#the autistic hyperfocus was the worst thing to lose when i was sick and the most precious thing I've ever gotten back

[giantkillerjack]

I... have deep-fried... my nervous system. I have overdone it today and thus I have done myself a hurt. I am a small zombie of a man. And also I am not a man. I am very very cute and also braincell supplies are running alarmingly low. I have many unread messages. I have autism. I have 6,000 thoughts on Arnold Judas Rimmer and his Longterm Hetero Roommate-ship with Dave Lister.

I am 7/8ths of the way to completely comatose and what remains of my brain is still like "do not worry my dude i will continue to produce images of the old space men kissing.

"I know it feels like the flu wrapped a lemon around a sledgehammer and then artfully rearranged your skull with it but so long as there is a single ounce of life left in this body then by God there will be gay thoughts about chicken soup machine repair man David Lister."

and what I'm saying is I don't understand how the emergency power reserve system ended up this way but I think it is also keeping me sane in Deep Space

#red dwarf #rimster #original #oof ow my bones #[lister voice] smegging ptsd yeah? #chronic pain #fibromyalgia #or whatever the fuck #i joke but this is actually a vital emergency system #if the tism has something to hold onto it suffuses me with a steady will to live. #i have several things in my life that give me that thankfully but the point remains #the autistic hyperfocus was the worst thing to lose when i was sick and the most precious thing I've ever gotten back #there was a time when i was afraid it wouldn't grow back. but as i healed it started to #grow back that is. different. eventually stronger even. #so at least if i feel like a wet paper towel post hurricane i have these little tethers to joy #what I'm saying is i need to think about evil fishnets Rimmer as a mental health concern. #sir that is my emotional support problematic sci fi show #urgh i am too ouch to sleep to tired to awake someone put me in stasisssss

[something-like-a-heart]

I just reblogged something that made me think a little bit about my personal experience of neurodivergence, that thing about how autistic characters on TV insult people, argue with the characters they’ve insulted (usually unintentionally) instead of apologising, and seem to be incredibly confident like they’ve never had to learn that people will get sick of you and abandon you at some point, once you’ve crossed a particular line in the sand through one of your behaviours, and you won’t see it coming until after they’ve done it. So you try your best not to be accidentally annoying or insulting or “too much” in any way, but it still happens and it’s your fault; when you get lonely, and people tell you that you’ll have to “be yourself” to make friends. Meanwhile, “being yourself” is what lost you these people in the first place. “Being yourself” is dangerous. Shall we say, it touched a nerve.

Anyway, it largely tracks with my experience of neurodivergence far more accurately than most of what I’ve seen in neurodivergent representation onscreen. Even when characters who read as autistic or otherwise ND on television or in the movies do cross that line, their friends will usually take them back. Meanwhile, I’ve had friends, good friends (or at least people who I thought were good friends) suddenly just cut me out of their lives for no apparent reason—at least, none that were apparent to me. Sometimes it gets back to me that they thought I was annoying, that I was too weird, that I laughed too hard or didn’t smile enough or that I had insulted them somehow (though I never really find out how, because apparently I already know what I did, which is ridiculous; I would not be asking if I actually knew what the issue is). I do my best to be polite and not show it when I’m in a state of sensory overload or I’m emotionally overwhelmed (and that last one has been harder to deal with than usual since my mother died five months ago). I try to act appropriately at all times but damn, is it HARD. And no matter how “normal” I try to act, some of my less “normal” traits always come through.

I’m extremely fidgety and always have been. It’s difficult for me to figure out when it’s actually my turn to speak in many situations, leading to me either being ignored or accidentally interrupting. I feel emotions very powerfully—the problem is that I’m not great at expressing them until they reach a point where they’re damn near unbearable. I over-explain because I’ve been misunderstood too damn many times throughout my lifetime, but people don’t listen because an explanation is considered to be little more than a poor excuse at best and passive-aggressive at worst. I’ve also been accused of passive-aggressive behaviour when attempting to take responsibility and make amends for something that I know I’ve messed up. When I’m emotionally overwhelmed or in a state of sensory overload I temporarily lose the ability to speak. I am always as precise in my words as I am able to be (again because I’ve so frequently been misunderstood) and although it’s been the source of some of my funniest jokes, I’ve also often been accused of taking things too literally; people sometimes assume that I’m actually too stupid to understand figurative language. I can be extremely blunt if I’m not careful, and I have to focus on smiling because my natural tendency is to have a very neutral expression on my face, especially when I’m in a state of hyperfocus. I misread situations badly if they don’t resemble things I’ve encountered before. And no matter how much energy I put into making myself acceptable, I never quite seem to manage it. I mean, I do my best not to be an asshole, but I just don’t, and probably can’t, perceive things from the same perspective as most people, so sometimes I get it horribly and catastrophically wrong.

This is why I don’t like playing new-to-me board or card games with people who already know the rules very well. It’s a bit too much like the most frustrating parts of my everyday life—everyone else already knows the rules, but if I make a mistake because of a rule that I didn’t know, or that I forgot because I had to absorb a lot of complex information all at once, people get mad at me and accuse me of trying to cheat.

And yet, I feel like I’m not actually allowed to claim neurodivergence. I’ve never been formally assessed or diagnosed with anything. That’s why I often tag my posts and reblogs about neurodiversity as “probably autistic”—I’ve been told by a few people who have a good reason to recognise the signs of certain types of neurodivergence that I probably am on the autistic spectrum, but without a proper diagnosis I can’t help but wonder if maybe I’m just making excuses for inexcusably immature attitudes and behaviour. Either way, I’ve gone through a significant amount of my life feeling like I have a defective brain, and I can’t help but be angry at myself sometimes for just not working the right way.

#personal #probably autistic #probably neurodivergent #possibly tmi and almost definitely whiny