#been feeling very neurotypical today (lies)

[guardianspirits13]

You know those two scenes from Wild Blue Yonder? Yeah…

(Edit: made some minor tweaks to them, mostly rendering and trying to get more resemblance)

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for snapping at my brother for taking his iPad to the bathroom? (I don’t think this is unsanitary despite the subject matter but idk)

Sorry for the long post !

Context: There are three bathrooms in our house. One downstairs, one upstairs and one ensuit in our parents room that neither of us use. He is mid to early teens and autistic, I am late teens and (as much as I know) neurotypical. I don’t know if this impacts anything, but i also don’t know much about autism. I don’t *think* it does but mum keeps letting him get away with this because of his diagnosis so it feels important to include.

Everytime he uses the upstairs toilet he brings his iPad with him and his headphones. He sits in there and watches YouTube and it takes him half an hour every time.

I only use the upstairs toilet because the downstairs one grosses me out to the extreme for reasons I don’t want to get into, (I honestly think it’s becoming phobic, I won’t walk past it if the door is open or even breathe if I’m near it,) but this issue is isolated to me and everyone else is fine with it. He is fine with using both. He also knows I only use the upstairs toilet.

He says he gets bored so he has to have his iPad when he goes. Yes, every single time, he gets bored and needs his iPad with him. I find this ridiculous, and ironic. Now instead of taking maybe five minutes he takes half an hour. I ask him again and again and again not to take his iPad in because it’s insensitive to if I might want to use the bathroom, but he doesn’t change.

We have had this same conversation over and over again, like, over twelve or eighteen months, and he keeps promising that he’ll change and then he doesn’t. It makes me upset how content he is to continue even knowing very well how it upsets me.

We had a really big fight about it awhile ago and mum suggested he try not to use the iPad when he thought I wasn’t likely to need to go to the bathroom, because that’s apparently as much as he can bear to do. He said he’ll try to use the downstairs toilet instead and because my dad uses that toilet he’s been getting in trouble with him for the exact same reason.

Sometimes when I knock on the door I’ll ask “do you have your iPad” and he’ll say no but when he comes out he does. He doesn’t have any qualms about lying to me and about breaking the same promise he makes over and over. It’s like he doesn’t care what I think at all and like he doesn’t view my problems as valuable. It’s literally the only thing I ask of him.

AITA: Today, he lied to me again. I knocked on the door and told him to hurry up and he said ok and I asked if he had his iPad in with him and he went strangely quiet and then said I’m coming out. when he came out he didn’t have his iPad so I thanked him because I finally felt he was listening to me, but he was lingering weirdly by the door. I HATE warm toilet seat so I gave it awhile and he went downstairs. He happened to come up while I was about to go in and he looked at me strange and I said “what? Why are you staring at me?” And he said no reason but I pressed it and he said “can I check the bin?”

In the bathroom we have a small bin that just got emptied today. He told me he had taken his iPad in there and had hidden it in the bin. I was peeved he had lied to me again and also that he had no problem with taking my thanks. If I hadn’t caught him trying to get it back he never would have told me.

So I said no and when I was finished I kind of snapped and told him I thought he was becoming a “nasty, selfish person.” It’s the only thing I ask of him and Im so tired of it. I felt especially upset the extent he would lie to me so easily. It seems like nothing gets through to him, and it’s like, I can’t help feeling he is a nasty selfish person!! I probably would have said more and said worse if dad hadn’t caught on to what we were talking about. Upon reflection I feel like I shouldn’t have said those things to him and I was being too harsh.

My brother apologized but I’m so sick of it and even after all this he said he would use the downstairs bathroom. It feels like he’s not making any effort to actually change the behaviour and he’s avoiding confronting it. I’m so tired of all of this.

AITA? I really don’t know what to do, but I feel like I’m being too mean about it.

Tldr: my brother always takes his iPad to the bathroom even though I ask him not to and he takes way too long on the toilet (up to half an hour) each time. This has been going on for months upon months and he’s showing no change even though he keeps apologizing and promising he will. Today, he lied and said he hadn’t and I thanked him because I felt he was finally listening but he had hidden his iPad in the bin. I snapped and said he was a “nasty selfish person” but I think I was being too mean.

What are these acronyms?

[randomstuffhewwo]

Tone Indicators, a Masterlist

Tone indicators are shorthand for words used to convey tone, which the Cambridge Dictionary defines as "a quality in the voice that expresses the speaker's feelings or thoughts". Tone can do so much to change the meaning and implications of a sentence. The intended use of tone indicators is in text, and they are prevalent on social media where miscommunication is rife, and posts and messages are often misinterpreted. Tone can be especially difficult to parse for neurodivergent people. This is not to say that neurotypical people never misunderstand tone through text, or even face-to-face, because they do — but that neurodivergent people may experience and interpret tone differently. They are simply paralinguistic signifiers used at the ends of statements to help readers fill in the blanks. They can also be called written shorthand for the poster’s (OP's) intent and emotion.

It's entirely too easy to use them, simply use them after, or even before, the sentence that you wish to clarify. "Can you explain this for me? /gen"

I'm going to make a masterlist of all the tone indicators I've seen so far, adding some that aren't in popular usage, some I personally use with my friends, some that I believe should exist, under the cut. In some cases, I've seen multiple versions of the tone indicator, in which case I've put the more popular one first (at least by what I've seen).

Tone Indicators I've Seen Popularly Used

/j: joking "i'll have to deactivate my account now /j"

/hj: half-joking "we should definitely date /hj"

/s, /sarc, /sarcasm: sarcasm "i absolutely love being sad /s"

/srs: serious "i'm just so very tired /srs"

/nsrs: not serious "my leg's hurting a little bit but i'm okay /nsrs"

/g: genuine statement "i'm thankful that you're talking to me right now /g"

/lh: light-hearted "isn't is spelled 'unnecessary'? /lh"

/nm: not really mad or upset "i think you got that fact wrong /nm"

/pos, /pc: positive connotation "the movie's back on for tomorrow! /pos"

/neg, /nc: negative connotation "i have work tomorrow /neg"

/ly, /l: lyrics "she's a, she's a lady, and i am just a boy /ly"

/p: platonic "i just want to hug you /p"

/gen: genuine question "are you okay with me talking right now? /gen"

/t: teasing "it seems your sense of humour is horrible /t"

Tone Indicators I Haven't Seen Popularly, but I Have Seen, and Also Sometimes Use

/ref: reference "it's like none pizza with left beef /ref"

/nbh: nobody here, for vague mentioning "i'm just so angry at someone /nbh"

/r: romantic "i really want to cuddle with you right now /r"

/sx, /x: sexual intent (Used for sexual innuendos, or similar hinting)

/nsx, /nx: non-sexual intent (Used to clarify the lack of any such sexual intent in a statement)

/m: metaphorical "i was just swept away by a wave /m"

/li: literal "the fish was as big as my torso /li"

/ij: inside joke "it's a whale on dry land /ij"

/rh, /rt: rhetorical "who even cares? /rh"

/hyp: hyperbole (exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally) "i've told her ten thousand times to stop playing that song /hyp"

/c: copypasta (a block of text which is copied and pasted across the Internet by individuals through online forums and social networking websites)

/f: fake "i saw this post yesterday /f", which could be accompanied by an edited or modified post

/th: threat "i will get you to read that book /th"

/cb: clickbait "this website saved my life! /cb"

Tone Indicators I Use With My Friends, or Believe Should Be Mainstream

/a: affectionate "you're a bitch /a"

/q: quote "get up, get up, there are worlds to conquer /q"

/nf: not forced "do you want to go out with me today? /nf"

/pa: passive-aggressive "looks like someone has been talking to someone else behind my back /pa"

/npa: not passive-aggressive "i think someone has stolen my pen /npa"

[bisluthq]

A letter from Nat

21.8.21

Hi people,

That was the greeting of one of my favorite patients here. They do a mix of mental health + rehab, and the overlap between them, (and like they look at other physical stuff, so all my hormone shit), and the woman that announced that timeless greeting was very much here for rehab and still off her face on arrival.

“Hi people,“ she said, swaggering onto the terrace, “I have been sent here to drink less.” And unsurprised silence graded this. “Who can help me?“ More silence followed. A few of us exchanged looks. “Does no one have a drink?“ She finally asked.

The moral to the story is never be afraid to go after your goals + to ask for help. The other moral is humor is everywhere if you’re just willing to see it because that was fucking funny.

I want to talk to you guys - you people - about two things today, and how they can interlink. The first is something I mentioned yesterday and want to expand on, and that’s shame around so called “alternate sexualities” and the second is stigma around mental health. “Interlinked, interlinked” as Ryan gosling‘s character says in the bit of Blade Runner 2049 I stay awake for each time.

People - even gay people - often talk about coming out as a tick box process. There’s a closeted before, and a freedom-filled after. I’m not here to rain on that pride parade; if that hasn’t been your full journey, that’s… fine.

I’ve been formally out since 20, maybe even 19. It’s who I am, I am proud + confident of my sexuality. And I’m very fortunate to have circumstances that mean I’m safe - more or less and mostly more - in that identity. And yet I still regularly feel shame. It was just over me, brought on by a girl pulling down at her skirt when she “finds out“ or a raised eyebrow in a group of dudes realizes I’m getting the jokes a touch too well or when someone asks if I have a husband.

Shame is an internal acknowledgment of deviance, and for most gay people it’s a tragically familiar emotion. Now, how can people who felt shame - deviance, embarrassment, discomfort emerge with absolutely no issues? And therein lies our second topic of the day: stigma around mental illness.

Several people messaged to say I was brave to share this stuff + talk about it at all in their #lettertonat. I’m not trying to be. I just want people to know that it’s okay to not be okay at all. Therapy, meds, clinic + whatever else you need in order to deal with your shit, is normal and fine.

You’re not a worse human because you - like the character at the start of my letter - need help. You might be a worse friend or partner. We destigmatize, we don’t sugarcoat or lie. Like yeah, you might be a right fucking nightmare. That’s on you by the way, not your mental illness. Sucking isn’t something your mental illness makes you do. But it can be really fucking hard to not be a nightmare when your demons come a knocking. And then many of us - yes, this included you my fucked in the head hettys - feel shame. Feel embarrassment. Deviance. It feels unfair; “I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t do anything wrong.” You didn’t. So what can you do now? Be a little kinder to your partner. Be a little braver about your gayness, a little prouder if you will. Be a little nicer.

And hettys and neurotypicals remember that you’ll never hate or shame us more than we hate + shame ourselves. So make less YNTCDs, and realize that you probably aren’t “not like the others” but you can…be funny, warm, clever + kind. And if we built a world on those 4 values, we’d have a better world.

Nat xxx

[vincent-g-writer]

The Silver Screen Savant: Thoughts on Hollywood Autism, Pt. 1

When I was a child, I didn’t fit in.

