#if its not obvious ofc this is about my personal experience with autism

[party-gilmore]

absolutely wild learning about my austistic leanings later in life because like

my parents just thought i was “eccentric” and found me rather entertaining, weirdness and all (plus their own probably undiagnosed AuDHD making their benchmark for normal skewed anyway) and my mon specifically was always so “mever change for anyone just be you” from a very young age so i just…

never experienced the concept of masking i guess?

Not as masking, I mean.

i would read accounts from autistic people talking about their experiences and struggles and pressure to conform and masking and the mental effects thereof and i would feel empathy because i “went through similar issues” but i th

i thought i was just being bullied for being Weird. just in general. like kids do. that this was a case of “well this sounds a lot like what i go through, but im not actually autistic so it probably isnt my place to join the conversation.”

it just never clicked that, “um. hi. these are the exact same behaviors you do. and there were moments in your life that almost led you to masking. because thats what it would’ve been. masking. but your dumb ass thought it wouldve just been ‘changing how you act and who you are in order to be bullied less’ which okay TECHNICALLY yes that is an accurate if watered down description of masking too, but.

Then you refused to on principle, because bullying is bad and fuck you and got angry about it to the point of overcompensating and INCREASING your Behaviors (tm) until you completely skipped over one of the key experiences that wouldve helped you identify with other people on the spectrum later in life.”

I just rolled through life like a steamroller of righteous, spiteful confidence that my preferences and actions were nobody’s business but my own and vice versa unless they clearly and directly affected others - so much so that I never actually set any kind of benchmark pattern for the way (NT) people around me act.

So I never had a benchmark for masking.

like im going back through all my memories of friendships that soured because i took everything at face value instead of trying to read deeper into cues. because I would always just say what i wanted people to know, straight up. like if i wanted attention i would ask for it if i wanted them to know i was hurt i would tell them. That made so much sense to me i assumed that was the norm. Because clearly. Thats logical. and obvious. So certainly other people are doing the same.

I got blinsided a LOT by the games my school friends and later some early adult friends played, yeah, but AGAIN (see: steamroller of self confidence) I simply assumed that was THEIR problem, not mine, and just… grieved the friendship and hoped for their sake they’d eventually sort their shit out 🤣

I literally thought they were the ones having difficulty with social contracts and cues and relationships.

Then over the past couple years the more I see accounts from other people in the AuDHD spectrum, like “yeah neurotypicals actually [thing i had been assuming was just an asshole trait for years without questioning it], heres what they really mean and a good script for responding” and “its funny how i [exact behavior i did for years] and no one realized i was austistic till later” im like… 🙃

And the last kicker was the post about food touching with the tag response “sometimes masking your autistic traits ends up more autistic than the unmasked trait” and my gut reactions were, in order:

…why would you bother to mask that, why is the way you eat anyone elses business?

i mean i guess it would ease up the pressure a bit, i got bullied for that too, i can see how maybe you wouldnt want to have to put… up with…

…

oHHHH SHIT IS THAT WHAT IT WOULDVE BEEN. IF I HADNT BEEN SO ANGRY ABOUT BEING ASKED TO CHANGE. IT WOULDVE BEEN MASKING. IF I’D KNOWN WHAT THAT WAS. THIS WHOLE TIME.

its just… its just been a series of months of me shaking my head and realizing my entire life has been that meme like “Am I having difficulties connecting socially??? No, it is everyone else who is wrong.”

🤣 girl help

#if its not obvious ofc this is about my personal experience with autism #not trying to say anything about whether its better to mask or not to mask i think thats up to each individual personal and their situation #whatever is most comfortable to them #…not me putting disclaimers in the tags of a personal post just in case anyone takes it the wrong way so i need to clarify #because suddenly i dont trust whether or not my tone comes across as intended anymore and am afraid of sounding arrogant #i bet THAT doesnt have anything to do with the AuDHD at ALL for SURE 🙄

[itsaspectrumcomic]

man ok idk if youll be able to advise on this or something but like. do you know anything regarding dealing with like internalised ableism?

