#saw everyone else including myself be like her pronouns are she/her and went no. diagnosed they/them

[plushri]

Just remembered a (cishet) guy I knew last year who exclusively they/themed me even though (for the purpose of this conversation) I am a cis woman and everyone in this friend group used she/her for me and I had a she/her pronouns badge... what was that lol

[monstersw1thv1bes]

Sources:

+ i looked on the national library of medicine but i can't find the link now.

I also used this website, but it isn't in english:

People telling me I'm being "ableist" when all I'm saying is "hey, these are the symptoms of NPD according to the DSM-5 and if someone treats you that way, that is abuse" are either young and have never been in a proper, long lasting relationship where you think you're genuinely going to spend your entire life with this person, or only support people with NPD in theory but would crumble if they were actually treated like a narcissists black sheep.

Personally I endured a relationship with my ex for a long time because I thought the way she treated me was her autism (she was not diagnosed with NPD until after I stopped talking to her, I had to hear about it from a mutual friend who also dropped her after I was gone and they became the black sheep) and I was convinced if I didn't try to work through these problems, that I was being ableist. Fuck that. Abuse is abuse no matter the reason.

I was manipulated into thinking I was being childish when I tried to talk about my boundaries. I was manipulated into taking care of the entire house. I couldn't say no to sex because I believed she simply wouldn't stop, just as she didn't stop when I told her not to bite me. I was also coerced into sex when I told her ahead of time I didn't feel like it. I was made to seem like an evil, ungrateful bitch to all my friends because my ex made it seem like she was taking care of me and she just wanted some peace in return (at the end of it we rarely ever spoke. i was basically her maid) when I took care of the cat, cleaned, cooked, did (and paid for) groceries, wasn't allowed to go outside and got yelled at when all I wanted was a damn hug. She'd walk around the house naked when I told her I was uncomfortable or when my family was about to come over any minute, she made me lie to everyone and say my bruises were lovebites (i still think that in her fucked up mind, they were), she'd vent at me about all of her problems including a child accusing her of grooming(!!!) and then get mad at me when I stopped smiling because I was having a bad day. I once tried to tell her I was unhappy in our relationship and she told me I always acted only out of emotion and she saw things far more clearly than I did, then basically went on to invalidate everything I was feeling until therr was nothing else I could say.

That is not even to mention how she forced me to be someone I wasn't. She changed my name, chose my pronouns and told me how I could and couldn't dress. And those are just the basics of how she made me act like a person I wasn't.

I had to move out, then go back to my own country on the other side of the world and announce I was working on my mental health, and then she ghosted me. But at that point I was so deep in it that I didn't even want her out of my life. I truly thought if I just fixed myself and I became a better person, that we'd go back to how things were and I'd actually be happy.

And then she got diagnosed with NPD. And then she slowly lost all her friends because she kept replacing one black sheep with the next. Goodbye flying fucking monkeys. It's come to a point where I've had to block all of our previously mutual friends because they kept contacting me for my side of the story, because at the time of our relationship my ex had made them believe I was somehow the abusive one.

And you know what? I honestly think she believes it, too. I honestly think she's wondering right now why everyone leaves her. She sure blamed her ex for leaving her to my face at the time. She was never the problem when someone was mad at her. It was always the other person misunderstanding her intentions, or blaming her for no reason, or being tok childish/immature/weak to deal with her personality. She groomed a fucking child and still believed she was thr victim when that child got a lawyer involved.

It doesn't matter if someone doesn't mean to emotionally abuse you and it doesn't matter if their behaviour has a reason. It. is. still. abuse.

it's so weird bc like. my ex considered herself the female wilbur soot (i was introduced to wilbur through her). and she lovebombed me the first month of our relationship. she consistently continued to have sex with me when i said no or even instigated after i'd already told her not today. she bit me painfully to the point of bruising. is it a narcissist thing? or is it just that she was so obsessed with him that she got into his brain and shared all his traits?

[agenderhyde]

i got less than five hrs sleep before work and was seven minutes late. still thinking about things.

i could’ve just avoided some of this stress altogether if i wasn’t scared. afraid. worried. worried that it wasn’t that big of an issue, and that i could live with---- with being read, always, as female, just one w/ short hair, and that--- i’d be fine. i’d be fine.

