could be no mistake or imperfection or forlorn sense of loss. I would attack my goals, not with a sense of duty, but with a passion for my visions and my feelings. I wasn't going to worry anymore about offending others. I think this was my way of breaking free from the identity that I had thought was me for so long, the corner I had been painted into socially by friends and family who either meant me well or didn't but had never fully understood me. I was becoming the girl my father had tried to terrorize me into hiding – and now she was coming out and taking power over the game. She was now me  - I didn't have to lock her up in a box anymore or check with Sarah to see if it was okay to be myself anymore. I wasn't ashamed to feel feminine or excitable or pretty anymore.

I threw away most of my jeans and t shirts that weren't for work, and I instead decided from there on then that I would always look my best – I would paint my eyes and my lips, and chose to wear dresses always. Wearing dresses had always been taboo for me. I had never felt confident with my own femininity or pretty enough to wear them. I wasn't allowed to wear them in school – mostly due to the kind of pressure that I would have come up against and the fact that I was afraid to feel helpless and gross somehow. At home my father had this unspoken assessment that wearing dresses was a sexual act. He hadn't shamed me, but given how he always sited studies that said that men were more attracted to women who wore dresses over jeans I had this feeling he would have been threatened by the idea that I was going to bring men home if I wore dresses. There was stigma to dresses – being dolled up was a weapon. It implied I was both a weak girly fool, and a lecherous whore – but somehow it meant that I was brave in a way that I hadn't been raised to be. And I hadn't had any female influence in my life to make the transition easier. I didn't know what to wear, or how to wear it. So wearing dresses was part of my truer self. It was empowering, and it was the way I was going to live my life from here on out.

I ended up getting an ear infection the first week that I worked in the dish pit. I had to wear a plain black baseball style cap and it covered my ears and between the sweat of working hard and the steam that rolled out of the dish machine, my ears became moist inside and I ended up with swimmer's ear. In a way, this ear infection was my new becoming – just like the one I had had at seventeen had been a becoming of sorts. I came out of the intense mind numbing feverish pain transformed and humbled. I managed this ear infection however, somehow I miraculously didn't have to take any days off of work. I went to the hospital, and they billed me three-hundred dollars to see a doctor for five minutes and get a very tiny bottle of ear infection medicine that did very little. I still have not paid the bill. When I ran out the infection came back. I didn't want to have to pay thousands of dollars because of the ear infection and I didn't want to go back to the doctors, so I instead looked up natural remedies to swimmer's ear online, and I discovered that the bacteria responsible could not live in certain pH conditions. Vinegar would kill anything growing in my ear, so I began to pour vinegar in my ear and almost immediately the ear infection cleared up. For a few weeks though, I smelled like apple cider vinegar. And my inner ear stung a bit from the acidity of the vinegar.

My mother was laying in her strange place one day as I was preparing to go to work, and she began asking me what was wrong with Sarah. Why was Sarah wasting her youth on some ugly mugged idiot who was clearly using her for her money. It was hard to picture Sarah as the fool she was clearly being. It was painful to watch Sarah so transparently give up so much of her individuality and things about her that made her so great to this horrible person who didn't even recognize or appreciate her. I shrugged and told my mother to ask Sarah about it – because honestly, I had lost the plot and I questioned my own ability to see through the reeds.

So then Sarah came out of her bedroom, and my mom told her to come to the bed and sit down to have a chat. My mom, quite confusingly, and much to her credit was the only adult that actually sat down and tried to talk to Sarah about where she was going with her life throughout this entire ordeal. My father had for some reason wanted to bring her down in some fashion, and Sarah's own mom was more or less left in the dark. I feel like Carol understood more than she let on, but the idea of her precious daughter running around with the likes of Zack wasn't something she personally felt she could face. Carol could be strong in some circumstances, a very industrious and straight forward person. But she could also be incredibly avoidant about personal issues that mattered, particularly where Sarah was concerned. She was afraid to admit to herself that Sarah was messing up, and she was afraid to tell Sarah what to do. She was secretly worried I am sure.

My mother explained it well. She didn't come from a position of loathing Sarah for hurting me, she didn't react defensively or rudely or come at it from an angle of trying to put Sarah down. She asked Sarah what on earth was going on with her. Was she okay? Could she not see that Zack was a terrible boyfriend? She asked her details about Zack. Sarah did her best to answer, and did her best to make excuses – but it sounded weak to her as soon as she made those excuses. Her voice faltered. My mom tried to explain to Sarah that she had also had boyfriends who were bad for her in her own life, men she had wasted absurd amounts of time on, who used her for her money (remember James), and wouldn't work. And in my mother's experience as a bartender for low end bars in town, she had seen men like Zack and they were always terrible and the women who ran after them thinking they would be the one to change them always came out of the situation short handed and oftentimes bitter about it. And my mom wanted to see Sarah with someone who would at least do his part financially. She wanted Sarah to thrive. She was too beautiful to be wasting herself on this gross selfish creep who didn't even change his clothes. Sarah didn't need to be with a junkie or a methhead. She deserved better,

