slightlyobsessedwithharrystyles

[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

[she-ra-ra-skirt]

Ok story time. I'll warn you now that I talk in general terms about abusive relationships and how they affected me, again in general terms. You can read this paragraph because I will end it by saying I am safe, happy and thriving and I hope the same for you.

So I met my ex when I was young and in a shitty situation at home, and I needed to get out, so I jumped at the chance to get together with him.

He was 5 years older than me and seemed so charming and sophisticated and everything I needed in a man, calm, kind and generous but it was all bullshit. Slowly, over time, well, after we had got married and he'd trapped me, it deteriorated into a coercive, controlling relationship. I wouldn't even call it a relationship, just a situation I was in.

After many, many years, I got a new job with good pay and met some amazing, lovely supportive people and knew I had to leave to save myself. It was also the year that a Act came into law in the UK that recognised coercive control and a woman successfully got her husband charged with it, so I knew it would be taken seriously as it's so hard to get proof of being controlled.

Anyway, I left with just the clothes I stood up in, and yes, that is an expression you read in books but you don't know what it's like until you literally only have the clothes on your back. Anyway, I moved to somewhere safe and even with my crushingly low confidence and self esteem, I hung onto my job as I needed something consistent in my life and to see the people I was friends with.

Covid hit and with it lockdowns that, well, really messed with my head but at least I lived safely on my own and I got through it.

Whilst at work, I wanted something easy to do so I begged for some easy work even though I usually got complicated stuff, due to being experienced. I have to say, as soon as I got it, I regretted it, as it was actually quite boring! Yeah, you can't win with me, so I kept my mouth shut and did the best I could with it.

There was a consultant who had put in the application that I was working and I was on sick leave when he rang and I answered the phone, not telling him I was off sick as I really liked his voice. Well, we talked for 2 hours and I was enraptured.

It turns out he was too, so we phoned and text a lot during lockdown and really got to know each other. Geographically we live miles apart from each other but we were both single and got on so very well, that we quickly became friends. And then he asked me out and I said yes!

I told him all about what happened to me and he was super supportive and it was exactly what I needed and I slowly but surely fell in love with him.

Now I'm Generation X, but I do believe people can get to really know each other through technology and that what we have is a 'proper' relationship unlike my Boomer parents. So for years, we've been backwards and forwards and really getting to know each other. He had to sell his house that he owned with his ex before he'd move things forward with me, so it's ben years and I adore that man so much, I could get very mushy about him right now, but won't.

He sold his house at the start of this year but I've been finishing off my therapies for the abusive relationship, so we haven't physically met yet but we want to. Well, last month he invited me to visit him and stay with him in a fancy hotel whilst he's away with work. So it's somewhere neutral and that he thinks will impress me, which I'm really not bothered about, but he is. I'm soooo excited.

The thing is, that it's at the end of next month and I'm getting really nervous about it. I have put safety measure in place so I can just look forward to meeting him, but still, my nerves are building.

I know we'll get on in person exactly as we do online so that's not a worry but it feels like things will suddenly move forward for us.

I do believe in marriage, despite my last one being shitty and it's important to me to have his last name, as I changed all my names, first, middle and last so my ex husband can't find me. It's therefore important to me to change my name to the same as his to show that we're a family and I want to share my whole life with him. I know he wants me to take his name so that we are more...I don't know, a couple together. He thinks names aren't that important and you should 'wear your name lightly' as Terry Pratchett said, but to me it's the opposite. I chose my name and it means the world to me, and I really want to take his so that I feel like I've really connected my life to his and I'm proud to tell everyone that I'm his wife.

So yeah, I also really like sparkly rings so I'm hoping for a lab grown diamond ring and a romantic proposal, although I won't get my hopes up. although it is too late if I'm honest, ha, as I've said I'll move into somewhere rented with him whilst we decide where to live permanently. Rented isn't such a big commitment as I could move out if things went wrong, even though I know they won't.

So after the worst period of my life, where I met this amazing man who helped me through it and asked for nothing in return, I'm about to get my romantic fiction book ending. Where we get married and live together and have a soft, gentle home where everyone is welcome and where I'll have a little sign saying 'leave your armour at the door' as it won't ever be needed in my house.

I'm so excited for my future and I've been planning my wedding on Pinterest. Although my friend pointed out I've been planning it for a long as she's known me and I was still married to my ex husband at the time heh heh.

I wanted to say this out loud, well in writing anyway, as it makes it real and I can feel how happy and relaxed I feel about being with him, which means it's the right thing for me.

[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.