#gifts to get the neurodivergent folks in your life

[projectilecry]

my list, as a fucker with both of ‘em, includes (but is not necessarily limited to):

money

more money

literally any cool shit you find outside**

anything that made you think of me

anything you made (i will cherish it forever and ever and ever)

souvenir t-shirts (corny as hell or not, you decide)

unlimited money

cups and mugs

handmade pottery

a lifetime supply of money

any kind of sticker (i will probably never stick it anywhere but i will cherish it forever nonetheless)

a functional pc or laptop

any car i’ve ever mentioned liking before ever

any pin/button (like the kind you put on jackets and bags for decoration)

any blanket ever

one or more dollar(s) (ideally not in the form of a check because i will forget to cash it)

anything funny or cool you find secondhand/vintage/at an estate sale/garage sale etc.

knives of any sort

lifetime supply of BelGioioso asiago snacking cheese

dawn dish soap

cold hard cash

dinosaur

ikea lördagsgodis sour cola flavor gummy viking ships

gender

construction equipment

legal tender

**examples of cool shit you find outside include but are not limited to: rocks, fossils, bones, teeth, geodes, interesting glass or plastic, minerals, cool branch or stick or piece of wood, nice sand, assorted bits of metal, gemstones, asteroids, feathers, and shells.

Saw a thread on Twitter of "gifts to give a person with ADHD and autism" that was full of stereotypical and quite frankly patronizing items, so here's a list of I (autistic individual) want instead as a gift

Money

Fourteen billion dollars

Free coupon to kill somebody with my teeth

Suitcase full of money

Cool looking rock

Scratching post for me to sink my claws into

An albino elephant

The head of Jeff Bezos mounted on my wall

Uncooked rice

A cup full of blood

100k in cash

[borom1r]

for the asks, how do you feel things like autism/neurodivergence are regarded in Rohirric society (as opposed to Gondorian)?

I’ve been lettin this ask marinate for a bit bc I wanted to give a relatively coherent answer snfjjs. anyways blah blah I’m too lazy to find it and link it— the post is somewhere on the blog but that ask u sent abt the fellowship + neurodivergence n my comments on Gimli being Astounded that Men make these things a Huge Issue when you could just. work to accommodate people. That.

but like. okokokok so I’ve mentioned. offhand that i quantify my gender best as an ulfheðinn. I am a wolf and I am also a man at the same time. I know my brain doesn’t work the way people expect it to. human society is a struggle. I still don’t Get It, but at least I can fake it well enough — and that’s like. A Thing. we have stories of berserkir coming home from raids and never being able to adapt to life in regular society. + that’s iron-age Norse society, right, but we know there were 1) these niches that existed on the sidelines of society that one could argue served as an outlet for people with mental illnesses (and berserkir taking part in psychoactive substances before battle is. Highly Likely Bullshit — 42:01 for discussions specifically of hallucinogens; tldr there’s no archeological evidence of such substances in viking warrior burials + the last thing you want to do is run into battle intoxicated. any substance use would be for bonding + rituals PRIOR to battle w/ enough time to recover from any adverse effects) and 2) there was some level of care for warriors/vikingar who returned with what could probably be classed as PTSD (there is at least one saga I can think of where an ex-berserkir had married and had children; Egils saga Skallagrímsonar — Skallagrím went into a fit while playing a ball game with his son and nearly killed him. He was only brought out of his rage by the intervention of a servant girl)

anyways. Rohirrim. SO, the Dunlendings seem to get all the shitty violent aspects of “viking” culture meanwhile the Rohirrim get the romanticized Wagner-esque sort of portrayal where they’re all noble mounted warriors and that’s Simply Bullshit. but if we take canon as filtered through a pro-Gondorian lens then it’s easy to understand why the Dunlendings would be portrayed this way. I’ve said it before but I do think it’s a very natural conclusion to draw that the Rohirrim were once a raiding culture and I’d argue the conflicts between them and the folk of Dunland began WELL before the Rohirrim were gifted land by Gondor. all this to say like, I’m certain the Rohirrim (and Dunlendings too, but we’re sticking with the Rohirric focus) had at least basic ideas of how to manage symptoms of PTSD even before they’d settled in what would become Rohan

as for like, autism specifically. not to be like “all the Riders have autism” nfnsjfjsjf but let’s be. Oh So Very Real here. what do you do when your child is struggling and simply cannot cope with life in the village? when they need an even more rigid, structured routine than you can give them? when they have more anger than you can manage? when you’re doing your absolute best for them but they still keep getting into trouble and you likely have other mouths to feed and responsibilities to take care of? when even if you love them to the best of your abilities, they still chafe at their surroundings? send them off to be a Rider.

let them work out their battle-lust against Orcs, let them burn off all their wild energy on horseback patrolling the open plains, let them flourish in the rigid routine of a soldier surrounded by other Riders who may not understand but still accept and embrace them because they are all brothers in arms.

and this isn’t to like. GLORIFY vikingar/berserkir from my end. this is me saying very genuinely that if I had lived in that time, knowing how my brain works and how I both struggle with societal expectations And how I quantify emotions/relationships/the Self in a decidedly non-human way— if it was socially acceptable for me to run off and live in the woods with a pack of my brothers-in-arms As A Wolf, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I think you run into a lot of “that’s Brigdwine, he’s a little strange and he still doesn’t speak, but he tends the horses well and even the meanest stallions are calm around him” where it’s like. Yeah They’re Weird But They’re Part Of The Community So Who Cares? + on the flip side, there’s probably a smaller but not insignificant amount of “did you hear Sigewynn got a letter from Sigeofor? seems he’s made a good name for himself amongst the Riders. better than terrorizing the goats and chickens and biting other children.”

sometimes nobody understands you and nothing that’s expected of you makes sense and you have no idea what to do with your emotions and everything is Too Much All The Time. and sometimes the answer is “go forge an unbreakable bond with your Éored and kill Orcs about it.”

[smrtelnaaleziva]

mood: rant; trigger warning: casual mention of suicide, psychosis, genral ableism

my favourite (/s) thing about being mentally ill (besides all the other stuff) is the inability to communicate with people who don't experience my issues. i am not even talking about neurotypicals, i am including in this statement some neurodivergent people as well. actually let me rant for a moment about neurodivergent people further stigmatising mental conditions using their experiences...

how do i explain to someone what i am experiencing when they dismiss it with "well i experience similar thing so i totally get what you are talking about and i am going to make assumptions based on my experiences?". dude it isn't the same. feeling hopelessness during depressive episode isn't the same as end of the world delusions i had during psychosis. being adhd daydreamer isn't the same as when i tried to kill myself bc i thought i was communicating with faeries and they invited me to live with them in their world which i couldn't do bc i was still alive. like people actually tried to compare these in my face and they aren't the same; i should know, i daydream a lot, have adhd and have experienced the doom spirals during depressive episodes before. it just isn't the same. so why do people insist on comparing it? how am i to explain to them it isn't the same when they already arrived to their conclusions about my situations.

i don't need someone to give me advice on a situation that isn't happening. i need people to listen to what i am actually saying. to actually try and understand my experience. i know that it is hard, that it isn't easy to let go of a way you viewed the world and mentally ill people your whole life bc society told you we were this way. when sometimes even psychiatrists feed these misconceptions. but please... just listen to me. to us. when we tell you what is going on.

do you like it when people tell you to cure your depression with yoga like you didn't already try everything you could to put an end to it? then please shut up when i am trying to explain to you what is going on in my head. don't use ableistic language like delulu or call bigots delusional when i (and for the matter the schizospec community as whole) ask you not to. this isn't a joke to me and it doesn't make me a hateful person. i am hurting. a lot. psychosis is painful both mentally and physically. all i am asking for is some empathy please...

thank you to everyone who isn't like that. i love you guys.

