Worlds Okayest Uncle

This is an ed recovery blog/space for my autistic waffling-on. https://www.last.fm/user/Unclenowzaradan I'm old. Minors leave me alone pls.

[hatesnoise]

Is there like, a better tag for me to use? It seems like #level 1 autism/autistic is just saturated with posts •Shaming people for how they talk about their autism •Reminding users over and over again how "bad" some people have it •Literally just...telling allistic writers how to write about autistic characters(??????) Like I didn't type #Level 1 autistic because I'm selfish and need to be told that there are people "worse off". I understand that there are struggles unique to the level 2-3 experience. I'm literally just trying to find people like me to relate to without being shamed every 3rd post. Like is it rude to suggest that people keep out of tags for things they don't have? Is it rude to suggest that it isn't nice to use a group's tags to blast out messages that are shaming and delegitimizing peoples' struggles? Like, I'm not one of those folks that would ever think to shame or discredit someone because of their personal struggles with themselves or a loved one. It doesn't seem fair that in trying to find my community, I get bombarded with more shade posts than relatable ones.

[hatesnoise]

I've been on a hunt for the hoodie that helped get me through most of high-school (the one that my ex stole/destroyed a few years ago).... And I FOUND IT AAAAAAA. Not only did I find it in the SAME SIZE but it still has the tags on it! I had been coping with a few iterations of the same hoodie but with a different pattern, which just isn't the same (and likely makes me look like less of an adult). Its going to take a few days for it to be shipped out/delivered but oh my GOD I found it and I'll never let go of it, or let anyone else wear it! (Funnily enough, the first picture is of me 13 years ago, plus one day exactly). When I find an outer layer that I like (I virtually always need to be wearing long sleeves if its under 80 degrees. Short sleeves feel wrong and I hate the feeling of wind/temperature changes on my arms) I tend to wear it until it is literally unacceptable to wear in public (holes, tears, ink stains, etc.). This maroon one was the one that I was able to hold together for the longest. I'm going to keep my eye on different reselling shops to try and scoop up a few backups because I cannot handle being without this silly thing.

[hatesnoise]

Tw: Ideation type things, mental health type things

It really disturbs me to know how close to ✌︎㋡ myself I was. For over 20 years, I was convinced that I was just fundamentally flawed; destined to do something stupid and irrevocable. I'm stuck between mourning for my younger self, and desperately scrambling to build my adult life back together so I can have a reasonably good future. I get this feeling of absolute repulsion when I think about my sickest weeks/years at the moment. Like I physically gag thinking about what I was feeling, wondering how many years I shaved off from my future. How much cognitive reserve was spent just trying to make a number on the scale go down? What damage did I do to my brain? I mourn when I think back to 4th grade. I would get home from school and "act out" what I saw my classmates doing (how they were walking, how they sat in their chairs, how they talked to each-other). I would rehearse it religiously, moving around the kitchen or standing in front of the mirror. It hurts me deeply to remember this. I was so desperate to just be and feel "regular". I would wish for it every day. I mourn when I think of 6th grade onward, battling this unrelenting and confusing urge to inflict pain on myself. How "coping skills" was confusing as a term for me because I didn't know what I was coping WITH. Therapists would tell me what to do when I felt "angry" or "sad", but that wasn't what I was feeling when I wanted to [whoops] myself. Instead it was torment. This unrelenting, unholy friction and INFERNAL NOISE. Like everything is wrong, and the wrongness just stacks, stacks, stacks. Pain releases enough of the wrongness to get me through the next moment. Now I'm having to train that impulse out of myself and identify what it was that dysregulated me in the first place. I'm... I don't know what I feel right now. I literally excelled in ELA, yet I didn't find the language for my anguish until I was nearly 31. I can't even describe what it felt like to unmask for the first time in....as long as I can remember. I didn't know I was masking, that the crushing weight I felt in all my muscles was the mask. I didn't know that Normal Things were Extremely Hard for me because my expectations were SO HARD. Its like learning myself for the first time, I guess. I'm learning my limits, how to regulate/make accommodations for myself (Like man its 2026. I don't have to go into the supermarket if it burns my wires. If looping the same song for 2 hours, wearing the same hoodie for 5 days and avoiding infernal noise is what keeps me from spiraling it doesn't matter if I feel judged doing it).