#anyway i'm just in general begging people online to shut up about things they don't know shit about.

[sureuncertainty]

if i have to see one more post about disney from people who don't work here or at least live in the area i'm gonna lose it

[romanarose]

You're so real for the tags in that last post lol.

Sorry for the scare. When I saw that you were active but not responding, it clicked in my brain that my mssg may not have been conveyed how I intended it.

Also i thought you were a teacher oops

I'm sorry to hear about your situation with your abuser and the doxxing. I'm really glad you're better now.

I would have also asked other people / blogs about that last ask, especially since some of people I follow here are several years older than us and I assume they have settled into whatever jobs or industries they're in. But I also don't know what industries those are.... so idk how extensive their searches would be. And I don't want anyone exposing their jobs just cos I've got this heavy anxious weight in my chest.

Is it wild to think that all those alt and racist people can get away with all that because a lot of leaders and company decision makers are also alt and racist?

Healthcare and city jobs seem to be the only stable jobs these days but since all of this is a concern, I should look elsewhere...

Pls pls pls if anyone reading this and the last ask can ease my mind, I'm begging you to respond (without exposing your irl jobs and lives)

It’s hard to convey tone online!

I’ve had many times someone has sent an anonymous message and I’ve said in my replies I can’t tell if it is meant genuine or sarcastic or not but I generally try to air the side of assuming people are kind

While you were waiting on a response, I was looking things up on Tumblr and on Google. I was probably going to respond either way, but asking around also if anyone knew if this was true or not.

Frankly, I wouldn’t worry about government or healthcare jobs. In general, both will do a standard background check and maybe find your Facebook or Twitter, but that’s gonna be about it. Unless you’re looking at the federal government on a higher level. Like the job that my dad applied for was working on a Native American reservation, but it wasn’t nearly that intense when he got a job working on a naval base

My social work job didn’t even want to contact my family or friends like how some government jobs will.

The most intense jobs are going to be ones that I don’t recommend anyway like the police. Fuck the police. But no, if you want to be a CNA or work at the DMV or be a teacher they are not going to be wanting to look at your Tumblr account, trust me

What I would be more concerned about with this soon to be administration assuming you live in the us Is what your Facebook looks like and if it has anything “woke”.

I live in a red state and I do not want to apply to be a teacher because even though I’m not “out” as gay and trans I post a lot of pro LGBT things, pro Black Lives Matter prop Palestine, things like that so given that my state has Rules about no critical race theory or trying to shut down even talking about being LGBT. They simply wouldn’t hire me.

Just don’t bring up having a Tumblr during your interview and you will be completely fine, I promise

[nirah10]

Some Personal Stuff

Here's something that doesn't really connect to anything but me and may not be interesting but I just want to get it off my chest because it's been bugging me.

As some of you know, I was recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. This had been a very big thing for me as it has finally answered some life-long questions and helped me better understand myself. My mum has been wonderfully supportive and my friends have been great in learning more about autism so that they can know me better and have actually asked about what kind of things bother me so that they could be more careful (which I never asked of them, but they're just awesome and care enough to put some effort in to helping me be comfortable ^_^). Really, almost the entire experience has been positive. I would actually say that one of the only issues I've had has been the way some of my siblings have reacted.

I have good relationships with all of my siblings and I think they're pretty cool people in general, but some of them have some really weird hang-ups from the way we were raised that they never really got past. We were raised with the very unfortunate (and vocal!) belief that mental health problems didn't really exist. We were told that things like despression didn't really exist and that people just needed to suck it up and get over it. We were told that people who practiced self-harm were just drama queens looking for attention (heaven forbid you ever want attention!). We were told that people who killed themselves were the most cowardly and selfish people in the world. I think you get the idea.

Thankfully, my mother has grown so much as a person and realized that not only are those ideas just plain wrong but they are also very harmful. She is now one of my strongest pillars of support and one of the very few people I feel truly comfortable speaking openly with about my mental health struggles. My siblings have all improved greatly, but some of them are still a little stuck on some of those old ideas. If you asked them, they would tell you without a doubt that depression is 100% real but, if you tell them that you or someone else has depression, there's a good chance that they'll become skeptical and start asking questions as if they're trying to prove you wrong. They might make comments about people self-diagnosing themselves or exaggerating or even just outright lying for the sake of attention. Quite often, they'll say things like "everyone feels like that sometimes" and completely play down someone's experience until they can dismiss it entirely.

Even before I got diagnosed, some of my siblings seemed to bristle at the mention of the possibility. When I said I was looking to be assessed, they all asked "Why?" Some of them were satisfied when I said "Because I think I might be autistic" and carried on the conversation normally or asked follow-up questions out of interest. However, some of them carried on the conversation with what felt like a determination to prove that my suspicions were invalid. They would ask lots of questions about my experiences but it quickly became clear that it wasn't in order to understand, because almost every answer was followed up with a "but" statement. "But everyone feels like that sometimes." "But lots of people would find that stressful." "But maybe you're looking too much into that." I even heard once "Do YOU think you're autistic or did Mum tell you that?" as some of my siblings seem to think my mother's change in attitude is also some weird kind of bid for attention. I was also asked by two different siblings, "Why do you WANT something to be wrong with you?"

My most common way of finishing those conversations, after hearing some version of why it's probably nothing and I'm probably not autistic (ie, "it's so easy to read about something online and think you have it"), was to bluntly say "I know. That's why I want to see a professional and get a proper assessment."