In a way, it was sort of therapeutic for me to be in the room witnessing this conversation. I just sat at the computer desk and listened. It was stuff that I should have had the clarity to say, but it wouldn't have worked if I talked to Sarah at this point. For one, the whole thing was way to personal to me, as it had been a huge part of my recently discarded life. I couldn't be the friend that Sarah needed because it would seem selfish – either due to the fact that I desperately wanted Sarah's friendship again and Zack was hindering that, or I wanted revenge or some kind of personal sense that I had to break the two of them up – and in any case the situation of me talking about my feelings at all was touchy. I was just a touchy person these days and my emotions were wild and sometimes seemed disproportionate to the problems at hand – at least they seemed that way to everyone on the outside. I was not a reliable witness. Secondly, by following Sarah and Zack around and trying to love them both – I had been endorsing their relationship – my stamp of approval had already been put on it and the ink had dried. I didn't support them anymore, didn't find them interesting either, but it was too late for me to be taking back my endorsement. It was sad to say this, but regardless of either one of us had done to whom, in the end I couldn't' be the friend that Sarah needed and she couldn't be the friend I needed. So for my mom to step in and tell Sarah that she wasn't being evil, that she wasn't so special that she could cure addiction, that her relationship wasn't magical, and that Sarah was allowed to acknowledge she made a mistake – it was helpful.

In the end, Sarah deflected most of what my mother told her, and just repeated that she believed in Zack and loved him. My mom told Sarah it wasn't love at some point, and Sarah didn't agree. To an extent it was easy to pull apart my mother's life and see that despite how right she was in Sarah's given situation, my mom probably didn't know what love was either. She was spending her days talking to Asian men and pretending she was going to fly out there to live as a sexy mother Theresa once she dropped some pounds and started saving her money, paid off her debt and got a passport to whatever current country she was planning on going to which had not yet happened and didn't seem like it really would. All the same, the conversation aged well, and it is remembered as a noble effort on my mother's part to do the right thing in this given circumstance.

On the 4th of July Zany's closed for the holiday, but it was a day where some of the kitchen workers were paid to come in early anyway to pull out kitchen equipment and clean behind things that rarely ever got cleaned. I was scheduled to come in that day – thought truth be told there wasn't a lot I could do to help the guys. I didn't mind working. Anymore, while I was at work I had a purpose and I didn't feel sad or uncertain. It was always kind of a pain to my self esteem to be around people who were uncomfortable with me or tired of hearing me talk. I liked getting out of the house. One of the few things Nicholas told me to do was something involving a vent and a pipe and I had absolutely no idea what he meant. He didn't want to teach me, and seemed annoyed that I didn't know what to do. If I had asked him to instruct me he would have gotten proud and annoyed at me for it, so I just went into the dish pit and looked at the area I was supposed to do something with and waited for a nice person to come in and help me. I think it was a matter of fixing something. It involved tools I had never been shown.

Nicholas was the kitchen manager, but the real leader of the group was this guy named Levi. He generally worked in the deli area of the kitchen. He was in his mid to late twenties. He could he commanding and cold when it was necessary, but he was also very moralizing and fun. Everyone liked him. I liked him. He brought the best out of everyone around him. He knew when people were struggling and unlike the other fools, he often times tried to help people rather than put them down. He was the best worker in the whole restaurant for this reason. He was married to one of the waitress supervisors named Dani who worked at Zany's as well. She was very genuine and nice. They had a daughter together, and had been married for two years. Standing in the dish pit I felt vulnerable and fearful that Nicholas would catch me not completing this mysterious task that he had ordered me to do and insisted that I should already know how to fix. Levi came in and smiled at me. I asked him timidly and quite awkwardly if he would help me. He looked at what I was talking about, and he laughed. He said he would come back and help me. He couldn't believe Nicholas expected me to fix this thing myself.

So in a few minutes he came in and him and a few of the other guys set about laughing and joking around and showing me what I needed to do. I stood there helplessly watching as carefully as I could so that I never found myself in the uncomfortable predicament again. Nicholas came in the room as they were finishing the job, and he looked at me fiercely and demanded that I be the one who fixed the pipe. He demanded that I couldn't be getting the other people in the restaurant to do my job. Levi seemed to have this weird natural way about him. He amiably told Nick that I didn't know how to do what he had asked, and in any case it would have been an even worse disaster had I tried to do it myself. He basically shielded me from Nick, who carried on to order someone else to do something in an attempt to maintain an ere of control.

Levi smiled down at me, and in that moment I got this strange lump in my throat and butterflies in my chest and I looked down and blushed. I realized that I was having an idiot girl moment like in a bad movie. I couldn't believe this! I thought Levi was cute in like, the most basic primitive stupid way that I pretty much had counted myself as too good for years ago, and it was embarrassing for me. He had done the basic man thing and helped me do something I didn't know how to do myself, and now he had just 'protected me from danger'. He wasn't poetic – he hadn't displayed any of the refinements of a sophisticated and complex. This isn't to say that Levi was dumb – he wasn't dumb at all. But he wasn't structured like that. In no way shape or form did he seem like a match for me, nor did I truly think I was in love with him in that moment or have any ideas of this going anywhere. Which made me feel even more foolish. How confusing!

He hadn't done anything particularly special other than be the generally benevolent leader that he always was – but I had just melted like butter on account of it. He had this caring kindness in his eyes, and an attractive face. I really liked his round face and his dark complexion (he was of Native American decent). And he was always very humorous and in control and brave and self sacrificing. He was so well balanced.  And when someone pissed him off, he confronted with them about it fairly. And he got stuff done. He was essentially all the things that Zack wasn't.