during band camp, when we (the freshmen & staff; returning members came the next day) went around introducing ourselves, they asked for pronouns. the cis guys all said, ‘i use male pronouns’ and everyone else was she/her or ‘female pronouns’. i said she/her or they/them, but quietly. i was scared. the next day, when the returning members came, it was just ‘she/her’ for me. not wanting to stand out. scared. wanting to make friends & adjust.  meeting someone’s who’s openly genderfluid, dfab, small, with bright hair. who’s confident w/ their identity. making another friend, a trans guy, and having him be the only one who comments on my pins--- ‘say no to binaries’ and the pronoun pin. he asked if i’m non-binary and i said it’s complicated. he was the first to refer to me as ‘they’ in person. when we first met, in the dorm lobby after band camp--- i’d complimented him on the trumpets’ skit, and we talked, and he told me his identity. i didn’t say anything about myself, just told him good night and we went back to our rooms.  not telling anyone for months despite it eating at me--- and my friend noticed my pin as if on accident, and asked me about it as we went into the music building (i don’t remember why-- there was probably a kpsi meeting) and acted as if it was no big deal. but my heart raced. she asked if i wanted her to correct other people, but--- fear. words. jokes passed off as innocuous comments that make me feel less than safe.  friends---- four. waking up before work, sending a message telling them to have a good day, saying i love them--- and asking for they/them. two have been great with it so far, including the aforementioned friend who offered to correct other people, but the other two--------  grabbing dinner w/ the two friends. one asks a question about me, using ‘she’. the other friend also uses she, and i stay quiet for a few minutes. they don’t mean harm. they don’t. but i don’t correct them.  my elderly professor (cis male). never talked with him in person, only emailed; i sit in the far back corner and have spent most of the class so far hoping he wouldn’t pick on me (b/c he calls on students to differentiate b/t the effects of drugs on men vs women) but then. last monday. turning in the short assignment he’d given us, having to walk up to him in that big lecture hall and hand it to him, and he says, ‘oh, she’s taking the long way around!’ and then refers to me as ‘batwoman’ and i spend the rest of the class feeling uncomfortable and wanting to leave.  last night, helping w/ the kpsi project. being referred to as ‘she’ and feeling generally uncomfortable. they’re good people and don’t mean harm--- most are also lgbt+--- but i still feel like an outsider. because i’m not a good enough musician, or volunteer, or friend, or..... because i’m one of two(??) jewish members in the chapter.... because i don’t fit into the gender binary, and everyone else at least appears content with their prescribed role.  my mom & grandma telling me, many times over the years, that i shouldn’t say i don’t want kids or a husband, that i’ll “want them eventually.”  having become so fed-up w/ my hair’s unruliness and tangles and dandruff to where i wore it up almost every day in 10th grade, and i decided to chop it off on a whim (i don’t remember if there was another reason or not). it felt.... weird. different. good. and i kept getting it shorter & shorter every few months, despite my mom & brother discouraging me (saying i looked like a boy, as if they meant to insult me). and it’s been almost three years, and i have no plans of growing it out again. growing up w/o a lot of money and needing clothes that would last. my mom would buy shirts that were at least two sizes too big on the premise that i would ‘grow into them,’ when i stopped growing sometime early on in high school. turns out, i like shirts that are a size larger than i need b/c they hide my body & make me shapeless. batman hoodie + t-shirt = good, comfy outfit. hiding.  talking to anyone about all of this? no. too scary. too much, too soon. words. my brother mocking a member of the honors college staff for listing her pronouns in an email. my friend saying there’s something “wrong” and that she “doesn’t like” about a they/them pronoun pin we saw at the mall. my mom turning to me when we were watching cbs’ “doubt” and saying, re: laverne cox, “that used to be a man.”  doubt. maybe i am over-reacting, or imagining things, or i just like to stress myself out, or the anxiety i’m feeling is fake b/c i’ve never been diagnosed w/ depression, or anxiety, but they are there, hanging over me, drowning me, and all i can do is get through one hour, then the next, then the next.... i need to exercise, and eat healthier, and i don’t like my reflection, partially because--- i know that’s supposed to be me, but sometimes i don’t recognize it, and i don’t------ for many years i thought, rather stupidly, that b/c my chest is small & i can hide it under big sweaters and/or layers, it wouldn’t be an issue--- no one would comment on it---- enough layers meant not having to wear a (sports) bra (i never was comfortable w/ normal bras), which stretches anyway---- and i could..... i don’t know. i look a lot like my brothers, but my voice is high-pitched, squeaky. i hate it.  i don’t want to “be a boy” just as much as i don’t want to be a girl. i’m neither of those things & i’ve never really said anything ~official~ on here. i’m tired. i’m so, so tired and being constantly misgendered only adds to that.  so. i am: trans, non-binary, agender. somewhere in the middle, if the middle is neutral and the extremes are hyper-masculinity and hyper-femininity. otherwise, just not having a gender. i was given two options and chose neither.

[acuppellarp]

Welcome (again) to A Cup-pella, Joanna! We’re excited to have you and Mackenzie Mitchell in the game! Please go through the checklist to make sure you’re ready to go and send in your account within the next 24 hours.

OOC INFO

Name + pronouns: Joanna + She/her

Age: 26

Timezone: EST

Ships: Chemistry

Anti-Ships: Forced

IC INFO

Full Name: Mackenzie Leilani Mitchell

Face Claim: Janel Parrish

Age/Birthday: December 8th/ 22 years old

Occupation: Singer/Actress

Personality: extroverted, outgoing, impulsive, passionate, dramatic

Hometown: Honolulu, Hawaii

Bio: Mackenzie Leilani Mitchell (better known by her stage name: Mickey Leilani) was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to two loving hippy type parents, Meilani and Edwin Mitchell, and a sister who was 3 years older than her. Her mother was a professional dancer and her father was an artist. Needless to say, art and expression were important things in the Mitchell household. From a young age, her parents encouraged their daughters to express themselves and live their inner truths to the best of their abilities. They loved the arts and saw it as a way for them to process their emotions as well as bond as a family. If they weren’t creating as a family, they could often be seen surfing the island waves.