(yes someone pissed me off and became inspiration for this post, how could you tell? and this was very much "neurodivergent folks can be ableist too" post but dont eben let me start on the neurotypical family members that tell me to quit my meds bc they don't like the side effects i am experiencing. i am currently symptomatic bc i have to fight myself to take my antipsychotics and sometimes i don't win that fight... just bc people ((mostly neurotypicals again)) were telling me my meds are poison and that my mental illness is a gift really got to me recently)

[stars-in-a-jam-jar]

Now, I understand the utility and value in saying 'You are not special. You're just like everyone else, you are not Uniquely Alone in this thing called Life, so stop telling yourself your struggles are unique and no one can help you/stop acting like you must live up to being The Chosen Gifted Child who solves All The Problems because that's unfair and untrue.'

However, in the ever-relevant words of Sally Brown from Peanuts, 'Some philosophies aren't for all people.' That lens cannot jive with me and potentially someone else who may somehow get ahold of this post hence why I open my mouth to say it.

Y'see, my primary method of interacting with other people's personhood since I was like. 5. Was to look out at them and intuitively notice 'That person is not like me, or my sister, or my brother, or my parents, or that lady at church.' I was constantly noticing how other people were unique and distinct from one another, and the concept of being 'normal' and 'average' was a silly myth that people made up to force other people to be convenient. (that one episode of Spongebob where he literally smooths out all his wibbly edges and Makes Himself Normal only for Squidward to realize that was a Terrible Thing To Suggest really stuck with me) I realize now that was for sure a partial result of growing up neurodivergent in a household with siblings who were also Vastly Different Varieties of neurodivergent and a mom who was Incredibly Neurotypical barring the suppressed PTSD she still refuses to acknowledge. Everyone around me -including the people closest to me- were varying degrees of different from me, but they were also varying degrees of different from eachother. I was special and by extension so were they, therefore I was not alone.

I've learned over time this is apparently Not how most people interact with the world and their community. They see the world and the people in it and the people in their lives as manageable overlapping categories. There's 'Average' people and 'Lucky' people and on and on and on with variations but always coming in Types to decipher, and then there's 'Me': the person whose perspective all this is filtering through and the most complex agent in the system of Things I Have To Deal With. Not to say most people think everyone else is simple by comparison, just that when you can see and experience everything going on inside your own mind and only some of what's going on in someone else's, you get a more detailed and complicated view of yourself by default. This higher level of complexity we experience from within is regularly a stressor for folks who take comfort in the phrase 'You're not special.' because it connects them to others by saying 'You are not failing at something everyone else is easily succeeding at, and no one worth listening to expects you to act like everything is always Normal And Perfect And Controlled.' There is no 'special'. We are all Just Normal.

Ironically, because I don't process the world like that, the phrase kind of just makes everything worse for me. If I'm not special but everyone else is, then that proves all the worst things I've heard about or said to myself. If no one is special including me, we're not people anymore, we're just a bunch of roombahs bopping into one another until our batteries run out. I don't mean to strike existential dread into anyone with that, I'm just trying to say that like. There's lots of ways to process the world and move through your life, and if a common piece of advice hits wrong, you can in fact look for a way to articulate your own truth and live it.

[russenoire]

have this really long convo thread with @eshithepetty as a response, @shigayokagayama. that whole 'you're SMART (in ritsu's case: and popular) so we don't have to worry about you/you don't have any real problems' thing hurts like hell to experience; because you seem to have won the genetic lottery, people look the other way if you're legitimately struggling in other ways. the very things that make ritsu so relatable for me seem to alienate other watchers… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's one reason why i wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until fairly late in my life.

i don't believe japan's schools offer this kind of special education, but it looks like gifted kid syndrome still applies there. my own 'gifted and talented education' schooling in the US was hit-or-miss in terms of actual educational rigor, racially stratified, rarely rewarded intellectual curiosity and often just involved more homework than the 'regular' classes, but my classmates were all geeky, nerdy neurodivergent souls and so i escaped a lot of the bullying that often occurs when such kids aren't educated separately. i don't regret this at all.

what i didn't love was the encouragement to identify with our academic skills, or the lack of importance placed on hard work and effort, or the expectations that we'd all be societal titans and make the world ours once we became adults. when i was a kid, gifted kids were often taught that our intelligence made us somehow superior to other students. high IQs and 'talent', on their own, have limited utility outside academia, and other skills that neurodivergent folks routinely find far more difficult to acquire are more prized in the 'real world'.

what good is social ease, or top grades and test scores, or others' admiration for your 'perfection'... if you still wake up most mornings wanting to die because you can't get your brain to cooperate? if you can't be skilled at something that's actually meaningful for you? IF YOU FEEL PAINFULLY FLAWED AND BROKEN all the time despite the perfectly put-together perfect perfect image others have of you? you know it's a lie, but no one else will believe you.

i'm still unpacking a lot of this trauma many years later. and it was absolutely traumatic.

this got so long, gah...

can we talk about how ritsu literally has gifted kid syndrome (am i projecting. maybe.)

oh ritsu is like. the gifted kid. the bit where hes having a mental breakdown but all his memories are just people saying how smart and talented he is is the most gifted kid thing that has ever happened in a television show

[sapphic-courtship-for-dummies]

Hey I’m like super bad at social cues so how do you know if someone likes you

Like I have a crush on this one girl but idk how to express it and like I’m hanging out with her a lot and we have a lot of physical contact but we both do that with friends and she even responds when I call her the love or my life but she acts like this with others aswell

Hey anon! Lol yes unfortunately being raised AFAB can result in a lot of verbal and physical affection shared between “gal pals” that can make it very confusing for wlw!! I get asks with this type of problem a lot.

On top of that, neurodivergent folks may have different social cues and not respond the same way as neurotypical people to affection, or do certain behaviors that could be interpreted as one thing but mean another. For example: someone averting their eyes/not making eye contact might mean they’re shy or like someone, alternatively it could just mean they have anxiety or some other neurodivergent condition/tendencies.

That being said, everyone is unique and expresses affection differently. It might be helpful to find out your crush’s love language—which sounds like it could be words of affirmation and physical affection—and compare it more closely to how she treats other friends. For example: does she text you more than anyone else? does she touch you more frequently/for longer than other people? does she have a special nickname just for you? are her gifts for you especially thoughtful and personal? does she stare at you for prolonged periods of time? does she write you subtle gay poetry? These are just some potential signs.

