Growth isn't Easy

Just a nonbinary person trying to live genuinely. YouTube: FlexyFox https://m.youtube.com/@FlexyFoxgaming Demiromantic Asexual that has only ever had strong feelings for one person Goal: Grow into a better version of myself Autistic

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“Everyone is a little bit autistic”

That line pisses me off, because it diminishes my experience with a disability. It’s like saying that because everyone gets sad once in a while, everyone has depression. The fact that this was said by someone with ADHD makes it hurt twice as much. Why can’t we all stick together? Those of us under the neurodivergent umbrella. We already have enough to struggle with without needing our own kind eating us as well.

Personally, I was taught to diminish my own life ever since I was young. I was provided for, people had it so much worse, I should be grateful. I don’t need someone else diminishing my experience when I am healing that within myself. Especially when you claim that you want to help me be better. No. You wanted me to fit a script. You never accepted me. You let the neurotypicals talk poison about me and drank it like it was ambrosia. Escort yourself out of my life with all your bullshit.

I don’t care that you chose them over me. I cared that you tried to play both sides and lied about it. I asked for your honesty, not to do things that you thought would ‘soften the damage’. People see my trauma and think they know better than I do about what I can take. Fuck off with that fake shit. You took away my choice. And that’s something I won’t ever forget or fully forgive.

Let the truth hurt. It hurts less doing what I asked you to do than when I find out later what you did instead. Let me judge the situation accordingly on my own terms. I don’t have a lot of autonomy in my own life, living with autism and other comorbid disorders. Let me have this. Let me have the experience that everyone else gets. Let me feel normal, even for a moment.

That’s what real friends do.

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Just met with someone that will help me develop an IPE (Individualized Plan of Employment). While the specific goal is still not quite there, she is going to connect me to someone to explore career options with me and put me on supported services. So basically, I will have help with determining where to go and help for months into the next employment to be able to stay in the job. My main problem was maintaining because of coworkers and managers not helping me. Hopefully, this does something. I really do want to work, but these past experiences have left me terrified and on the paranoid side.

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I only recently realized that the reason I hate controlling people is because of Pathological Demand Avoidance. It is also the reason that I question even a manger’s demands when it goes against my logic or morals. It’s a sudden, almost rage-like feeling in my body, like I want to lash out when this happens. Instead, I have learned to bite my tongue until it bleeds.

This is a boundary for me. Cross it at your own risk since you’ve been warned.

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Why is it that we take silence as being guilty? What if the reason for my silence is that I am sick of arguing? Of wasting my breath because people never try to understand me or my viewpoint? It isn’t a win for them. It’s a win for me in the long term because I know my truth and my worth. They might damage me socially, emotionally, and economically, but I have something they will never possess.

A sense of self that doesn’t need external validation.

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I love how happy my mom was when she came home the other day and proudly exclaimed that I have an eating disorder and that I had it since childhood. She had just learned about what the current eating disorders are since it’s Eating Disorder Awareness month. I let her have the moment because why not? She missed so much when I was growing up that I feel bad to deny this small victory.

But yes, I have always had ARFID. It just wasn’t recognized until a few years ago. I remember getting so mad at people because it looks like Anorexia (before ARFID existed as a diagnosis), but I never had body image issues. But yes, I did have limited intake of food due to sensory aversion and bad experiences (vomiting and choking/fear of it happening again). I also struggle with medication because of how bad it is.

At least the teens and children now will get the support they need for this. Eating Disorders are no joke. It can be a death sentence by causing irreversible damage to the body.

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You don’t need a specific day to show your partner that you love them. You should be showing your love everyday in the little things you do for them and how you surprise them maybe a few times a month with something bigger. Otherwise, why have a partner?

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I hate how my autism manifests itself for me, because I have been blessed with awareness and a lot of shortcomings. This combo especially sucks when you get diagnosed at a late age. Now I have internalized albeism that has made me incredibly prideful about asking for help, because I feel like I do not deserve it or genuinely need it.

I had been told for years that I wasn’t that bad and to suck it up. Now my pride stands in the way of getting the help I know I deserve. My stubbornness refuses to let me be humbled on this front by life. This is hell.

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I hate finishing things. Beating a game, reading the last page of a story, watching the last seconds of the current show. All of these things make me feel this cavernous void within my chest. It’s like mourning, but I don’t know what I’ve lost.