As Mickey got older and showed a true love of music and acting, the Mitchells did what they could to help her hone her craft (i.e., voice lessons, acting lessons). Even her older sister, Keilani, helped her sister learn her lines for local plays that she participated in. When Mickey came out in her freshman year of high school, the Mitchells literally threw her a party to let her know that they could never love her any less. The older relatives in their family may have had difficulty accepting it, but Edwin and Meilani would be damned if they did anything other than accept every part of their daughter.

As the younger of the Mitchell sisters, Mickey got into a lot of trouble for being a free spirit from everyone other than her parents. She was often called out in class for talking and given detention for debating with teachers. The girl was headstrong, and she was taught to make no apologies. While rarely rude, she did not keep herself from speaking her mind. She was a bit of a party girl as a teen as well and often snuck out to go dancing with her sister.

Getting her acceptance letter from Tisch was a great day in the Mitchell household. While her parents and sister would miss her, they knew she was getting closer to her dreams. Very much an extrovert and adventurous person, she had no fears about moving to New York and expected that she would adapt instantly. What she didn’t expect was Rose.

Rose and Mickey met in her first semester at Tisch and, though Rose will tell you that she spotted Mickey first, the Hawaii native begs to differ. Rose’s quiet, shy demeanor and that ray of light that seemed to surround her made Mickey feel her heart instantly beat faster. When Mickey saw that Rose could not only keep up with her but bring her back to a calm she sometimes needed, she was sold on their relationship. Rose’s eventual proposal was something that Mickey never saw coming but she never hesitated to say yes. Her parents and sister were beyond supportive of the engagement, because they could see that Mickey had definitely found her other half. So, Mickey’s ending of their engagement came as a surprise to everyone; Rose included.

Mickey has always been an impulsive person. Her impulsivity was part of her charm, but it could also cause her trouble and this often happened in the form of risky behavior. Three months into her engagement with Rose, Mickey started feeling… off. She was irritable and found herself doing things she wouldn’t normally do, like being overly sexual. When she wasn’t feeling that way, she was felt like locking herself in a room and hiding in their forever. Things hit their peak when Mickey found herself making out with her costar on the set of the off-Broadway production of A Walk to Remember: The Musical. They were caught by one of the stage hands, and her actions hit her like a ton of bricks. She felt like things would have progressed if they hadn’t been stopped and she couldn’t understand why. Rose was the first person she thought about when she woke up and the last one before she went to bed. Utterly disgusted with herself, she couldn’t bare the pain in her chest and ended her engagement with Rose soon after that.

Mickey ran home and was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Her parents and sister encouraged her to reach out to Rose and explain what was going on, but she couldn’t. She didn’t deserve Rose, whether she had an excuse or not. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t right. Mickey has a lot of shame about it, and has been going to therapy on a regular basis.

Her return to New York feels a little too soon even though it’s been a year, but her therapist says it’s time to get her life back. Mickey has been casted in Cruel Intentions: The Musical at (Le) Poisson Rouge as Kathryn and she’s excited to start. She’s been back for three weeks now and she’s been trying to walk into ACup to talk to Rose, but she hasn’t made it in yet. Mickey gets as close as walking up to the door before the usually brave girl turns back.

Pets: None

Relationships:

Rose Beringer: Now that Mickey is back in New York, she plans to make every attempt she can to begin a friendship with the girl. Though she still loves Rose, she doesn’t feel like she deserves her and doesn’t think she has the right to expect anything else. While she would like to say she is too mature to get jealous, Mickey will have a problem with anyone who flirts with Rose. Since she feels those emotions aren’t in her right to have, she will overcompensate by covering it up as best she can.

ACup Crowd: Mickey is probably known as the girl who randomly hides or leaves when she is at the cafe. Whether people have noticed that it is because Rose is working is another story. She probably just comes off as indecisive and kind of odd.

EXTRA INFO

Twitter name/twitter URL/description: Mickey Leilani / @mickeyleilani / Destined to leave a mark on Broadway as big as my talent!

Five latest tweets:

@mickeyleilani: Okay, the only thing missing from New York is surfing #almostperfect #bigappleheart

@mickeyleilani: Rehearsals have been intense! Time to reward myself with some pampering! #manipedi

@mickeyleilani: I love six inch heels. I love dancing. But sometimes these things don’t go together #deargodmyfeet

@mickeyleilani: Staying at a hotel for the past few weeks until I get settled hasn’t been so bad #feelingspoiled

@mickeyleilani: IT’S LEG DAY! #HELPPPPPPPPPP #gymtime

[criticalbread]

Autism Awareness Month - Day 1

Day 1.      Make yourself known.  Tell the world your name and age.  Talk about your diagnosis.  Are you self or professionally diagnosed?  Do you think self-diagnosis is valid?  When did you realize/find out you were autistic?  Post a photo of yourself if you’d like.

Hello world, my name is Lici/Leesidhe/Leeshy and though I haven’t figured out how to spell it at this point, I at least know how it’s pronounced. I’m 24 and nonbinary using they/them pronouns. 

Diagnosis is a weird thing to talk about for me, because when I first see the word I think about my self-diagnosis even though I have an official diagnosis now. I think the idea that I might be autistic was in my mind from early high school off and on, but only in passing, since I didn’t know much about it beyond “social difficulties, right? you mean everyone isn’t secretly confused and scared by everyone else all the time??” 