At the end of the day, you can research body language cues all you want, and it could still not be right. I wouldn’t want to steer you wrong especially when most articles and online tips completely exclude neurodivergent behaviors or make generalized and inaccurate assumptions. I wish there was an easier way to tell, but in my experience the only way to ever really be sure is through direct, explicit communication. You might have to just ask. Or send her some subtle signs of your affection and see how she responds.

Best of luck friend, I hope this helps. Aphrodite be with you. 💖

Love,

Sappho 💘

[thatblackboianarchist]

Giftedness is a Spook

I personally think giftedness is a stupid concept. Basically, it’s the idea that certain children, so folks under the age of 18, are “smarter” in some general or abstract sense than others, or more competent, more talented, more skilled, “better thinkers”, whatever. This concept originated pretty much in the 19th and 20th centuries, where we began consolidating under the “intelligence” label and categorizing people based on “how smart” and “how dumb” they are. There is a lot of baggage associated with the term giftedness, a lot of it historical and bigoted, so let’s investigate and such.

The most used definition of giftedness is having an IQ score above 130, or two standard deviations above the mean of 100. Though this historical definition has faced lots of criticism, since it is clearly possible to have superior ability in some domain without having a conventionally high IQ score, such as in the arts, or debating and public speaking, or sports, or chess, or really anything really.

Due to the fact that the “IQ above 130” definition of giftedness falls short of actually capturing all high-achieving children, most modern gifted education programmes no longer use this as the sole indicator of giftedness, and rather adopt a more multidisciplinary approach. Now, most simply look for superior skill or talent in one or more key areas, which can be art, or sports, or leadership, and attempt to cultivate that, as well as looking for people with a generally higher IQ than the average in their age group.

The issue with this approach is that it views giftedness as some sort of intrinsic, fully general, conserved property that is only found in certain sects of the population, and thus categorizes people into “gifted” and “non-gifted”. This categorization falls short in part due to the existence of “twice-exceptional” students, who are gifted in one area, but require unique accommodations in other areas. So it appears that it is possible to be “gifted” and “non-gifted” at the same time, so just how useful is this concept?

What’s more, giftedness often focuses on general cognitive traits, such as gifted children have greater white matter density, or faster information processing speed, or hear sounds faster, or think more critically, but from my perspective, these just seem to be variations in human characteristics, in the same way that some children are taller than others or start puberty earlier than others. Everyone develops at their own pace and there are plenty of people who develop out of the norm, especially since concepts of child development almost always exclude neurodivergent children and their different cognitive and psychosocial milestones.

And they are not necessarily NATURAL or inevitable variations in human characteristics either. All the traits associated with intelligence - information processing speed, critical thinking, white and grey matter density, working memory capacity, creativity, executive functions, enhanced senses - are heavily influenced by societal factors.

For instance, a child that has been well-fed since birth is obviously going to have a more developed brain with a higher capacity for all those things than a child that has suffered chronic hunger. A child that receives nurturing and good parents is going to have a more developed brain a child that receives abusive and neglectful parents. A child that grows up in a war zone is going to be different cognitively and intellectually than a child that grows up in a relatively peaceful location.

And those developmental consequences aren’t always natural in the sense that they are innate, they are artificial, engineered by politicians, corporations, and a society that absolutely refuses to take the suffering of children seriously. Yet the children who have been disadvantaged by this abusive society are unlikely to be categorized as gifted. These children show lower scores on IQ tests and the school system thinks they’re dumb, or worse “average”. These children don’t show superior performance in any particular area, there must be something wrong with them, they’re not “special” like these gifted kids other here. They don’t need special help, they just have to follow the curriculum for the regular or the *gasp* dumb kids, geta 9-to-5 job, and wait 50 years to retire, they won’t be these gifted kids that change the world.

LAME. This is lame. This is the wrong way to think about the differences that exist between children. And what’s worse, it’s so definite and unchanging, as if the traits associated with intelligence cannot be changed. As if we can’t help children with their working memory capacity, or their creativity, or their critical thinking, or their executive functions. As if we can’t help children find something they enjoy and let them cultivate that activity. These are all skills that can be taught, but they aren’t taught at all. We just let the bell curve “form naturally” and then take the kids on the right-half of it and label them “gifted” and then discard the rest, even though we are capable of teaching them those skills.

Giftedness promotes two unhealthy narratives: (1) being average isn’t good enough and (2) being below average is bad. With regards to (1) and (2), it completely ignores all of the facets of a good life, or what can be a good life. In my view, a good life is one that you enjoy and are proud of. Where you have strong relationships with others, actual freedom and control over your life, where you have things that you’re good at or enjoy doing, where you are proud of what you’ve accomplished. It has nothing to do with “having a higher working memory capacity” what the fuck?

There is value in being “average” or “mediocre” or “below average” or “stupid”. You can still produce art that people enjoy. You can still be a good athlete. You can still get really good at a specific area of academia. You can still be a competent engineer. You can still connect with others and mean something to them. You can still travel the world, drink wine condescendingly, and have a good time meeting people and seeing things. You can still contribute to society, and you can even make innovations that change it, but you don’t have to make a “significant contribution” to a worthy member of society. You can still care about others. You already change society, just by being part of it, and that is enough.

Focus on the experiences you want to have, the relationships you want to build, and the skills you want to learn, not on “I want to be smarter” or “I want to have better memory” or “I want to be the best”. It’s okay to want to be smarter, or to have better memory, or even to be the best at something (since it’s not possible to be the best at EVERYTHING), but those things are relative.

When you become “smarter” at something, or the “best” or just better, at some specific domain, you will find that all the traits associated with intelligence tend to increase with regard to that specific domain. For example, when you get better at chess, you develop better problem-solving skills associated with chess, or more critical thinking in regards to games, or better memory for recalling chess piece arrangements or movement formation or techniques, or faster information processing speed in regards to processing your opponent’s and your own moves, or better “chess logic” or “chess reasoning skills”, or the ability to understand and reason about chess on it’s own.

Intelligence is relative and domain-specific, the superior memory you would develop in chess won’t cross over to, say, memorizing decks of cards, or generalize into just having a superior memory for all things. That’s not how human brains work, they are highly specific and skill-oriented. So when you focus on becoming “smarter in general”, you are essentially setting an impossible goal, because it’s not specific enough for you brain to be able to systemically learn and apply it. You have to be specific if you want to make any progress, after all, and this applies to our constructs of giftedness.

We have to be specific! We have to let children choose their interests and hobbies and help them develop natural talents, as well as explore their interests and help them reach a suitable level of competence, where suitability is determined by THEM, the child. When you let them develop interests and hobbies of their own choosing, they naturally will get “smarter” in that area, you know, better working memory and stuff in that regard.

