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“I worry that my friends will misunderstand my silence as a lack of love, or interest, instead of a tent city built for my own mind.”

Tarfia Faizullah, from "Poem Full of Worry Ending with My Birth," published in Poem-a-Day

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"u look tired" dawg i'm going insane

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because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

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all my love to mostly and fully bedbound people. i feel like we're often left out of even disability conversations and advocacy, much less the wider world. we are full, real, complex people like anyone else. we deserve love, support, connection, and the ability to live the fullest life we can under the circumstances

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I feel like we don’t talk enough about how having chronic illness and/or chronic pain makes you irritable. It makes you grumpy. It can make you a not very fun person to be around. 

We don’t talk enough about the ugly sides of chronic illness/pain. The parts where you feel like a bad person not because of the pain in of itself but because everyone else thinks you are pushing them away. The times when you don’t bear it like a saint and the roughest edges of your personality come out. Where maybe you do hurt other people’s feelings. Its a complicated side of the experience thats resists an easy answer. 

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served my duty as an autistic artist and made a bunch of autism creature reaction images

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People wonder why disabled people "make their disability their whole personality" when we live in a world where disabled people have to constantly explain themselves so they aren't judged and attacked.

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Meltdown Triggers

Neurodivergent_lou

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Autism From the Inside vs the Outside

Mrs Speechie P

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Neurodiversity

The Autistic Teacher

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Autistic and Getting “Locked” in Repetitive Thoughts

Neurodivergent_lou

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Monday May 8th, 2023 6:14 am

Alright so some shit's happened since I last blabbed in April. Um don't want to go into too much detail but someone I know was in a DV situation that almost ended their life but didn't thankfully, and because of that I was sent into a bit of a trauma spiral to a certain extent right after I was hyper concentrating on my BPD. Like obviously I care about the situation and have empathy, it had also really ticked off some triggers for my PTSD of my past and not being able to process through this because I've had to work a lot more lately. I've had to take on a lot more responsibility and focus and physical/mental labor that I wouldn't recently normally be able to do, but probably in combination of the trauma, the change in routine, the added stress and anxiety, I went into a manic mood swing. I'm still in it. However, it's not the fun, euphoric kind; it's the anxiety, stress, twitching, paranoia, constant grinding, always on the go, never doing enough but simultaneously too much, increase in my OCD traits, insomnia, interrupted sleep, can't turn my mind off, want to spend to feel something kind of mania. It's manageable though! For the most part that is. My partner and I noticed my change in mood swing when it was just starting to happen, like when I get irritable, or more sensitive, can't sleep, easily agitated kind of feelings. I also let a friend/coworker what's going on so they could look out for me since it's really hard to listen to my body or slow myself down or not act on impulsive decisions etc. It's nice to see the self awareness and understanding is being put to good use. Though I know realistically I wouldn't have been able to make it through these couple of weeks if I hadn't been manic if I'm being honest.

#journal entry

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— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

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