Anyway, I got assessed and diagnosed. I thought that might be enough to satisfy my skeptical siblings. Turns out, not really. While they won't say that they don't think I have autism anymore, they are still very quick to dismiss it. I had one sibling suggest that, because I'm on the mild end of the spectrum, "it doesn't really affect [me]". It wasn't a question but a statement. I have had several more shows of feigned interest for the sake of trying to minimalize or dismiss and it has been quite disheartening at times. With some of my family, I feel reluctant to ever say anything relating to mental health and especially autism because I'm tired of hearing thinly veiled denials that I'm actually autistic. Getting assessed/diagnosed was supposed to be about understanding and helping myself and not about whether or not my family was comfortable.

Not long ago, my Mum shared a video on Facebook that was meant to raise awareness on autism. It started with the speaker telling you to imagine trying to watch a TV show and listen to five radios on different stations all going full volume at the same time, and then explained that that's how life can feel to an autistic person all the time. The video carried on for some time after that and covered other experiences. I messaged my mother privately to discuss some of the things discussed in the video and I told her that I hadn't wanted to leave a comment because I didn't want other family members to see it and start leaving dismissive comments. After talking to her for some time, I decided that I would leave a very simple comment on what I felt was the easiest thing to understand, simply saying "The example of the TV and five radios is spot on." I kid you not, it took maybe two minutes for one of my siblings to respond with something along the lines of "Yeah, I get really stressed out when there's lots of noise too."

Part of me wanted to let it go and leave it be but, after talking to my Mum and seeing how much she had changed and how much work she put into beng supportive, I felt upset and got stubborn. I responded that anyone gets stressed out in loud environments, but that that was not the same thing. For an autistic person, sounds can be so distracting that it can become hard to function and lead to panic attacks, even if it's not loud. The answer was (paraphrasing) "I get that. If I'm driving and the radio is on and the kids are being noisy or screaming in the back, I can forget where I'm going. I have to turn the radio off sometimes so that I can focus." Okay, no. Just no. That's not the same thing at all. I quickly answered with a detailed explanation of why it's not the same thing, also emphasizing that there's a big difference between getting stressed by actual loud noises and having your brain completely shut down over sounds that might not even be loud. They quickly backpedaled and said that they knew it wasn't the same and that they were just saying it was relatable, a family member who had joined in said that they hadn't even watched the video and was only responding to the other's comments about finding noise stressful. That was followed up by another comment saying that maybe they hadn't communicated properly and they hadn't meant anything by it, which I felt much better about. I still didn't buy the idea that the inital comments had no intention of being dismissive, but I could believe that they realized partway through the conversation that they were being upsetting and wanted to fix it. Still, the conversation has stuck in my head as a very disheartening experience.

Sensory overload is one of my biggest difficulties with autism. I am very easily upset by sound and it doesn't take much for me to shut down. Volume is rarely a factor but, rather, the number of sources, whether I can distinguish one sound from another, and whether I can locate the source. I used to have panic attacks in school during tests because being able to hear twenty-some pencils scratching but not being able to distinguish between pencils sent me into a complete panic. Those pencils may as well have been cannons in my ears. They were the loudest things in the world.

Tonight, I sat down at the nursing station at work and immediately noticed a sound that I'm not accustomed to hearing there. It was quiet enough that I couldn't tell exactly what it was and, worse, I couldn't tell WHERE it was. I became so distracted by the sound that I completely, physically froze. I don't know exactly how long I sat there but, at the end of this little experience, my tea had gone from freshly made to just a hair above lukewarm. The entire time I sat there, half my brain was desperately trying to locate the sound and identify it and the other half of my brain was desperately begging the first half to ignore it and just let it go. My heart rate went up to what I would expect it to be if I had just run a short distance. A sense of panic gripped me, the same kind of feeling I had the first (and only) time a cop pulled me over. I literally could not think about anything else.

After several minutes, I finally managed to calm myself because, without having to move from my frozen position, I was able to both identify and locate the source of the sound. What was it?

Do you see it?

A watch. It was the sound of a watch ticking in a basket of found items sitting several feet away. That was all it took to put me into a state of shutdown and had me edging towards a state of panic. A watch that somebody found and left behind, leaving a barely audible but unexpected source of sound in an environment I am familiar with took me from independent and capable to frozen, vulnerable, and moments away from hyperventilating and bursting into tears.

But autism doesn't really affect me. But I barely register on the spectrum, so I don't really count. But everyone gets overwhelmed by noise sometimes. But everyone has trouble focusing in stressful situations.

Someone being on the mild end of the autism spectrum does not mean that they don't suffer or that they don't really have it. It means that they present well. It means that they're better able to control their outward reactions and/or better able to learn what's expected of them. Saying someone's autism is "mild" is a reflection of how much other people are affected by their autism rather than by how much the individual is affected. On the outside, I would have simply looked like I was deep in thought and anyone who walked past probably wouldn't have looked twice. On the inside, I was freaking the hell out. It definitely affected me, even if there were no observable manifestations in the outside world. I have avoided furthering my education or looking for a better job because of experiences like this. I have missed work, which later meant I struggled to pay my bills. I have lost friendships. I have passed up opportunities. I have never left the town I grew up in, even though every single member of my family has moved away. I will likely never have biological children because I don't think I can handle pregnancy. I don't know if I will have children period because the process of adoption might be too overwhelming for me. I am terrified of having children and failing them as a parent because my autism might cripple my communication with them or cause me to be too impatient or inflexible. I am not likely to achieve many of my aspirations because little moments like ticking watches in unexpected places happen all the time, even if nobody except me knows it.

I have "mild" autism and it affects me.