And even if they don’t reach expert levels of performance, or perform averagely or even below average, it doesn’t really matter, since it’s not something they need to be an expert in. For knowledge that is universally relevant, like comprehensive sexual education, you should work on ensuring that your average is a high standard. But if the piece of knowledge or skill doesn’t meet “nigh-universally relevant” or “necessary to function in this society”, then who cares how will people learn it? Especially since they can always come back in the future and re-learn it, or improve on it.

We also have to address child suffering and ensure that all children have good and strong support networks, are well-fed, have medical care, are free from abuse, etc. This makes it easier for them to actually have the time, energy, and cognitive capacity to choose their own interests and hobbies, AND work at them. It also helps them make relationships, explore, learn, and make a good life for themselves.

Also, a quick note. Interests are just things that you like to do or have a feeling for; hobbies are recreational pursuits that you actively engage in. So, an interest can be looking at pictures of castles online, a hobby can be actively seeing castles in person. It’s more or less an arbitrary distinction, but I like to use them in tandem to cover all the bases.

[zannolin]

bones-rattlingly, heart-stammeringly, gut-wrenchingly in love with every single one of the decision you've made for your fae au!! i just feel some much thought and dedication behind every phrase, my head is going to explode

the amount of mundane yet whimsical gestures and trinkets that breathe with history and folklore of that world, like existence of something beyond and something mystical and magical affects everyday life in physical, noticeable ways, while also communicating this sweet sweet uncertainty and uncanniness which is so so intrinsic to any fantasy-esque story happening in the modern / real world setting???? should as well point out while i'm still allowed to talk to people that the mixture of all things concerning faery folk and coastal expanses and looming sunshine feels so so fresh and so wonderful

and the language! the style! the flowing of word patterns! the metaphores!! the text itself is so light and so charming like chiming on the winds, but also all of the details keep you grounded and really really present in the surroundings of the story (and i don't even know if i'm making any sense i'm sorry)

and also the intimate gesture of gifting a protection charm to your newfound raccon best friend-slash-little brother so he doesn't get abducted by faeries?? sobbing

all and all, i'm bewitched, body and soul, thank you so so much for your work!!

i don't even know how to respond to this :')) thank you so much! i'm really glad people are enjoying it. it's an au i've been wanting to write for a long time, on a subject i've been fascinated with for a long time (i've been making up my own fey lore for years; i used to build tiny faerie courts out of poplar twigs and azalea leaves in my front yard as a kid).

a lot of the little protective rituals are kind of like an ode to my neurodivergent routines. like, i always listen to a song while i'm brushing my teeth, i get dressed a certain way every day, i never step on sidewalk cracks etc etc because it just feels Right to do that, even if maybe they aren't doing anything at all. i've always been fascinated with superstitions and the traditions that spool out of them over the years. it's such an inherently human thing, same as making "potions" in bubble containers and leaving cookies out for santa and mixing up dirt and herb soup in the backyard. there's a lot of magic hidden in the mundane, to me.

i'm having a lot of fun with this au and i'm really really happy (i keep saying it but it's true!!) that people are having fun too :D you guys make it worth the effort

[phoukanamedpookie]

The importance of female characters of color who are not nice

Regina Mills. Azula. Marie LaVeau. Annalise Keating. Amanda Waller.

What do they have in common? They’re all women of color. They are not nice. And I love them for it.

It’s funny how long it’s taken me to come around to writing this post. I’ve felt some kind of way about these characters for a long time, but I haven’t felt free to talk about it. Now I think it’s time to unpack that.

I love that these characters are mean and selfish. They want things for themselves, and they don’t care how other people feel about it. They take up space, demand to be seen and heard. 

They don’t downplay their gifts or pretend to be less capable than they are. They’re ruthless, ambitious and vengeful. They aren’t good role models and don’t give a damn. They could care less if you think they’re likable.

They don’t give a shit about coddling a man’s feelings of inadequacy. They don’t reassure white folks that they’re smart and beautiful and good. They don’t dry white girl tears. They ain’t got time for that shit, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care.

Can you see why I love them?

But fandom presents me with a conundrum.

Women of color are constantly scrutinized in American society, and that scrutiny seeks ways to pathologize and demonize everything about us. Our looks, our personalities, our culture, everything.

This extends to fandom. For the longest time, I was uncomfortable with the ways the majority of fandom talked about these characters, but I never said anything. First of all, because I couldn’t quite verbalize what felt wrong. Secondly, who was I to comment on it? Our experiences and perspectives are all valid. Isn’t that what we’re always saying?

But now I realize that not speaking on this does no one any favors. So, I’m done with that. From here on out:

No more pretending that I don’t see so much of my own experience as a queer woman of color reflected in these characters. 

No more silently stewing as these characters I identify with constantly get called crazy and evil.

No more quietly denying my womanism when analyzing these characters or how fandom responds to them.

No more turning a blind eye to how race, gender, sexuality and neurodivergence play a role in how these characters are vilified by their source material and their fandoms.

No more prioritizing everyone else’s life experience but mine when discussing these characters.

You don’t have to like my faves. They’re my faves, not yours, so that goes without saying. But I’m not holding my tongue anymore because it’s more convenient for you.

[star-anise]

Adding to more Gifted kid discussion: While I wasn't in my schools gifted section, I was always told that if I had been one point higher I would have been. At the same time, I was always noted as the "smart kid" in class, and i viscerally feel every post talking about the results that happen from being "Gifted" and having undiagnosed ADHD. It's resulted in a bit of a "neither fish nor fowl" anxiety scene and often always feeling never "good" enough.

Honestly the biggest myth about asynchronous development (why not go whole hog and use the technical term instead of “giftedness”) is “Schools are the best at telling who is and who isn’t! If you were in your school’s Gifted program, you were Gifted, if you weren’t you arent!”

Asynchronous development is a fucking complex concept and it can’t be reduced to a single IQ score. Schools have to make really subjective calls about who gets special funding and who doesn’t, and those calls can be as dumb as “We only have funding for 20 so the bottom 5 meet our criteria but we don’t have space for them” or “She technically qualifies but her band class is at the same time as the pullout program so we won’t put her there.”

(Tangent: I have a friend whose Master’s thesis was basically, “How many teacher training programs include accurate information about asynchronous development?” Basic Facts About Gifted Kids. Like, “Gifted children can have significant social and emotional difficulties” and “Gifted children may not necessarily be top performers; conditions like learning disabilities, physical disabilities, mental illness and childhood trauma can prevent them from performing in a way that shows their true abilities, and many teachers miss Giftedness in students from marginalized backgrounds or ethnic groups.”

Only like... less than 10% of the programs he studied included that shit. So the VAST MAJORITY of the teachers in his state were just walking around never having been required to learn it. I did a Master’s in Psychology; my coursework never covered it either. There is a huge trove of research out there most professionals in the field never look at.)

On the? Upside? It appears NONE of us feel Good Enough, so it’s not like you missed out on it! I felt like I Wasn’t Really Gifted, Just Kind of Bright for most of my life because my district had a mainstreaming policy and I wasn’t a child prodigy, and that only changed when I learned how to read psychometric reports and went back and requested my educational records.

