𝙶𝚎𝚎𝚔𝙶𝚢𝚛𝚕Had a job interview today. I forgot how exhausting everything is. Masking like crazy. Trying not to stim. Forcing myself to make eye contact. All just to appear normal. Ugh.
Evan LightAdapting to my recently and late-diagnosed autism is kicking my ass.
I'm glad to have (finally, it seems) found the missing puzzle piece that explains why my life has generally been mostly a series of missteps and tragedies.
I was never built for this conformist world.
I've barely been in public spaces for 2 months apart from cycling on public trails Ever time I have been in an indoor public space, I'm confronted by painful noises, distracting visuals, and early warning signs of implosive meltdowns.
I recently visited the in-laws for my father-in-law's heart surgery. I got to experience a number of allistic invalidations and judgement of my experience. It was as though my dignity and pain just didn't matter.
Of course, they have no idea how hard it has been to succeed in this society for 49 years, while suffering constantly for no clear reason (until now) and still presenting as a mildly mental person or as a person insisting on doing the morally/ethically right thing even when inconvenient for me or for more employer—and why I'm so burnt out that I haven't worked in 2 years.
FiL bluntly asking if I've considered going on Social Security Disability (which, by the way, is an utterly humiliating and frustrating process, from prior experience with my late Huntington's Diseased wife). SisterIL initiated an interrogation about how I'm dealing with my autism, leading up to her saying, "Well, everyone has their own pain". Neither of them meant to do harm yet their remarks were so absurdly lacking empathy.
I finally snapped and told her that she has no idea how much that hurt, that I'm tired of casual denigration—particularly from family, and to either lean in or just don't ask about my experience.
The worst part of a late autism diagnosis is the emotional labor that almost every allistic implicitly expects me to do for them. Masking just leads to more anxiety while showing up authentically isn't necessarily better. I don't have the spoons to teach them about autism so my take, after two months, has slowly moved toward asking and just starting to advocate for my needs and that if people expect me to educate them that they should "do your own research of fuck off."
@actuallyautistic Not sure anyone has gotten this nerdy (but almost certainly):
I'm using o4-mini to collect various subjective sensory metrics from me several times per day over time to help me look for patterns in my CNS and develop strategies for energy mgmt and meltdown risk reduction. Already yielding wins with 3.5 days of data!
#chatgpt #actuallyaudhd #actullyautistic #autismacceptancemonth #autismawarenessmonth
@actuallyautistic TIL that my internal/implosive autistic meltdowns are a recent phenomena for me yet my *external/explosive* meltdowns have been with me most of my life.
I had my first one in months today. I recognized it immediately. It's what I used to think of as my rage. It's been at the heart of so much of the pain and misery in my life.
It's never been rage. Removing the trigger doesn't do much at all to reduce it. It sputters out and then I feel sad, ashamed, and physically like hot garbage for usually at least the rest of the day.
Here I was just beginning to make peace with myself and my autism.
Now I've found this part, a very old part, that I hadn't realized was connected until now. And I despise it.
And so there's a lot more to grieve than I thought.
@Sci_Fi_FanGirl @actuallyautistic As a late and newly diagnosed member of the club, I'm beginning to clue in that some of this new "weirdness" doesn't go away. While I'm becoming calmer in this seemingly new CNS, my thinking and behavior is different. It's deeper, more analytical, more deliberate. At times, that frightens me.
I caught myself today, talking with family, establishing a boundary for their sake, so they don't spend energy on us when they clearly need it in their current difficulty, and then changing the subject gently but intentionally to something humorous to bookend the conversation but also to lock in that boundary. Calculated but caring.
There's always a hint of a mask there, isn't there? Masking behaviors comes from fear. Yet almost every interaction between people has at least a grain of that. We attend to loved ones because, on some level, we fear either for their wellbeing, or the relationship, or our own identity, if we do not do so. So even acts of love carry the smallest grain of fear.
I suppose what I'm saying is this: masking does not seem a binary thing, there or not. It seems instead to be a continuum, asymptotic when approaching 0 and same with 1.
Write your congress people. Call if you can. Visit them in person if you can.
This is another step toward death camps for disabled people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4
#actullyautistic #actuallyaudhd https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei/114394288984003500
Weary Wulf[P] Operate from the logical and rational position that it's only reasonable to get angry over something one understands, then seek a definition of woke and how it pertains to harm. There is so much confusion! And then what? *Happy campers* should not be *frumple*, and yet rhey are. They cannot define woke, because it's more of a rallying cry, a guttural grunt (to incite ire), than anything. It's the equivalent of "Unga bunga!" as far as meaning goes.
-7
I guess I'll bite. Who am I?
💜 Wife to @Rand
🐱 Cat Mom to #BodhiTheFluffButt
💾 30+ yrs #IT • #Linux • #DevOps • #InfoSec • #ProjectManagement
🌈♾️ #ActullyAutistic • #OCD • #Migraines
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🥟 #Foodie • #Pescetarian
📚 #SciFi • #Fantasy • #Mystery
Q: How long have I been on the Internet?
A: Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch, I was there when it was written.
Konomi KittenAutism and supermarkets are literally the worst combo.
jflatnote@theautisticcoach I am #ActullyAutistic AND #ImmunoCompromised and haven’t eaten inside a restaurant since February 2020. But back when I did, I always tried to snag some kids crayons and left some crazy scrap of illustration - maybe a sketch of the inside of the restaurant, or a drawing of my anticipated meal (which is double hard for me because aphantasia).