Ayman’s Thoughts

One autistic non-binary refugee write about disability, neurodiversity, feminism, radical youth liberationism, Zionism, LGBT, race, intersectionality, economics, and about many other interesting things! (Image description: me in one of my seminars on autism and neurodiversity paradigm)

[ayman-eckford]

Unpopular opinion: I hate the “all cultures are equal” narrative. Because I’m from Ukraine and Russia and no, their culture is not equal to British or USA or any other not-so-terrible cultures.

Because if you are thinking that there is no difference between being born in Northern Korea or in ISIS or in the UK... well, you are really lucky to be born in the UK and don’t check your privileges.

Or you are deeply unlucky to be born in ISIS or Northern Korea and so couldn’t even imagine what a decent life looks like.

Yeah, all cultures and countries are problematic. Even the “good” ones. But some are not just problematic, they are awful and unbearable to everyone who is not highly privileged and conforming.

Yeah, PEOPLE are equal and should have equal rights. But their cultures are not equal. There is a difference.

[ayman-eckford]

My family has a great history of internalized xenophobia. Actually, like many USSR families.

As far as I know (but I couldn’t be shure) my Mum is Russian.

But my Dad’s family is more interesting.

Officially he is Russian too. And proud of it because he is a conservative Russian nationalist.

But in reality:

-his paternal grandfather is obviously Jewish. He had famous Jewish relatives. The problem is - this my grand-grandpa hated to be Jewish. He was deeply ashamed of it. In some documents he literally tried to cross the “Jewish” line and write “Russian” instead. (Pretty bad attempt as I could say because you could actually see what he is crossing. Whatever, spoiled document couldn’t change obvious facts).

-his wife, my father’s granny, has a really weird patronymic and surname - probably Jewish. Despite that she was “Ukrainian” in her documents, it was really odd that she was hanging around with Jewish a lot, because Ukrainian people in this region was really antisemitic.

-My father’s maternal grandpa… Well, he is the reason why I look like Asian in some photos and Dad looks Asian in many photos. My grand-gran was “Russian” by documents but as my father admired, his grandpa looked really Asian. My father used to say that he looks like a person with obviously Japanese descent (partly White, partly Japanese, to speak more precisely). But it’s also possible that he has some Chinese or even Korean heritage. Anyway, he was born in a city that borders China and has a port connecting the Russian Empire with Asian countries. So… only one thing is obvious: he could be anyone but not a pure Russian.

-My Dad’s maternal Granny was “Russian who has some Greek roots». And of course Russian by documents.

And yep, after all of that my father is “magically” Russian.

I think this could be interesting for people who believe that the USSR was free from xenophobia. And for everyone who wants to know WHO some nationalists really are: sometimes they are just ashamed of their own heretech, with so deep internalized xenophobia that they completely ignore it and have hate not to the society that marginalized them, but to other people like them and their ancestors. And sometimes they have this hatred even toward their own kids who refused to be inner racists and xenophobs.

-Ayman

(Photo 1: Ayman’s dad. Photo 2: Young Ayman)

[ayman-eckford]

[ayman-eckford]

Why do I love comic books? Because their authors often aren't scared to speak about “difficult” and “problematic” topics.

I wasn’t a big fan of Ms Marvel, but I started to like this series more and more while I’m reading it.

At fires it was because of obvious- and not so obvious- anti-Islamophobia messages. And I just liked finely see a Muslim Super-hero.

But “Generation Why” (the second Ms Marvel graphic novel) is the best youth liberationist comic book I’ve ever read.

It’s kind of an allegory.

The main villain Inventor decided to use society's ageistic ideas and make teens under “human batteries”. He understands that adults don’t really care about kids, and that it would be easy to brainwash teens because adults made teens believe that their life does not matter. He created the cult that dehumanizes teens, and many teens volunteered to become part of it because society made them believe that their lives don't matter.

Adults care only for “their own '' kids - like Wolverine was trying to save a Mutant girl because he is mutant himself, but youth problem in general, system problems, doesn’t matter for them.

Sixteen years old American - Pakistani Ms Marvel is fighting with ageist stereotypes in her school and on the streets of New Jersey.

And she tried to destroy the Inventors cult not just by her fists, but on an ideological level.

And at the same time she is in a position in which so many young people find themselves: she has to deal with the mess that the old generation created, she has enormous responsibilities - but couldn’t speak about her problems openly because adults don’t actually care. Most of them - at least her parents - would just restrict her freedom even more in the name of her protection and leave problems unresolved.

Parents would “freak out” if they found out the truth about Ms Marvel because they are “overprotective” - so Kamala Khan has to deal not just with a villian, missing kids and her new superhero abilities, but with her parent’s emotional problems too.

