@solunest You When You Walk In The Room Most Times

@solunest you when you walk in the room most times

just for the record i would have played wolves with you

The First King of Hyrule ✨🌿

you're not an horrible person you are 15 years old

friend asked recently how I knew I was autistic (late self dx) and after a joking answer of ‘five autistic people told me unprompted in the span of about two weeks, I settled on: I don’t.

I don’t Know that I’m autistic. What I do know is that my life makes more sense, and is easier to navigate, when I view it through the lens of being autistic.

I learnt what masking was, and started to undo the damage of 20+ years of it. I let myself stim for the first time out of joy and it was incredible. I recognised it as a regulation skill and started using it for coping. I stopped being cruel to myself about making ‘weird’ noises, I let myself ask for tone clarification from friends. I stopped thinking I was being rude by mimicking others (echolalia). I started respecting my own communication needs and differences. I started being able to communicate these with friends and loved ones, and had the language to do so. I recognised my sensory needs and was better at reducing shutdowns and meltdowns (which is also been confused by and blamed myself for in the past). I also could better identify things that were genuinely impeding on my life and ways to work with myself around them. (Social situations are easier now that I know what information I need before hand, and can prepare. I know what the difficulty involved in switching tasks is and can work with myself on it.)

Mostly I stopped bullying myself the way I’d been bullied growing up for everything that has made me ‘weird’. I stopped policing everything I did the way my parents had in an effort to ‘help’ me blend in. (I don’t resent them for this- I understand that what they did to me is likely what was done to them and they didn’t (and don’t) recognise it.)

Not a weird or broken horse, but a regular zebra.

self-flagellation and self-bullying are all bad motivators for change BTW. it can be hard to escape from a spiral but genuinely u have to be nice to urself or nothing will change