#corgijournals!

[theoldaeroplane]

it's 11am. i log into tumblr. i see a drawing of an anthropomorphic dog with tits. "he/him," the description says. i nod. i am filled with peace.

it's yesterday. my partner messages me to say he ordered some femme clothes he's excited about. i tell him i can't wait to see. i tell him i'm looking forward to painting my nails again soon. i hold joy in my heart.

it's one in the morning. i am watching a cartoon about centaurs. my fingers hurt from the combined effort of learning to play ukulele and holding the tools for the craft i'm working on. my bird is asleep in his cage. i am tired and content.

it's almost noon. i've accidentally turned a shitpost into a poem. (Again.) i feel good in my body. i'm full of a nervous excitement for my future. I press post, and i get up to start my day, and i am thankful to be here.

[theoldaeroplane]

Man; this last year has been so strange for me in terms of my perception of myself.

It has been not quite a year since I said to my [redacted] that my fussiness over people at my work not following any sensible structure in their code was so strong that you would almost think I'm autistic. I'm not sure why it was that idle thought, specifically, that made me start researching what having autism actually looks like. It was such a tremendous breakthrough for me once I started reading, in a way it hasn't been for some friends that have offhandedly mentioned they thought they might be autistic. (It's possible they're having their own breakthroughs in private, but I don't think so.)

Suddenly I had Explanations for why I am the way I am. I had the language. I didn't have to constantly fall back on "I guess I'm just overly sensitive" or "I'm weird like that" with no obvious cause.

On the heels of this, and I mean like three weeks after I started reading, I began to suspect I might have ADHD as well. I've suspected this in the past, I even took a test, but I was told I didn't have it. And they were the professional, and I paid hundreds of dollars for that test, so surely it meant I didn't have it, right? My problems with time and attention and memory must just be quirks. I must just not care enough.

Buddy.

Earlier this year I finally got an appointment with a psychiatrist, who asked me some questions and gave me a prescription. It had to change a few times before we found one that balanced side effects and symptom relief.

I can't tell you how strange it's been to watch my perception of myself change. For most of my life, I was told I was weird, lazy, that I didn't care enough, that I was too sensitive, that I needed to try harder, that I had so much potential I wasn't living up to, that I was acting different on purpose, that I thought I was so special. I internalized all of it. I believed all of it. What else could I do? I was a kid. Something was wrong and the adults in my life decided it was those things.

No one ever thought I might be autistic. No one ever suggested I might have ADHD. Not even my dad, who also has ADHD, who is probably autistic himself.

I do my best not to be bitter. The world was different when I was a kid. Information was hard to come by and we were poor. For all that I've come to hate my mother I understand that she herself was struggling heavily with her own mental health. I'm angry I slipped under the radar, but I don't know if anyone can really be blamed. And being angry can't change the past. All I can do now is move forward.

I have to remind myself, often, that I am a good person. (The fact I was raised to believe that all people are inherently wicked is another post.) That I am trying my best, and operating under a fundamentally broken system that is intolerant to people who don't fit its borders. That if the screaming and shaming and self-flagellating were going to work they would have done so by now. That my brain is built in such a way that causes it to constantly feel both over- and under-stimulated. That I'm not broken.

I was, as the story goes, a cygnet being raised by ducks, who simply got more and more frustrated when their strange duckling did not act the way a duckling should.

Well. I guess I'm a swan now. A swan with baggage, which is a funny image. I can't quack, but I can trumpet. And I have wings so powerful that they can break bones. (Just go with the metaphor.) More importantly, I know I'm not a duck, and I'm learning I don't have to keep trying to be one.

[theoldaeroplane]

journal

didn't get considered for the cleaning job. pretty tore up over it; it's hard not to take it as "wow I can't even get a job cleaning houses." im sure it's not that deep but it's still very discouraging.

but, my basil plant is thriving, and I made oleo-saccharum for lemonade last night, and I'm trying a new, cheap enzyme cleaner to try and get the dog pee out of the carpet. (nature's miracle smells so bad that I can't stand it. I'm trying something called Kids n Pets.) on Saturday it rained so hard that at the barn's arena we couldn't hear each other speak and it was really cool.

my days feel longer now that I'm not getting high as often. i planted some grass seed in my yard to cover up the bare spots. i wake up sore in good ways, ways that tell me I worked hard the day before. im going to get the contract info of the recruiter that got my friend their 70k/yr job in the same field as me. in my personal trauma work, i discovered why I get so upset when i feel like the people important to me go a while without contacting me (i grew up internalizing the message that I was unimportant and a nuisance, and my inner child reacts very strongly to it now). i love how clean and organized my house is now and it motivates me to keep it that way, and make it even better. im slowly returning to writing and drawing. im doing my best to notice the good things in my life more than the bad things.

im trying really hard, and my therapist says I'm doing everything right. im doing my best not to get too worked up over my job problems. I have issues and needs that many others don't and it makes sense that it will take me a while to find an adequate job to accommodate those.

im trying my best.

