#and i just had to walk half way across the school

[geraldmariaivo]

I’m like 95% sure that I’m autistic, though undiagnosed. While I absolutely experienced a lot of these, I found the communication barrier less extreme. Mostly for three reasons.

1) as a smallish child I devoured books, and my parents encouraged my reading, so they just chucked thicker and thicker books at me. And my dad has a lot of old fantasy books. Between that and my later consumption of really long fanfics online, my childhood-adolescent vocabulary exploded with big words that older people know, and mean very specific things.

2) My parents watched lots of detective and private investigator shows (think Elementary and Person of Interest). These shows had smart characters who used big words, lots of words, spoke calmly, and very importantly- got their points across in a way that I understood very clearly, and the other characters understood as they walked through their explanations. None of them were particularly good at socializing, but they could convey information.

3) growing up, my dad and especially my uncle (my dad’s older brother, and an engineer) were the single most pedantic people I knew, and they would argue semantics into the ground. I know for a fact that my uncle is autistic (undiagnosed, but trust me there’s no way he’s not), and he had the most literal mindset ever. He was the kind of guy who drilled into me to never say “always” unless I genuinely meant “every single solitary instance.” He’s loosened up with age, but my god it was so stressful to talk to him as a child. Between him and my dad, I had to figure out how to piece together sentences so there was no possible way it could be misconstrued or used against me, because anything that could be, would be.

I ended up absorbing the speech patterns, and paired it with my vocabulary to make what I said as air-tight as possible. (Example: if someone asked “Did [X] do [Y]?” and you’re 98% sure they didn’t, normal answer is “No.” or “I don’t think so.” What I had learned to say in middle school was “To the best of my knowledge, [X] didn’t do [Y], though I haven’t asked them about it recently, so you might need to.”

Unfortunately I now have the opposite problem. In the words of Red from OSP: “Why use one word, when fifteen will do!” Which also sometimes (but much less often) results in people not knowing what the fuck I’m talking about because I explained it in too much detail. This usually happens when someone is sleep deprived, extra stressed, or uninterested in what I’m saying anyway. Ironically, my dad is the one who complains about it the most, telling me that I sound weird, and need to learn how to talk like a normal person. Meanwhile my uncle is like “Ah, yes. I can understand what you’re saying perfectly.”

Funnily enough I’ll sometimes use internet shorthand when something is obvious enough that I can be confident that the person I’m talking to can extrapolate the meaning, but it ends up with me say things like “Honestly the Generation 1 Transformers theme songs are funny to me. They clearly didn’t really know what they were doing. The every season’s theme was different, and all of them had disorganized music and vocals. None of them were particularly coherent, and half the time you wouldn’t be able to tell what genre the show was by listening to it if it wasn’t for the fact that they slapped a computer-y sounding filter over the voice lines because robots.”

ironically, my dad, one of the main reasons that i Talk Like That, tells me that i have the weirdest speech patterns. It’s not particularly derogatory, but every time he does it reminds me that he knows has gained the trust of zero autistic people under the age of forty because of his boomer-ass nonsense, because every autistic person under the age of forty that I’ve met who’s heard me speak like that almost immediately dropped the mask and started using their own patchwork speech patterns. (Yes i know all naturally occurring speech patterns are patchwork due to social mirroring and the like.)

I realized the other day that the reason I didn't watch much TV as a teenager (and why I'm only now catching up on late aughts/early teens media that I missed), is because I literally didn't understand how to use our TV. My parents got a new system, and it had three remotes with a Venn diagram of functions. If someone left the TV on an unfamiliar mode, I didn't know how to get back to where I wanted to be, so I just stopped watching TV on my own altogether.

I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.

In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.

This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.

My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?

My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.

When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.

I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.

Maybe. This is the theory of one person. I'm curious if anyone else vibes with this at all.

[nightlyrequiem]

Be Still My Heart

Chapter 12- The Shower Task

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New Chapter Every Saturday

You're the best in the meth industry but a new product suddenly pops up. You and your boss, Valeria, must figure out who is making it so you can take back the market. All the while tension is building between the two of you.

A/N: I cut open my foot in July when I was outlining this chapter and couldn't shower for a couple days. Was awful. It's also shocking how much a simple cut can bleed. I have a scar now, it's purple and sticks out a little

Tags/Warnings: Illegal Substances, Boss Employee Relationship, Angst, Some Hurt/Comfort, Violence, Manipulation, Suggestive Themes, Smut (But Only in CH20.), Dual POV

Sleep does its best to evade you that night. Between the unwelcoming unfamiliarity of the guest room to the slight ache in your leg, you just lay there awake. Finally, late into the night you begin to fall asleep. Resting uneasily.  It's quiet all the way out here. A silence only cut into by the occasional bark of coyotes. It feels like as soon as you close your eyes you're opening them again. Valeria sharply knocks on the door and doesn't wait for you to bid her entry. She walks in and sets down a pair of crutches next to you.

"You can't do much with your leg," She starts. "you'll help me around my office."

You rub your face and sit up, feeling as heavy as two and a half bags of bricks. "... Okay." It's not what you want to be doing but your options are sorely limited.

Not only are you supposed to help her in her office, it turns out, you're confined to the office. Having to ask her for permission to use the bathroom like you're a child in school. It seems she doesn't trust you with the important paperwork, so you're stuck reading the official contracts and agreements that need to be signed in order for her to keep her possession of the fisheries and warehouses. The subtle scratching of Valeria's pen makes it difficult to focus on the swimming words in front of you.

