#idk if I was in charge of tumblr and I tried to name it smth like Ryeposting or Spidey-_Sensing

[disconnected-dragon]

Diversity win! The billionaire that was given free reign to indulge his hyperfixations at an early age and so thinks it’s gonna turn out great if he rams his interests into every aspect of the MULTIMEDIA COMPANY HES RUNNING is autistic!

im-- im just trying to process this "twitter rebranding to x" move like-- WHY is elon so obsessed with the letter x?

he named his cars x. he named his rockets "SpaceX". he maybe got booted out of paypal partially because he tried to name it x. he named his KID x.

and now he's trying to rebrand TWITTER, the brand so ingrained by now they got us to call tweets TWEETS, into x too????

what IS WITH this man and the letter x? why does it have him in such a chokehold???

[culminada]

scrolling autistic Tumblr and not relating to anything anymore.

Even though I know I'm autistic. It's all sensory sensitivity, anxiety, inability to be authentic, difficulties unmasking, experiencing ableism, unusual connection to animals (?), "stop saying autistic people have never had sex", etc.

Autistic people ARE more likely to be asexual, and I'm one of them! It feels invalidating when people complain abt other people's headcanons of autistic people never having had sex. I'm autistic and I've never had sex.

I was raised in an accepting home and homeschooled. I have never experienced someone invalidating my autism when I come out. I have never experienced someone not believing me about an autistic symptom. I have always been encouraged to be myself and express myself authentically. I don't struggle with anxiety. I feel like I can express myself authentically with my friends (autistic and neurotypical). I don't avoid social situations with them, in fact I seek them out.

I was a later teenager before I ever had to mask. I speedran 'learning to mask' in 3 years in a hostile environment (hostile meaning cliquish and normal (derogatory)) and now? Honestly it doesn't feel like masking anymore? It can be hard to initiate interaction with someone I don't know and I usually avoid it, but social cues? Just feels like learning another language. But I CAN learn it. It's a complex set of rules to be learned. I used to not be able to recognize people I'd talked to before. Now I can do it fine, no problem. I'm much better with names, too. Interaction with other autistic people feels easier, but it's still interaction.

With my neurotypical friends and family I'm very relaxed and I don't worry about masking unless it's an emotionally-charged situation (and even then, I DO want to show support and I know how, it just feels like translating what I want to communicate into a language that they'll understand and feel. It's an act of love and care for me, not a burden or smth I'm anxious about.) Social interaction doesn't cause me stress like it used to. (And how much of that was the cliquishness of the place I was at?)

And I'm not struggling to fit in a world that wasn't built for me. Neither I nor my family nor my culture expects me to get a job. The last time somebody asked if I was graduated yet or what grade I was in, and I tried to explain the convoluted mess for the umpteenth time, my mom just shrugged and casually declared me graduated. Ig I graduated in some random person's kitchen one Sunday afternoon. I'm not going to college and I don't need a job. I don't have to stress about half the things my autistic peers do.

I don't experience sensory sensitivity, like I've said.

I hyperfocus so hard I DONT notice all the little things; distracting sounds, etc. that even neurotypicals notice.

Sometimes I feel like I have the opposite of all the autistic symptoms.

What ARE my symptoms then?

Inability to start and stop tasks. Special interests. Stimming. Rigid thinking. Missing social cues. Lower empathy. Caffeine doesnt effect me. Hyposensitivity. Greater need of sleep. Distress when things change. Difficulty adjusting my expectations when circumstances change. Missing the bigger picture (esp in social situations). Needing to re-hash every social interaction in my head after the fact.

And those symptoms are mild, too, in the sense that they don't impact my life a whole lot. Maybe I just have kind friends who don't mind the occasional missed social cue or oversharing? Executive dysfunction is the worst symptom (in the sense of negatively impacting my life), and maybe oversleeping compared to neurotypicals. Am I even autistic??

I don't know, AM I masking and don't realize it? Bc I definitely used to have major social trouble.

My friend who is autistic is very sure that I'm autistic, but idk if that's just because I can speak the autistic language easily? I remember before I knew I was autistic and she told me she was, and I mentally switched my script from 'normal people (derogatory)' to 'autistic person (yay, less complex!)'

At the time, I saw it as just another script. An easier one for sure, one I understood (even just from seeing posts online. There's just one rule: be straightforward. And maybe let her info dump sometimes. And be aware of potential sensory difficulties.). It felt more natural; like the way I always communicated at home. like I could stop masking.

But I don't have any scripts at all now. I don't mask. I just interact. I know how my autistic friend interacts. I know how my neurotypical friends interact. And I just DO! The interaction!

What do yall think? Is this masking?? Aaaaahcjskfjskfjd