So hey: Fuck what your school said! Qualitative experience matters as much as quantitative tests! If you read about being seen as freakishly smart and having a nagging sense of Good But Not Good Enough and go “Hey, it me” then you get to join the party! Welcome to Former Gifted Child Anonymous!

(Membership benefits are uh... solidarity with other neurodivergent folks, and the burning passion to improve schools everywhere. We should get T-shirts, goddammit.)

[deliciousmeta]

The importance of female characters of color who are not nice

Regina Mills. Azula. Marie LaVeau. Annalise Keating. Amanda Waller.

What do they have in common? They’re all women of color. They are not nice. And I love them for it.

It’s funny how long it’s taken me to come around to writing this post. I’ve felt some kind of way about these characters for a long time, but I haven’t felt free to talk about it. Now I think it’s time to unpack that.

I love that these characters are mean and selfish. They want things for themselves, and they don’t care how other people feel about it. They take up space, demand to be seen and heard.

They don’t downplay their gifts or pretend to be less capable than they are. They’re ruthless, ambitious and vengeful. They aren’t good role models and don’t give a damn. They could care less if you think they’re likable.

They don’t give a shit about coddling a man’s feelings of inadequacy. They don’t reassure white folks that they’re smart and beautiful and good. They don’t dry white girl tears. They ain’t got time for that shit, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care.

Can you see why I love them?

But fandom presents me with a conundrum.

Women of color are constantly scrutinized in American society, and that scrutiny seeks ways to pathologize and demonize everything about us. Our looks, our personalities, our culture, everything.

This extends to fandom. For the longest time, I was uncomfortable with the ways the majority of fandom talked about these characters, but I never said anything. First of all, because I couldn’t quite verbalize what felt wrong. Secondly, who was I to comment on it? Our experiences and perspectives are all valid. Isn’t that what we’re always saying?

But now I realize that not speaking on this does no one any favors. So, I’m done with that. From here on out:

No more pretending that I don’t see so much of my own experience as a queer woman of color reflected in these characters.

No more silently stewing as these characters I identify with constantly get called crazy and evil.

No more quietly denying my womanism when analyzing these characters or how fandom responds to them.

No more turning a blind eye to how race, gender, sexuality and neurodivergence play a role in how these characters are vilified by their source material and their fandoms.

No more prioritizing everyone else’s life experience but mine when discussing these characters.

You don’t have to like my faves. They’re my faves, not yours, so that goes without saying. But I’m not holding my tongue anymore because it’s more convenient for you.

[arihi]

NaNoWriMo #15: Othering

I am, if I had to be honest, feeling a bit uncharitable today - which means that I probably shouldn’t be writing this post, but I have a boatload of errands today and I’m taking this break to write this, so it’ll be shorter anyway. Let’s talk about how people, most often in online communities, step over the line that is celebrating one anothers’ differences and land in ‘invalidate others’ experiences because we don’t know how to distinguish pride in our own identities from a sense of superiority over others because we have the emotional maturity of a 12 year old’ territory. And how, at heart, everybody has the potential to be a bully.

We are all individuals and therefore focus more on our lives and what impacts us more than we sometimes do on the people around us, never mind people that we don’t see or know about. This is okay! This is good. You need to focus on yourself. If you avoid your issues by compulsively fixing other peoples’ problems or begin to define your self-worth by how you can serve others, that’s not great! I know somebody who has a lot of problems but avoids it by love-bombing and bending over backwards for acquaintances that they were not nearly as close to as they thought they were, and it was very off-putting to the people around them. Then they would loudly, passively aggressively talk about how all they did was try to help them and how ungrateful others could be and didn’t they know that they had problems too?? And that they were pushing those problems aside to be a GOOD FRIEND? Note: Nobody asked them to make those ‘sacrifices’. Being a good friend is more than trying to lavish others with praise and gifts. They viewed themselves as a martyr and never stopped to think about self-growth because the thought that they were in the wrong was inconceivable. It was extremely unflattering.

But, I digress, and that’s not even what I’m annoyed with today! And I am trying to choose my words carefully, because it can be a sensitive subject, and I’m not very good at thinking thoughts through so I don’t want to give off the wrong impression. Queer spaces, kinky spaces, neurodivergent spaces that are not the neurotypical cisheteronormative culture and society that we know and criticize? Have a problem. The problem is sometimes we come to these spaces online and we are invigorated. Queer folk, kinky folk, neurodivergent folk - we’ve all got something about us that isn’t the “standard” (and I know that’s not a great word, but something has gotta be short for the ‘neurotypical cisheteronormative culture and society that we live in’). it is unfortunately more common for people ‘outside’ the norm to not have experienced great things in life due to their differences. So when we are around communities built around these differences, and we see, maybe for the first time, a variety of others who are similar? Who have gone through these problems? When we see queer folk who have been cast aside by their blood families and made their own found families? When we see kinky nerds who are into the same weird things we are? When we see others who suffer from invisible illnesses and talk about struggles that we’ve also experienced?

God, we are EXCITED.

And this is why I’ll always say that for all the negativity social media brings, it’s still always going to be a net positive for me. It provides these opportunities to bring others together, to empathize with people you wouldn’t have otherwise known about, and on and on, you know the drill. These communities bring life to people. These communities have kept people alive. They’re great. We celebrate our different identities and begin to feel this warmth that maybe we didn’t have previously.

But then that sometimes swings too far to the other side and people who should rightly accept and take pride in themselves start to, how to put it...be giant raging dicks! They take their experiences, their hardships, and yeah - they’ve gone through a lot. But it becomes a sort of ‘I’ve been through a LOT and therefore things that I experience are more RAW, more PURE than you who has experienced NOTHING!’. Does that make sense? Let’s rephrase it. It comes out as “polygamy is inherently more loving and better that monogamy”. It comes out as “my 24/7 D/s relationship is deeper and we are more connected to one another than your vanilla relationship”. It comes out as queer spaces for some reason EATING themselves alive and fighting over ace/aro identities. Sometimes it comes out as people using neurodivergency as an excuse for their actions and blaming others for not understanding them, ignoring the fact that the people who have condemned their actions are ALSO neurodivergent. Your identity truly honestly does not get to justify every single one of your shitty actions, y’all. I’d say ‘be an adult’ here, but people, once again, have the emotional maturity of 12 year olds so apparently you can’t!!

I have this thought in my head that I still don’t think I can quite put into words. But it’s this feeling that you have pride in yourself and it’s okay to be proud of yourself - but that maybe for a long time, you did not have this pride. And maybe previously when you were kicked and pushed down by society, you developed a sense that what happened to you was wrong. And it was wrong. But now that you are proud of yourself, for the first time maybe ever, and you feel good about yourself - you start to conflate feeling good with being right. And you start to weirdly hold yourself as this rubric to which others should adhere to, and if they don’t well...it’s okay, but they’re not really experiencing life as well as you do. At least, that’s what I’m assuming people who do that shit are going through. You see it a lot - I’ll use the example here of nerd gamer boys. They may have been bullied as children, and that wasn’t great. But they start to take pride in their identity and now THEY’RE the ones on top, and now a lot of them whine about girls on streams or queer representation in games because it’s too political, or whatever the new controversy of the week is. What it really boils down to is that once there’s the opportunity to be in the in-group when so long you were not, so many people TAKE it and PLAY INTO it by becoming the bullies. By making more and more in-groups and excluding others because it feels weirdly nice to belong to a small group that judges all the others. Because that power and sense of belonging can be intoxicating.