A common statement, many people empathize with. However, to say “I didn’t fit in,” is a gross understatement. I stuck out like a sore thumb, and at times, still do. Now, why was this, you may ask? Well, there are things I could name. A banal little checklist of traits and characteristics would probably do the trick. But I’m not sure that would do it justice. So I’ll tell you what it felt like:

I had trouble reading facial expressions, because people’s face, and hands, and body would say one thing, while their words said another. Smiles that didn’t reach the eyes. Laughs that were a little too hearty, or loud, or hollow. Disingenuous conversations and actions frustrated me. If lying was wrong, why were, as my mother used to call them “little white lies” acceptable? Why did we smile and thank our new neighbors for their homemade casserole dish, before promptly throwing it away when they left? These things, and many others, puzzled me. But the thing that puzzled me the most, was interacting with my peers. I didn’t understand the sensation of a hundred million bees, pricking me with electric anxiety when I went to school, or played with children in the neighborhood. I didn’t understand why they weren’t constantly talking, wondering, asking- about everything. I didn’t understand how their minds worked. Most of all, I didn’t understand why it physically hurt me to look into people’s eyes, child and adult alike. On the other hand, I did notice they didn’t like me very much. “You’re weird,” they would sneer. Or “you talk too much.” And, they were right. I knew they were. Even as I would wax poetic about all sorts of nonsense, like the difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis. I knew. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t shut myself off.

And that’s just one tiny example, of a lifetime.

Back then, if you’d asked what was “wrong” with me, on a good day, I would have shrugged. Other times, when I despised every fiber of my being, I’d parrot back the sentiments of my peers. “Freak,” “loser,” and “r*tard” were words I heard often. And for a long time, I believed them.

Today, I know differently. Not to say the above struggles no longer apply. If anything, some of them are worse. But now, I now longer blame or hate myself for being different. Now, I understand.

The Lightbulb Moment

In 2014, my daughter began speaking. She was four years old. Before then, she could say “dada,” “juice,” “two,” and “go.” The rest was garbled noises, when and if she made a sound. Most of the time, she didn’t. My wife and I were concerned, to say the least. But it wasn’t exactly a new worry. My princess never crawled, never pointed to get people’s attention, or show them things, and did not play with toys. Plus a host of other concerns. So we hopped on Google, and after about, oh, half an hour of research, got in touch with a doctor. Now, I feel like I must add the caveat here that we wanted to have her seen before then. However, many issues (including a bout of homelessness) prevented that. So we were a bit…late, in that regard. No matter. Her doc sent her to a local play therapist, and after about fifteen minutes of interaction, the therapist knew exactly what was going on: Our little Princess was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

But wait! There’s more-

Once this became clear, my wife started looking into other things. Her own independent research, as it were. She kept it to herself for a month or three, then avalanched it all into my lap . Our Princess wasn’t the only one, as it turned out. And really, had I ever bothered to look…it was obvious. But I was in denial. I couldn’t possibly be autistic. So, like the stubborn Taurus I am, I dug my heels in. I refused to discuss it, for almost year. But, my beloved wife, who is much smarter and wiser than I am, knew what to do. In the name of “research for Princess,” she had me read a list of common autistic traits/symptoms. And it all came crashing down. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I was, without a doubt, also on the spectrum.

The gift of the Media: Fear, self hatred, stigma…superpowers?

Now, you might be asking, why exactly did I doubt myself? Cultural association, of course. And by “cultural association,” what I really mean is “the media.” Mostly, anyway. See, I’ve noticed a trend. In movies, tv and books, autism is usually presented in one of two ways: The Rainman, or the Idiot Perma-child, who cannot care for themselves. And I’m neither.

On the one hand, I was a straight A student. I could sleep through classes and make 100%. I was reading by the age of three or four, and I graduated highschool at fifteen. On the other, I have been known to go a full forty-eight hours without eating, because I “didn’t think about it.”

But I’m not the autistic person you see on tv. Now, that isn’t to say those people don’t exist. They do. For example, my daughter deals with much more noticable struggles than I ever have, while I have another member of my family (also on the spectrum) who is a certifiable genius. And I’ve known many others who are “obviously” autistic, whereas I pass as allistic* (see footnotes below) easily. Which is a sad discourse altogether, really. One the one hand, an “obviously” autistic person, what one might call “Low Functioning” (I could write a whole other post about why “low/high functioning” labels are harmful, however, for the sake of brevity, there’s some here, here and here) are often boiled down only to their struggles, where as people such as myself are relegated to “Not autistic enough to be my problem” or “well, you don’t look autistic.”

To quote-

“The difference between high-functioning autism and low functioning is that high-functioning means your deficits are ignored, and low-functioning means your assets are ignored.” -Laura Tisoncik

Why is this? As you might have guessed from the title of this post- I put a lot of it on the shoulders of the entertainment we consume. Nevermind certain hate organizations who swath themselves in the cloak of “advocacy” such as Autism Speaks, and Anti-Vaxcers, who think it’s better to have a dead child than an autistic one.*

I could go on. At length. However, I’m going to try and stay on track, just this once. To put it plainly, Hollywood Autism often works exactly like “high” and “low” functioning labels: We’re either uplifted to inhuman portrayals of superpowered savants, or downgraded to an “inspirational” invalid. In these stories, we’re props. The “Magical Disabled person!” as Tv Tropes puts it, there to uplift the neurotypical character from their adversity. After all, if this poor dumb sod (i.e- me) can be happy with their burdensome life, surely the pretty white able-bodied protagonist can! We’re “funny,” “scary,” or “sympathetic,” characters, who lack dimension, and nuance. We’re “inhuman.” We’re the lesser. Or at least, that’s one way it’s written. The other is the hyper intelligent, almost “superhuman,” and definitely super jackass genius, who’s much too smart™, and logical© to ever have feelings, friends or empathy. That’s it folks! That’s the show!

That’s what books, tv and movies told me, anyway. And what I truly believed for a long time. It’s why I cringed away in terror and shame when my spectrum issues were finally noticed. And why it took me so long to come to terms with it.

So, there you have it. Part 1. On the next episode, I’ll give some examples, both good and bad, and maybe even a little “what not to do,” or at least a “please consider real hard before doing this in your own work.”

If you like writing, talking about bad tropes and even worse marginalized representation, you can follow me at wordpress or at my “still has that new car smell” twitter. For now- thanks for reading.

-Your loving Vincent

*allistic= Non autistic.

*Vaccines do NOT cause Autism, however, if they DID, it would still be better to have an autistic child than one who died at the ripe old age of “easily preventable but deadly communicable disease.”

[strangetownsayit]

ok so um.......... .. . . ..

 i had a really bad time, went crazy and deleted all my maurice fics. Yes I have them in my notes and if someone wants them, I can send them to them, but still. i no longer feel confident about You Don’t Own Me and To a Happier Year.

but i feel bad and guilty bc then i remembered someone who left a very nice comment in my fic. maybe ill rewrite everything and publish it again, but not today and certainly not tomorrow. so ill explain my outline for the two fanfics cus i already had a ending in mind

before anything-- do i plan to write more maurice fanfic? the answer is yes. i hyperfixate very hard on maurice so ill never stop, but ill try not to make it public till i trust my bilingual capacities

 so, You Don’t Own Me

Percival Darsey is a young man who spend time in Penderleigh’s after having an encounter with Anne in the village next to Penge. He becomes Clive’s pupil bc of Anne’s desire, and so Percival bounces between them (wanting clive’s attention, then wanting anne’s)

Clive doesn’t really care about Percy’s attraction to Anne, bc he was sure it was silly love-at-first sight stuff. It was supposed to be explained later that Percy was really naive when it came to love. I actually had some dialogue written in my phone’s notes app to show how percy views were when it came to love and how easy it was for him to fall in love:

“I can’t do nothing but leave it to take me, Mr. Durham”, said Percy gently, with his back resting against the black slate of the roof; the light rays of sun --whose bright, blinding face was hiding behind clouds-- were worth coming the next day. “When someone smiles back at me, when someone touches my shoulder to get me out of the way, when they wish me a good day; I fall in love too easily, with many people. Approximately five times a day.”

“Many people?”, Clive laughed. “You mean, many women.”

Percival contemplated the sky a while.

“No,” he finally said, “many people.”

 Percival was supposed to be Clive’s opposite: excited about loving and be loved in return, excited to be discovered and being so happy with himself, he can barely hide it.

But when Percival got infatuated with a man, an acquaintance of Clive, Clive started to snap, to wander, to ask questions he could’ve never asked before. But Percival had nothing to hide anyways, and this would make Clive distant

Resume: with time Percival would’ve become closer and closer to anne’s circle, and thus he would’ve grown tired and exhausted. Bc Percival is autistic, and he has very little spoons (a metaphor about being autistic), meeting new people every day, being dragged to social compromises and being treated as some sort of servant that these rich ppl needed for entertainment, he would’ve suffered a meltdown and avoid Pendersleigh for a while

But bc Percy is not dumb, he would’ve returned bc he needs to eat, and bc of his neurodivergence he couldn’t keep jobs that were mostly aimed to neurotypicals. So when he came back, he decided to stay in Clive’s side. He found comfort in his cases cus all he needed to do was ignore Clive and sleep and little lol. And so this was supposed to be the first step to develop their relationship: Clive being interested in percy now that he has discover Percy likes men as well, Percival feeling drawn to Clive. They get to know each other and eventually, they fall in love.

But ofc everytime Clive perceives a hint of flirt, he panics and back off, bc hes an I—HSHFS- NOO- WAIT—LMAO DLFAOF—IM SO SHY--- gay, and Percy is a ;)) bisexual, so they keep flirting a good part of my outline.

But then BOOm I planned Mrs Hall to visit clive. And so clive wouldve remembered everything with Maurice, feel bad, and reject percival once for all. Percival cries a lot and anne thinks he is sick bc he has an uncontrollable sobbing, but then he escapes again

Clive has some awful months and Anne notices. She knows, but at the same time, she doesn’t: she knows Percy and Clive had a cute dynamic and relationship, she knows they loved each other, but she cant notice the homoerotism they had, and so she goes on looking for percival

I shpuld add that even tho I didn’t outlined this, there was a subplot exploring Anne’s bisexuality. I was working on how to do it when I deleted the fanfic

She finds Percival and discovers that he lied this whole time: his real name is Daniel Darcy, son of Mrs. Darcy, a middle-class woman who fell in disgrace after her husband escaped with his lover. It is revealed that Percival has many brothers and is the youngest of all, being 22. It is also revealed that he have been running away from home and coming back since he was twelve. His mother openly talks shit about Percy and it is hinted that Percy is a  Bastard, a product of a love affair.

