REBLOG IF YOU'RE EXTREMELY BURNT OUT DESPITE ALSO FEELING LIKE YOU'VE DONE NOTHING WORTHWHILE AT ALL

REBLOG IF YOU'RE EXTREMELY BURNT OUT DESPITE ALSO FEELING LIKE YOU'VE DONE NOTHING WORTHWHILE AT ALL WITH YOUR LIFE!

Neurotypical Person: "Just talk to people. Stop being afraid of rejection. The only way you'll fail is if you don't even try. Have some confidence."

Autistic Person: (asks whatever questions they can think of from a prepared list and the conversation ends up being awkward and forced)

Autistic Person: (infodumps about their special interest and gets labeled as annoying)

Autistic Person: (comments on something they observe and gets labeled as judgmental)

Autistic Person: (approaches random people in random places, not realizing that there are some places where people don't expect to be approached, and gets threatened)

Autistic Person: (talks to someone, misses a subtle cue that they want to be left alone, and gets labeled as disrespectful of boundaries)

Autistic Person: (tries to join someone's conversation and gets labeled as an eavesdropper)

Autistic Person: (teases someone as a joke because they've seen that that's how a lot of people interact with each other, not realizing that they don't have enough of a connection with this person to do that, and gets labeled as mean)

Autistic Person: (tries to talk to someone who's already talking to someone else and gets labeled as rude for interrupting, and waiting until they're alone to avoid interrupting isn't an option because that rarely ever happens)

Autistic Person: (approaches someone or faces in their general direction while trying to think of what to say to them, and gets labeled as a creep for hovering or staring)

Autistic Person: (talks to someone too often and gets labeled as clingy)

Autistic Person: (talks to someone, by some miracle it works and this person actually enjoys the conversation, but now they have to do it again and again and again, and they eventually run out of things to talk about or do something wrong)

Autistic Person: "I don't get it. I talked to people. I did exactly what I was told to do. And I didn't say anything sexual, anything gross, anything about death, or anything else that would be considered 'obvious'. But it didn't work. It can't be because I did something wrong, because I followed the advice exactly and so many people insisted that that's all I have to do. There must be something wrong with me. Maybe I'm just unattractive."

It's like this entire tag reads my mind

What an autistic person says: "How long is it going to take?"

What they mean: "I want to know whether to activate my short term waiting mode where I just wait and do nothing else, or activate my long term waiting mode where I occupy my mind with something else. I fully understand that both are possibilities, and I have no problem whatsoever with either one, but I want more information so I can best adapt to the situation."

What neurotypical people hear: "I am impatient and demand that everything I want happen right now. Please scold me and publicly humiliate me for it."

This is all so true and hits so hard. I don't think I've felt seen in a long time. Thank you so much for this post

so many of the transfems i know spent their time pre-transition performing a kind of lifelong exercise in self-deprivation, the goal of which was to find out exactly how little a person needed to live. they starved themselves, dressed carelessly, shunned friends, and hollowed themselves out so as not to be burdens on anyone but themselves.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-denial that so many of us once learned to rely on.

and if you are so lucky as to love a trans girl, you must insist upon her. you must insist upon her happiness, her comfort, her pleasure, and her rest, because she may still not yet know how to make those demands for herself. if you can devote any amount of energy to becoming an engine that nurtures the flame of even a single tgirl then there is a place for you in trans heaven, which as far as i'm concerned is the only one worth going to

Not to mention a lot of insurance providers don't cover a late in life diagnosis and even if they do, it's expensive.

Can't take away from something that isn't there.

Not to mention to get any support from the government or an organization most people need an official diagnosis.

My childhood trauma didn't make me stronger. it made me a people pleaser. it made me forgive way too much. it made me not speak when i'm supposed to. it made me an extreme empath.