Untitled.

Descriptions are overrated.

[touchingthevoid]

Me, problem: I often hear a joke and start laughing, only to realise it wasn’t a joke at all and the person telling the non-joke isn’t pleased that I laughed.

Therapist, solution: wait to see if the other person laughs, if they don’t, it’s probably not a joke.

Me: {laughing}

Therapist: {silence}

Conclusion: therapy is not going as well as I had hoped it would.

[touchingthevoid]

I’m not entirely sure how this will go, if I’ll manage to do it and, if I do, how long it will take me to get there, but I decided to not let myself be broken by one person’s behaviour.

It’s common for a great deal of autistic people (neurodivergent people in general) to feel like others’ bad behaviour towards us must somehow be our fault.

We’re the “weirdos”, so sure we must have done something weird to deserve it, expecially when those others clearly state that much. Or maybe we aren’t, maybe we didn’t, maybe - just maybe - that’s just a lame excuse they use for the inexcusable.

I don’t want to let one such people define me, define how I see myself and define how I see others.

One person’s narcissism with its typical taking advantage of and disregard for others won’t serve as the means through which I evaluate anyone else. They will not be the lens through which I see the world.

I will not apologise for being me, I will not be ashamed of my autism, and I will not automatically take someone else’s nasty behaviour towards me as being surely my fault.

This is a work in progress, but I won’t let them define me, define how much I love or how much I care for anyone else. My own self included.

[touchingthevoid]

Some of the dumbest (real) reactions I got from close friends and relatives who I’ve told about my HF autism diagnosis:

1. Do they [specialists] even know what autism is?

2. Dr [name] has probably never seen an autistic person, my neighbour has an autistic son and he screams all the time.

3. Oh come on, do you really think autistic people can finish or even go to university?

4. No, you’re not. What you really are is actually hypochondriac.

5. You read too much. If you read less, you wouldn’t get such silly ideas into your head.

6. You don’t bite [ehh?!], bang your head against the wall, smell people’s shoes [wtf?!], {insert other behaviours along these lines people think all autistic individuals must absolutely display}, so you can’t be autistic.

7. So what? We’re all a bit autistic.

8. You just don’t go out enough, all you need is a few drinks and sunlight.

9. That’s a lame excuse. If you don’t want to come [to some get-together], just say it.

10. You have to make an effort and socialise more, that’s the only way you’ll snap out of it.

11. How long will it take to get cured?

12. [NEW] Does that mean you can’t work anymore?

…

I will keep adding to the list as I hear/remember more of these “wonders of the human mind”…

[touchingthevoid]

Since I felt the need to actually seek proper help to manage everyday life challenges posed by my autism, a lot has changed.

I started “pruning” my friendships. I do not need friends who think “we’re all a bit autistic” and my problem is “not making an effort to be like others”, or even that my autism would “go away” if only I forced myself to “enjoy the same activities as everyone else”.

I came to a point where I had to make a choice: either follow specialist advice, or do as others (layman) expect me to do, which is basically what they themselves do.

I have spent my entire life during the latter. It’s time to try a different approach, so I’m going with the former.

Either people accept the difference or they don’t. It’s not my job to try to convince them to. Like it’s no homosexual person’s job to try to convince others to stop being homophobic, or any physically handicapped person’s job to convince them drop ableism.

And that’s about it for now.

[touchingthevoid]

Ready to start the conditioning to push my limits of endurance: Seoraksan, South Korea, this autumn.

There’s just something about mountains and their uncanny ability to induce perfect calm and absolute exhilaration simultaneously.

So grateful for the trust implicit in the invitation!

[touchingthevoid]

It actually feels okay to be me when there’s no one nearby I must imperatively walk on eggshells around.

Basically, it feels okay to be me when I can actually be myself, without the awful burden of having to pretend to be someone else in order to be liked (or even accepted), knowing in advance that it isn’t me who those who say they like me are actually fond of - rather, it’s the image of what they want to see in me that I become a reflex of in order not to freak them out.

And that is something I should know to be a waste of time and effort which always leads me nowhere good: there’s only so much I can consistently pretend, only so much small talk I can make, and only so long I can pretend to be a bit daft for.

The longer and more consistently I pretend to be what others want to see in me, the more it hurts when the system crashes, as it always ends up doing.

Sure, being disliked, seen a “a weirdo” or even perceived as “scary” is far from ideal. Yet, for some of us, the alternative is far worse.

[touchingthevoid]

Intrusive thought/question of the day: just how the f*** did I get here?

Had someone asked me to predict my own future a year ago, today as it is wouldn’t even have been a possibility crossing my mind. All it took were a few clicks to trigger a massive cascade of life-changing events which are still developing (and some of which will hopefully continue to do so, correctly and for some time).

Would I have chosen things to happen the way they did, or would I not take back those clicks were I able to go eight months back in time? I certainly would. And yet here we are and, painful as it has been to get here, I am glad to be where I am. Lessons learnt through pain are often the hardest to forget. Thankfully so.

Not all I’ve learnt can be classified as “negative” - yes, I did learn that people can be virtually infinitely more twisted than I already thought they were and that, no matter how nice they seem, and how long they seem that way for, they should never be trusted, at least not fully so.

But I’ve also learnt that, no matter how hard I am kicked down, be it illness or just humans being what we are - predators always seeking new prey - I appear to always manage to get up again (with good, professional help, at least), stronger than I was before.