There was a silly joke I had in my notes app:

“Many years ago, Mr. Darcy ran away from us, in the gay nineties”, he spat, struggling with laughing and bitterness. “Gay, my mother hates the word, just like she hates me and everything that is stunning.”

Then Anne wouldve told Percival about Clive but he wouldve stop her and ask her to go. But he wouldve return to penge a few weeks later cus he a dumbass who doesn’t value himself. Then he and clive wouldve kissed in the rain while he sees percy in the darkness of the night at penge’s garden, but then percy wouldve been like “lol bye” bc he just wanted to let clive know that he loved him too and that he would be back in the morning.

Fluffy ffluffy fluffy flufly

Then BOOM Maurice makes an appearance, telling clive everything about what happened with kitty, then asking for money lmao so he and alec can look for another place, and he tells clive that didn’t anywhere else to go. At fisrt Clive says no but then percy manages to persuade him into helping Maurice, who is surprised to see Clive with a man. Clive and Maurice have a nice chat, clive apologizes and cries and then the next day Clives calls Risley and cries too and say something like sorry I wasn’t there for you yoy didn’t deserved to go through that and it was so unfair, and then he -in  a very subtle way- apologizes to anne. And thus Clive is clean of guilt

But then Clive and Percival have a fight bc he wants to participate in Clive’s life but Clive refuses. Angsty angsty angsty. Percival reveals he was promised by his mother his part of the heritage if he married and became a proper gentleman. He tells clive he will accept his mother offer if clive keeps being ashamed of him

Clive wants to be with percival but he sees himself in another drama, so he does what is easier: letting Percival go.

But percival didn’t expected that shit to happen ?? as extra as he is, he thought clive wouldve comfort him and kiss him. .. .. . . .

Bc he doenst know anywhere else to go, and doesn’t want to get married and hates his mom and he would hate it if he became clive, he goes with Maurice and Alec CUS HE WANTS THEM TO BE HIS DADS ¿’¿’’93 me too bitch get in the line

So advices advices advices. Percival has a clearer mind and he runs his way up to penge

So kisses kisses kisses, he and Clive are in love nd stuff. JUMP TIME, Maurice and alec live in France and they are Percy’s and Clive’s neighbors. Anne is looking for adventures and kisses many women and many men. Everyone is happy YAY I can cope

TO A HAPPIER YEAR

Ok I am a little tired I want to sleep jdswiow io

So Clive’s durham first love. Fluffly fluffly fflufy

It cover events during the movie (clive being tired of bullshit after Christmas vacs).

Bc clive is an asshole, he ignores Quinn (his first love and stuff]) and quinn wants to know why he is being pushed aside and why is clive so distant. But then he discovers it and wish clive luck

JUMP TIME they are both in their 36 and clive is miserable during a trip in Italy. They both meet during said trip, reconnect romantically,  and HAPPY YEAR YES EVERYTHING IS HAPPIER THE YEARS HAPPY ENDING WHATEVer. I swear it is cuter Im just very sleepy now lol

[ssironstrange]

buckle in, i have some Personal Shit to get off my chest and fling into the void. might as well before i’m Purged, right? lots of triggery stuff ahead. 

so last week i got a job. it isn’t a spectacular job. the pay is shit and it’s extremely physically taxing. but it’s a job. i’ve been unemployed since july having put countless resumes out and done a handful of interviews with absolutely no luck. so we’re just happy i’m employed and going to have some income again.

on my very first day of orientation last week, my mom texts me asking me about christmas plans and i tell her i’m unsure what my schedule will look like while my brother is in town because i literally just started and don’t actually have any sort of schedule yet, obviously.

she proceeds to get pissed. starts calling me selfish for getting a job right before christmas. blames me for messing up plans because now she’s gonna have to work around my schedule. says i did this on purpose because i could have easily gotten a job like this at any time. i’m floored.

like, my mom is a grade A special class cunt, but she took it to new levels. i couldn’t even think of anything to say. i was so appalled and upset by the fact this woman couldn’t even say a simple “congrats” to her own daughter, knowing the troubling financial situation we’ve been in. eventually my s/o took my phone from me to text her himself because he was Done with her shit. i proceeded to have a mini-breakdown. i thought she had finally changed. like, i went without speaking to her at all for two years before because of bullshit like this she pulled on me in the past and told her if she wanted me in her life she needed to take a hard look at herself and change some shit. and she did. for a long while there she really did. she stopped drinking (she’s a raging alcoholic who will deny that until her dying breath) unless it was a special occasion and even then it was only like one glass. she started being nicer, friendlier, and a lot more grateful for the things we help her with. she stopped complaining and bitching about every possible thing. hell, she even started finding some social events to get out and go to. For a while she was actually kinda nice to be around for a change.

and then she did that and it made me realize nothing about her has actually changed. she can’t change. she has so many unchecked mental problems she refuses to see a doctor about. she’s in denial about 90% of them. she is sick, needs treatment, but refuses it at all. refuses to even acknowledge she’s sick. she’s extremely narcissistic. her selfishness knows no bounds. she honestly believes that giving $50 to someone in need while dropping $2k on herself(on shit she doesn’t need at ALL) is being generous. she has no concept of saving money. she has to spend it. she’s a hoarder and shopaholic. she’s paranoid of everyone and everything; everyone is out to get her, conspiring against her. any time her phone acts up she’s convinced someone is trying to hack her. a company accidentally overcharging her and she thinks someone within that company is personally trying to steal from her. she believes her doctors are trying to fuck with her when they’re literally just trying to obey the law. no matter what it is, its always about her. it doesn’t even fucking cross her mind even once what another person might be going through or dealing with or that accidents happen. she believes because a waitress working a double shift on thanksgiving didn’t bring her napkins in 5 seconds when she asked that she doesn’t deserve a tip. she feels personally attacked when i talk about her generation as a whole. she can’t ever be wrong. she believes because she’s older that she knows everything. she believes because she has had an encounter with something that it makes her an expert on it, or because she read 1 book or 1 unsourced article on the internet that she knows more. she believes, in her mind, that i am still 13 years old. honestly. she continuously pulls up weird shit from that time. thinks i still dress the same, still have the same preferences about everything no matter how many times i have told her “i haven’t like that since i was 12/13/whatever age.” hell she even talks to me like i’m a child half the time. She hasn’t worked a job since she was in her 30s and lies to live off the government, mooches from literally anyone she can, and gets oil royalties that she didn’t even do anything to invest in, she just inherited them. but then has the gall to bitch at me about jobs when i’ve been working since i was barely 15. she believes the world owes her. she believes that we kids owe her for being a mother and frequently tries to hold that over me as if that weren’t her fucking duty anyway when she decided to keep us. she is always angry and negative and prone to violence - especially while drunk. she has literally pointed a loaded, cocked gun at my chest, thrown glass dishes at me (which ended with glass shards in my hands and feet), dragged me by my hair, and has done ten times that in emotional abuse. she’s called the cops on my brother over an argument, and has thrown a computer monitor at me (one of those old CRT ones) because i said she was acting crazy. she would get so nasty with me my brother would have to step in and tell her to shut the fuck up. she didn’t even try to get me into counselling or therapy or even talk to me when she found out i was being sexually assaulted as a young child. all she did was remove me from the situation, which ultimately removed me from half of my family and didn’t explain why. she never told me is wasn’t my fault. she never talked to me about what sex actually was and how it’s supposed to be. she never told me about consent. she did nothing for me to cope with and process the years of physical and mental trauma i had endured, and i am still fucked up from it to this day because it defined my view of everything sexual. it created deep and strong neural pathways i’ll be lucky to ever be able to change. she went through my mail and read a letter to a long distance friend, finding out i was queer and genderfluid and outed me to the rest of the family, called me a disgrace and disgusting. she would go through chat logs and shame me about everything she could. she’s racist as fuck, still uses the N word, and has told me several times if i ever dated a black person she would disown me. she has always played favorites with my brother because he is the smart one, the one who graduated at 16 and got into university on full scholarship at 17, the one who has always been a social butterfly, extroverted with lots of friends, neurotypical by most standards, handsome and always had good taste in girls, successful in everything he does, and has a great career as an environmental engineer that pays well enough for him to take multiple overseas trips, pay off student loans(when he decided to switch majors and stay in college longer) and is just over all the perfect son (he and i have always gotten along fantastically. i love him immensely, but it’s no secret to either of us who she has always favored),and she’s an opioid addict - another thing she will deny until she’s dead. and thats just everything i can think of at the moment. theres more. theres always more.

so she texted me a couple days ago apologizing without actually apologizing. blaming her attitude on the fact her pain meds are being reduced (not once did she actually say sorry) and she’s been in a bad mood because of it. today she texted me, still without a real apology, just saying how she’s wondering how my job is going. but the truth is, i know she doesn’t give a fuck. she only wants to feel better about herself. she wants to believe she’s forgiven so she can have things her way again. she doesn’t actually give a shit about my feelings, about what she’s done to me, or about how this is the same cycle of bullshit we’ve been through countless times. she doesn’t care. 

and yet, i still find myself feeling guilty to cut her out like the tumor she is. despite everything she has done to me. i can’t help it and i wish i could. she has manipulated me so much throughout my life that i have an almost pavlovian response to feel like its my fault, that i’m the failure she’s always said i am, that i’m the one letting her down. i know i’m not. i know that isn’t the truth but it’s still there and i hate it. but still, i’m trying my best to just fucking ignore her. she doesn’t get to have the satisfaction of thinking all is well and forgiven. i’ve been through this too many times and frankly i’m just so fucking tired of it.

[genericdubstep]

Today the world broke.

My followers knows that I haven’t had the best relationship with my parents. They kicked me out when I was fifteen and left me to rot in a psych ward because my alcoholic stepfather didn’t want to share his apartment with an autistic person. Which understandably made me suicidal. 

But I pulled through, moved into my own apartment when I was sixteen and managed to regain control of my life. I did that on my own, no help from anyone. I even managed to obtain a semi-functional relationship with my parents again, even though they didn’t deserve forgiveness. The only downside is that I was stuck with a contact person who came by a few times a week to make sure I didn’t become suicidal again. But aside from that, everything started working out.

But as my followers also knows, I recently fell back into a pit of despair. I don’t know what the fuck happened. I lost some friends, got bullied again, drank a bunch of alcohol to cope and suddenly I’m a paranoid mess. It all happened so suddenly. I was fine (by comparison) in 2017, but the moment it became 2018, everything I loved just fell apart and my life has only gone downhill since.

But I have been pulling through. I have been keeping up with school with damn near perfect grades. I cook my own food, I buy my own groceries, I clean my own apartment and pay my own bills. All that stuff. Despite being a paranoid mess, I have somehow managed to remain a functional, responsible adult.