But dear lord did I feel silly. Because I was crushing on this guy I had nothing in common with. And I was attracted to him in this corny conventional way and I couldn't control myself– the way of the way basic as hell teen movies presented girly crushes, and I was supposed to be above this! It had always seemed foolish and dumb, taking into account all the romantic characteristics I had gotten from books, and all my high expectations. And here I was admiring this guy's shoulders and feeling weak in the knees because he was 'manly' and soft at the same time. Furthermore and most importantly, he was married! Very Married. I knew his wife. She was a really sweet lady. There was absolutely no place for me in this scenario that seemed wholesome in any way, or realistic. There was absolutely nothing to pursue. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. Pursuit was the only thing I really knew how to do in these situations. Quietly perhaps, but I wasn't able to just let it be. But I couldn't do anything, so instead I just internally combusted whenever Levi said hi to me or smiled at me.

From then on, I was always excited to go to work if Levi was there. I would eventually get comfortable enough to joke around with the rest of the kitchen but when Levi said anything to me I sort of stiffened up. If I let myself be comfortable around him, then it would all come tumbling out somehow and my awkward secret would be spilled out for all to see all over the dish pit floor. Because I didn't have those boundaries like other people did. If I got comfortable then my body language and my eyes would betray me and I would be revealed as the true creep that I was. So my only recourse was to create physical boundaries by not letting myself get too comfortable. It wasn't hard because whenever he was in my presence I stopped thinking clearly. And it confused Levi because he really liked me in this totally innocent way and he interpreted my reaction to him as fear – which in a sense he was right, but for the wrong reasons. He told me himself several times that he thought I was one of the best workers in the kitchen, and that I seemed like I really bright, sensitive and intelligent girl. He didn't mean it as a form of hitting on me or some ulterior motive flattery. But I melted a little bit when he talked to me.

I felt really bad about it, but there was something kind of addictive about the guilt so when I attempted to shame myself into not thinking about it, I thought about it even more. I felt like some kind of Golemlike creature that was staring into Levi and Dani's living room window jealously on a dark serene Christmas night, wishing that I could be included in the family somehow with some kind of absurd Phantom of the Opera like madness of swooping in and stealing Levi and making him weird like me so he could live in the sewers and be my husband instead of Dani's. Perhaps I am exaggerating a little when I say it like this. But I often wondered what it was that attracted me to Levi, and when I thought about it long and hard I started to feel enormously sad. I think it was because Levi seemed very stable and kind. He was very assertive in a way that I didn't know how how to be, and very warm and huggable in a way I didn't feel like I was. And I had never had anything that was very stable or kind in my life. Most men I knew were mean and unpredictable and likely violent. In the end, I had to watch my back, and be careful not to bruise their tender egos else they would make me pay for it. I had grown up second nature with a mistrust that men had honest intentions and when I was around men I felt a little bit gun shy. And Levi was so fucking nice.

I had started to go through the process of befriending my own brokenness. I don't think my self esteem was the greatest, but I didn't process self hatred when I looked at myself in the mirror anymore. It was counterproductive to feel self pity or spend too much time thinking about what I didn't have. I looked at myself as a project of sorts – and in that sense I wasn't afraid to snip and break any part of me that could not fulfill my own goals, but I wasn't in the game to beat myself up anymore – at least not in the societal sense. I had come to terms with myself and my body and how life would be – so long as I kept moving forward and matching my own expectations. But I would never have what Levi had. Whatever it was that Levi embodied, it reminded me of a time in my early childhood where I had been acquainted with a simple sense of goodness, like the way a batch of cookies smell good in the oven. There wasn't much to think about or sort out. It was just delightful and good. I wanted life to be simple and good again. It wasn't the worst life. I had built this palace of ideas and exhilaration and sorrow. I wouldn't have given it up for anyone. But I was also tired and weary and Levi's limited presence in my life offered something that appealed to my childlike need to find something that felt like home.

There was a wall between me and the Levi's world though – and it wasn't something that was going to be broken down. I knew my place and even liked my place. I was made for more. I wasn't in the game to play house with someone. And in that sense I was kind of a Golem staring into the window as Levi and Dani watched their daughter open Christmas presence, unbeknownst to them that I was spying into their lives like a loathsome curious worm. I felt sort of like a creep being so attracted to Levi. I felt badly whenever Dani was nice to me. I felt like I was disrespecting her in some fundamental fashion by coveting her husband. She also liked me and thought I was bright and honest. I think she was mostly going by what Levi said about me, but it was enough to make me feel guilty.

And of course there was this disturbing part of me that entertained how I could edge in to Levi's life. I remember having this dream where I went into work, and everyone was gone in the whole building. I went into the back of the restaurant and looked down the line and there was Levi – he was the only one there, and the walls and the floor seemed to shake and yet everything was painfully and grossly clear. He didn't know I was there somehow, but the intensity of it being just him and I in the restaurant gave me this weird sense that my mind was boring into his life in ways I knew better than to do. Upon waking, I had this notion about how I could probably make myself seem cooler and more fun and personable to Levi than Dani. It would take years of rehearsing and focusing. It wouldn't break them up, but if I spent six insane years trying to break them up I could probably manage to make Levi very unhappy and confused. And I would have made some kind of weird mark on him and there was something satisfying in knowing that I could alter or change him – separate him from his family and his old life – give him some abstract thing to chase after rather than the comfort of family and the next meal.