This has already gotten a lot longer than I meant to. I guess it has really been weighing on my mind. And honestly I could write so much more about this. But this is a NaNoWriMo and I’m not in the habit of making this terribly long about a tiresome topic to talk about. So I’ll try to wrap up.

Just, you know. It’s weird. It’s weird that queer twitter can be SUCH a shithole and that lesbians have to mute the word ‘lesbians’ because there is so much dumb discourse on it, and it’s weird that queer communities get so wrapped up in their online spaces and their warped version of purity culture that they eat themselves alive, somehow oblivious to the fact that ‘standard’ society in real life only BENEFITS from these seeds of discord. It’s weird that kinky spaces talk about consent and how your kink is not my kink and that’s okay, and then turn around and judge other kinks because they have different risk profiles, or because those kinks are ‘too light’. It’s weird that neurodivergent spaces sometimes gatekeep one another with outdated definitions and diagnoses (that are ALSO outdated and are often only accurate to a white male patient!!!!!) and sometimes use their neurodivergency as hotkey excuses for their behaviors and never try to grow as individuals.

I’m someone who often says that I love individuals, but people are EXHAUSTING. And sometimes I feel that most days than others. But that’s also maybe my own version of othering those that I do not know personally and assigning them to the easy definition that is ‘a group that I do not want to get to know any more beyond pleasantries’ because it’s easier to group people into easy categories. And that might be on me.

But, god. People are SO, SO fucking exhausting.

[neurodiversitysci]

Advantages of being neurodivergent?

I’m going to describe a way of thinking about being neurodivergent that has been gradually emerging for me this past year and a half. 

There are many ways to think about being neurodivergent. Telling your disability story is one of the most important and personal decisions you can make. So, even more than usual, your mileage may vary. Also, there are a lot of ways this perspective can be misunderstood. I’ll do my best to clarify, but it’s possible people skimming might think I’m saying something hurtful or triggering. If you’re only up for skimming right now, scroll past. I don’t mind.

...

Being neurodivergent is hard.

Sometimes, it’s hard because the world is designed for people with brains unlike ours. We face pressure to hide who we are, and we’re expected to do things that our brain wasn’t meant to do all day while making it look easy.

Sometimes, it’s hard because our brains betray us. We want to get up from the chair and make dinner, but the connection between our brain and body isn’t working. We want to start that creative project we’re excited about but sit staring at an empty screen for hours. Countless times a day, we forget midway through an everyday task what we were doing, leaving a mess and nothing finished. We lie in bed in fatigue and pain when we want to go out to work, run errands, or see friends.

But what if the very difficulty of neurodivergence was an opportunity?

I don’t mean “opportunity” in the sense of “ADHD is a gift” or “I love being autistic.” These are good feelings to have. But the struggle itself could be meaningful, even if you see no advantages to your neurodivergence.

It means the Hero’s Journey (or Heroine’s Journey) is our birthright.

What makes a hero(ine) is confronting difficult situations and doing the right, but hard, thing. That might mean confronting fear while facing down a dragon. It might mean speaking the truth even if everyone rejects you for it.

I think most people have moments where they have to choose between the easy thing and the right thing. Ask anyone who’s tried to go to the gym first thing in the morning or give up coffee. But for us, everything can be hard, even painful. So the heroic moments are both more obvious--and more numerous.

We have opportunities to become hero(in)es multiple times a day, every day.

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?” -Jalaluddin Rumi

We can have some of the clearest mirrors in the world. (I DON’T mean that we shouldn’t feel hurt or be sensitive to the sandpaper).

I DON’T mean that we should just “push through everything” with sheer willpower. Sometimes the hard but right thing to do is to rest and care for ourselves--especially if everyone’s telling you to work harder. Sometimes the best strategy is to befriend the dragon rather than fight it. I mean acting according to our values as best we can. Stepping into the boots of a Hero or Heroine means we’re not "putting ... life on hold waiting for a cure.” We’re doing what we care about, however overwhelmed or unprepared we may feel. 

I often feel discouraged because I keep growing and learning new skills, but life gets harder faster than I can improve myself. It feels so unfair that most people get to find an equilibrium in their thirties or so, and for me, my family, and other neurodivergent people I know, it just keeps getting harder with no end in sight. But what if feeling like running to stay in place is just what it feels like to “level up” in life? What if living in a neurotypical world means we have to “level up” more than the average person?

Then there’s the meaning the struggle brings.

We can work on the world. We can try to change the world so other neurodivergent people can have a happier, safer life. 

We can work on ourselves. We can practice being proud. We can learn to work with our brain so we can accomplish as much as possible with the brains we have. We can explore our interests, develop new skills. 

(Note that I did NOT say fight to “overcome our disabilities” or become “normal.” Even if that were possible, it would mean turning ourselves into a copy of everyone else. Conforming. Assimilating. No thanks. I mean becoming a happier and more capable neurodivergent person).

Yes, of course we can pursue any purpose in life. Our life mission might have nothing to do with disabilities at all. We can pursue all the purposes neurotypical people can, plus our brains drop extra ones in our lap.

...

ASIDE: Coming to this perspective has been a struggle, and sometimes I have trouble holding onto it. I grew up in a high-pressure upper-middle-class suburban environment, absorbing the idea that one should be happy and healthy all the time. If you’re depressed? Something’s wrong with you, you should fix it, take some medicine to fix the chemical imbalance. (Taking antidepressants definitely helped and I’m glad I took them, but I took them for the wrong reason, and my expectations were unrealistic. Depression can mean real struggles with the world or finding meaning that are a natural, maybe a necessary, part of life. It’s not always or only a chemical imbalance. Antidepressants can make it easier to work through the content of depression. The problem was my belief that life can and should have no depression in it). If you feel like doing a few things is painfully hard and overwhelming while all your high school and college classmates are doing a lot more with seemingly little struggle and fatigue? Something must be wrong with me; college is supposed to be the most fun time in your life. 

Without this perspective, I’d never have been diagnosed as neurodivergent. But I’d probably believe in myself more. I’d probably be stronger.

I know people who grew up in a less affluent environment who expected struggle and pain, physical and emotional, to be part of life. They have their own problems, but they don’t shy away from pain or struggle. They know they can handle it, because they always have.

So, what I’m saying here might seem obvious to folks like @clatterbane or @withasmoothroundstone. It might not be to some of the high school and college students I hear from here, who sound like I did.