But some days are worse than others. Some people may remember that I cut myself a week ago. It wasn’t even very deep, it was more like scratch marks. I decided to share that story with my dad and mom. They promised not to tell anyone, because if my contact person found out, he would undoubtedly take my apartment from me and put me back in a psych ward. I’m legally an adult, he shouldn’t have that kind of power over me, but I’m disabled and disabled people don’t have any rights, so he can throw me in a psych ward if he feels like it.

My parents promised not to tell anyone. They lied. They told my contact person and now he wants to take everything away from me that I have fought so hard to obtain. He gave me an ultimatum; I can either rot in a psych ward (which would keep me away from school and ruin my future) or I can take anti-psychotic medicine. Just to be clear, I have never been psychotic. I can be paranoid at times, but I have never displayed any signs of psychosis. Anti-psychotic meds is a practice used to silence autistic people and turn us into energyless zombies if the neurotypicals get fed up with us. Giving a non-psychotic person anti-psychotic meds can often lead to intense depression, intense stomach pain / vomiting and suicidal tendencies, just to name a few of the side effects. You can find a lot of horror stories about these meds if you look them up.

I can’t afford to drop out of school and rot in a shitty psych ward again. My ambitions are too great to give up like that. So naturally I agreed to take the anti-psychotic meds. In reality, I am obviously going to flush them all in the toilet and fake my side effects instead. I refuse to be turned into a zombie by a bunch of neurotypicals who wants to take my future away from me.

But this means that I can’t trust anyone. My parents betrayed me again. I thought I could trust them, but as usual, they just want to ruin my future and lock me up. Same goes for my contact person.

I have nobody. I can’t trust anyone. I am now completely alone in a world that hates me for being autistic. Today the world broke.

[badweatherbiologist]

big ass trigger warning: i dissociate half way through this text, it’s about sociopaths and manipulation

i don’t even know how i got to this point. i was just thinking of how much i hated sociopaths - yes, it’s that time of the year, it’s almost november and I stumbled upon an aspd forum.

 I haven’t been this tilted in forever, then it got me thinking, you know.

the traits I've observed in sociopaths are:

antisocial and lacking empathy

   conniving, manipulative, deceitful, and dishonest

   control freaks

   charming and smooth and use those social skills to get their way.

rule-breakers and risk-takers and commonly have repeated clashes with the law and thus a criminal record

will copy behavior of neurotypical/empathic people to not seem bad

and like, the more i think of it, the more i realise i’m partially like this too. i want to be in control of things. i am dishonest and manipulative for my own good, telling lies so that i can get myself out of situations i dislike. I've been told i’m very kind and funny to new people, but i wonder how far it really goes.

like till what point do i stay me

because i am capable of empathy, sure, i am capable to care for people’s feelings and care for their needs

but what if i like

taught myself all of that?

i know my grandmother managed

what if i’m doing the same thing?

they say ppl with aspd are incapable of love

and some days i wonder if i am too, because like

what does love feel like? i know that i want good things to happen to people in my family and my friends, and that i’d be upset if they didn’t, but what does love really feel like? because at this rate i just

like idk

what if all this time of me hating sociopaths

it’s that i hate them because i see myself in them? it’s that i hate them for being able to not give a fuck about someone’s emotions, whilst i want to do that, on particularly bad days like today. 

like i have always tried to help people, but most of the time it was for my own benefit, and i always hated people who would use others as stones to step on to get to a goal, simply because i don’t understand it. but what if this whole time I've been like that, too? just teaching myself not to do it because society thinks it’s bad?

a friend and i had a convo like this. about how we’d actually, genuinely be able to kill someone if we just “flipped the switch”. it’s a phenomenon i can’t really explain, but i think the talking about sociopaths triggered this dissociation right now. because i know that right now i feel cold, i feel empty, like a black pit inside, and i know that’s how sociopaths feel. and i know too, that if someone were to ask me something rn, I've learned to deal with these sort of things, so i could lie to them and they would never know. 

but if i were to look in the mirror right now, i know that i’d have those huge pupils again, the demon stare like i call it.

i don’t know, you know.

like i went onto that forum, and now i keep thinking of all the times i’m faking being nice

all the times people ask me for things and i deep down don’t give a fuck, but do it because i know it’ll make me feel better about myself, not even because they’ll feel better, but because i will. most of the time, it’s because i just want people to shut the fuck up for a moment. 

i don’t know. it’s like going onto that forum about sociopaths just triggers that mirror in me, that mirror’s everyone’s emotions and such. but if you mirror nothing, you get a void.

like i don’t know. i feel like i’m both sleepy and very awake at the same time, and my head is hurting a little. it might just be another episode.

it’s just like. i always thought of myself as a nice person, partially because i make myself do things for others because it’ll help them and i’ll feel good about myself, but what if being nice is something you don’t learn, but you just feel? just like love is something you just feel?

like, i don’t feel anything

not love

nothing atm

and i think i prefered myself last year

when i felt everything at once and it all went to shit

because this void is making me feel even more like

an alien

an outsider

than any fucking forum can

just

idk

like idk

i’m just thinking how i’m annoyed at these people, these sociopaths for existing

i know that’s radical

but they fucking hurt people like me so much, they hurt my feelings and they threaten me and anger me just by existing

and the thought i just had, that i could even be something similar to that? that made me dissociate so hard. because now that i write about what i feel, like the keys beneath my fingers, the floor beneath my feet, the texture of my pants and such, i feel “warmer”, less of a pit. like a fire started burning again, and all of a sudden i’m okay.

and now i get it, mo. now i get why you didn’t want me to talk about this that one time. i get it, because i’m the same. the more i get in contact with these morally inept, toxic people, the more i feel myself turn into one, just to cope.

and maybe that’s what happened all these years. maybe this is just a fall-back to a way of coping and facing the world. maybe my way of protecting myself is also retreating, especially when things trigger me. 

i don’t know. like i really don’t.

like i just keep thinking, what if all the people i hated for being arrogant, for not caring about other people’s feelings, for not considering me and what i needed weren’t actually bad people, but were just normal kids, and what if instead of them being the narcissists, i am?

would that even be possible?

wouldn’t i be fooling everyone? my two best friends, the two most emotional and empathic people i know, wouldn’t i be hurting them? my family, my old friends, everyone I've ever talked to

what if it wasn’t them

what if it wasn’t

and what if it’s me

i know i shouldn’t be thinking this

or even considering it as it’s really bad for my mental health and such

but in the words of my ex-best friend, maybe instead of blaming me, you should start and look at yourself, first.

(which was weird, considering i had literally just told her i thought i was the person at fault all the time, but ok, you can’t heal stupid)

anyway, i’m going to app my aunt about this. the more i think about it, the further away from myself i get. 

thankfully for me, though, ever since last year, i have regained feeling in my fingers. which is nice. took me a while. aunt had told me that  would probably be a cause of like my meds and also just the sensory overload in my head. 

but okay, a deep breath, and then i put an end to this text, because these disgusting emotionless words creep into my heart like they were branded on it, and i hate it.

clarification: i hate sociopaths, and everything they’ve done and do. and i get that it stems from trauma sometimes, and for those i would make an exception, if they weren’t just as bad as all the others. and if you’re a sociopath, don’t interact with me, i’ll block you right away and you can go feed off someone else’s misery

[elfnerdherder]

The Unquiet Grave: Chapter 4

You can read Chapter 4 on Ao3 Here

Chapter 4: What Validations We Seek

           It’s late when the flight gets back from Georgia, and Will sleeps in one of the bunks at the EBAU rather than make the drive home. He has his own blanket and pillowcase that no one touches, and he sets them up on the bunk before he sleeps. Sometimes, laying his head in the space where someone else slept gave him the ability to see their dreams if he didn’t layer his own things accordingly.

           It’s not their dreams that wake him in the early morning, though; thankfully, it’s not his sordid, dark ones, either.

           It’s Hannibal Lecter.

           He opens the door to the room and squints, sleep still clinging to him. The knocking hadn’t been overly repetitious, although it’d been firm enough that it’d jolted him from a dream where he’d been lost in a maze of ever-growing hedges. Lecter stands the way he’s come to expect a therapist to stand –back straight, shoulders back, and expression placidly open. When Will stares at him, he notes the lack of animal hair on the leg of his trousers, the smell of breakfast cooked an hour or so before, and a cologne of rich, careful selection. He sees things one would only see in having to look with their real eyes rather than his metaphorical ones. It’s an interesting sensation, and it brings him one step farther out of the cobwebs that cling to his mind.

           “Good morning, Will,” he says cheerfully.

           “Where’s Crawford?” Will asks. He glances past Lecter, sliding his glasses on. “Or Bloom?”

           “Agent Crawford is deposed in court, and Dr. Bloom is seeing one of her patients today,” Hannibal replies. “I was allowed into the headquarters to see you here.”

           “I have work.”

           “Then the adventure will be ours,” Hannibal decides. “If you don’t mind, of course.”

           Will minds very much, Hannibal’s decision to make his work their adventure, but he lets him into the small rest room all the same. The tabs on Beverly’s tablet still contain his articles. Thankfully, it sits closed so that Dr. Lecter can’t see.

           It’s a haphazard version of the FBI, what with the scattered tables and the bunkbeds assembled against the walls. It’s for any agent working at HQ with long hours, but years before it’d melded into the sort of space that only empaths used when the work became too much. Neurotypicals tended to avoid the place entirely.

           There is an empath sleeping in the corner with bad dreams, and when Will glances to his distraught face, he can see the edges of terror, the whisper of someone chasing and chasing and chasing and not letting the empath get away this time.

           He looks away and quickly pulls his gloves on before getting dressed. The clothes from the day before will have to do.

           Just across from him, pinned to the wall, is a picture of four people posed with a sense of comradery. They’re meant to be empaths, with their wide smiles and eager eyes, and the caption beneath it says, ‘Yes, we can!’ Will eyes it with a curl to his lip as he laces up his shoes. None of the people in the picture are empaths.

           They don’t speak as he makes coffee and sees himself out of HQ, jacket buttoned against a cool breeze and a whisper that Abigail Hobbs still hasn’t woken up. They stand on the steps, and he tries to wake himself up, small shakes of his shoulders and feet that rock him forward, then back.

           “I’ve got an RA,” he says. At Lecter’s furrowed brow, he explains, “Rogue agent. If they didn’t tell you, that’s what I do here, for the FBI. I track rogue agents.”

           “They send empaths after rogue agents?” he asks, surprised.

           “They send empaths after empath rogue agents,” Will clarifies. “If it’s an E-1, they send an E-2. If it’s an E-2, they send another E-2 with countering talents, or an E-3.”

           “Where you are the only E-3, I’m sure most of the responsibility of E-2’s falls directly to you, or if it is a particularly difficult E-1, they’ll ask for your help.”