And waking up with that feeling, I was covered in sweat and I felt guilty and sick and my skin hurt. This is sort of what I mean when I talked about having a bad side to me now. Because before Zack and Sarah, I never would have considered this. I would have calmly accepted Levi was with Dani and it never would have crossed my mind to manipulate that situation in my favor. Of course, I didn't manipulate anyone, and I never would. I would never ever make another woman feel terrible about herself or insecure in her relationship if I could ever possibly help it, even if some sick part of me felt compelled to do so. But having thought about it, and having had the kinds of dreams that lead me down this psychological journey, I felt like I had already done it, or at least laid down the psychological groundwork, and in that sense I had already done a very bad thing regardless of Levi or Dani could recognize it.

Later that 4th of July night, I begrudgingly went with Sarah and Zack to sit on the Lewiston hillside and watch the fireworks go across the town and decorate the sky and the reflect in the Snake and Clearwater River. I could see all the little lights of the town, I could see the light that was where my mother lived, I could see many of the places where my mom had moved us all, I could see the businesses I had known since I was very little. I could see Zany's and the area where Levi lived, the factory, the places I had attempted to apply to work at. It all seemed so small, and when I looked at the town from below, it made me want to choke. I felt this sick crazy feeling that it wasn't enough and I needed to get far away. And beyond the town, I could see the endless miles of empty eastern Washington desert that stretched out for hundreds of miles before finally turning into the Cascade Mountains – so far from the cities and places where things happened and I could find people who might understand me. This was the world I had always known. And it wasn't enough. It looked small. It gave me this perspective of how small I was in this ugly little town. Someone like Levi could flourish and do well here. But for me, I needed something more. I longed for something I would never find in this little crevasse of the world.

PART 98 - https://tinyurl.com/y7pjvn95

PART 97 - https://tinyurl.com/ybvlfusf

PART 96 - https://tinyurl.com/y8cm6pdy

PART 95 - https://tinyurl.com/ybxq2o5j

PART 94 - https://tinyurl.com/y8k7mwq4

PART 93 - https://tinyurl.com/yc8mae7e

PART 92 - https://tinyurl.com/yb7bwsuw

PART 91 - https://tinyurl.com/yar8e8rp

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-90 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far).

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-90

[ol-razzle-dazazzle]