The latter being the lesson I want to hold the tightest on to.

[touchingthevoid]

Sudden snow cravings.

Most sounds tend to bother me deeply, and make me feel sick, even. Especially the high-pitch type. Yet I love the sound of walking on fresh, deep snow. It is a very soothing sound, very calming, reminiscent of happy memories.

With every step, it’s as if the snow itself were telling me, in its own language, that everything will be okay.

Snow makes me happy. And there are very few things that actually make me truly happy. At best, things tend to make me content.

Sudden snow cravings indeed.

[Picture taken during a lovely solo hike in Bergen, Norway]

[touchingthevoid]

For the first time in quite some time, I feel back in control. Nothing to hide, nothing and no one to fear, freely making the decisions I truly believe are best and for the best, regardless of others, their rules and their expectations.

[touchingthevoid]

It’s a common trait amongst autistic people to take others at face value, to believe them and not question their ulterior motives, which can make us, for the lack of a better word, gullible, “easy prey”. It’s easy for vultures to take advantage of that - and they most certainly do.

Whilst that may be true for many of us that we can be easier to be taken advantage of than neuronormative people, what such vultures don’t seem to be aware of is that, another common trait amongst us is focus and persistance, for better or worse, it’s not easy for us to let go.

We spend our lives since we’re first socialised adapting to a world that is naturally hostile to us, because we are the exception, and the world is built for the norm. So we’re used to adversity, we’re used to emotional pain, we’re basically used to a constant fight for survival.

Let’s use our hard-coded persistance and acquired adaptability in our favour. We may be different, but many of those differences are also our biggest competitive advantages, our biggest strengths and, when a vulture takes a hard enough bite, show them we’re easily capable of turning them into dinner (figuratively, of course).

[touchingthevoid]

I found myself “miraculously” having the chance to “go back in time” and do things which resulted in disaster differently. It’s just perfectly explainable simple chemistry, but it does feel like a miracle. So much so that, even doing everything differently this time around, I’m terrified the outcome will end up being the same again.

Hopefully it won’t. It will hopefully be indeed possible to change the past by re-living it - differently, making different choices, taking different steps, ultimately getting a different result.

[touchingthevoid]

I have just recently found out that a number of anticonvulsants (including some used for controlling neuropathic pain and other such off-label uses) significantly decrease the effectiveness of the contraceptive pill.

The question is: why does the patient have to “find out”? Shouldn’t it be the practitioner warning them?

[touchingthevoid]

How can anyone kind and empathetic not feel empathy for people who had it hard all their lives, who the universe seems to be always plotting against, as it always seems to treat them harshly and unfairly, very sensitive people who fear abandonment and often appear lonely, confused about themselves and their self-worth, self-conscious and insecure, and in need for support, a lot of support, who could do with some praising to raise their spirits?

Unless we’re slightly horrible people, it’s hard not to empathise with someone like this. Yet, who we’re empathising with is quite possibly a narcissist. A so-called “vulnerable narcissist” to be specific.

The biggest strength and most powerful tool of the vulnerable narcissist is precisely the vulnerability they portray.

This is a type of narcissism we don’t talk about often, yet one which is as toxic as any other.

Awareness concerning vulnerable narcissism should be raised: both to allow those around them to protect themselves and to let vulnerable narcissists know that help is available (unlike other cluster B personalities, those with narcissistic personality disorder do suffer as a direct result of how their disorder makes them interact with the world and with themselves).

This is a good start: https://www.verywellmind.com/signs-of-a-vulnerable-narcissist-7369901

[touchingthevoid]

“When something seems too good to be true, it normally isn’t” and, when it feels like we’re living a dream, that may serve as a good indication that we should prepare for the fact that, whether we like it or not, sooner or later, we are bound to wake up.

[touchingthevoid]

Loving someone is one of the most dangerous things we can do, a risk we most often don’t even choose taking.

To love a person is to give them an incredible amount of power: the power to make us happy, to make us feel whole, alive, and that our lives are entirely worth living… and the power to make us feel the exact opposite too.

I never ever want to give this amount of power to anyone else ever again.

[touchingthevoid]

From where I stand, hell does exist. It’s just that hell is not as much a place as it is a state. I guess all who have experienced clinical depression are familiar with it.

Hell is when you become trapped inside your mind, and that mind trapping you is made solely of an asphyxiating mix of abstract, overwhelming sadness, oppressive panic, undefinable confusion and a deep, frightening sense of being lost, accompanied by the fear of never again being able to find the way towards yourself again.

The self becomes unreachable, I know the person I am is still around but, in the midst of the handicapping chaos keeping me a prisoner inside my own mind, I just can’t seem to reach them.

Hell is made of acute, paralysing pain. A pain which cannot be pinpointed to any specific part of the body, but an extremely violent, blinding pain nonetheless.

Hell is when your mind turns against you and buries you alive inside yourself.

[touchingthevoid]

I can’t deal with the fact that I’m ageing. And I really am ageing. Doors are closing. Horizons are narrowing. Opportunities are becoming increasingly limited.

20 years ago feels like yesterday. Although I can’t say I’ve wasted the last 20 years, I can certainly say that, unlike today, 20 years ago, it was easy to become whomever I wished to be become. Look the way I wanted to look. Live how and where I wanted to live.

Time is awfully unforgiving, and the clock only moves in one direction. The walls of age keep getting reinforced by it, and I feel like, soon enough, they’re be caving in on me.