Genuine question I fear may be misconstrued no matter how I say it: Fellow autistics, what do you do when you have to banish your special interest? When you lose it for good?
I grew up a ridiculously obsessive harry potter nerd. I had basically every bit of trivia and fact memorized. It was all consuming and everything to me. I loved other media, other topics, but not as much as HP. It was one of the only things i got excited about.
Now, of course, I have been uh. Not Doing That for years. Ever since jkr's vile fucking manifesto I just couldn't. I'm queer, my partner is nonbinary, many of my friends are genderqueer in some way. She twisted everything that I'd loved and left it hollow. I don't necessarily agree that HP is like, actually the worst media ever to exist, but it absolutely has soooo many problems that make it nauseating to have any fondness anymore. and I don't want the fondness anymore, I hate it, I hate so much that it's something I invested so much of my brain into. It's not comfort, it's sickening, even if part of my brain insists that it could be comfortable if I just ignore the bad parts.
Since then I've been trying to find something else. There's a not insignificant chance I have ADHD, and I have many other media and topics, childhood and otherwise, that I love to look into and hop between. Percy Jackson, the concept of death, TMA, medicine, media analysis, ISAT, cats. I love them all! I could talk about them for hours if you let me!
And yet, when I look to something to anchor me, something that I can come back to that has an incredible amount of meaning and comfort to me... it's a void. In place of HP there's nothing in the center of my little mind galaxy. And I sure as shit don't want HP back in there as the sun. I'm still questing to find what the new interest could be. It makes me feel, strangely ungrounded to be like this.
Has anyone else ever experienced this?? Even if no one knows what tf to do about it, I feel a little crazy trying to explain it. I'm still not sure if what I'm saying here makes sense.