           Will nods, staring out at a small scattering of agents walking in a not-quite group. He can spot the empaths from the way they walk close enough to seem ‘together’, but distanced by instinct, by habit. No one tries to move too near to them, and they maintain a guise of blending into the crowd without being the crowd. All empaths have that talent, to attempt at being the crowd while never being able to be part of the crowd.

           “Most of them resent me,” he says. Lecter looks amused, and he hurries on to say, “Not because of my abilities. Empaths don’t tend to draw lines like that. It’s because they know that if they step out too far, Jack sends me after them.”

           “You represent what happens if they cannot maintain control,” Hannibal realizes. “How do you find your own methods of control, Agent Graham? How did you regain control of yourself after you killed Garrett Jacob Hobbs?”

           Will wants to say that he builds forts; that he is quite capable of maintaining control and placing walls between him and the man he murdered. He glances to Hannibal’s face, notes the serene expression of someone that is impartial, someone that asks because he’d said it was alright to ask. He can’t say these things to Jack; he sure as hell won’t say them to Director Hansen. There’s something appealing about saying them to someone that another empath can’t walk up to and pry the words from simply by looking into their eyes. There’s something appealing about saying the truth to someone like Hannibal Lecter.

           “…Someone put my gloves on for me,” he reveals, quiet. Ashamed. “And…I had a sensation like I was killing myself. Like I’d put the knife to my own throat and…” He makes a cutting motion with his free hand. “I just laid there, trying to build the walls up, trying to…come back into my own head, and I couldn’t. Agent Crawford had to haul me up and drag me from the cabin before I could even realize that I was Will Graham and not Garrett Jacob Hobbs or Abigail Hobbs.”

           “Do you feel that you have some semblance of control now?”

           He knows the right thing to say, so he says it, otherwise he’ll be placed before his director and forced to face the music. “I’m in control now,” he lies.

           No one has time for an E-3 that can’t maintain control. He heads down the steps to his car, and Dr. Hannibal Lecter follows.

-

           He’s smiling as they pull up to Dolarhyde’s address, and Will can’t feel his amusement as he looks at him.

           “What’s so funny?” He’s never had to ask that before. Normally, in a simple glance he can see the reason behind the smile, the rhyme behind the flicker of light in someone’s eye. He steadfastly ignores the mild sensation of just how it feels to have to ask –almost pleasant in the sense of ignorance.

           “You see the police raids on television, you see empaths appearing in court to reveal the thoughts behind a murderer’s blank gaze, and you see the FBI releasing news to the press about terrorism,” Hannibal says, climbing out of the car. “Yet now I’m able to see the work that leads to that sort of media reveal. It’s like peeking behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz.”

           “His name is Francis Dolarhyde,” he says, walking up to the fence. He hands the file to Lecter, reasons that if Lecter can keep his head on straight, he has every reason to see the file. “Attended the EA from the age of ten up to graduation, fast tracked through university. Worked in the Marine Corps for four years, chose not to renew his contract and instead began FBI training and education. A Field Agent, E-2 Seer and Dreamer that worked as an empath inspector. If empaths began showing signs of any form in instability, he investigated the situation to deem whether or not their position in the FBI needed to be reevaluated.”

           “They allow empaths to work in the field like that?”

           “Some of them. He’d have been tested extensively.” Will had been tested extensively. He stops at the fence that he has to open in order to walk up to the front door, and he stares for a long time up at the bleak, aged house. While Hannibal reads over the dossier, Will removes his gloves and delicately places them in his coat pocket. He flexes his fingers, studying the space Dolarhyde occupied once as a place of rest.

           His hands pass along the latch to open the fence, and he is a mailman, striding forward to drop off a necessary bit of mail. The feeling is bleak, a smear of a memory, and it’s cast aside as he walks up the path towards the house. The grass is aged, yellowed, more crab grass and weeds than anything, and when the wind blows, dandelion seeds scatter and cling to the bottom of his pants.

           He touches the railing as he walks up the steps, but there is nothing but a faint, echoing whisper that the rail has been used before. Someone was fatigued when touching it, but then it is gone. At the small mailbox by the door, mail is stuffed in. He doesn’t touch it; he knows the mailman is losing his patience, having to cram more and more mail in with no one to retrieve it.

           “Can you feel everything?”

           “Not everything. Not even I’m omnipotent,” he replies. He jiggles the handle, not surprised to find it locked. To the amusement of Hannibal, he retrieves a key from his pocket and unlocks it, walking in.

           “Do you have keys to the homes of every agent?”

           “Every empath.”

           It’s not lost on him that the right to privacy doesn’t exist as far as the FBI is concerned with empaths. Although it’s fair, seeing as how the FBI doesn’t think any citizen has a right to privacy –if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.

           Right?

           It’s taken a step farther with empaths, though. Copies of their house keys, the right to read through any and all mail if they behave in a manner ‘questioning of the integrity of the FBI’, an ability to control just where they receive medical aid if the need arises. Will hasn’t had to endure any of their invasive behavior, but he is well aware of the ability for that to change at any time. Perks of the job and all.

           The air inside is stagnant, the house not entirely clean but not quite cluttered enough to be considered messy. There’s an odd smell, something like musk, dry sweat and copper, and Will stands in the entryway, inhaling it. He passes hands along a dusty end table where odds and ends, knick-knacks from the fifties rest, a weird feeling of bitter nostalgia that curves around him as though he is standing in a tunnel.

           “There is not much in the way of information from his time before he came to the institution,” Hannibal says. It’s a jarring noise in the otherwise quiet, and Will manages a small hum of agreement, walking over a creaky step. The walls in his mind are slowly falling away with the sort of hesitation due when dealing with a strange place, but as he walks into the living room they’re completely obliterated in the wake of the fury.

           Where the entryway had the sensation of a grandmother meticulously displaying her small bit of worth, the living room is that dream gone wrong. A floral print couch lays decimated by what could only be a hefty axe, the wall paper curling in desolate strips from the wall. Pottery lay smashed in shards, picture frames scattered across the floor. There is an untouched recliner that sits as a stark juxtaposition to the otherwise destroyed living room, and Will picks his way through, sitting down on it.

           Lies, lies, lies is this place that I rest, where I lay my head. They don’t know; they can never know, and I take my secrets to the grave while I drag the rest of them with me.

           He tries to delve deeper, but the feeling is old, although strong. Will passes fingertips over faded arm rests, curls his bottom lip in and bites it at the sense of an honest, horrific injustice.

           “Did Dolarhyde do this?”

           “They say it’s easier to just refer to them as an RA,” Will says after a prolonged silence. “You need to distance yourself from them, Dr. Lecter.”

           “Are they afraid that if we don’t distance ourselves, we will grow to pity them and excuse their actions?”

           “Yes.” Will is mildly pleased to hear that Lecter doesn’t say ‘you’, but humors him and says ‘us’. Like Lecter has to be the one to force up walls inside of his mind.

           They’re down, though, and as Will looks about he can see the path Dolarhyde paved, furious in his actions, a twisted form of justice his adrenaline as he took an axe to everything he owned –no, not owned. Gained. This was his house, but it certainly wasn’t his home.

           He continues on, moving from the living room to a dining room where the hollowed remains of an extravagant dinner lay. Bits of food still on the plates were a breeding ground for maggots, and he stares at their hungry but lazy path on the plate for longer than he should.

           In the kitchen he finds nothing but more dirty plates, although as his bare hands pass along the door he pauses. He palms it, focuses on the glowing pulse on the knob. There’s a desperation to the feeling of throwing the door open, a heady taste of betrayal. Fear.

           “He came in through the back, not the front,” he says. “Last he was here.”

           “Can you feel how long ago that was?” Rather than the annotator that echoed him as they wrote, Lecter is engaging. Somehow, that’s more grounding to Will, to have to think as himself rather than someone else in the moments with his walls down.

           “Before he killed the Perkins family,” Will says after a thought. “This is older than the feelings and thoughts of his murders there.”

           “So he came home first, then made his way to the Perkins?”

           “Why the Perkins, though?” Will wonders out loud. “Why them? He had to travel to them, take time for them…”

           “Perhaps Agent Crawford’s work studying the Perkins will give insight to the why, when you meet with him once more to tell him the where and how of your RA.”

           Will nods in agreement, continues on towards the hall that leads upstairs. There are shattered shards along the plush but old carpet, and Will looks down to see his eyes reflected up. Dolarhyde smashed the mirrors.

           Bedrooms lay empty, spaces where someone once was but never again would be. Will stands in the tepid space of each one until he can confirm that Dolarhyde didn’t enter there in his haste to destroy certain aspects of this place in which he felt so confined.

           He starts to enter the master bedroom and pauses at the doorway. Inside, the terrifying sense of panic lays.

           “What do you feel?” Hannibal asks when he doesn’t walk in.

           Will grips the doorway with his bare hands, trembles in the wake of a dread that is cloying, grasping. There is no escape. There is no end. There was an end, but there is no more, utterly destroyed in the wake of this time that reaches and reaches, and he’d been stupid enough to reach back. He stares ahead to the faint, ever-so faint impressions of someone rushing through the room, leaving dresser drawers hanging out, a small chair near a vanity overturned. The bed is a disastrous mess of things thrown, things left forgotten in haste, and it’s there that he walks to, crawling onto the lumpy, aged material to lay down.

           It’s there that the fear abates, a lulling and steady wave that crashes over, then recedes. In the dip in the center where someone slept the most, he lays back and trembles, one palm pressed to a ratty coverlet, the other palm pressed to a forgotten jacket. Although faded, old from passed time, there is a sensation that this is the only place Dolarhyde could settle his mind, settle the racing thoughts inside as he sees and dreams.

           “He’s afraid,” he says when he can speak.

           “What does he fear here, Agent Graham?”

           “There is…information he’s found. Something he’s learned that he can’t reconcile. It’s…thrown everything to question, and he’s…reverted.”

           “Reverted to what?”

           “To the death,” Will murmurs. “He has to run. He has to run, but where to, he…isn’t quite sure yet. Maybe I’m just not seeing it. But here is where…he slept.”

           “Your rogue agent found something of great import that caused him to revert to a space where he was the monster rather than see it in someone else,” Hannibal says, and he doesn’t enter the room. “What was he investigating when he didn’t report back?”

           Will climbs off of the bed when he’s sure the fear surrounding it won’t overwhelm him, and he walks out of the room, looking around.

           “That’s what I need to find out, I suppose,” he says, heading back down the stairs. After a beat, Hannibal follows.

           When they’re outside, he dares to ask, “Did they ask you to follow me around, Dr. Lecter? Jack afraid I’m not going to be able to handle it?”

           It’s a taunting, jabbing sort of question, declared with bared teeth and an unironic gesture towards the door he’s locked behind himself.

           “Yes.” He doesn’t seem perturbed to be so honest and direct, blunt and unhesitating in his answer.

           “What are you going to tell them?”