I started really researching and looking for information and autistic people talking about their experiences in college in my second year. I researched for a good year and a half, nearly two years, before I was really confident enough to say, “Yeah, I’m autistic.” I felt like I wasn’t allowed to say that, because I doubted everything that I thought I knew about myself. My older sister was and is emotional abusive and essentially trained me into this small, quiet thing who was afraid to move, talk, even smile wrong. I was afraid to like the things I liked, dress how I wanted, move or sit naturally, and I was constantly terrified of making a social mistake with my sister present-- which, of course, means I was always terrified, because I could never figure out what was going wrong. Looking back, a huge explosion would always greet my autistic traits or behaviors, so I learned quickly not to do things a certain way (if at all, like stimming) and essentially shut down and closed down what I couldn’t learn or suppress and did as little as possible socially.

Since I had suppressed and coached so much of myself into a new shape, I had a lot of trouble allowing myself the realization that a lot of things that were natural to me were there, if not smothered or shaped into “acceptable” forms. But in my third year of college, I had the lowest period of my to date in my first semester, and then in my second semester studied abroad in London. Experiencing such a low time where my ability to pass as NT was nigh nonexistent and then going to London, which was both joyous and full of anxiety and confronting situations I used to avoid and then discovering my honest reactions to them outside of my sister’s influence and with my newfound tentative knowledge-- towards the end of my time abroad, I was confidently self-dx’d as autistic and said “fuck it”, essentially. I wanted to relearn how to stim, reconnect to the stims I remembered from when I was a kid. It changed completely so much of how I viewed my past. I began to recognize all the bullying I went through from both classmates and my sister and how so much of it was because I was autistic. I saw now how it had shaped me, and why things could be so terribly hard that I had always been told should be easy and natural.

Part of what led to this self-dx was my increasing difficulty in a rigorous, student-driven college. Without familiar structures or clear guidance, and increasing reading and writing loads including tons of theory and jargon (which I don’t process well) I think I burnt out over and over in small bouts, and then in a huge one when my thesis became A Thing To Do. I dropped out right before my thesis was due at the end of fourth year because I couldn’t complete it. I was in crisis for about two months there at the end, just fighting to get it done. Parents, professors, and even my therapist, most of whom saw me as NT and a successful student to date, kept encouraging me and saying they knew I could do it and telling me not to try for another semester when I mentioend it. So, cheerfully bullied into continuing until I completely couldn’t, I reached a breaking point. I just couldn’t do it. No matter how hard I pushed, it wasn’t going to happen, and I was going to destroy myself trying. College academics had always been difficult and sometimes impossible for reasons I couldn’t understand-- except now I did, and I knew I needed accommodations if I was going to do this, and to get accommodations I needed an official diagnosis.

Now, this diagnosis is not the one I think of when I see the word. Getting my official diagnosis was hell. As an adult, it was so difficult and energy-consuming to find a person who could diagnosis my grown-up self. It was expensive. Insurance is confusing and, oops, actually didn’t pay for it after all. The psychiatrist who did the cognitive tests and interview seemed to never give me enough time to answer all her questions about “symptoms” when I was stupendously anxious and stressed, apparently didn’t hear me when I talked briefly about being abused and how it effected my social presentation, apparently never noticed any of my frantic stimming during the tests (rubbing jean texture, leg jiggling, foot jiggling, finger tapping palms), which I recognize are small because of abuse forcing me to suppress but also it is her job to notice gdi. 

This skepticism of my reports of stimming I then had to fight, had to apologize and take blame because she told me I should have mentioned that I had them but that I have learned to suppress them (I had in our first interview; I even performed a few verbal stims and described a dozen physical stims, then the next day she noticed none of them). The diagnosis itself-- it squicks me out having to read some of it because of the way it’s worded and what they’re looking for, how they view it, and defining traits as are just so misunderstanding of WHY autistic people do certain things or don’t do certain things or don’t have NT behavior. It was a victory that felt gross and made me self-conscious of how the people around me, including my professors, view me. I was too stressed to process all these little things at the time, but looking back? Getting this diagnosis was a nightmare, one I had to deal with while trying to tackle my thesis a second time. 

Long story short (too late, this is very long), I managed to return for my fifth year by the skin of my teeth, got my diagnosis that I had to fucking fight tooth and nail for, got accommodations just in time to do my baccalaureate exam, passed it in a flash of both glory and horrified anxiety (a bit like a combusting piece of space trash hurtling through the atmosphere without warning, oops), and graduated. 

Self-dx is so valid. I would not be here if I hadn’t self-diagnosed. I would not have graduated. I might not be alive. I definitely wouldn’t have gotten a diagnosis that got me accommodations to graduate. The moment I was able to accept myself and my years of research into autism and say, “I am autistic,” was the most important moment of my life, because it made my at times confusing, lonely, painful life make sense, and it made my at times joyous, passionate, curious, and beautiful experiences of the world make sense. Both of these things are so important because I am not strange, or broken, or weird, or terrible, and I am definitely NOT alone. I felt like I was meeting myself, a version of me more true than the one I had learned to give the world. It was such an important tool for finding some healing from my past abuse, for self-realization, for combating my internalized self-loathing and helplessness and self-criticism. I am still working hard, and I’m still struggling with a low period, and I still have my troubles and my mending to do, but I can never say enough how important it was for me to find my brain community. Self-diagnosing rocks.