All the gay asks bc you made me do all of them

OWO thank you I love you1. describe your idea of a perfect dateAll of them??? Kakhiwkdkalgr walking around the beach or going to a bookstore or maybe a forest to chill or an abandoned place for a spooky date??? Movie date??? Ocean date??? Marriage date??? All good!!! Crab catching would certainly be on the agenda though. The oceans the best2. whats your “type”My type? Uhh anyone that’s nice to me lmao. Someone i can joke with and I know that cares about me. Quiet on the outside but like, nurturing and fun when you get to know em. Someone that doesn’t let people treat em like garbage because i yearn to be like that. On a side note I’m not sure why but most people i used to tend to have crushes on were ISFJs (or ESFJs) probably because they fit the criteria above. I don’t really like people that are totally my personality, and I think it’s important to not surround yourself with yes people or people that vehemently disagree with you. And communication! V important In terms of looks though? The kinds of girls I’m attracted to vary a lot actually. Buff girls soft girls tall girls short girls thin girls medium girls big tiddy little tiddy it’s all good. I guess I tend to prefer girls that aren’t white (not in a fetishistic way of course it’s just most girls that I’ve had crushes on or knew that were gay that were white just had really bad personalities and that brand of White Feminism™️ sorry if I worded this poorly) brown or black hair I guess? Just someone that doesn’t look like me adjnrujbslltgbk. Also someone I can squish and hug nicely. Of course I think there’s a lotta bullshit with people limiting themselves to only a few criteria and the racism or body type discrimination is total bullshit. Fetishisation is just as bad. There’s just so many cute girls out there why be a shitlord to people y’know? 3. do you want kids?Later on in life, if my partner would then yeah sure why not. I hate babies though so I would...4. if you do, will you adopt or use some other form of child birth?Adopt definitely. I’d personally prefer to adopt a kid that’s older, because they have a less chance of being chosen and I want them to be raised in a loving environment. 5. describe the cutest date you’ve ever been onI’ve never been on an actual date ;v; but tbh any date I’d have with my gf would automatically top the list6. describe your experience having sex for the first time (were you nervous? or was it easy peasy?)I’ve never had sex so I got no gosh dang clue aside from fantasies, which I would be nervous as heck but ultimately want to be as adoring as possible and kisses everywhere7. are you a morning time gay or night time gay?Mornings when you don’t have to go to things are amazing and beautiful but otherwise afternoon or night time gay. Anything that isn’t midday is good though8. opinion on nap dates?I’d be down for it. Sleeping is great, but cuddling and sleeping? Even better! Doesn’t matter for how long but yes! Good shit!!! 9. opinion on brown eyes?Only the most beautiful thing ever??? Brown and black eyes being ugly is a government lie, they are gorgeous. Black eyes just have that deep obsidian stare and like an adoring cat with dialated pupils you just want to hug, and brown eyes??? When the light hits them or you’re staring into them? Beautiful galaxies my dude. 10. dog gay or cat gay?I love dogs but I would never own one unless my partner wanted one. They’re just not a companion I prefer to cats. Cats are very good and fluffy and compact in comparison to dogs. Dogs are amazing though and I need to pay every one I see. 11. would you ever date someone who owned rodents or reptiles?Dude we already planned to live in a pseudo-barn to have crabs, rats, bats, cats and lizards 12. whats a turn off you look for before you start officially dating someoneSomeone who’s very ‘my way or the high way’. (My mum’s a lot like this and it’s caused me to try to constantly be appeasing. But with my mental illness I’ve gotten a lot more irritated by it.) Or someone that is a bit too mean I’m joking about people to the point where you don’t know if they’re serious. (I have this problem a lot with ‘friends’ and it leads to a lot of doubts and depression.) Also highly argumentative people who want to seem better than you and debate everything you say. (Just...ew.)13. what is a misconception you had about lgbt people before you realized you were one?I live in a homophobic family, so I used to think gay was a swear word lmao. I was told that we were unnatural, burning in hell, hypersexual, all that shit. Issues on trans people were even worse, and back when I considered the possibility of me being a trans man (while I experience dysphoria In my body I don’t think I would ID as a man- at the time I didn’t know what agender identities were) I was made to feel like it was the worst thing ever or that it didn’t exist that everyone was just straight and ‘normal’ 14. what is a piece of advice you would give to your younger selfDon’t pretend you’re aroace to hide who you are, you’re autistic but that’s okay just don’t overwhelm yourself, try to do things to the best you can. Also toxic feminity/masculinity is bullshit don’t feel guilty about wearing anything. You’re gay it’s so much easier now and don’t let people dictate of make you defend yourself 15. (if attracted to more than one gender) do you have different “types” for different genders?Lmao nah. There is always that awkward moment when you think you see a hot butch but then he’s a twink. Bamboozled again. 16. who is an ex you regret?A few years ago I was forced into a relationship with some rude ass dude who ignored that I ID’d as aroace at the time. I guess at the time I had some comp het so I think that’s why I went along with it? It was kinda some toxic shit like nothing nsfw but he was just a huge dick that went off at the slightest disagreement and I’m glad I got rid of that trash lmao17. night club gay or cafe gay?Cafe gay by far!!! Well I’ve never been to a night club, but I’m someone who gets overwhelmed by loud noises and people, so it wouldn’t be the place for me. Cafes are relaxing18. who is one person you would “go straight” forNo one lmao, The only possibility of slightly me becoming straight is like a fictional character19. video game gay, book gay, or movie gay?Books and video game gay! There needs to be more gaymes, but books are good I just have less time to read them as opposed to gaymes which I can do whenever 20. favourite gay ship (canon or not)Probably RenMerry from Touhou! These two mean a lot to me, and got me into the series that helped me realise I was a lesbian! These two just work so well together that I strive to have a relationship like that- a slightly bickery old couple with the freshness of new adventure tied together with a love that will never fade away even as it transcends borders~21. favourite gay youtuberDon’t really have one. I’m not really into the British youtuber scene and the ones that I do sub don’t really talk about their sexuality or not (I think sailor j might be bi? But that’s about it) I usually watch comedy channels or vocaloid covers. Actually Oktavia’s Gay, yeah let’s go with her. Her voice is amazing and made me realise how much I love deep voices22. have you ever unknowingly asked out a straight person?Ahbkowejkboesh I’ve had crushes on straight people that I’ve wanted to hang out with but no of course not I’m too shy for that shit23. have you ever been in love?Yes! And I’m still doing so right now! 24. have you ever been heartbroken?While in a relationship? No. But like the whole ‘falling in love with a straight girl senpai and then everyone tells her that you have a crush on her which causes you to be distant to each other leading you to cry copiously at her graduation and never truly repairing your friendship which is all you ever wanted and never being able to talk to her again?’ ...y yeah 25. how do you determine if you want to be them or be with someoneHonestly I try to make a distinction between ‘people I have crushes on’ and ‘people I would date’ bc yeah someone might be cute but dating is another story. I’m someone who varies a lot in style (as someone who may possibly be gender fluid or agender but hasnthad the opportunity to explore that for family reasons) 26. favourite lgbt musician/bandUhhh Queen I guess? Idk I need more gay shit recommend me please. Queen is quality shit though 27. what is a piece of advice you have for young / baby gaysDon’t ever feel the need to apologise or defend you being gay. Be happy even if other people aren’t about you. If you’re autistic chances are you’ll question your identity, don’t worry about it and just love who you love. If you’re a lesbian especially don’t apologise or feel you have to be in a certain role to ‘be truly gay’ and also please ask people out otherwise you’ll never get anywhere- all lesbians are useless and I got lucky shjgowkgowlgr. But above all, don’t feel guilty and have fun exploring yourself and fleshing our who you are, even if you can’t always show that out loud. 28. are you out? if so how did you come outI’m not out to any family member (I say that I’m aroace but they believe I’m straight despite jokes on the contrary) but pretty much everyone that isn’t a complete stranger knows. I can’t help but talk adoringly over my girlfriend so it just happens. Otherwise I go on some spheal about homophobic bullshit dropping hints that I’m gay before saying I’m gay. It’s led to some shittalking and other various bullshit but I don’t give a fuck anymore 29. what is the most uncomfortable / strange coming out experience you have Believing I was aroace and my friends saying that i was in denial of being gay. I was like ‘lmao Domi’s just a friend I lowkey have a crush on her but she’s just being nice :^)’ then like a week later burst through the door like BITCH GUESS WHOS GAY FOR HER GIRLFRIEND 30. what is a piece of advice for people who may not be in a safe place to express their sexualityEvaluate the consequences of coming out. While I live in a homophobic family, Australia is somewhat accepting and there’s no conversion therapy to my knowledge at least (there are highly fundamentalist Christian groups but I’m not sure if they include forms of violence) Especially if you are in an anti-gay country or an area where you could be persecuted, I think it’s important to be out to at least one person you know who supports you. It could be online or a friend that you know you could trust (if you don’t know if you could try subtly bring it up and see their reaction, but better safe than sorry.) because it’s hard to go through this entirely alone. While it’s important to be unapologetic of who you are, it’s more important to protect yourself- this doesn’t make you wrong, but the people who make you feel wrong wrong.