,,,

Even if nothing in the outside world changes, I will feel happier and contribute more to the world if I see myself as a Heroine with something to offer, not a rat running on a treadmill barely stopping to breathe. I have some overwhelming months, maybe even years, ahead. It might help to remind myself I’m just descending to the underworld to prepare my gift to the world. If you want to take a Hero(in)e’s path too, welcome! it would be good to have company on the journey.

[donatellalejandra]

I just graduated and that means I literally survived.

Tw: Trauma, Suicide, Abuse, abuse by authority figures, depression, and violence.

School was hard. Like way too hard for anyone to deal with. It wasn’t a fun time for most of it, there were parts that were just me fooling around in a photo studio, but the other parts, in classrooms with teachers who didn’t understand depression episodes, didn’t understand anxiety, didn’t understand neurodivergent folks, teachers who deliberately used fear tactics in order to gain order in the classroom and cause long lasting trauma on children the ages of 7 to 12.

That was school for me. It wasn’t all about learning math, French, sciences, it wasn’t about the curriculum being assigned. It was about getting through the day without feeling like you were a burden, without feeling like you were insignificant, without feeling like you didn’t belong anywhere. That’s what school was like, that’s what school taught, how to survive trauma.

No one helped, I may have shown a side of me in art classes that would suggest I was suicidal in high school, and I most likely was, but when they saw the poems I wrote and put me on a watch list they met my depression and suicidal thoughts with anger and disappointment. The anger and disappointment was mostly from my parents, and the principal at the time had me come into her office to talk about it. I had to say that it was a love poem even though it had imagery of sadness and hopelessness. Had to say this is how I express love. Because that’s how it worked for me back then. I was still a tender nerve after elementary school.

I didn’t know how school worked when I first went into it as a young kid. I just thought you sat in a room and followed what the person at the front was saying. French classes in kindergarten weren’t like that. Mostly because I lived in a house of people who only spoke English and Tagalog, I didn’t know that many words in French. The teacher would say to me that I was to be punished for not knowing what she was saying. I was marked as the class clown for not understanding her. It kept happening as I grew up into the next grades. I’d cry in class asking why no one would help me understand what anything meant, and they would scorn me and tell me, “You should know this by now!! Why don’t you know this already?! Didn’t you learn anything?!”

It broke me. And I was only 8 years old. I was a child who didn’t know anything, but to not ask for help, and to try and get through everything without getting yelled at by someone. Sneak around, forge signatures if you have to, make them think you’re an actual good person. Because obviously if you’re a good student you’re a good person. And if you’re not, well it’s too bad then, you don’t respect or understanding, you just get yelled at.

Moving up through elementary school it didn’t stop, it got worse. Grade 5 and 6 were the points of extreme trauma. My grade 5 teacher would raise his hand at kids who couldn’t get the answer right. We were all scared of being hit by him. My grade 6 teacher was more nefarious with her technique. No matter what you did she would yell at you. If you got the wrong answer she would yell at you and scorn you for being dumb, and if you got the right answer she would scream at you because holy shit one of these dumbasses finally got it right! You would pray that the project was done well, otherwise she would call your name out as she was grading the papers in front of the class, look right in the eye, and rip the paper up 4 times before tossing it in the recycling bin. She didn’t scream at those people, she just gave them a scornful stare. We all broke in that class I believe. I broke too.

I had teachers in high school ask me why I was forging signatures, why I wouldn’t ask for help, why I was doing so poorly. I can only tell them that I couldn’t ask for help, that I would be punished if I ask for help. They would reassure me and tell me I could ask for help, but I knew that I couldn’t just do that. It was engraved in me the trauma of everything that happened before. And in junior high the environment became that of a prison yard. You had to toughen up, get into a few fights, show people you can take a punch, take a hit, and get up and hit back harder. I remember having my face stepped on and my glasses break, and then tripping that guy to the ground so hard the ground shook, and the air left his lungs. It was all in good fun though, right? Just learning to be a man in the school yard. Get bruised, and get scrapped, and get bullied, and turn that trauma into energy to get through the days.

I became toxic. It was a way for me to survive that point. If not, I surely wouldn’t have survived those days.

It was only in my 5th year of high school when it weighed heaviest on me. It was the darkest point in my whole high school experience. It was the time when I decided living was pain, and only pain. There was no hope, and no light, and I was lost. I hated myself, but loved everyone else, so I gave friends my lunch money, or bought them candy from the machine, or bought them lunch. I didn’t eat. I didn’t take care of myself. In gym class I would run the 5k test at top speed hoping my heart would burst, hoping I would just die running, just die in the middle of the suburbs where nobody knew me, and scoop me up and put me in a hole for me to rot. I was falling asleep in class a lot. I was isolating myself more. I just wanted to die, because nothing mattered, because the world only knew pain and how to be horrible. I wasn’t dying fast enough. I didn’t want to hang myself and I didn’t want to cut myself because that would be too sudden. If I was to die, I chose to die in the most pain I can possibly imagine, because it’s what I deserved, it’s what the world taught me. And everything I knew about the world is what I learned in school. The trauma had mounted, and it was the end, I hit bed rock, and there’s nothing more to do, but wait for the day, the day when I was finally gone.

I wasn’t dying fast enough. A voice came to my head and said that. I had to make a decision. Either stay at rock bottom and wait to die, or live a little. I didn’t have to do a lot, I just had to do something, anything, to live. So I decided to try that since I wasn’t going anywhere.

And then I learned to pick myself off the bed rock and claw my way out of my hole. I became part of the play, met one of the most amazing people in my life who I then I called my girlfriend, and now I call my best friend. I have friendships that lasted and ones that didn’t, and the voice in my head got me through it all.

CEGEP had its ups and downs, but it showed me that I had worth, because of the people there who would see me as a friend, and who would love me to the ends of the Earth, and remember me for days to come. My depression, and trauma led me down paths of being easily manipulated around that time. It put a hole in my side from surgery, and it left me understanding that some people just want to control people to their core. I would hit rock bottom again and again, but I would rise up again and again.

University wasn’t something I wanted. My whole school experience was something I didn’t want. My parents wanted me to get a bachelors degree in something rather than start a photography business based on my professional photography degree I worked really hard to get in my last three years in CEGEP. I was living with them at the time so what I wanted wasn’t going to happen. University had its points of feeling like I didn’t belong, very memorable feelings I felt at the start of my academic career. I did make friends, and we all got through it together, but academia showed it’s ugly head to me in those last years more than ever. Not in the form of trauma, but in the form not caring about that trauma. The way academia works makes it so that you have to follow a certain set of rules, and if you don’t, then you don’t understand the curriculum, and since the curriculum has to do with what’s happening in the world that means you don’t understand the world. I wasn’t a child anymore, I went through all that already and understood that what I learned in school was nothing compared to what I was going to learn out in the world. To academia it doesn’t matter if you’re depressed, if you neurodivergent, if you’re disabled, if you’re from another country, if you’re poor, if you’re sick, if you’re family is in trouble, all of it doesn’t matter to academia, because everyone is like everyone to academia, and if you don’t follow like everyone else does then obviously you don’t belong there, or anywhere for that matter. Because without a ‘proper education’ you don’t get a job, you don’t get a job you don’t get paid, you don’t get paid then you don’t get to live, and you’ll die because you don’t matter to academia, because you couldn’t hand in an essay on time, or write a critical summary according to a teachers convoluted outline, or you couldn’t get to class because the weight in your chest was keeping you in bed, or you couldn’t attend school because you had to spend money on trying to survive rather than pay for another semester. There are so many reasons. I know they’re valid, but academia doesn’t.