The worst part is that I am unable to start something new for some time after. Even though I have other things lined up next, it’s like I completely freeze and have no energy to move on. A full shutdown where I have sit there, a hollow shell until my feelings decide to return.

I hate that transitions make me feel like this. I hate that I don’t really hyper fixate enough to not do this so often. I find it easy to end things, but starting something new feels like I have to shed my skin every time, leaving me raw and aching with a feeling I cannot name. A feeling that feels similar to poison coursing through my veins.

An energy that demands to be felt no matter what.

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Boundaries only matter when both people respect them. I will always respect your boundaries, but will you respect mine?

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Welcoming in the new year with a fever, already off to a great start. I was barely around people and I get this sick; my health might be starting to decline overall.

Who wants to join me and live out in the woods in a spacey commune?

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I use to not be able to look at myself in the mirror. It use to trigger anxiety. It felt like whenever I saw myself, I just couldn’t intellectually connect that this body was me, that it was another stranger I couldn’t risk looking in the eye.

Now it’s a weird, detached sort of feeling when I see my reflection. It’s like now I know this is me, but I feel neutral about the fact. It’s not from a lack of self-esteem. I just don’t really care about how I look. I know I’m around average or just above average, but that doesn’t matter to me. It’s the whole concept of self that intrigues me and why my behavior and feelings towards the mirror may hold answers.

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I hate that I can’t just say that I love someone. Every time, the words get stuck in my throat and choke my voice into heavy silence. Am I defective? Or is it just the alexithymia talking (or keeping me from speaking?)

I cannot say it to people that I really want to say it to. Instead, I can only blow the other person off and I feel terrible for it. I can say it sarcastically just fine, but the emotional overwhelm is strong. I try to show it in actions, but I always just get misunderstood. Why is love so hard? Why can’t I just experience feelings normally?

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Everyone you meet is a lesson, whether you know it or not. Even if you never learned what that lesson was, the Universe has this uncanny ability to keep sending that lesson your way until it gets through your thick skull.

Because yes, my thick skull needs a lot of lessons and hurt feelings to understand the bigger picture.

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Loyalty doesn’t mean sticking with someone when they continue to do stupid things that harm themselves or others. Loyalty is being able to call out the other person on their shit to help them be a better person. It’s supporting their growth, not their toxicity/insecurity.

I hate that argument that because I wouldn’t be in jail with my friend, then I cannot be loyal. No. I am so utterly devoted to those who I choose to be close to me, but I wouldn’t sit behind bars with them. Blind loyalty needs to be addressed as the toxic mentality that it actually is.

If they were truly loyal to me, they would understand why I’m not sitting with them in jail.

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I struggle daily with feeling like I’m unlovable. I sabotage myself before I could ever get somewhere with someone romantically. Why? Because I can see all my flaws, magnified to a degree that makes me second guess how someone else could ever view me positively. I never even give them the chance to judge me themselves.

Call it trauma, social anxiety, maybe even autism. But whenever I look at myself, I’m looking with someone else’s eyes. Because when I really sit down and think about myself, I don’t see myself as flawed or broken. It’s social conditioning. It’s other peoples’ voices being internalized because I had to accept their negativity to fit in.

The irony was that I never fit in. I was left with an inner voice that was never mine and a heart that was gaslit into believing something that was never true.

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“Violence is never the answer”

I would agree, if we lived in a more intellectual world where people possessed hyper-empathy. Because I have always been peaceful to others and still got bullied, beatened, harassed, SA’d, and threatened. Words never worked. I had to resort to violence to defend myself.

I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I still don’t regret it when I finally did.

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One of the biggest things I hate to hear is someone telling me how I “should” feel. There is no such thing as a universal way to feel in any given moment.

Take grief. Some people cry. Some people are numb. Some people distract themselves. Some people smile and laugh. All of these are valid responses. But I was told that I should cry when someone dies. When I didn’t as a child, they said I was broken. No. I was emotionally numb and unable to express my emotions properly because sometimes I cannot tell what I actually feel. Emotions can be so overwhelming that my body cannot process anything so I am left numb. It is not a flaw or a defect. It is just how my brain works. My brain is just as valid as yours.

We need to normalize other responses to things. Mostly when it comes to flat or inappropriate affect. Emotions are a spectrum. What I feel or express is valid, and you telling me how to feel only makes the alexithymia worse.