           “You seem perfectly capable of recreating your barriers and walls, even in the face of emotion that stopped you in your tracks. I would inform them that if they’re searching for a psychiatric stamp of approval, they certainly have it.”

           Will nods, not sure if he’s happy to hear that, or if it’s some sort of sign that Lecter has as much trouble seeing his mind as he has in seeing into Lecter’s. There’s the chance that he’s being generous, that if he says it enough then Will will actually gain the ability to build effective walls.

           “Are you going to keep following me around?” he asks instead, heading towards the car.

           “For an indefinite amount of time, yes.”

           Will nods, accepting this rather than fighting it. He did give the good doctor the okay to have conversations.

           “Coffee, then?”

           “Coffee sounds wonderful, Agent Graham.”

-

           Jack returns from court to see Will waiting in his office, gloved and dozing in his chair a few hours later. It’s the sound of his briefcase hitting the desk that jolts him up, and he blinks rapidly and looks around blearily, adjusting the glasses set crookedly on his face.

           “You’re back,” Jack says by way of greeting.

           “Dolarhyde hasn’t returned to the house since the Perkins. He’s scared and trying to hole up somewhere.”

           “He’s scared,” Jack repeated.

           “He’s found some information while undercover that really spooked him,” he says, shifting to get comfortable in the chair. “When I asked for the files, they wouldn’t give them to me. Who was he investigating?”

           “Why do you need to know what the information was?” Jack asks, sitting down. It’s the way he shifts as he sits, adjusting himself and busying his hands that tips Will off. He can all but smell the unease coming off of him.

           Dolarhyde isn’t the only one that’s spooked.

           “…If I know what made him so afraid, I can find out where he’d go,” he says slowly. His eyes track the hands that try to open a small pack of trail mix, yanking down so hard that Jack almost spills it across the desk.

           “I know it’s a classified operation,” Jack says after uttering a short curse. “All of Dolarhyde’s work was.”

           “Right.”

           “Out of my jurisdiction sort of classification,” he tacks on after looking at Will’s unimpressed expression.

           “Jack,” Will warns. “I have a hard time believing anything is out of your jurisdiction.”

           “This is.”

           “Then so is my help,” Will decides, standing up.

           “Excuse me?” Jack looks up from his trail mix, and the stubborn, set expression on his face is one Will has seen a thousand times.

           “You asked if I can handle it, and I can’t handle not being able to do my job because of some internal political bull shit,” he says. “I’m not crawling into his head half-assed. Don’t make me do that and then not help by refusing to fill in the blanks.”

           The air turns heavy as they look at one another, Will focusing on his mouth rather than his eyes. He knows that if he looks at his eyes, he’ll see everything he needs –maybe even the information Jack claims is confidential. It’s not enough of a risk for him to try and look, though; he’s seen enough times into Jack’s mind that he, without fail, falls into the same memory, and it’s not a memory he wants to see at the moment. He’s not in enough control.

           “You’re a pain in my ass,” Jack says with a sigh of defeat. “I’ll talk to Kade Purnell –she’s the director of EI.”

           “Thanks for letting me do my job,” Will says, and he walks out before Jack can snap back.

-

           He doesn’t go out with co-workers when they are kind enough to invite him out for drinks. Drinks mean bars, bars means people, and the amount of people that have climbed inside of the bone arena of his skull are enough to leave him exhausted, worn thin like a fraying, old shirt.

           Instead, he drives to Wolf Trap and greets the dogs that rush out from the house when he opens the door, dropping down onto the porch to give them each the attention they deserve. They are kind, lapping at his shirt rather than his face, and his gloved hands rub spots they couldn’t have scratched themselves.

           Dogs are kinder than people, he thinks as he sits outside with a glass of whiskey and lets them run around. Their love is a pure thing, and when one of them licks his wrist, he only gains the impression of their wanting more treats than he’s willing to share at the moment. As a pack, they are a singular, cohesive unit rather than too many individuals existing within the same space. Alana has made it clear she thinks he has too many of them, but whenever another stray turns up, he can’t find it in his heart to do anything more than let them stay.

           Dogs, in all of their love and understanding, are far better than people.

           He cleans up a dinner for one, feeds the dogs again and finds himself hunkered around another boat engine from someone down the road that couldn’t afford to take to a shop. The wind outside glances off of old windowpanes, makes them shake, and he thinks of the sounds the cabin made when he’d rushed in, not knowing what he’d find. The cabin was quieter than his house, at peace with the monstrous death inside of it. When he finds himself staring down at his clenched, blood-stained hands rather than greasy hands holding tools, he decides it’s time for bed. Redirect, redirect, redirect.

           When he goes to climb into bed, he finds Abigail Hobbs bleeding to death on one side and Mrs. Perkins bleeding to death on the other. He sighs, considers them both for a long moment, then crawls in between the two of them to try and get some sleep.

[kitchsykitchenwitch]

TW: Religion. My personal experiences with mental health, psychiatric hospitalization, and suicidal ideation/attempts. Some mild discussion of the current political climate.

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So, this is a half-cooked essay I’ve had rattling around my head for a couple of years now, but hadn’t really found a good time to write it all out. After watching the Jesus Christ Superstar Live special today, I think now is as good a time as any to put this out in the world. Please not the aforementioned trigger warnings, and also be advised that this is probably gonna be a bit ramble-y and not the best written piece on the interwebs.

***PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT A REVIEW OF THE JCS LIVE SPECIAL!***

Some background on me. I am an atheist who grew up in a Catholic family, and I struggle with C-PTSD and bipolar II disorder (which weren’t properly diagnosed until about four and two years ago, respectively), as well as chronic autoimmune and pain conditions. When I was a kid, every year during Lent, my mother (a theater junkie) would play both the soundtrack and 1973 movie of Jesus Christ Superstar. The original soundtrack has always had some sentimental value to be because of this.

A quick aside on my faith, or lack thereof. I never considered myself a very strong Catholic. Fortunately, I grew up in one the lucky few liberal Catholic families, and was always taught to think for myself and question everything. My questioning of religion first started when I was in fifth grade, and became very interested in Greek mythology, which soon expanded to Norse and Celtic myths as well. I loved the stories and fables, and it didn’t take me long to draw the parallels to Christianity and Catholicism. I began to think to myself, if these stories aren’t true, then why is Catholicism the one true way? I also struggled with prayer and forming that “personal connection to God” that my youth leaders insisted I must develop. I grew up in a turbulent, and at times, abusive home, and my pleas to find some peace were, of course, left unanswered. I struggled for years thinking that there must be something I was doing wrong, or something inherently wrong and broken about me as a human being. This added to the depression that I struggled with as an adolescent, but I kept my reservations to myself out of fear of alienating my family and friends in the Church. Eventually, I found myself sitting on the agnosticism fence, finally making the jump over to atheism about a year and a half after I graduated college. I discovered that I found more sense of worth and fulfillment in taking responsibility for my own actions and accomplishments, more agency and knowledge in the presence of evidence and facts, and far more comfort in the love of those here with me in the physical realm. For a long time, Jesus Christ Superstar and any other remnants of religious music fell off of my playlists for many years as I came to terms with my beliefs.

A couple of years ago, as I was building a Broadway playlist on Spotify, I decided to put the original soundtrack on and see how it played to me as both an adult and a critically thinking atheist.  I was expecting to experience that nostalgia that I spoke of earlier, but I was not prepared to be emotionally bowled over at the realization that this is a story of not only faith, but of struggle with mental illness. I mentioned this to my mother after my revelation, and she told me that she wasn’t surprised. I didn’t know this, and some of you may not either, but she told me that when the show first premiered, there was a lot of push-back and anger because people didn’t approve of such a raw, radical and purely human portrayal of their Messiah, preferring the calm beatific and self sacrificing demigod of their scriptures. Listening to it now after being on both the loved one of someone who is mentally ill, and being a mentally ill person myself, I found myself relating to the characters in whole new ways that felt absent before, and it completely flipped the traditional Passion story on its head for me.

I’m going to take the soundtrack (nearly) song by song and give my thoughts. The ones that are irrelevant to the overarching themes I mentioned, I will skip over. I’ll also provide YouTube links to the ones I do delve into.

Heaven on their Minds

Even though I’m an atheist, and one would think I’d relate to him more because of this, this is the only song in the show where I truly sympathize with Judas. I look at this song through the lens of watching an older family member struggle heavily with bipolar I disorder, which was left untreated for many many years. This came into stark focus for me when I reached adulthood and the two of us became much closer. He is hands down the most intelligent and one of the most empathetic people I have ever met in my life, but the flights of mania, ego and rage and the crushing depression he experiences has a major impact on everyone who loves him. I struggle with this as well to a lesser degree, and being on both sides of this coin, I really do sympathize with those who love someone with this disorder. The struggles we go through can leave us hyperfocused on ourselves, forgetting that the people who care about us are also deeply hurt and concerned for our safety and well being. Judas is begging for Jesus to take a step back and look rationally at how his (in Judas’ perception) egotistical and selfish actions are harming himself and those around him, imploring that he still admires him and cares for him as a person, but eventually ends the song in frustration as he realizes that his friend will not listen to him.

What’s The Buzz/Strange Thing Mystifying

I had two major thoughts on this song, and I’ll go through them separately.

This song is where my sympathy for Jesus begins and for Judas comes to a screeching halt. Judas proves himself to be a misogynistic prick as Mary Magdalene attempts to provide some small comfort to Jesus as he is growing more and more frustrated with his disciples. The slut shaming rubs me absolutely raw, and if I had been in that situation, I would have jumped down his throat just as Jesus did.

The second takeaway from this is that this is where I see parallels to mental illness start to take root in the show. Depression lies. Depression will tell you that nobody in your life truly cares about you, and that they will all leave you alone in the end.

“I'm amazed that men like you Can be so shallow, thick and slow There is not a man among you Who knows or cares if I come or go!”

This, obviously, leaves his friends reeling, and they beg of him, how can he possibly say that about them? He doubles down with the final lash out of “Not one, not ONE of you!” I have similarly lashed out at those who mean the most to me when in the depths of a depressive low. Thankfully, my circle understands that when I say things like that, it’s not truly me, but the monster that lurks within me that I usually keep quiet and calm in the back of my mind.

Everything’s Alright

Judas, buddy, you really lose me here. He turns from slut shaming and goes into full on neurotypically ableist fuckery. The is implication that his friend doesn’t deserve a few small comforts because there is some greater cause that must be served, and that he should suck it up because there are people who have it worse.

Jesus, in response, reminds him that there will always be people in the world who have it worse and who are suffering. This is a concept I struggled with for years. I would always minimize my pain by saying “Well, it could always be worse.” This kind of thinking just led to more self-berating, beating myself up when I couldn’t pull myself up by my bootstraps and force happiness into my chemically-misfiring brain. And here he takes another emotional dig, saying that Judas better shape the fuck up, and leaves the vague threat of suicide hanging over his head as another lashing out, which I have also done in my worst moments of pain and despair.