[theoldaeroplane]

Journaling

Had some good introspective talks over the weekend, mostly about my perfectionism and the root of it. I was able to see that deep down I still think of myself as flawed and unable to make good decisions. This manifests itself as perfectionism and an insatiable need for the approval of literally anyone else, from partners to strangers. Even when I do get it, this notion of badness quickly causes me to become suspicious of that approval. ("You're just being nice because you're my friend/partner/whatever.") This becomes a vicious cycle where nothing I make is ever good enough and no amount of praise is ever sufficient.

This is all useful information, but now I have to do the hard work of digging out that core of "I am bad" (thanks, evangelical upbringing!) and replacing it with something better. Not sure how to do that but fortunately I have therapy this week

[theoldaeroplane]

talking to myself

can you just lose your identity? i guess it depends on what your identity is. what you based it off of. is your identity just something you like? what you value or believe?

what is it that gets stolen out of you when you realize for the first time that you're too old for a toy, that you can't find the joy in it anymore? not like---no, not like depression. it's not everything. but it's something youve carried with you all your life?

silly that it's a brand that did it. makes sense though. always did love creatures.

it's not a problem to cycle through interests. it's just frightening to witness a behavior you did not anticipate of yourself.

[theoldaeroplane]

just journaling

woke up with a cold; not too bad, but kind of sucks. managing it with dayquil.

been feeling... empty. not all the time! but a lot. i've recognized it as something like burnout, or attempting to recover from being in survival mode for two years. probably both. googled "how long does it take to get out of survivor mode" and ultimately wound up on the cptsd meme subreddit. I already knew I have cptsd, but it was kind of eye-opening to relate to almost all the memes i saw there. One in particular hit so hard that P had a full bawling meltdown. after some squabbling about what to do, R took front. got us dressed, took my meds, ate a good breakfast. R let Raz out which was good i think. he was fussy while i was doing breakfast but now that i'm sitting he's happily sitting on me.

i don't think it was unhealthy for me to be scrolling that subreddit. i think i do okay in terms of not subjecting myself to things i know will upset me. i also know i am a CHAMP at avoidant coping. so i guess it's maybe like, a way of easing myself in?

energy dropped after eating which happens a lot. i think that's relatively normal? not sure what normal is anymore! normal enough. i know everyone at work gets the energy drop after lunch anyway. i befriended a sweet older lady from Malaysia named Mary last week and after lunch she always comes into whatever room i'm working on and goes "corgi! i don't want to work! i tired!" and i'm like "mary you're so fucking right"

been wanting to draw some emotional processing art but keep distracting myself out of it. for example, i am once more working on my silly little homelab stuff, which is something i can happily do for an entire day. and probably will today! but it does mean i'm not drawing. which isn't inherently bad, but does feel like an avoidance strategy. but i am here journaling so that's gotta be something?

sitting with partner and listening to spotify now for a bit. (if you're reading this hi babe <3.) got therapy later. gonna try to do laundry. jojo is asleep under the bed and raz is waddling around on the ground looking for trouble. things aren't too bad.

[theoldaeroplane]

meandering thoughts (reflective style)

with my life seeming to settle a little bit (knock on wood) my brain returns to its favorite dilemma: relationships! how confusing they are for me! how i get crushes all the time on everyone and am too scared of alienating people important to me to do anything about them! operation "just be cool and hot and hope people are attracted to you" does not seem to be working, despite the fact i am both cooler and hotter than ever. i have always given off an unconscious air of "don't interact with me" that I think makes this difficult for people. (probably because I largely don't want most people to interact with me, and because I'm autistic and can't figure out social cues, and because even casual touch with people outside of a very small bubble activates like seventeen goblins in my brain!)

i talked to my therapist about these feelings last week and we're probably going to focus on them moving forward. this was really the year where i realized that the depths of the damage done to me growing up were much deeper than I thought. it's difficult to acknowledge that! it's hard to really look in the eye how much work I still have to do even now.

I've been reading about relationship anarchy and finding it appealing. the trouble of course comes in the practice. my therapist, who's trans and poly and is someone I trust to have good takes on these things, said something like ... "you can just ask the people you want to be closer to if they're interested in exploring a possible deeper intimacy." im both fascinated and terrified by this. sure i can just ask. what if i get told no? ive been told no so many times. it does a number on your self confidence! what if it makes this person who is important to me uncomfortable? what if it pushes them away from me? it's happened before! i can't risk losing what I have!

i suspect the fact my support network is almost entirely friends makes this much more frightening; without the kind of anchor relationship most people i know have in the form of immediate family, expressing interest in changing the relationships i do have kind of feels like fucking around in my operating system's files without a backup. it's sort of funny to be okay with the mortifying ordeal of being known, but being too afraid to even get to it.