"Valeria?" You pipe up.

"Hm?"

"... I think... could you send someone to look through the lab for my notes?" You ask.

The scratching stops.

"Your notes were in the lab when it exploded." Valeria says flatly. You look up from the documents and meet her gaze. She's backlit by the harsh sun shining through the window behind her. Making her shadow lunge imposingly across the floor towards you.

"Yeah." You frown. "Can you send someone?"

"Yeah, I can send someone." She sighs. "You could still cook without them though right?" She asks.

"Yeah." You reply calmly. You're not sure though. You know how to make passible meth, but you'll have to try and get all the ratios right again. You decide not to tell her that. "Just makes me feel better to have them on hand."

Your notes haven't been recovered.  So you've been spending the last couple of nights trying to rewrite everything you can remember. Maybe it's time to move onto a more modern way of keeping notes. Digital notes can't burn in fires, but it doesn't feel right. The first night insomnia has disappeared and you're stuck fighting sleep. Not wanting to stop now that you're going, hand moving faster than your mind. Scribbled out mistakes litter the lined pages of your brand-new notebook. Risk of destruction isn't the only issue with physical notes. It's hard evidence. Or perhaps soft evidence.

Your mind comes to a blank and you resign, closing the notebook and lazily pushing it to the side of the bed. Due to your injuries, your hygiene isn't what it should be. Valeria had taken you back to your apartment for the essentials like she had promised, hair care, bodywash, toothbrush and toothpaste, spare clothes. All you've managed was changing each day and brushing your teeth. You still can't fully stand on your bad leg but it's healing fast. Faster than a fracture should. You're starting to suspect the doctor is an idiot and that your fibula and tibia weren't injured at all. Or at least, not at severely as he said.

The need to clean yourself beyond sitting on the bathroom floor with a soaked rag tugs at you. You want more water, soap. You feel filthy, like you've grown a second skin made of grease. You struggle off the bed, considerate of your leg and ribs and slowly make your way out of your room. Casting a glance into the hallway that leads into the living room. 

In the bathroom you lean your hip against the sink and discard your crutches. Stripping out of your clothes is frustratingly harder than it needs to be, especially with the unnecessary cast. You lumber into the bathtub, struggling with how little weight you're able to put on your leg. It's worse some days. The shower is still wet from when Valeria used it. The water slickens the porcelain. You bend down and turn on the water, flinching at the cold spray of water,  and adjusting it to be warmer. You curse, realising you forgot a rag to clean yourself with. Warm water pelts your back as you contemplate if maneuvering back out of the tub for one is worth it. 

You decide that it is. Getting out is harder than getting in. Your knee almost slips out from under you when you kneel. You swing your good leg over and push yourself to an unsteady stand. Placing a hand on one pale blue tiled wall to keep yourself up right. You reach up and snag a rag. The sound of the shower drowns out all noise as you awkwardly climb back into the tub. Your blood freezes as you step on the curved edge and slip, Slamming into the wall and knocking bottles off of the side. You gasp, feeling a burn in your thigh and leg. You look down, checking it over.

The white bandage along your upper thigh, soaked gray from the water blooms red. The fall reopened the large cut. It dilutes in the water, swirling into the drain. In seconds the bandage has turned red.

"Valeria!" You panic. It heightens when she doesn't come so you call her name louder. The burn in your thigh hurts more than the throbbing in your leg. The bathroom door flies open and Valeria shoves the curtain out of the way.

You can imagine what you must look like right now. Laying in the tub naked getting sprayed in the face by the shower, a river of red running from your leg.

"What the hell happened?" She barks, leaning over and turning off the shower, getting her arms and shoulders wet.

"I fell." You reply sharply.

"Really? I thought you were just laying on your side and bleeding for the fun of it." She retorts. "Come here." Valeria carefully pulls you from the tub, ignoring the hiss of pain as the skin on your thigh stretches.

The feeling of her warm hands along your bare ribs is overwhelming. She doesn't offer you a towel to cover yourself, instead just sitting you down on the side of the tub. Water droplets drip down you and pool on the ground as she retrieves something from under the sink. It's a bucket of supplies. Bandages, stitches, alcohol, scissors.

"You're bleeding all over my bathroom." She says, beginning to cut away at the soiled bandage. You know you are, you can smell the nauseating metallic tang of it. "You tore the stitches, I'll need to fix them." Valeria comments. You wish you were a little more prepared to be seen naked. You wonder what she thinks of the sight. 

Valeria painstakingly takes out and restitches your thigh. Leaving the skin tender and delicate to the touch. She even wraps your thigh in a new bandage. Giving it a gentle pat when she's finished.

"You'll live."  She says. You don't respond, feeling embarrassed. You can't even shower properly without turning it into an issue of some kind. Valeria goes quiet as well. The silence is oppressive and uncomfortable. You're far too aware of the fact that you're naked in front of your boss, who had to drag you from the tub like a wounded soldier and fix your injury for you. She places a hand around your shoulders. "Come on, you need to lie down and stop putting strain on your leg."

Valeria walks you back to your room, arm still around your shoulders, keeping you pressed against her. You feel tired and gladly lean against her. Giving up on caring about your nudity. The white sheets suddenly feel welcoming as you lay in them. Pulling the covers over your body. Valeria lingers beside the bed. Seemingly unable to trust you to settle down without hurting yourself. You're left wondering what else will go wrong this month.

[worlds-okayest-fag]

i swear to all the gods avaliable if i dont find whoever took my bag im going to stab someone

i literally have my laptop and my book, that is it