Mary, bless her, proves herself to be the true caring partner as she swoops back in to attempt to soothe him to sleep, wanting to provide some form of comfort to the man she loves.

This Jesus Must Die

When this essay first started taking shape in my head a couple of years ago, I wasn’t planning on including this song.

Then the election of 2016 happened.

I won’t ramble on too much on this one since it doesn’t directly tie in to the overall themes I outlined earlier, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the indirect connections.

The disturbing trend of othering, tribalism, and white supremacy that has taken hold in the US can be seen in the lyrics of this song. The willingness to outright harm and even murder those who are different because of ignorant fears of having their way of life destroyed is as much a problem today as it was then. This affects all who don’t fit this mold: POC, non-Christians, women, LGBTQ+ folks, the disabled, and, you guessed it, the mentally ill. It’s chilling to see these attitudes, which these types of Christians claim to revile when speaking of the priests and pharisees in the Passion story, so thoroughly inform their worldview and morals. It makes me feel physically ill to see this happening.

Simon Zelaotes/Poor Jerusalem

Oh Simon. You are that one “friend” or family member that every mentally ill person has. The one who thinks they have all the answers. The one who gives you all kinds of unsolicited “advice” and tells you how you should think and act, because that’s how things are gonna get better for everyone else (oh and I guess you too). This isn’t one of my favorite songs, so I’m gonna end it here for this one.

The Temple

This is more regarding the second half of the song, when the lepers are demanding that Jesus heal them. This one resonated deeply with me. I am a very empathetic person, and I also have a very hard time saying no to people. I want to help as many of my friends as I can and make them happy. The problem is, I don’t always know how to turn that off, and I end up overextending myself with either physical demands or emotional labor. When Jesus cries “There’s too little of me,” I felt that on a very personal level, as I have said similar things when I take on too much. He finally breaks down and snaps, screaming at them to heal themselves. Again, I have expressed similar thoughts when I reach my limits and break.

Everything’s Alright Reprise 

I Don’t Know How to Love Him

The story now shifts the focus from the mentally ill individual to the partner/spouse/caregiver of the one who is ill. This is SO important. It’s very easy for our caregivers to stay silent and power through for our sake, while they slowly burn out trying to help us and to continue to live their lives. They tend to stay in the background, shouldering enormous tasks, and very rarely do they receive help that they badly need.

Mary does her best to calm Jesus, keeping on her smile until he falls asleep. Once her job is complete for the evening, she goes off by herself to vent her fears and frustration into the ether. She loves him, but at the same time, he deeply frightens her. That monster that lurks in us is scary, and not just for the person who is ill. It reaches out and threatens everyone that the person loves, and for those who don’t know what it’s like to have that in your head 24/7, it’s terrifying. But who does she tell? Who else could possibly understand? So she just lets her fears out to no one but herself, and at the end, collects herself and goes back to work.

Damned For All Time / Blood Money

Some of my sympathy for Judas comes back in this one, but only but so far. Being the friend who realizes that someone they care about may truly be out of control and a danger is a terrible position to be in. Do you call the police and have them involuntarily committed? Or do you keep trying to fix things yourself? It is never an easy call to make. He handled it EXTREMELY poorly though.

The Last Supper

This is where everything goes to hell and falls apart. Jesus and his friends gather together for one final meal, but his mind is already far afield with self destruction and suicidal ideation. Right off the bat, he makes throwaway comments about his friends’ apathy.

“For all you care, this wine could be my blood. For all you care, this bread could be my body.”

His own apathy launches back into anger as he spits:

“I must be mad thinking I'll be remembered - yes I must be out of my head! Look at your blank faces!

My name will mean nothing Ten minutes after I'm dead!”

The group immediately launches into rebuttals and reassurances. Judas is finally fed up with his friend taking his anger out on everyone and speaks up, telling him that he has alerted the authorities. Jesus doesn’t care and goads Judas into blowing up at him and basically telling him to stop being a dramatic asshole. This is behavior I have both witnessed in others and done myself in my angry/manic swings. You think so little of yourself that you think you have deluded your friends into thinking you are a good person, so the addled logical next step is to make them understand just how bad of a person you truly are and shove them away, violently if necessary. Judas takes the bait and flees, while the rest of the group tries to placate their friend with, what we would perceive as empty, platitudes and optimism.

Gethsemane

The similarities to this song and my own inner dialogue when I struggle with suicidal ideation are staggering to me. The exhaustion, the “Am I really this worthless?” and “Maybe the world would be better off without me” statements, looking to lay the blame on someone else, wanting someone else to do the deed for you because you don’t have the guts to do it yourself, rage at a spiritual figure that you feel either doesn’t exist or doesn’t care. That was like a swift punch to the gut. I never thought that as an atheist, I would relate so heavily to the character of Jesus, but this song drove it home for me that I really do, and that it’s not a bad thing, and that I can relate to him as a person without it having to be a religious experience.

Pilate and Christ

Short blurb for a short song. I view Pilate as the role of the medical professional who is dealing with a particularly difficult case. In this first appearance, he takes on the role of the apathetic doctor that all of us neurodivergent individuals fear we will get, someone who really takes no interest in your problems and instead kicks you to the mercy of another office or the insurance company.

Could We Start Again Please

This is another one that speaks to me on a deep, personal level.

“I've been living to see you Dying to see you but it shouldn't be like this This was unexpected, what do I do now? Could we start again please? Could we start again please? I've been hopeful so far Now for the first time I think we're going wrong Hurry up and tell me, this is all a dream Or could we start again please? Could we start again please? I think you've made your point now You've even gone a bit too far to get your message home Before it gets too frightening, we ought to call a halt So could we start again please?”

These are very similar to what my husband said after my suicide attempt. He told me that he felt like the whole thing was a nightmare that he couldn’t wake up from. He told me that he was terrified, and that he wished there was a way to do a hard reset on everything. He told me that he wanted to help me, but that he didn’t know how to even begin to do that. Fortunately, with lots of therapy, we have been making it work, but that was his first experience with serious mental illness. When I was in psychiatric hospitalization, these points came up yet again, as he had never experienced this and didn’t know how to handle someone he cares so deeply about be committed and see the bad and good that goes with it. It’s all scary as fuck, and this is why our caregivers need support and love and someone to talk to as well.

Judas’ Death

Again, keeping this one short. The regret train rolls into the station as Judas realizes that maybe he made a mistake. I’ve heard fellow patients in hospitalization say this about loved ones who had them involuntarily committed. When they make the call, they think it will be a few days in the hospital and bam! You’re cured! They end up coming to the horrible realization that psychiatric hospitalization is difficult, scary, and at times, dangerous. Some people step up to the plate and help their loved ones through it, while others balk at what they’ve done and bail completely.

Trial Before Pilate

We come back to the doctor/patient metaphor with this song, this time with Pilate taking the role of the  doctor who genuinely wants to help a patient, but the combination of the patient’s complete apathy/desire for self destruction and pressures put on by outside forces (like overwork, various bureaucracies, and bullshit from insurance companies) force their hand into making the harsh call of commitment. Pilate realizes that since Jesus refuses his help and also refuses to help himself, he has to make the hard call. I have been in the position of having a doctor ask me questions to help, and I basically told them to fuck off. Doing so forced the issue of hospitalization (which, by the way, I’m not directly comparing to a death sentence, just pointing out connections that I see).

This is an inelegant collection of the thoughts and emotions that this show creates within me. I’m not really sure how to close this out, now that I’ve finally written down the comparisons and analysis that has been in my head every time I’ve listened for the last couple of years. It feels good to get it out, even if the writing doesn’t flow very well. So there you have it. How a mentally ill atheist can still find meaning and their own story in a work of entertainment based on religion.

[alice-harley-quinn]

I’m a bag of salt.

Alright, i though i could handle this today and calm down, but it’s something it kind of makes me angry so much, at least to me.

So, today i was in the bank with my mother and we touch the topic of bullying (don’t know how, we were talking about corsets at the beggining!) and she says:

‘No offense, but...’

LIKE LISTEN WHEN YOU SAY NO OFFESE IT MEANS IT WILL FUCKING OFFEND ME

She thinks that when i call myself an aspie (cause i am maybe? duh) it’s considerate as a ‘etiquete’ and it’s wrong. (Eh...... what?) For later says: ‘If no one had discovered asperger the world would still be the same.’

WTF

‘Like imagine around the 50′s / 60′s if a child had problems with begin social would keep with their lifes cause the parents believe they are shy!’

Alright, but you should know that in that era, parents were 80% more strict and use to always make their kids to do things as like socializating.

‘Well, when i was a kid my mother never...’

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH no no just stop there.

‘Everyone would believe you are just shy if we didn’t knew about your condition and would have still a normal life.’

OH BY THE NAME OF ANYTHING IN THIS WORLD.

Every word sounds so wrong! Arlight, taking away the part of the parents, today’s kid (specially when my condition started to show up more) are cruel and evil and would probbably bully you and make you feel like crap? Because we don’t tend to understand the same thing as them or cause we like different things and like to focus in one think?

‘Kids are kids’ You just... Don’t.

‘Maybe if we didn’t knew about your condition would made a party with many kids so you could socializate.’

Yeah... What can i say.. No.

Sure, there are aspies who enjoy begin around people, in open places! Cause at least in my experience, I HATEEEEEEEEE BEGIN IN SMALL CLOSED PLACES WITH MANY PEOPLE AND TOO MANY LOUD MUSIC. I FEEL LIKE I’M BEGGIN ATTACKED.

‘You could have totally a normal life. I know as a mother. We could have totally find out just about your deficit of atenttion and brain irritation and everything would be the same.’

Yes, you are a my mom, but in this topic i know more. Sure, i was born with not one, but 3 things! AND GUESS WHAT? WHEN YOU ARE ASPIE YOU ALSO SUFFER OF DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY! *throws conffetti*

Yet you say i don’t, that i over react!

‘You are just begin stubborn, you always wants to be right about everthing.’

Cause i am right in this???? THATS WHY????

Why it would have been a problem if asperger was never discovered? Many kids around the beggining of 7 years old since its the age you show the symptomes, would be conffused of why they can’t be like their classmates, in why it’s so difficult to see in the eyes, to talk with someone with the same age. and as a said, kids tend to be cruel and rude when they see another kid having those smalls traits. By growing up, still having those problems because people believe that they are shy, that’s when the bullying begins, in fact we would be more scared if we speak up, since we know it todays era most of parents wants to face every childs problems with psychologist.

BUT WAIT, IF YOU TAKE THEM TO PSYCHOLOGIST AND THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE TOPIC, THEN HOW YOU HELP? YOU CANT.

