thinking about the time they sent me a seven year old autistic patient to investigate if he was suffering abuse because in every psychological test he kept drawing awful monsters
and I start the consultation already miserable as fuck and I give the kid some pen and paper so I can maybe communicate and see what's on his mind
and then I go WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND I KNOW THOSE MONSTERS
turns out the kid just had a special interest in Five Nights at Freddy's
I pointed at the monster and went "That's Freddy!" and I've never seen a kid that ecstatic in my life
the mom looked at me as if her son and I belonged at the same satanic cult and that's why I knew the names of the demons in his head
I wrote back to psychologist like "I'm not sure how to explain this but looking up five nights at freddys might bring you progress with this patient"
at some point the nurses realized the autistic children and I were like, Really Vibing
so they decided to highkey just appoint all of them to my day and it took me almost a month to realize that the fact that I kept arriving and finding that all of todayâs appointments were autistic children was Not A CoincidenceÂ
anyway this one time there was a kid who was really into christianity but it was like, specifically angelsÂ
so Iâm trying to start up a conversation with him and I ask what heâs reading and he goes âdo you know what a nephilim isâ
and like for one hellish second my soul is suckerpunched out of my body and thrown straight into supernatural-fanfic-on-wattpad hell, and then I reassume control of my flesh prison, ignoring the mental edits of Dean and Castiel making out, and go âArenât those the guys who are half human and half angel?â
and the kid was so fucking happy but the mom was staring at me like âwhy are you privy to this bit of occult jesus loreâ
and my heathen lesbian of a self just looks at her and goesÂ
âi love bibleâ
This reminds me of one of the first clients I worked with as an art therapy intern. Staff were concerned that this 10-year-old boy might be âpreoccupied with deathâ or even had suicidal ideation because he kept drawing pictures of âdeath-related imageryâ.
However, since this boy had ADHD, was on the autism spectrum, and was a recent immigrant who didnât speak English well, staff couldnât get him to explain to them what his drawings were about.
I asked to see some of his artwork and immediately realized that the âdeath-related imageryâ that this kid was drawing was actually fanart of Sans, from Undertale.
I remember telling the staff that, while I didnât expect this to be an easy case, I had a feeling that they neednât worry about this kid quite so much anymore.