My name’s Lici/Leesidhe/Leeshy, and this is very long. Here, have a picture of me to cap it off.

[Above: A picture taken during my time abroad. I am alone in the photo sitting on a wooden bench in front of a tangle of bushes and vines. It shows me from the waist up, a white person with short curly hair. I’m wearing a soft burgundy jumper and flower crown of yellow dandelions and tiny white flowers. The flower crown is crooked and about to fall apart. I am ducked forward and looking up into the camera with a nervous smile.]

[pojkflata]

My emo ass backstory

This was originally the script to a draw my life video, but I realized that it was becoming so ridiculously long that it could only work in text form

Nevertheless, I wanted to get this out of my system. I don’t think I’ve ever truly told anyone about my past in more detail than “I was bullied”, and just getting in depth about it for the first time in my life felt. Good.

CW for bullying, abuse and animal death

I was born in 1998, in a city called Helsingborg in southern Sweden, actually only a few miles away from Denmark by boat. My father worked as a cashier at the time, and my mother was unemployed. She used to breed dogs, but had to give it up when my big brother, Jakob, was born in 1997 in order to be able to raise him, and later me and my siblings. We still had some dogs around though, including one named Bandit who I adored.

During my early years, my family was struggling financially, because the only one out of my parents who had a job (my dad) had a pretty poorly paying one, and not only did my parents have me, my big brother and dogs to care about, I also had a little brother, Filip, and a little sister, Klowbi. We very rarely got things like toys or games, since my parents couldn’t afford them, so Jakob and I early showed interest in the internet as a nice way to spend our free time. The internet was a much more empty place back then, but we still found a lot of fun things to do, moreso than with the few toys we had.

When I was maybe five years old, my parents got more well paid jobs, my mother as a politician and my father in the advertisement industry, and my family’s economical situation became a lot better.

I began 1st grade in 2005, and oh jeez… I was bullied for nine entire years, and most of it stems from the fact that I was an undiagnosed autistic. Worth noting is that I was dfab, and presented as a ”girl” at that time, but it’s not like nobody noticed my symptoms just because of that. A lot of people noticed actually, but my mom did not believe them when people expressed concern.

I changed schools a lot, but I always ended up bullied, and my teachers would never support me, instead saying it was my fault for various reasons. A lot of the bullying was about harrassing me to the point that I would get meltdowns, because my classmates thought that was hilarious. I was a circus animal, in every sense of the word. Other fun stuff that happened to me in school was being asked out as a joke, being assaulted in gym class and being threatened with assault and bloody murder.

One particular story I remember takes place when I was in 7th grade. One of the popular girls asked me if I were a lesbian, and me, not knowing when to keep my mouth shut, said that I was not sure of my sexuality, and that there was a possibility I was not het. It quickly became the hottest meme that ever hit the school, and I was very heavily sexually harrassed over my statement. After four days of no peace, I decided I’ve had enough and attacked the girl. I ended up cracking her phone’s screen, and she promptly threw a fit and started playing the victim. Of course, she played the entire school, teachers included, like a piano, and I was demonized yet again.

At the time, I trusted my mother a lot, so you might wonder how she reacted to the whole thing… not ideally. She completely ignored that I was being subjected to homophobic harrassment, and instead just talked to her friends about how brave I was for being too autistic to know how to avoid giving my abusers ammunition. And yes, she chewed me out for cracking that phone screen. That was when I first realized my mother might not be as fantastic as everyone in my life had told me, and it would only get worse from that point on.

So how did I cope with being so heavily bullied? Not very well, mind you, but I still somehow survived. And I, knowing how pathetic this sounds, owe my life to the internet and my pets. I had a lot of wonderful animal friends. Those I loved the most include a Cocker Spaniel named Tim, a really fat mackerel tabby cat named Pikachu, a white cat with yellow/blue heterochromia named Kitty, and a gray tux cat named Pyret, who is still alive, actually! There was a time where Kitty was my absolute best friend. Kitty was a really antisocial and hissy cat, so it was all the more heartwarming that when no one really cared for me, at least I had a friend in a grouchy hissy cat who hated everyone else but me.

Unfortunately, that meant that Kitty despised other cats too, which became a problem when my family was forced to take in a new kitten back in 2012, the aforementioned Pyret. Kitty attacked Pyret whenever given the chance, and Pyret’s presence put Kitty in such a bad mood that she ended up attacking my at the time 9 year old sister. That was the point where my parents realized that the situation was going out of hand, so we took Kitty to the vet, and she was diagnosed with gastric cancer. The vet speculated that Kitty became unusually aggressive because she couldn’t handle her pain. There was nothing the vets could do, so Kitty had to be put to sleep.

Tim the Cocker Spaniel also suffered a similar fate: I was his very best friend, but one day, he got a disorder that affected the nerves in his eye area. That meant that slowly, his eyesight became much worse, and eventually, he recognized everyone as a threat, and reacted accordingly: aggressively. I was the only one who he could still recognize as a friend. Because of this, as well as the fact that he was clearly suffering, he had to be put to sleep as well.

Both of their deaths caused me great grief, but I’m still glad that I got to know these wonderful pets who helped me during the worst time of my life.