relationship anarchy says, do away with preconceived notions of what a relationship "should" look like. kick out the fences and define new borders. fuck your friends and live domestically with your platonic life partner, if you want. this fascinates me. it's something I've been writing into many of my characters' relationships for some time now, without having a name for it. do i want a traditional partner? part of me thinks I do, but maybe that's just a lifetime of social conditioning. what would be the most fulfilling for me? i don't know. it seems like something you can probably only figure out with experience, and right now that's my problem.

i was raised by people who wanted me to "court" instead of date. (My therapist made a terrible face and said oh I hate that for you when I told him this.) i was raised by people who definitely would have tried to get me to read "i kissed dating goodbye" if i had done anything other than have a crush on a gay boy all through high school. I still talk to that guy all the time, crush free even, and he's in a great relationship with another man now. their relationship is strictly romantic; the partner fulfills his sexual needs with other people. i thought that was so cool when I first heard about it. I think it was the first time someone I knew personally demonstrated a functioning, nontraditional relationship. Others have followed. I'm so happy for them! I watch, fascinated, from behind the iron wall I've built for myself while "Hello My Old Heart" plays in the background.

it's Christmas as I write this, and I've got no plans. a few people have checked in on me, because I'm always alone at this time of year. (honestly, the checking in kind of makes it worse. "hey I'm celebrating with my loved ones and I know you aren't, how are you?") that's another complicated topic, but it's been a little easier this year. it's probably to do with both time and the fact that my adhd is being managed for the first time ever; it's common to have increased emotional regularity when that happens. I'm lonely, but I'm used to it, and things will go back to normal soon. It would be nice to have someone to spend it with. i don't know if it's in the cards for me. maybe next year.

I worry sometimes that I sabotage myself. Oh, I'm into this person, but they're in a relationship, or they're straight, or they're ace, or they live far away, or I work with them (as if any of those things are a hard limiter in all cases). I can find any excuse not to express my interest in someone. It's something I'm working with my therapist on.

As morose as this post is, I'm okay. today I'll mess around with my server project and go feed my friend's pets while he's away. I'll spend a lot of time thinking about this and distill my feelings down into something I can overlay onto a character; i see myself most clearly when I do it through a mask. I've got things to cook and a fridge to clean and an indoor bike to ride. There are people who care about me and it's important I try to remember that.

uh, happy holidays! i promise i am okay enough. please don't make me think about it any deeper than that. I really truly hope you have a good one.

[theoldaeroplane]

Rambling

Had a semi-major health scare Monday (I'm okay) and have been recovering from that for the last week. In an hour I go in and get onboarded for a company that places people in factory jobs---I'm literally so worn down from the last two years that I don't want to let myself hope, but if I could get placed somewhere that pays a living wage and just do repetitive tasks to my music all day that would be incredible.

Monday's scare knocked the wind out of me creatively which is actually painful with how inspired I was for the last few months. I seem to be able to get over myself and write with very specific circumstances so that's better than nothing. I cut up some paper for artist trading cards and I'd like to try to make some of those soon too as a low effort, low stakes creative thing.

As ever, I struggle to keep myself from perceiving myself as a burden to people around me. On a logical level I believe them when they say I'm not, because they're my friends and they've proven that over and over, but the wicked goblin that lives in my brain loves to point out that's what my parents would have said too. And look how that turned out. I have a dedicated playlist for grieving the fact that my parents' love was conditional.

It's started to become clear to me that I think I am more damaged than I previously thought, and I guess I would rather know that than otherwise. Ive spent a lot of time thinking about a line from a song: "for once I want to be the car crash, not always just the traffic jam." I've always identified with that line, with the idea of "if I'm going to get hurt, at least do it in a way loud enough to get help." To not feel like a chronic nuisance, because I think I've always had that sense of being A Nuisance. A Bother. An Inconvenience. And I'm sure that I was that to my parents much of the time (I recall the time my mother informed me I was an unplanned child), and that's surely why I have such trouble with it now. I spend so much energy and time trying to do things to convince people (read: myself) that I'm worth the effort to put up with. I'm certain it's why I get so afraid and anxious when something I do is met with silence or a lackluster response, because oh no, this is it, they're finally sick of me, they're going to tell me I'm annoying and needy and troublesome just like my former best friend once did. (That's another thing I should really bring to therapy. It's been ten years since that happened and I still haven't really talked about it.)

If I can just get work that doesn't drain me. If I can just get work that pays enough to let me afford the things I need to support myself without burning out. (I live in fucking Iowa. It's a low bar here, the cost of living.) If I can just stabilize, if I can just start to get enough money to feel secure again, if I can start to look for a new car that doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart at any moment. If I can meter my energy out in the right way to let me be a person after work. If I can just, if I can just. I'm so tired. I'm so so tired.