[cuntess-carmilla]

This is just an extremely long vent post sparked by my brother. ^_^

(Reclaimed r slur by the end in reference to myself)

Someone explain to me how my brother can be so smart yet always soooooooooo fucking wrong in everything other than thinking cops and Piñera are scum.

Actually? I know exactly why! It’s because in his colossal immaturity coupled with his trauma of having always been told that he’s dumb because he’s autistic and the combination of mostly STUPID awful teachers and bullying was the actual reason why he did so badly in school after like 3rd grade. Which I get! But the way he ~copes~ with his inferiority complex is by being possibly THE most arrogant person I’ve ever known!

Ok, no, the most arrogant one was my ex-boss who sexually harassed me, but my brother (being actually a good just really frustrating person) comes 2nd. Besides that insecure arrogance, he’s way too driven by his gut feelings without supporting those gut feelings with reason or proper sources. Sometimes AGAINST proper sources. He ESPECIALLY doesn’t inform his gut feelings with other people’s opinions to form any sort of balanced collection of ideas to consider!

Given that he also has really bad anger issues (I’m fucking uncle Iroh post-war crimes compared to him) and represses every emotion that isn’t Wrath, a lot of the time his gut is just going by whatever position, POV or idea causes him the strongest emotional reaction - again, without proper research - that aligns with his like, misanthropy and sense of The World Inherently Sucks, so a lot of the time it’s motherfucking conspiracy theories! And he sticks to the position that took 5 minutes to convince him no matter what anyone says if they don’t passionately agree with him.

AND when someone doesn’t passionately agree with him, or innocently asks questions that could make his position be exposed as wrong or unfounded, he takes it as the grandest personal insult meant to make him feel stupid and if we try to tell him that disagreeing with him or even just not being sure what we think of the positions he adopts, he literally, legit says we’re just saying that to demonize him and make HIM out to be the psycho.

I love him but he’s wrong a lot of the time EVEN compared to my very fascist parents when it doesn’t come to specific local politics (ie. hating cops and Piñera). Don’t get me wrong, they’re fascists so I disagree with 99% of their views (the ones I agree with being stuff like “rape is bad” and “femicides shouldn’t happen”), my mom herself makes up a lot of insane fascist conspiracy theories, and both of them source their information from right-wing mainstream media.

But like... At least they try to form opinions based on (the sadly biased) information they can get rather than immediately making up their minds with NO space for questioning anything based on what aligns with their emotions?

Ok, my mom not so much but she’s only like that when it comes to subjects she thinks she knows well. When it comes to subjects she knows she’s ignorant of, she doesn’t do that. She’s open to asking questions, being corrected and thinking things through in those cases.

My dad is generally capable of all those things that my mom does when she knows she’s not knowledgeable enough in the subject at hand, and actually has a pretty decent capacity to admit he’s wrong when he’s proven wrong by undeniable facts! He knows too that a lot of his own ideas and perceptions can change through time and he’d rather be properly right instead of clinging to past ideas and perceptions just to never admit he was ever wrong. What’s more, he fully accepts that people aren’t always going to agree with him on everything and that’s not a fucking hate crime! What a concept.

So like, yeah I think their politics are wrong almost entirely lol. But I can at least... Think of them as relatively functional adults when it comes to that shit even if they’re wrong and stay very wrong? My mom does take some things more personally but never to my brother’s level.

Just minutes ago my brother was spouting conspiracy theories about COVID (you know the shit, virus was human-made, it’s a conspiracy by some secret society to kill people, etc) like it was objective fact. My dad has stayed away from watching or reading any news for the sake of his own sanity so he doesn’t actually know all the facts, BUT with the facts he didn’t know, he asked him where his information came from in a very neutral way, or filled in the spaces with reasonable logic and distrusting things that are obviously conspiracy-mongering.

Just that my dad didn’t immediately agree with him and put the things he was saying to question my brother started fucking yelling and victimizing himself. I was so fucking annoyed that I committed the crime of interfering not regarding the subject itself, but regarding how my brother was handling not being agreed with. He word by word said “OH, SO YOU AGREE WITH HIM?" I told him I wasn’t agreeing or disagreeing with anyone! Because I wasn’t! I was just trying to calm the dude down and TRY to teach him, for the billionth time, to learn how to take CONSTRUCTIVE gentle criticism and to handle others having a healthy minimum of skepticism regarding the extreme ideas he proposes out of the blue! You know. Like a fucking (by tomorrow) 22 years old guy SHOULD. Ah, yes, he’s not a fucking teenager! HE’S TURNING 22 IN 23 MINUTES FROM NOW.

THEN he started victimizing himself, WITH ME.

