Autistic Thoughts - Tumblr Posts

(Sorry if your question was rhetorical and my examples don't align with your experiences, friend. My autistic ass felt compelled respond because I think about this a lot.)

We live in a culture that doesn't create good listeners, unfortunately. This absolutely does not excuse your friends for not paying enough attention to your difficulties, especially if they've seen them often enough to know they're consistent, but at least in my experience medical language causes semantic misalignment that prevents neurotypical people from understanding the real nature of our difficulties.

Society assumes that there is a baseline 'healthy' type of person who, among other things, can go to work with no issues. A deviation from that baseline is ultimately tempotsry. An illness to be recovered from. Got a cold? Take some zinc and vitamin C and you'll be fine in no time! Seasonal allergies? Sucks, but take some medicine and put up with it cause it doesn't last all year! Concert too loud? Step outside and take a breather.

We're neurodivergent. The language used to describe our difficulties is the same language used to describe illness. The difference is that we don't 'recover' from our difficulties becsuse we're not sick. Society isn't constructed on either a material or semantic level to accommodate our needs. We look sick as a result, and mask to look normal. The difference for us is that masking is the deviation. It's a symptom of a culture that pathologizes any deviation from an assumed normative model of productivity.

The reason, I think, for neurotypical people needing to be reminded of the consistency and scale of our difficulties so often is precisely because they don't exist in a constant state of difficulty and we don't have language to adequeately describe how we experience difficulty. They might say they hate pickles on their burger, and where you listen to and accommodate their difficulty, they often won't be upset if you actually serve them a burger with pickles on it. They'll just pick it off and thank you for being so kind as to cook for them. Whereas for us, the pickle juice has irrevocably ruined the the burger and it'll need to be replaced entirely.

I've never understood why my neurotypical friends need to be reminded of my same difficulties every time and be met over and over again with the same reaction of surprise and the question, is it really that bad? When people tell me about their problems with something, I try to remember it and take it for granted. I may forget by accident, but I don't ask again every time if the person is really still unwell from it. So why can't they do the same in my case?

People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me

Just some thoughts

Sometimes I dream of being unable to speak. Just for a few days. No one would ask me questions anymore, I wouldn't need to start a conversation, I would be constantly listening to my thoughts. As if I no longer needed to interact with the outside world.

Maybe what bothers me is not having to talk, but that no one understands me.

I wonder what it would be like to be like Bella Baxter in Poor Things. Like, rebooted to zero. New brain, new life, new way of thinking. But in fact I'm not sure I would like it, because it would mean reliving childhood and teenage traumas. Maybe I'd better move forward with the brain I already have. I don't really know where I'm going, but at least I'm starting to understand a little bit who I am, so I'm trying to get out of it with the little information I have. I think that's what everyone do. We pretend that everything is fine, when in fact we have no fucking idea.

When I talk like that, I feel like I'm in a book. Besides, I would like this to be the case. I wonder if anyone would be interested in reading a book about my life as an autistic depressed? Obviously, I always come to say to myself that it is not exceptional enough to be told, that said I would have liked someone who has experienced the same difficulties as me to talk about it through a book. But I tell myself that if I had to write a book, I might as well write something totally different from me, just to change my ideas. Do I really want to talk to anyone else?

Maybe. To my friends anyway, or my family. But hey, we come back to the same point.

They wouldn’t understand me.

Not entirely, anyway. There is always at least a part of me that seems strange to people. And yet, I rather have the impression that it is the rest of the world that is strange.

YES! THIS!

When I was in elementary school, I tried talking to a group of kids at lunch and I’d consistently be ignored or unheard, but one time, they all turned a glared at me.

I was shocked, surprised by the reaction. I shut up and cowered, secluding myself. I thought I had done something wrong to deserve that reaction, that I had said something wrong.

So I prevented myself from speaking at all unless I have planned out my exact words perfectly in my head. Perfectionism and anxiety kept me from socializing with my peers. I analyzed my words everytime I went to speak, though it often took so long that once I had perfected my sentence, the topic had already moved on. So I just stopped trying at all, resorting to daydreaming and silently listening in on other’s conversations to entertain myself.

My dad often told me: “you are doing the world a disservice [by not socializing]” I took insult to this, thinking he was blaming me for struggling(even if it was I that had to out effort in to help myself and stop self-isolating), but now as I look back, I understand what he really meant. He loved my personality and self, and he wanted the world to see me for the beautiful person I was, but I kept failing him by locking myself away.

I didn’t really notice my loneliness until the pandemic when I was truly alone, no one to call or hang with. I used discord to help make some online friends for a few months and it helped—typing slowly and rewording your messages wasn’t frowned upon and taking time to respond was normalized in chat-based media.

I didnt talk without scripting my words for a long time. It wasn’t until 9th grade(when I was 15yo) when I rambled about Amphibia for literal hours to my therapist and friends that I finally managed to break out of the habit. Since Amphibia was my hyper fixation at the time, it was one of the few things I was confident on to not get wrong or accidentally offend someone when talking about.

I’m not good at catching subtler social cies, but I am sensitive to signs of awkwardness and irritation, so I feel incredibly punished whenever I get an upset response from people after I say something or communicate something, especially when it’s unexpected because I’m confused why I got that response and fixate on it.

Even now when I have friends and can talk confidently, my social skills are still stunted and I am scared to talk to people IRL even when I know them because I’m scared to disturb them or upset them by accident.

Banner by @ alwaysribbit

People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me

I hate being bad because of fear.

Sometimes, because of my OCD and trauma, I’ll avoid certain stuff. This can be hard to explain to others so it often leads me to lie or come off as passive aggressive when I’m asked to do a task/go somewhere/touch something that I’m scared of.

I know that avoidance is unhealthy and reinforces the cycle of anxiety, but it’s so hard to fight against and I hate being so scared and shaking and just having to act fine and stay stiff and quiet because I “shouldn’t act anxious” and am “scared of nothing” according to my mother.

Though, when I promise to do something or accept a task that I then avoid and never do, it upsets people, reasonably. I hurt other people to avoid my own fear and I don’t know how to help it.

I take therapy, anxiety meds, exposure therapy and I’m getting much better but it’s still so hard. I wish it could just stop and I could follow instructions without having irritational fear making me break rules and promises.

I don’t want to be a bad kid, I wish I could be the best kid out there, but that’s just not possible right now with what’s being asked of me.

Banner by @ alwaysribbit

PDA autistic culture is hating the demand that comes with labels so much that you don’t even like identifying as agender because it still feels like…a gender (a concept which society forcefully imposed on you, and you therefore want no part of)