And at the same time people believe that HER generation (or all youth generations) are irresponsible.

Here is the Inventor’s quote, and I think this is the essence of this comic: “The young are seen as a political burden, a public nuisance. They are not considering educating or protecting. They are called parasites, leeches, brats, spawn…

If you used these words to describe any minority but children, it would quite understandable be considered hate speech.

We are [by dehumanizing kids and using them for free energy] simply taking this loathing to its logical conclusion”

P.S.Of course there were some problems and potential triggering stuff like ableist language or the main character trying to justify abusive father. Also it’s not a good book for people who completely hate black humor.

Also it’s a light-style comics styling under some classical comics books. Good for many readers, but not for all.

[ayman-eckford]

It’s a huge responsibility to have a Little alter.

Sometimes it’s exhausting. And it’s important to acknowledge it. A child alter is a child that you have just like that, a child that you never choose to have. And even if you love this kid it could be difficult sometimes.

It’s important to explain this to you Little: you could love them, but sometimes you are angry and tired and have some unpleasant thoughts about them and this is completely ok. Because everyone has unpleasant thoughts. No one could completely control their thoughts and feelings.

It’s important to pay attention to your spoons: because if you have Littles, especially if this Littles likes to front... it’s like having a child who’s needs you have to constantly keep in mind. I mean, not to become too tired or overwhelmed, think better where you are going and for how long.

And you have to be patient. Not to traumatize your Little one who is already traumatized. Not to be an ageist like people around.

We are still only learning all of this. For us “spoons part” is the most difficult. For you it could be any other part of this journey.

But anyway, I believe that it deserves so much effort. And yeah, you will make mistakes. It’s important to acknowledge them too.

But in the end it all would make your life much better. Your life, your Littles life, your System life and maybe even the life of people around you.

[ayman-eckford]

[ayman-eckford]

There is no such thing as a “children's book”. There are only books that you like. It doesn’t matter how old you are: you can like fairy tales and books about kids if you are an adult. And you could like “serious” books or books about “adult problems' ' if you are a kid.

We shouldn’t “protect” young people from knowledge or shame old people for their desire to be trendy or because they love simple stories.

The same with toys and games. I know kids who hate toys.

I know adults who love toys.

Damn it, it’s about all hobbies! They are exiting to make your life more happy, not to made you fit in a narrow “age apartheid” norms.

Pity that even progressive people who understand that all books and hobbies and are gender-neutral don’t understand that hobbies and books also don’t have age.

[ayman-eckford]

A little about religion…

O, Allah, I want to be more like your Prophet Muhammed (PBUH)

-I want to worship You and trust You, with full understanding that You are not making mistakes so my existence is not a mistake.

-I want to fight Islamophobia and be brave enough to protect my Umma (at least by words).

-I’m going to listen to women’s opinions and to the opinions of other marginalized people, because women in Arab society in the Prophet times were deeply marginalized, and the Prophet was the one who was trying to change it.

-I’m going to leave in the past all nationalistic and shovinistic stereotypes, fight rasism and nazism.

-I want to trust my feelings despite how weird they could be. And trust that feelings, not alters-persecutors like Sus who tried to stop me from been a proper Muslim or a happy person.

-I want to help the poor and hang out with outcasts.

-I want to reform society and make it more fair.

-I want to be brave enough to stand against my biological relatives and people who have power.

-Abu Hamza

[ayman-eckford]

I hate when doctors ask me to say “something positive about your life” when you come to them because of mental health problems.

Because I didn't come to chat with them about my special interests or yummy coffee from the local coffee shop.

Doctors are not my friends.

They are medical specialists and I came to them because, damn it, I have a medical problem and need their help.

Sorry, but:

“Me: I’m depressed/obsessed/losing control over my body...

Doctor: Wait, can you say something nice about your life at first…”

Is like:

“Person: A cucumber stuck in my ass, please, help me!

Doctor: No, wait a minute. Maybe we could chat at first?

Person: No, please, take it away!

Doctor: But could you find something positive in this situation?

Person *giving up*: Hmm… other cucumbers not in my ass? Some of them were tasty?

Doctor: Yes, exactly! I was right! There is something good! Now, tell me more about the taste of a cucumber..”

Why does everyone understand that THIS IS ridiculous when we are speaking about “physical” problems but even specialists sometimes behave like mental problems not medical problems at all and could be cured just by “nice attitude”?

[ayman-eckford]

[ayman-eckford]

Very often people think that if you don’t want to give birth to a child, you hate children.

Even one of our alters Ver.B.A. was thinking like that.

But in reality I’ve often seen quite the opposite situation.

Very often people who really hate children (aka who are abusing children, don't treat them as an equal human being and think that their child is their slave and property) have huge families. Or at least two or three kids.