I graduated from university on Monday. There was a convocation, all us who met the requirements to graduate put on the designated robes, held our barcodes out to the scanner back stage, and once we scanned our way to the front of the stage we had our names called out, our hand shook, our diploma given to us, and a pin as a parting gift. I was happy to see the people getting their diploma, people who I met in different points of my life, who were either customers at my work, who I played basketball with on the weekends, or old classmates, people I used to know from high school or CEGEP. I was happy to see them. The ones who saw me were happy to see me.

They all cheered and say, “We did it!! We’re done!” And I didn’t do that much cheering. I was happy it was over. I held the envelope in my hand that held my diploma, and thought about what it meant to be holding it. It meant I was integrated enough to live in this world, supposedly. It meant that it promises me a good job, supposedly. What I think it could mean is not a congratulatory pat on the back that said, “Congratulations!! You’re future is bright and full of promise!!” It felt more like a receipt, or a document with words on it that meant nothing to me. I learned what I could, but what I learned most was how to survive my trauma that academia put on me. How to survive everything else too, from my parents to horrible people to myself.

This diploma is not a trophy, it’s not a pat on the back, it’s not a good job. It’s a cold, icy breath that groans at me, and tells me with an evil grin, “Congratulations. You didn’t die. Yet.”

[ltwi]

I want to tell people (a list of truths about myself)

Tomorrow is my 18th birthday. I never thought I would get this far, so I wanted to celebrate by making a list of things that are true for me. Some of these things are common knowledge, some are not. I like to share things with others in hopes that it helps me become more proud of who I am and who I've become. :)

Tw: I'll list them before each point. Some points are pretty heavy and some aren't. Please feel free to let me know if I need to add any, I'll do it as soon as I can

Also this is pretty long you do not have to read all of it or any of it for that matter, I'm just typing out all the feels

1. I'm queer/pansexual and transmasculine! I think those are the labels I want to use but those could change and that's okay! I think my gender is pretty common knowledge but my sexuality? Who knows

2. I'm almost a year on testosterone! Woo! I don't know if I'm going to stay on it for much longer because I'm pretty happy with where I'm at, but I'm not sure.

3. Tw: family issues, harassment?.......……........................................................................................Wow my relationship with my family is very complicated. It has very little to do with my queer identity (which I'm very lucky for), and a lot to do with not respecting my boundaries. I won't hug most of my family. I feel like I can't trust a lot of them because of my boundaries with hugging and other things being very forcibly crossed in the past. I definitely have some bio-family based trauma in my life that I'm learning to deal with. I might feel uncomfortable talking about my extended family sometimes and this is why.

4. Because of no. 3, I'm very picky with specific people touching me. It may not look like it, especially around my friends who i (for the most part) really enjoy hugs from. It's not your fault if I say no to physical contact.

5. Tw: mental health discussion......................................................................................................................................................... I have bad anxiety, OCD, and depression. My OCD has actually been getting a lot better lately! Which I'm really proud of! It so much the other two but I'm trying to take better care of myself in regards to those things.

6. I got top surgery in march! Again, a few of you know this. It was such an amazing experience. My mom helped me pay for it, which i am so so grateful for. I just wish so badly that everyone that needs gender-affirming surguries can get them, as soon as possible, and have as good of an experience as I did. I am struggling with feelings that I didn't "deserve it," as so many folks need it and have been waiting so much longer than I have. Although getting this surgery was definitely a matter of my life for me, if i could have "gifted" the experience to someone else, I would have given it away immediately.

7. I don't tell many people this because of the stigma attached to this, but I am autistic! And I'm learning to be proud of that, because when I first found out I was quite ashamed. When I say I'm autistic I mean that I'm on the autism spectrum. That means a lot of different things for different neurodivergent people, and if I'm being honest I'm still learning what exactly that means for me.

8. I rarely ever say "I love you." But I do want to say it now, because even though I may not see every one of my friends all the time doesn't mean you don't mean the world to me. Your friendship means so much. I love you ❤️

[veado-bela]

ASD parenting.

I’ve been doing a good deal of thinking about K, in regards to the ABA debacle. I think the reason why I feel so lost with K is a weird set of internalized ableism. My mother has a chronic mental illness, and she royally fucked me up. I have a chronic mental illness, and am gonna fuck MY kids up, by default. Coupled with Kaedin’s Dx, and the complete isolation I’ve felt since K was first born, I’m constantly second guessing myself. Which is ridiculous, because a handful of my friends and exes are on the ASD, I have sensory processing issues (even though I’m not on the spectrum), I taught in extra needs classrooms before my back got thrown out by a student, and despite my feelings of distance and issues with relating to a vast majority of people, I am slightly gifted when it comes to psychology, it’s applications, and understanding people’s minds. I’ve. Got. This. Except I don’t. I did not have to worry about fucking up my ex for life. I did not have to worry about fucking up my students or friends for life (except that I did/do worry). I did not have to worry about any of those people. And even if I did worry (because I always do), the sole burden was not on ME. I’ve finally stopped saying he has PDD-nos because I’m getting exceedingly exhausted by having to explain that yes, it’s on the ASD spectrum, and no, it’s not “Asperger lite”. I’m sorry, but “Autism 1″ is so fucking broad and vague. What TYPE of autism? Labels fucking matter. And I can spot that shit a mile away. Meeting someone at a gig and getting an intense urge to ask if they want joint compressions, because they’re obviously having a severe anxiety induced stim. But, “Hey practical stranger. Can I squish your elbows and such? It will likely help.”, seems to be a strange introduction. And yeah, she’s currently getting an eval for Asperger’s. But anyway, my kid’s gonna be okay. My ex’s family just isn’t going to understand K. They refuse. But we have a biiiiiig ol’ extended family of neurodivergent folks and queer folks and all sort of people to connect with. And I’m still scared that because I have bipolar that I’m gonna screw up both my children. I need to stop thinking that. I really do. It undermines my past experiences and capabilities. I’m not my mother. I know when I need help. I know that playing helpless and clueless will NOT benefit my children. I know that there’s a difference between excuses and REASONS. But because of med issues this past week or two, I’ve been up and down and up and mostly down. A little dissociation and issues with executive functioning. And I constantly worry what that’s doing to them, especially K, who needs structure. NEEDS structure. Then I think positively about it. I’ll be able to empathize with his sensory issues. It makes it a little bit easier for him. But I don’t want Z to feel “othered”. And I don’t want this to turn into a case where K and Z are comparing themselves to one another. Or building resentments. Or fighting for my attention. And we’re back to square one.