ME! THE ONE BITCH IN THIS HOUSE WHO ALWAYS ADVOCATES FOR HIS ASS, HAS ALWAYS TRIED TO LISTEN TO WHAT HE HAS TO SAY WITHOUT DIRECTLY SHUTTING HIS IDEAS DOWN WHEN I THINK HE’S WILDLY WRONG BECAUSE EVEN THEN I MAKE SURE TO DISAGREE WITH HIM IN A WAY THAT HE DOESN’T PERCEIVE AS ME THINKING HE’S A STUPID PARANOID IMBECILE (paranoid he IS by the way!).

I’M THE ONE CUNT WHO’S ALWAYS TRIED TO MAKE THE REST OF THE FAMILY UNDERSTAND WHERE HE’S COMING FROM WHETHER HE’S RIGHT OR WRONG, WHO’S TRIED FOR YEARS (AND SUCCEEDED A LOT OF THE TIME!) TO TEACH THE REST OF THE FAMILY HOW TO ACCOMMODATE FOR HIM, HIS DISABILITY AND HIS TRAUMAS WHEN HE DOESN’T RETURN THE FAVOR TO ANYONE, SOMETIMES ASKING FOR MAYBE MORE COMPREHENSION AND PATIENCE FROM THE REST OF THE FAMILY THAN IT’S FAIR TO ASK FOR!

HELL. EVEN WHEN I TELL HIM OFF WHEN I GET PISSED AT HIM AND SAY PRETTY HEAVY THINGS TO HIM? I MAKE SURE TO ARTICULATE WHAT I’M SAYING IN A WAY THAT SHOWS COMPASSION AND IS COMPLETELY CODDLING IN TONE SO HE DOESN’T FEEL PERSONALLY ATTACKED. EVEN HE SAYS I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO “LISTENS” TO HIM.

THIS EMOTIONALLY REPRESSED DUDE WHO BREAKS FURNITURE AND DESTROYS OUR FOOD WHEN HIS ANGER OR ANXIETY TAKE OVER, WHO DOES NOT LET ANYONE SEE HIM VULNERABLE UNLESS HE’S HAVING A MELT DOWN ONLY BECAUSE THEN HE CAN’T STOP HIMSELF FROM CRYING? HE USUALLY TRUSTS ME ENOUGH TO HAVE CRIED ON MY SHOULDER MANY FUCKING TIMES.

AND HE ACCUSES ME OF JUST WANTING TO MAKE HIM SEEM LIKE HE’S THE INSANE DUMB DELUSIONAL AWFUL PERSON, SO I CAN SOMEDAY USE THIS INSTANCE AGAINST HIM IN ANOTHER “FIGHT”, WHEN I’VE NEVER FUCKING DONE THAT EVEN WHEN HE, TO BE HONEST, DESERVED IT? SERIOUSLY DUDE? FOR FUCKING REAL?

I’M THE ONE YOU’RE GONNA ACCUSE OF THAT WHEN I SPEND MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE CODDLING YOUR PETTY ASS, PROTECTING YOU, BEING A SECOND MOTHER AND CHARGE FREE SHRINK TO YOU?

OR PULLING ALL-NIGHTERS TO HELP WITH YOUR COLLEGE HOMEWORK WHEN I’VE HAD CLASSES TOO THE NEXT DAY? SOMETIMES DOING THE WHOLE COLOSSAL PROJECT ALONE THE NIGHT BEFORE IF I REALIZE YOU’RE TOO BRAIN FOGGED, FATIGUED OR TRIGGERED TO DO ANYTHING WITHOUT GETTING SUICIDAL OR SOMETHING? SENDING YOU TO BED WHILE I DO YOUR SHIT AND DON’T SLEEP AT ALL? SOMETIMES GROUP PROJECTS WHERE YOU WERE GROUPED WITH LAZY ASSHOLES SO I’M DOING THE WORK OF 4 PEOPLE ALONE THE NIGHT BEFORE? FOR FREE?

M E ?

BITCH, I DON’T EVEN WANT A MEDAL OR TO BE THANKED BECAUSE BEING THANKED FOR ANYTHING MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE! BUT COME THE FUCK ON. I’D JUST APPRECIATE NOT BEING SLAPPED ON THE FACE IN RETURN, YOU KNOW?

*insert gif of Disney’s Hades exploding in red fire then calming down 2 seconds after*

Like you just! Can’t fucking have an adult conversation with this dude if you’re not validating him without question! You can’t! You can’t have any level of healthy friendly debate with him! You can’t beg him to be reasonable! YOU CAN’T!

He was saying “BUT IT’S OBVIOUS”, my dad asked CALMLY “With what proof?”, then it was “WELL, IT’S OBVIOUS TO ME”, then “That’s an opinion, not a fact. We can google the number” and OH MY GOD!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!

Then to ME he was all “YOU JUST LOVE TO BE RIGHT, DON’T YOU?” calling US immature and saying WE are the ones who don’t want to listen to a different opinion!!!!! When I told him he fucking loves being right he victimized himself again with a “WELL, FOR ONCE I’D LIKE TO BE!”

I was about to tell him, with the last dying bit of my patience, that yeah, like most people I do actually like to be right and I like it a lot! But that being right requires actual fucking work and THINKING rather than just going by whatever supports your misanthropic Kill Society angry feelings, and the moment you’re proved wrong YOU HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR POSITION IN ORDER TO BE RIGHT, BECAUSE IF YOU CLING TO YOUR DEBUNKED FIRST BASELESS CONVENIENT OPINION OUT OF PRIDE THEN YOU’RE OBJECTIVELY WRONG AND A PISSBABY.