Because when your kid is just like a free housekeeper or an expensive doll without any personality, it’s not a big deal.

But if you realized that a kid is not a slave who was born to “give you a glass of water when you become old” and even not an android, it’s a huge responsibility.

You have to not just feed a kid, give them a shelter in your flat and look after their medical problems for 18 years.

You need to pay attention to their needs.

You need to understand that a child is a completely separate person with their own values and you can't just change them.

You need to do something with this unhealthy ageist power dynamic when parents have all privileges and children don’t have any rights to decide their fate.

You need to understand that kids don’t ask to be born so they don’t owe you anything in the end!

Maybe this is why many people who would be better parents than the majority of parents don’t have children.

And many parents who hate their firstborn (just because their firstborn is not a robot) decided to have a second child.

Sometimes it’s better just to admit that you are not ready to be a parent yet or maybe you would never be ready, then spoil your child's life.

Also, I like babies. Yeah, they are cute. But I would never have my own baby because I know that I couldn’t handle them.

Maybe one day, if I would have more money and I would become more healthy, I would adopt a child. But certainly not a baby. Only a child who could give me permission to adopt them and who I would accept and like as a person. Because I honestly know that I couldn’t accept any child like I couldn’t accept any stranger.

-Ayman

(Old photo of Ayman and Ayman’s little brother. We like him as a person. We don’t feel sorry that he was born. But we couldn’t handle him when he was a baby).

[ayman-eckford]

I recently realized that I couldn’t explain my experience as an ordinary refugee experience.

Technically I'm a refugee, but I don’t feel like one.

Refugees often miss their countries.

Refugees often like to read or hear something about their motherland.

Refugees often want to communicate with other people from their countries.

If refugees have family members that left in their homeland, they miss them.

Refugees often have a proper past, something good in their past before all their refugee experience started.

Me, on the other hand…

Well, sometimes I couldn’t name my home country. I used to say “Russia” not because I sometimes forget that my home country exists separately or because Russian culture and Ukrainian culture are similar… Well, they are almost similar, but this is not the point.

I knew that I would have a strong flashback if I would only hear the Ukrainian language or see some photos from my hometown Donetsk. It’s not safe for me to even think about the country and city where I was born and spent my first 18 years of life.

But I still see Donetsk in nightmares. This is what Donetsk is for me. A nightmare city that I have always hated. Since I was three years old.

And I don’t want - no, I literally couldn’t- hear or read stuff about Ukraine and especially Donetsk.

I don’t have contacts with people in Ukraine. At least not with people that I remember from Ukraine (all my Ukrainian contains are

contacts that I started to have when I was living in Russia). I have no idea what happened to my relatives in Ukraine. And I don’t even want to know.

My parents are still in Russia. And I think I have a granny in Ukraine. They are part of my nightmare dreams.

I want to save my little brother. But other relatives… sometimes feel that it's better to die than speak with them even again. I am still really afraid of them.

And of course I’m avoiding any people from Russia or Ukraine in the U.K. I'm even scared of Russian-language people in the shops!

I don’t feel that I have any kind of life before I leave… no, not Ukraine, but Russia (and I was living in Russia after Ukraine). All these years in Ukraine and Russia was kind of one long disaster for me.

So I have as much in common with most refugees as I have with the British Royal Family.

I feel more like Holocost survivor who lived in Nazi Germany, or sexual slavery servival, or Ghunatanamo survival. Like a person who was living in constant fear and almost no one could understand their experience because almost no one spent two decades of their life in such conditions.

It’s really difficult to explain to other folks that I meet in the U.K.

And I feel so lonely because of this experience that no one understands.

-Ayman

(Abu Umar’s selfi)

[ayman-eckford]

For alters:

Accept yourself = accept that you are part of the System.

Not because System life is always amazing. Sometimes it’s not.

It’s just because it’s who you are and how you live. You are one of the guys in the System. It’s your way of being. And for you it’s completely normal.

[ayman-eckford]

People often ask Systems “who is more real among all your alters?” In this video I would explain that there are no such things.

[ayman-eckford]

I hate to pay for mistakes that my predecessors made. I mean, my name is Abu Hamza (other names/ Anwer, John). I’m not Sus! I’m not Ver.B.A.

Why should I have problems because they did something wrong in the past?

Also why If I’m going to do something, people expect me to behave like Ber.B.A., believing that I would make the same mistake, that I would have the same problems?

It’s not fair!

Also it’s not fair when someone says “how things could change so much in one years?” Or stuff like that.

Dear singlets! For you a year is a short period of time, no big deal. Especially if you are an adult. But for me it is more than my whole life! For my co-host Abu Umar it’s the sixth part of his life. For Ayman... my other co-host Ayman. Well, Ayman is “old”. Almost 25. But they miss some years while important events are going on, so they better understand how much one year could mean.