When it comes to coping using the internet, some of my fondest memories come from the website KPWebben, a website for a Swedish magazine directed at kids in the ages 8-15. From 2007 to 2012, the website had a community with a forum. I created a name around myself on said forum. I was spunky, snappy and not afraid to call the BS when I saw it. I was frequently questoning the authority in the moderators at the site, and I loved to make people think and question the reality around them. In many ways, on KPWebben I was allowed to be myself without facing consequences (from peers, mind you: the moderators loathed me). To some extent, I may have taken it too far, because I would often end up doing questionable things and create discourse around myself. I didn’t mind that much, though: I would much rather be known as the really cool and well spoken person that was a little too confident at times than as the human waste of space most people in meatspace saw me as.

This attitude actually gave me a lot of friends, including the person who is now my best friend and favorite person. I may have mellowed down a bit since my KPWebben days, but I still adore her.

Eventually, I graduated 9th grade and began secondary school, and somehow, I was bullied no more. But gradually, another problem surfaced in my life. My mother. Long story short, she was abusive to me. She isolated me from my friends, insulted me, and she expected me to have all the responsibility of an adult but none of the benefits. She was neglectful, as mentioned before, she wouldn’t listen to people who suspected I was autistic, and she never really cared about how I was suffering from being bullied. At times, she would even blame me for being bullied, much like my teachers would do. During this time, I realized that I was non-binary, and I had come out to my family, but my mother aggressively refused (and still refuses) to use my preferred pronouns, saying that ”it’s so hard :(” whenever I corrected her, and would scold me for correcting other people about my pronouns, because apparently me wanting to be referred to using my correct pronouns was embarrassing and annoying.

My mother also showed heavy favoritism towards Jakob and constantly compared me to him. Now, it is true that there’s only a 15 month age gap between him and I, so we are twins in everything but name. But Jakob is not me. Jakob is neurotypical and has not suffered the trauma I have. Jakob is an aspiring musician and while he hasn’t technically made a hit, he is talented and he probably will make it big. Being constantly compared to a person like that really hurts, especially when the people making these comparisions know you can’t become anywhere as good, and that they are just making these comparisions to make you feel bad about yourself.

While the bullying from my classmates was technically worse, what made my relationship with my mother so bad was the sense of betrayal. When I was younger, I thought that my mom was a real life super hero. She worked in politics and all of her motivations stemmed from her wish to make children’s lives better. She had made an extremely good name around herself, and she is a really likable person on the surface. So I didn’t know what I did wrong when she suddenly turned on me and all her talk about wanting to improve children’s lives went out the window. And her good reputation acted as a safety net as well, because no one believed me when I told them about what was going on beneath her facade.

My father was just not there. He was physically there, but he lacked a spine. He constantly enabled my mother’s disgusting actions, and always told me that she cared and that she doesn’t know how to raise me. Because a person with the kind of positive reputation my mother has cannot possibly raise an autistic child, right?

A lot of things happened to me in 2015. I was run over by a bus, for starters. I was on my way home from school, on my bike, when a bus appeared and ran over my left foot. The bus driver was breaking several traffic related laws, but they never faced any consequences despite me pressing the police to do so. The accident led to some minor fractures in the bones in my foot, but I was really lucky in that accident. It could have been so much worse. I’m still here, and able to walk, and that’s nothing short of a miracle.

I was also finally diagnosed with autism later that year, and I was enrolled on a boarding school for autistic people. This was a massive turning point in my life, because it let me move out at the age of 17 and escape the clutches of my mother. It’s far away enough from Helsingborg that my family can’t just visit me randomly, and I have my very own apartment. I still visit my family every other weekend and on breaks and such. I do miss my cat a lot while I’m here, but it’s a small price to pay for the peace and quiet and a place where no one really abuses me anymore.

There are however two downsides to this: I had be held back a year because my autism was making my studies suffer in 10th grade, before I moved to the boarding school, and I effectively won’t graduate until 2019. And Klowbi, my little sister, seems to be affected negatively by this change. We were pretty close to begin with, and me moving so far away when she was only 12 meant that she lost an otherwise ever-present friend. On top of that, she appears to be neurodivergent, but as I’m writing this, she has no access to therapy. And if that wasn’t bad enough, my mother appears to have moved on to abusing Klowbi instead of me. I don’t know too many details, since I don’t spend a lot of time with my family (and my mother seems to act as nice as she can in that slimy abusive way whenever I’m visiting). I try my very best to help my sister, because in my age, I did not have anyone who cared about me or my situation (that wasn’t an animal that couldn’t do a lot to help me), and I don’t want Klowbi to experience what I did.

[chitarra10]

I was tagged by @penaltywaltz... well, sort of... I just stole it from her. X-)

Rules: tag 20 people

The Last:

1. Drink: Milk

2. Phone Call: My mom called me to tell me that my grandpa was coming home from the hospital today.

3. Text message: My friend in TX... I wanted to make sure he was gonna be OK since he’s in the path of Hurricane Harvey... he says he’s OK right now, thank God.