i live in a rural part of ireland, right? and idk what it is about rural ireland but some of the people are heinous. my school is in a small miserable-ass town and like. God, man. not everyone sucks, of course but like. jesus lol additionally i have a ~mildly ableist~ mother (a "we're all a little bit autistic" and "erm. youre not disabled because youre not in a wheelchair or blind/deaf" etc etc type stuff. + "npd = bad person" which isnt particularly good for me specifically because i have npd (that i both Cant get an official diagnosis for, for various reasons, and im not really Looking for one either because i know what i am and its not like you get support for it because ~ooh scary narcissist~.)

and like. idk if this is Obvious but that can kinda cause a weird-ass relationship with You (being Me in this case, yk how it is with the second person perspective when. ranting) and The Concept Of Being Disabled. like, objectively. im disabled. im autistic, ive definitely got adhd (that im hopefully going to get examined for at some point cause college stuff requires it for the disability forums and stuff. gotta love that. fuckin 80% comorbidity right?), ive got a laughable number of repetative strain injuries, i have a sensory processing disorder, an endocrine disease that effects my Entire cardiovascular system, a spine that felt a lil quirky and bent in too much. so on a so forth

but also like. it feels wrong to call myself disabled. yk, like im doing a disservice to all the other ~actually~ disabled people (being Anyone but me lol) (none of this is At All helped by the fact that my mother refuses to listen to me regarding Jack Shit about my health in Any way. "oh you nearly passed out on top of a hill because of your cardiovascular condition? erm youre just not exercising enough actually" "you dont have depression [said while i was filling out an assigned mood diary after being forcefully brought to camhs for Reasons" like. shut the fuck up and Listen to me please. at least Entertain the idea that i could be right about something for fucking once lmao. cause ive been right about EVERYTHING regarding my mental health so fucking far so. fuck off /nay ofc) (also man. like, even if you ignored the physical issues ive got im still disabled on account of being autistic. like, motor function is fine, despite being a lil clumsy and/or unsteady sometimes but like. my emotional needs are Fucked. think of the response youd get if you asked a. fuckin. 8 year old or something to do algebra. but with a very emotionally stunted and traumatised 17 year old lol. lmao, even /lh)

so like. if youve got. any advice or whatever on any of this thatd be Super cool + no pressure obvs. sorry this is a whole. like. fucking essay's worth of Random Guy Complaining To You On The Internet lol

-🐢 <- just so i can find this again if you respond. i Like Turtles. i am Normal about the tmnt and also turtles The Creatures. i wont talk at length about turtle mutant anatomy (i am deceiving you)

Internalised ableism is a really hard thing to deal with, especially when you're surrounded by people who constantly re-enforce it. I've also spent a lot of time worrying that I'm not disabled 'enough' to deserve certain accommodations, that I'm making an unnecessary fuss. But the truth is, autism IS a disability and if there are accommodations that can help support you, you deserve access to them. You're not taking away from others with disabilities by advocating for yourself.

It's taken me a long time to understand this and I still worry sometimes. What has helped is talking about my experiences with people I know understand, like my therapist or best friend, and learning about the experiences of other autistic people through books, social media, YouTube and even real life.

I'm sorry your mother and others aren't being understanding - remember that's a them problem, not you, and try to spend your time with people who do understand.

🐢🐢🐢 <- the turtles wish you luck

#🐢 #ask #anon ask #autism #actually autistic #advice #autistic #autism is a disability #its a spectrum #long post

[zyxyz-xyzzy]

You know what really hurts me these days? What really makes this whole SJ thing crush my self-worth and motivation to improve so utterly? The feeling that I’m not valid, that I don’t belong anywhere and never will, that I’m like an outsider to my own identity. I feel like even though I’m technically part of a few Oppressed Groups™, for various reasons they Don’t Count or I’m Just As Bad as the privileged ones—I guess because I’ve internalized so much of the rhetoric about people like me being Wrong and Bad that some part of me sees “evil problematic oppressor” as my identity in and of itself, that it’s more central to my self-image now than my actual identities, so if something could be construed as me being a victim/oppressed person there must be something wrong with it. More specific stuff under the cut, fwiw.