You couldn’t get it if you are not a child or if you do not miss one year of your life, or if you are not an alter who lives less than a body. But one year is an enormous period of time for some of us. And yeah, I couldn’t become Ver.B.A. after a year because I’ve never been Ver.B.A.

So one year could change everything.

-Abu Hamza

[ayman-eckford]

Me: seeing nightmares every night just about me-minor that need to go back school, have to live with their parents and trying to run away.

After that I woke up and had a strong migraine. I was having it every morning.

Also me two days ago: starting to take trancviluisators before going to bed.

Still have nightmares about teen life but at least without strong anxiety during a dream and migraine after.

Today: dreams finely changed. I was a kid but not me, Ayman. I was some Brown -skinned 13-14 years old British kid, and it was 2014 and I was fighting for Mosul on ISIS side. And I was killed. Half of this dream I was choking and bleeding and after that, when I died, my “friends” just made photos of my dead body to post it online and were chatting about what to do with my stuff (like they couldn’t care less that me/this boy is dead).

And after that another dream: me, finely me, Ayman as an adult and I broke my arms.

So this morning I have this feeling that my dreams are not so scary any more!

I mean, dreaming that I just broke my arms or dying fighting for a terrorist group is nothing compared to my constant nightmares about school and my parents.

And many years ago my parents promised me that I would miss school! And even now many people still believe that childhood years are the best time in a life!

Such a joke!

[ayman-eckford]

I am delighted to say that Liza and I have finished writing our young adult/children fiction book “Mental Family”.

It started like a very personal project, in a really unpredictable way for me, when I only met Liza.

She is our four years old girl. She is Autistic, kind and deeply empathetic. And at first she was really afraid of the world around us, afraid to front. She used to spend almost all her life in the inside world and was scared that people outside would trigger her or abuse her.

When we met, It had been no more than two week since I found out that I’m part of the System, and like the main host who believed for years that there is only one in my head, I was overwhelmed. And so I found out this child inside my head, the scared child and at first had no idea how I could interact with her and earn her trust.

But Liza started the project that changed everything. It was her initiative. We always liked to make stories and write something, even when we were small kids. Liza knew it because she was separated from me when I was five or four years old. And she still likes writing, just like me.

So she decided to write a book that she wanted to read herself: the book about DID/Multiple experiences without demonization and pathologization, a story about the value of love and support in a System, a story about inner-friendship and the fight to be themselves in ableism worlds. About family abuse and abuse survivors. About acceptance- from people around who will accept you if they are your real friends. But, more importantly, about the importance of accepting your own differences (and it doesn’t matter if you a System, Autistic, queer, refugee or just weird).

This book became a kind of bridge between us. We were writing it during our most traumatized events in the System exploring process: when we found out how much stuff I don’t remember, when we have burnout and depression, when we figured out more about our persecutors.

The main character of this book, eleven years old Elizabeth, is the host of the Mental Family System. She doesn't know that she has DID - well, she knows that her best friend ever and her worst enemy Nadeen, little toddler John, wise Amy and other guys existed inside her head. She chatted with them really often. They knew her thoughts, dreams and deepest secrets - and some of these secrets even Elizabeth didn’t know.

Only Elizabeth hid her Mental Family from people around her, including her foster mother Mum Suzi and school kind-of-best friend, Syrian refugee Aisha.

Of course, Elizabeth wants to find out more: about herself and about her past that sometimes seemed not as she remembered it at all. She knew that there was something that Nadeen was hiding from her. Last experience with adoption ended really badly and Nadeen doesn't trust adults any more. She trusts only her Mental Family. But why and what if Nadeen lies to her?

And, more importantly, if Elizabeth is ready to accept the truth?

What if the truth could destroy her new life in Sheffield, her “happy ever after” with new foster mother, school friends and perspectives to finely

stop being a “freak” and have a normal future?

Luckily, one trip to London not-long before Christmas changed everything. After one extremely unusual meeting in a big march, Elizabeth has a chance to at least open secrets that Nadeen was hiding from her.

Would she be brave enough to start this journey and where it could lead girls.

So, yeah, we made our journey in System acceptance together with Elizabeth. And if you want to find out how Elizabeth and Nadeen’s story ended you could write me a private message and maybe become a beta-reader!

Me and Liza planning to publish this book in a future… and we really hoped that our own Mental Family story would be happy, and that our book would help other “Mental Families” (and all kids who feel like they are a weird on out) to accept that there is no such things as “norm”. And just introduce Plural life to singlet kids and help them to see that we are not monsters from Split, but real persons who just share one body.

-Ayman.

(Me with a toy cat)