4. Song you listened to: “All the Wrong Things” by Branan Murphy ft. Koryn Hawthorne... it’s a beautiful song about admitting your faults and the sincere desire to change... give it a listen, I think you’ll love it. :-)

5. Time you cried: Yesterday... my boss ripped into me for telling him I was too sick to come into work, and he demanded I come in anyway, so I sucked it up and went to work, and it was a living hell of pain and nausea, then I stopped at my mother’s house because she picked up my prescription refills from the pharmacy for me, and I was greeted by my sister ripping into me because for some God-forsaken reason, she decided that my mother should come home from work and clean the house instead of visiting her own father in the hospital, and she decided that I’m selfish and narcissistic and that I don’t care about anyone else but myself for not stopping my mother from going.  I just took the prescriptions, left the house, and broke down when I got back into my car.  And I ended up missing work today because I’m still sick AND depressed out of my mind today.  Way to lead up to my next mission trip in 3 weeks, eh?

Have You:

6. Dated someone twice: No

7. Kissed someone and regretted it: Yes

8. Been cheated on: Yes

9. Lost someone special: Yes

10. Been depressed: In the long list of diagnoses I have going on right now, depression and anxiety are among them.

11: Gotten drunk and thrown up: No... I don’t drink.

List 3 Favorite Colors:

12. Sapphire Blue

13. That teal color that you can’t quite tell if it’s blue or green

14: That indigo color that you can’t quite tell if it’s blue or purple

In the last year, have you…

15. Made new friends: Yes

16. Fallen out of love: Was never in love

17. Laughed until you cried: Yes

18. Found out someone was talking about you: Yes... one of my co-workers has been reporting every single thing I say to my boss behind my back, including the fact that I’m currently in the process of getting a concealed carry permit, which lead to a loud shouting match between me and the boss.

19. Met someone who changed you: Yes

20. Found out who your friends are: Yes

21. Kissed someone on your FB list: Sort of... Rocco isn’t technically on my FB list, but I have an entire album dedicated to pictures of him because he’s my little “fur-nephew” and I love him so much, and I kissed him on his little Beagle head when I saw him yesterday. :-)

GENERAL:

22. How many Facebook friends do you know in real life: Probably about 85%.

23. Do you have any pets: I have a “fur-nephew,” Rocco, does he count? :-)

24. Do you want to change your name: Sometimes I’d like to... I’m not exactly keen on being named after my abusive father.

25. What did you do for your last birthday: I had to work, and then I went to a local coffee house afterwards with my friend from church, and she gave me a Sherlock Holmes book for a birthday present. :-)

26. What time did you wake up: I got up at 11 because I was supposed to be at work at 12:30, but I was way too sick to do it, and I ended up spending the next 5 hours sitting on the floor in the bathroom with my phone and tablet in case anyone tried to contact me.  No one did, of course.

27. What were you doing at midnight last night: The same thing I’m doing right now... Tumblring with the TV live streaming in the background.

28. Name something you can’t wait for: My next mission is happening in 3 weeks, and I can hardly believe it’s that close already!! :-D

29. When was the last time you saw your Mom: Actually saw her?  Two days ago.  But I’ve talked to her on the phone multiple times since.

30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: My health first and foremost, and a close second is my financial situation.

31. What are you listening to right now: “Salvation” by Skillet... it’s the Eurus and Sherlock song, seriously, check it out, it’s the perfect theme song for The Final Problem.

32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: My grandpa goes by Tom because his middle name is Thomas, I work with a sales guy named Tom, and I know two Tom’s from church.

33. Something that is getting on your nerves: My current situation in general.  The stress is just piling on again when I’m trying to get packed and ready for my mission, and I need it to stop so I can concentrate on this.

34. Most visited website: Probably a tie between Tumblr and Facebook.

35. Mole/s: I have freckles of various shades of brown all over my paper-white skin, but only one on my left forearm is slightly raised like a mole.

36. Mark/s: My entire body is full of scars from the acne I had when I was a teenager, multiple cysts I had removed, and a significant amount of self harm in the form of stabbing my arms with sharp objects when I was in my late teens and early 20′s.

37. Childhood dream: I wanted to be a professional ballet dancer and an actress.

38. Hair color: The same as Benedict Cumberbatch’s natural hair color.

39. Long or short hair: A pixie cut that was supposed to look like Jennifer Lawerence’s, but because my hair turned curly once it got cut short, it actually looks like a cross between Daniel Jackson and Sherlock having a bad hair day. X-)

40. Do you have a crush on someone?: A fictional someone... X-)

41. What do you like about yourself: I dunno... the older I get, the more I feel like my greatest talent is the ability to take levels of abuse that other people could never handle.

42. Piercings: 3 in each earlobe and one 90′s cartilage pierce in my right ear.

43. Blood type: O+... as most people of Western European heritage are. X-)

44: Nicknames: Up until I was 30, everyone used to call me this particular word that used to make me blazingly, furiously angry, and I never understood why it did, but the angrier I got, the more people would say it because they thought it was funny to make me cry.  Then when I was 30, my sister started questioning me as to why I got so infuriated at the sound of that word, so I started researching a few linguistic things online, trying to see if this word was truly made up as they claimed or if there was actually something to it.  I managed to find the linguistic roots of the word, and it turns out it was actually an Albanian-influenced Italian curse meaning, “The Devil’s Ass,” with “ass” being in the context of a slave or a work donkey.  Basically, they were cursing me to be a slave to the devil every time they called me that.  Needless to say, I proceeded to angrily confront my family with the evidence I found, and told them that if any of them ever uttered that word to me, about me, or in any way, shape, or form of connection to me, that it would be the last time they ever see me for the rest of their lives.  No one’s ever used a nickname for me ever again.  And after that, they dang well better not.