So a large part of what makes me feel that I’m worthless, don’t matter, etc. is that I’m too privileged, but theoretically someone who knows me could try and counter that with “But you’re not male, or straight, or neurotypical! That’s pretty oppressed!” And I wish it could be that simple, really, but I just can’t make myself see it that way. So looking at these one by one:

To start off with an example, seeing all the posts here lately about International Women’s Day just made me feel worse instead of better, because I knew that that day and those sentiments aren’t about me, aren’t for me. As a cis white woman specifically, I feel like I’m not really in a marginalized group at all, that I’m not the one who really matters here, that it’s not my place to speak up or have an opinion that people care about. Even if I did, a lot of the historical issues that are involved in that (reproductive rights, the wage gap, etc.) are things that have never affected me personally because of my other privileges as well as how sheltered and withdrawn from the world I am in general, so I don’t really have the right to complain to begin with. And even though I am Not Straight (I’m shying away from using the l-word here b/c I kind of feel like I haven’t earned the right to call myself that, if that makes any sense), it’s not like it’s actually affected my life any outside of, like, my preferences in fictional ships and meaningless stuff like that. I’ve never been in any sort of relationship, and prob never will b/c I’m just too much of a mental and social trainwreck for it to work out (plus the combination of me being self-centered, bad at dealing with other people, and having Literally Zero experience would prob make me a pretty terrible gf anyway, so anyone worth dating would deserve better than someone like me tbh). The combination of that and not really feeling like part of the ~LGBT community~ has given me zero reason to come out IRL, so I haven’t, even though I feel privileged and selfish for staying in the closet despite it not being a safety requirement for me (I know my parents would be supportive, and since I don’t really have an IRL social life I don’t have any friends there to worry about their reactions). And ofc, while online I don’t deny it I don’t exactly go shouting it from the rooftops either, and I only admit to it in spaces that are reasonably supportive to begin with. So as someone who’s never really experienced misogyny/homophobia personally, do I really have a right to act like I’m part of the group, like I deserve to be heard?

Now, on the mental side of things, I try to avoid admitting this online usually because I know I’ll just be pitied or made fun of (and I can’t really blame them for that, as much as it upsets me), but yeah, I have an actual professional diagnosis (from when I was like... 3, don’t remember the exact timing) of what was known at the time as Asperger’s. (Yes, I know that’s not a real thing anymore, but I’m not really comfortable calling myself autistic/on the autism spectrum for various reasons, so I prefer to keep using that label despite its unofficial nature.) And sure, if you asked me whether that’s affected my life, whether I’ve suffered from the effects of ableism and the like in the past, the honest answer would be yes. But that isn’t enough. For one thing, it’s not really seen as a Big Deal in the way race/gender/sexuality issues are, so I feel like my cis/white privilege outweighs it completely. And it also seems like it can’t really be compared directly to other types of oppression—I wasn’t treated badly just for existing as part of [X group] like in other cases, I was treated badly because I fucked up. Because I couldn’t function normally, because I caused problems for everyone around me. Can I really blame them for that? Can I really act like I was a victim just because of that? I’m not so sure. And to look at things from a more recent angle, getting back to the whole “aspergers vs. autism” thing, I see a good bit of autism-related posts on my dash and tbh they usually aren’t all that relatable? It feels like it’s always focused on the physical side of things, the stimming and sensory issues and whatnot, which just haven’t been as big of a factor for me, especially now that I’m older. In my case the more obvious effects are the mental ones, the special interests, difficulties with social cues, etc., and those aren’t really given much attention (in a positive/supportive light, at least). Sometimes I even wonder if I was never really autistic to begin with, if I’m just some antisocial weirdo who can’t deal with people, and I don’t have any good excuse for it. Ofc, even if that were the case I wouldn’t necessarily be Completely Normal mentally, since there’s still the overwhelming depression and anxiety to deal with (though I know learning disabilities and mental illness aren’t really the same thing, so that’s kind of a bad comparison anyway, but they are something that even I can’t deny I have). And lately I’ve been suspecting I might also have BPD, but I haven’t brought it up with my therapist or anything since I’m afraid I’d look like an ass if I said it and turned out to be wrong, plus with the stereotypes of people with it being “toxic”, “manipulative”, etc. it would really just end up being just one more reason to hate myself and for other people to dislike and distrust me in the end.

#not a reblog #a sj tag #it's time to Vent oh boy #sorry for the walls of text orz #I haven't spent a ton of time on editing this so it might read weirdly at parts idk #that being said if anyone actually reads this I am kind of curious what they'd think #feel free to send me an ask/message/whatever if you do have something to say about it