Also, an aspie person tends to be very easily manipulated or believe in someones lies, in fact if we are not teached or helped, we are not able to see the difference between good and evil. And it either helps the part of depression and anxiety.

In fact, in 2013, England, it was made a test to a group of people, 374 find out they were aspies, which 243 (66%) were told they had suicidal thoughs, 127 (35%) tried to kill themself and 116 (31%) had depression. it was show that more likely an aspie adult, WITHOUT KNOWING THEY HAD THE CONDITION, were more likely to be suicidal (and i’m part of that group, wohoo!)

So imagine, this test was 4 years ago, now IMAGINE, if aspeger wasn’t know, what could happen? It was also told that we are able THE DOUBLE to kill ouselfs more than a neurotypical person or any person and that we have 4 times MORE suicidal thoughts (and it’s true!)

‘People believe that they just have depression’ YES AND NO.

Just imagine how many people would kill themself cause they don’t know what they have and were never feelt themself ok after so many things that happened cause they were never able to feel ‘normal’ or fit in society.

What am i trying to say this? That thanks to any creature, Hans Asperger discovered this condition and teached us about it. That we are in 2017 and people still unknow a lot? Yes, but the important it’s that someone find out about it! IT IS IMPORTANT.

[inanawesomewave]

No, Your Ex-Boyfriend Isn’t a Psychopath, He’s Just An Asshole

Today I want to talk about what people mean when they say, “oh my god, I really do think my ex was a psychopath!”. This is normally followed by loosely cobbled-together pop psychology, a quasi-working knowledge of psychopaths in popular culture, and a hard-luck story in which the speaker revels in a self-appointed victimhood, whereby a claim is laid that can gift said speaker with the metaphorical medal that reads: ‘FINALLY, I SURVIVED SOMETHING’.

We all have our fair share of fucking assholes in our dating past. Even those of us with the antisocial bent and the knack for Machiavellianism are not 100% immune from meeting and dating assholes. We may even love them. Actually, let me just say this about that: I have dated assholes. I have not fallen prey to assholes. Whenever I have dated an asshole I have done so knowing completely how truly terrible they are. One thing you will see me talk about a lot on this blog is a tendency to administer to life’s losers, its outsiders and marginalised loners. If I were cynical I’d say this is nothing more than a manifestation of plucking the weakened from the herd and adopting them into my life for whatever reason, but to dispel a myth real quick, more often than not, I have loved them. I have dated cheaters, liars, scammers, the fragile, the needy, the broken - whatever word you want to use to romanticise the experience. I have been in situations that have spilled over into abuse against me, and I have fought back (abuse not lest ye be abused). But were any of my exes psychopaths? Even the abusive ones? No, no they were not. Because “psychopath” is not synonymous with “didn’t treat me the way I’d have liked”. I feel what happens here is a desperate grab for rationalisation of the experience. It is a much more palatable reality to kid yourself that the reason your ex-partner cheated on you, or didn’t listen to you, or called you fat those times, or taunted you or ignored you or teased you or whatever, is because you have diagnosed them with a clinical deficit in their ability to love you how you want to be loved. If you tell yourself you dated a psychopath when you have no real basis for that, you are telling yourself the only reason you had a bad experience with someone you were in love with (how embarrassing for you, you think - and that’s a normal thing to think) was because they were broken, because there was something wrong with them, because they were faultlessly fractured with a sickness, a disease. Get your head out of your ass. There’s a lot wrong with this but I’m going to keep this as succinct as I can - first of all, it’s not your job to make decisions about psychopathy on behalf of the psychopath. I will go into this more in another post, but don’t paint this fucking dreamy narrative of the antihero onto psychopaths you have identified (hint: you’ll have got it wrong so many times), and therefore paint your ex as someone who desperately wants to love you, but just doesn’t gosh-darn know how to hecking well do it. 

Believe it or not, there is such a thing as an asshole who has no psychopathic tendencies. Some people are mean because they are mean. Even psychopaths cannot be excused, and that’s fine, psychopaths do not want to be excused by you. But you are not helping yourself or anyone else by joining the clueless gaggle of embittered ex lovers - this need to be a part of a community is baffling. And it’s overwhelmingly and ironically arrogant and entitled of you to diagnose someone who has hurt you with a condition you have made clear you know nothing at all about - that there’s a backstory of damage and psychological abnormality that lies in the hands of the person who did not love you, that they only reason they didn’t love a loveable boo like you - is because - oh god, of course - there’s something wrong with them!  But the psychopath is rarely the fuckboy who is sleeping with your cousin and your best friend whilst claiming exclusivity and loyalty to you, he is very seldom the one you expect. Psychopaths aren’t, on average, super-intelligent hyper-beings - but but rather the friendly man in the sweater vests who works in your local off license and has a computer rammed to the rafters with snuff pornography at home. Neurotypicals do not have to dig incredibly deep to do bad things, especially if those bad things seem to come with little consequence or condition. Conversely, not all psychopaths are choosing to use their super-mean-awesome-bad-person powers to date you and then ghost you or whatever they did. Just because they showed no empathy TO YOU when you were dating them, it doesn’t mean that they can’t feel empathy. Just because they never seemed to show remorse for what they did SPECIFICALLY TO YOU, doesn’t mean they don’t have the capacity. Even if that asshole decided to become abusive, doesn’t mean they’re a psychopath. The truth is, regular people are abusers more than you would care to know. I mean, if your logic in diagnosing your ex were true, then almost 100% of the prison population would be filled with psychopaths. But it isn’t. The figure I read changes depending on where I read it, but it is never over 30%. Psychopaths don’t tend to get caught, unless they’re doing something you would consider quite horrific.  So before you spill the gossip to your friends over a light Prosecco lunch that you dated - and survived - the horrors of the psychopath who is so good at hiding their psychopathy that they’re not a psychopath in the least bit - consider the ugly truth. There was nothing wrong with them. There was nothing wrong with you. But that person didn’t love you. Maybe stop loving them, too.  Oh, and avoid this one like the plague. 

[formulatemotif]

3/2/2020 i dont know

tumblr diary

tl;dr: today was a very bad day. why am i like this. seriously why

i feel like such shit!!! and you know why? its because i ***am*** such shit. holy hell, i am the worst fucking person. oh my god. today i got so heated for no reason at all at this kid luke. i guess he is annoying, and naia agrees that someone had to tell him at some point, but god damn, it should not have been like that. i feel stupendously awful. he did not deserve that. i was sitting there antagonizing him like i usually do.. which is bad in its own way but i’m not going to address that right now. he was spraying this hand sanitizer stuff that smelled like total and complete shit, like when that girl in the back of the classroom starts spraying her victoria secret bullshit for the entire class to choke on. it was that except so much more concentrated. i told him he was an asshole. mikko held out a water bottle for me to hit him with, and, not wanting to look like a little bitch i guess, i took and and went over to him. i hit him once, really, like one successful hit, the other two he caught. i told him just.. straight up. that i just hated him with all my being. which, i guess, is true, since he is so fucking annoying, and has absolutely no self awareness when it comes to him being annoying either, even though everyone except delia and maybe alex make it abundantly clear that he is not welcome. regardless, i guess it stopped being a joke when delia was like “um... calm down... sit down...” like i was a fucking idiot. jesus christ, that was what set me off the most. like... fuck you??? it was a joke and you’re acting like im serious, which, i guess, made it actually serious. which is so fucking stupid i know i am so full of myself and shitty i know that but god fucking dammit she was looking at me like she was the fucking peak of clarity and like i was some fucking dog that was barking at passerby. seriously, FUCK her. i literally am so sick of her. she’s such a... how should i put it... heart player! she makes me want to scream sometimes, but other times we’re best friends. i fucking hate it. i fucking hate highschool. but more than anything, i hate myself! why did i do this! in the end, i have no one else to blame but myself. not luke, not delia, but me, and only me. no one else is at fault for my actions. and yet here i am complaining like they are. i don’t know. i’m just so upset. what can i even do? after it was clear that things were Heated at that point i sat down and stared down luke for some fucking reason until he left. i started shit with delia too which escalated, but also ended, pretty quickly. god the more i think about it the angrier i get. she was like “you didn’t have to handle it that way” like i didn’t already know that. and the hypocrisy! jesus fucking christ i have never met anyone in my life that is as ignorant and one sided as delia is. she does not care about anyone else but herself, and even then, she’s totally and completely oblivious about her own actions. as if my outburst was any better than all the shit she’s done over the past 3 years with alex and the string of boys she leads around on a fucking leash. god, i just hate her! i just hate her! i don’t. but i do! she’s so fucking typical (neurotypical, i might add) that it makes me want to bash my head against a wall. her boyfriend is autistic and she refuses to believe it, or even entertain the idea that he might be, saying shit like “don’t even say that” and “he’s not like that.” fuck you!!! my sister is autistic!!!!! fuck you!!!!!!! fuck you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! she acts like him being autistic is the worst fucking thing in the world. literally i just i can’t FUCKING stand her. holy shit!!!! and she says shit that’s like borderline homophobic like don’t you understand that you can’t say that if you’re straight??? like, what the fuck??? calling shit gay is funny, but when it gets to the point where i can feel my and everyone else’s discomfort radiating off of them like a fucking sonar it gets to be too much. and the drama!!! fucking, all she talks about is drama! i don’t care!!! i don’t care at all!!! who fucking cares what alex sent you or that ellery didn’t respond to your text within two seconds, i don’t!!! sometimes i feel like im only friends with her because i feel like i want to be a part of something, and even then, i’m really not. i have maybe 2 friends at school total. literally, no one likes me. and why should they. they shouldn’t is the fact of the matter. the fact that i’m typing up this entire fucking thing where i rant about a friend behind her back instead of just talking through our problems like adults is proof that i am toxic and unlikable. people approach me to talk to me and somehow i end up being mean to them. not on purpose, but god dammit, you’d think i’d be smarter by now? no, no apparently i’m not, because look at what that got me. i am just as bad as i’ve always been. i am a shitty person and i have no idea what to do to change that. i’ve always thought about suicide, of course, but i think that’d be the equivalent of ripping off the bandaid of all the relationships i have with other people to reveal the third degree burns of lies and bullshit i’ve conjured up over the past few years to paint myself in a perfect light. which doesn’t even work, by the way. sometimes they see actual glimpses into my life, but the only people that really know anything would be my mom, ruby, and maybe aiden. my poor dad. he literally has no fuckin clue. even then, the people listed don’t really even know anything at all. i don’t want to tell anyone about it. i don’t think anyone should or would want to know. it’s bad, and it’s ugly, and really is not something i should tell even my closest friends. i am so tremendously suicidal and self loathing, and the only way for anyone to find out would be if i finally just up and killed myself. wow this got so far away from the point! after reading all of this i’m sure anyone with half a brain could deduce that i am a whiny little teenage girl that likes acting all big so she posts it to tumblr.