45. Relationship status: Single... have been for 13 years, and honestly, I stopped looking for a relationship a looooong time ago.

46. Zodiac: Ophiuchus

47. Pronouns: She/Her

48. Favorite TV show(s): Stargate SG-1, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Star Trek in all it’s incarnations, Psych, and Saving Hope.  I might be forgetting a couple, but those are the top of the list.

49. Tattoos: None yet, but I think I’m gonna get one for my 40th birthday in 2019... I wanna get an American eagle with it’s wing around a Central American quetzal to represent how much I love Central America and doing missions work there, and underneath them, “Mark 16:15-16,” which is what’s known as “The Great Commission” from the Bible.

50. Right or left hand: Right

51. Surgery: I had all the baby teeth and 4 permanent teeth removed from my mouth when I was 11, and I had 2 pilar cysts (so far) removed from my head... but there are 3 more cysts forming on my head, and they’re gonna get removed if/when they get big enough.  Dermatologist said I’m gonna have to deal with the cyst problem for the rest of my life.

52. Hair dyed a different color: Never permanently, but I have done temporary dark brown and eggplant purple a few times.

53. Sports: Never was a sports fan... the only sports I actually like to watch is the Olympics and American Ninja Warrior, if that counts. X-)

54. Vacation: The last thing that could actually be described as a vacation was when my friend took me with her to NYC for 5 days because she was eager to cross it off her bucket list.  Before that, it was in 2001, my mother, my sister, and I took a road trip to 2 states that were an 18-21 hour drive away just for two particular food festivals, and before that, my grandmother took my sister and me to Italy after I graduated high school in the summer of 1998.  Every other place I’ve been to has been for mission work... missions are no vacation, they’re hard work, but they’re the most worth-it thing you’ll ever do in your life. :-)

55. Shoes: I have Sketchers work-shoes, a few pairs of canvas shoes, a few pairs of ballet flats, and 2 pairs of heels that I haven’t worn in over 5 years.  But all the shoes that lace up, I laced them with either black or white elastic, so now all my shoes are slip-ons. :-)

56. Eating: I ate a bowl of vanilla yogurt with some chocolate BelVita biscuits about an hour ago.

57. Drinking: Nothing... I had a glass of milk earlier.

58. I’m about to: Back to Panama for my 9th mission in about 3 weeks... this has been the most disorganized and closely cut mission I’ve ever done, but the money came in, so now it’s actually happening!!

59. Waiting for: September 16th because that’s when we’re leaving for Panama... :-)

60. Want: My health back, and my finances in order.

61. Get married: If it happens, it happens.  If it doesn’t, that’s fine, too.  Either way, I’ll be perfectly OK.

62. Career: I’d love to be able to do this missions thing for a living, but the financial support isn’t there right now.  I hope someday (soon!!) that it will be.

WHICH IS BETTER:

63. Hugs or kisses: Hugs

64. Lips or eyes: They’re both pretty essential for a functioning face, but I’d say eyes serve a more necessary function.

65. Shorter or taller: I’d like to be a couple of inches taller, maybe I might be if the scoliosis in my spine can ever be straightened out.

66. Older or younger: Physically I’d like to be younger, but intellectually, I’d like to be older and wiser.

67. Nice arms or nice stomach: My stomach has never been nice, even when I was at my skinniest, and I’ve always been OK with my arms, so I’d say I’d rather have my stomach be nicer looking.

68. Sensitive or loud: These aren’t mutually exclusive, so I think each has their place in the appropriate situations.

69. Hook up or relationship: Relationship.  I don’t go for that momentary fun and then dump them off bull crap.

70. Troublemaker or hesitant: Actually... once again, not mutually exclusive, but... neither of these are characteristics I’m OK with.

HAVE YOU EVER:

71. Kissed a stranger: Not by choice.

72. Drank hard liquor: No

73. Lost glasses/contact lenses: An unfortunate number of times in my life.

74. Turned someone down: Yes

75. Sex on first date: Never

76. Broken someone’s heart: Once... but if he truly did love me and want to marry me, then he should’ve learned sooner that I wouldn’t stand for taking a backseat to his BFF for the rest of my life.

77. Had your heart broken: Yes

78. Been arrested: No

79. Cried when someone died: Yes

80. Fallen for a friend: Yes

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

81. Yourself: There is, in fact, empirical evidence that I exist, despite so many people’s opinions to the contrary.

82. Miracles: Yes

83. Love at first sight: No... you can’t possibly learn what you need to know about a person in order to make the choice to love them from just one look.

84. Santa Claus: Every parental figure is a Santa Claus. :-)

85. Kiss on the first date: Not anymore.  He’s gonna have to earn that.

OTHER:

86. Current best friend: I’m actually not sure.  I hate to call someone a best friend who doesn’t think of me the same way, and I don’t believe that anyone thinks of me that way at the current moment.

87. Eye color: The same as Benedict Cumberbatch

88. Favorite movie: Probably a 3-way tie between Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Beyond, and The Force Awakens.

I’m tagging everyone who sees this. Everyone, please copy, paste, fill it in, and tag me!! :-)