But I didn’t get to say that because something else interrupted it and then things cooled off while, like a good Scorpio Mars, I’m still endlessly ruminating on and won’t forget about the rest of my life as much as I’d actually LOVE to be able to forget this instance of him being an idiot. 8)

Like, does this motherfucker not fucking get that unless I already know the subject thoroughly and have a fully fleshed Opinion, I don’t often give opinions out loud BECAUSE I try to first shape my thoughts properly and THAT’S why I tend to be fucking right? That that’s why I always have a lot of arguments and am so certain of what I think, because I’m so insecure that I only fucking talk when I’m 99.999999% confident in what I have to say, rather than it being because I’m an inflexible asshole who thinks is better than him!

And he’s seen it. He’s fucking SEEN ME acknowledge when I’m wrong!!!!! Including the times I’ve been wrong TO HIM.

In all honesty I don’t enjoy admitting when I’m wrong (in big part BECAUSE I put a lot of effort into articulating the ideas I’m standing by!), but when I realize that I am, just out of a minimum of maturity and sense of DIGNITY - because I’d find it so fucking humiliating to not acknowledge being wrong when it’s obvious that I am to everyone involved and I can no longer defend my point - I still do it!

Bitch, you said it yourself, I LIKE TO BE RIGHT. I’m going to side with what I genuinely think is right even if I used to think it was wrong! There’s a motherfucking reason that as a teenager I was a Pinochet apologist, Gays Go To Hell, Communism = Evil / Capitalism = Freedom, pro-life, Catholic and now I’m THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF ALL OF THAT.

Does he think it didn’t hurt my pride to discover one-by-one that my views were absolute shit? IT DID AND GOD KNOWS MY PRIDE IS SENSITIVE AS HELL. Does he think it wasn’t depressing to have my whole world views destroyed? I NEED TO STAND ON FIRM GROUND ON EVERYTHING OR ELSE I LOSE MY SHIT, IT WAS AWFUL TO SUDDENLY HAVE MY WORLD VIEW WRECKED. Does he think I didn’t try to argue for my WRONG ideas for as long as I still thought I had decent arguments to back them up? OF COURSE I DID, I BELIEVED IN THEM FOR A REASON, AS WRONG AS I WAS.

But I changed! I changed when I no longer had any space left to think I was right! And I operate the same way with my current positions and ideas now! Dude, I tend to be right over you BECAUSE I don’t immediately get set on the first thing that makes me feel emotionally Validated, unlike you! You ARE smart but you’re SO driven by your own colossal yet insecure ego that you don’t even BOTHER to be critical of your own thoughts and all your potential goes to waste.

I ruminate on every single little thing obsessively, to my own detriment, being my own Devil’s advocate having an ruthless debate against myself in my mind, starting off COMPLETELY insecure about my own thoughts, paranoid trying to imagine in what way I could possibly be proved wrong by someone else if I said my ideas out loud and how to hold my stance in case it happens. I NEVER say my ideas out loud to people who I think know more than me or are smarter than me, to not make a fool of myself in front of anyone because I’m a coward and I was also bullied into firmly believing I’m a fucking retard!

All of that pathological effort because I actually don’t think I’m better than you or anyone else! I think I’m really fucking stupid! So I overthink it all endlessly and by PRINCIPLE I distrust and question my own thoughts and perceptions at every single second. For hours, days, weeks, months, EVEN YEARS.

That’s why when I do speak I’m one of those annoying bitches who have an answer to everything! BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU’D TRY TO PROVE ME WRONG ON THAT FRONT ALREADY AND I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH THAT HUMILIATION SO I ALREADY HAD THAT SHIT COVERED BEFORE I DECIDED TO SAY ANYTHING.

And nothing in that exhausting, paranoid process guarantees I’ll be correct! So even when I firmly think I’m right I keep it to myself some more in case that maybe two years later or something I’ll discover a flaw in my thought process.

It’s so tiring, it’s so fucking tiring how EVERYONE who knows me from afar or from very FUCKING close, thinks that any and every one of the fucking things I achieve just fell into my stupid hands out of the sky by mere luck because God felt like giving me an easy ride that day. They ALL think I’m some arrogant bitch for the very few things I don’t doubt anymore when I try my best to be humble as long as I don’t humiliate myself! But I’m SURE they all think I’m a conceited lucky show off!

EVERY TIME I’m for fucking once proud of anything I achieve, people tell me to my fucking face that I’m just naturally and inexplicably talented, taking away any merit of my fucking own.

Like it’s a FUCKING compliment that, supposedly, everything I’ve achieved by pushing myself to my limits despite being at a disadvantage in so many areas, destroying my already ill body and breaking my autistic little brain, barely sleeping for days, having panicked crying fits where I self-harm because it’s not good enough and I don’t know how to make it right... What I finally accomplish by putting in all that effort, self sabotage and sacrifice?

Oh, it just fell into my hands because I’m THAT blessed, apparently! It’s all just LUCK AND TALENT I DIDN’T DO A THING TO EARN! I’m SO lucky and effortlessly talented! I feel SO fucking flattered!!! :) Thank you SO much! :) I’ve never EVER doubted myself also! :D