theory of mind

I've seen a lot of social media commentary on the frustration of telling others they're autistic, only to be met with disbelief and being told, you don't look autistic! I wish I had that problem. If I tell people, I'm not sure many would be surprised. I'm more likely to get responses like, ah that explains.. a lot. 

I think about all the times I'd be out and around people for one reason or another, not sure what to do with myself, just looking at the floor, pacing in circles until I can go home. I'm not doing anything autistic! I'm bored, nervous, I'm just thinking!

Driving my aunt's car last weekend, I was very cautious. I haven't done any driving in decades. I focused on control, making turns at clean tight angles, accelerating and decelerating smoothly. I didn't go much over 10mph because we were in a parking lot, and I wanted to be confident the car would do exactly what I intended it to do, before going out where there are all sorts of things to run into if I'm a little off.

I thought I did well. Did I drive like a neurotypical would? Maybe not. I was worrying too much about making my aunt nervous. Creeping along at 10 mph, just going in circles, maybe I seemed to be driving like Rain Man. It's too easy to make assumptions about why people do things differently. Assumptions get it wrong all the time.

So would this mean I'm not really autistic, or that autistics aren't what neurotypicals understand them to be? Regardless, it bothers me a lot how others seem to perceive me and my neurodivergent behavior. It is not flattering. Where is theory of mind, when we're just making it up with an incurious preference for our assumptions over reality?

embracing autism

I hate the autism diagnosis and that in itself may be symptomatic of autism. It is too vague, too open ended, what good is it? They say it's common for people on the spectrum to have no interest in fiction, but also common not to have that issue at all. Every symptom is like this. Common to have it, common not to have it, and common to have completely opposite symptoms. What kind of diagnosis is this? Is it common for people with autism to hate the ambiguity of it?

I hate the wide gamut of severity, too. Low vs high functioning doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm low functioning in that I don't work or have friends to do much of anything, but high functioning in my ability act like an otherwise neurotypical person when I'm in public. Nobody with any familiarity with severe autism would confuse me for one of them, and yet it doesn't make much sense to call me high functioning.

My therapist pointed me towards a website with a range of diagnostic tests. While there are some areas where I don't seem to be at all autistic, overall, I score in the low to moderate range for autism. There's even a test specifically for masking, for those who might score deceptively low, due to having the self-consciousness to camouflage, and that's where I score very high. Well above the average for both neurotypicals and autistics. I'm trying like hell to be normal, why isn't it working?

What do I do with all this? I don't know. I don't want to come to terms with it. I don't want to lean into making excuses. I desperately want to feel less alone, less like a failure. I doubt the utility of saying it's not my fault, it's just autism. That just makes me feel hopeless. Whatever we call it, I already know that I'm like this and I'm so tired of it.

[[] [] []]

My entries have been longer lately. I've always tried to keep them to a reasonable length aside from that time I was shrooming, but I've been worrying about that less lately. Why do I write? Because I feel like it, and hardly ever feel like doing much of anything. I need to find someone with motivation to spare, but short of that, I write because it's the only thing I feel like doing, so why not. Given that I'm not really trying to do anything else, such as write something interesting other people might want to read, I might as well relax some of these rules I've been going by.

I could pretty much just write all day. I don't know why. I don't do it, because it would serve no purpose. I don't write with enough intention to point my writing in any particular direction. I only know how to ramble about whatever I feel like going on about. I did ok with community college level papers. I have some hope that I could learn to do more than this, but so far, I just keep doing this.

This is something an autistic person would do, isn't it. Which I hold back, because I don't approve. Better to camouflage it.

What IS autism, I tried asking Google, but could only find vague studies and theories. That's a broader problem with almost everything in the DSM, but it's especially true of autism. They don't know. Even when they do study it, I don't know if they're studying severe autism or high functioning autism and that's especially important given my concerns that they might be two separate unrelated disorders. It's all so poorly defined.

I always thought lacking "theory of mind" was one of the most fundamental elements of autism. They're in their own world, in large part because they don't think about anyone else's world and thus, the world in between connecting us. I think about this a lot, in every conceivable way. I can't interact with people, without concerning myself with what they're experiencing, thinking, and feeling.

Then it occurs to me to question conventional interpretation. Is it possible they're actually getting the phenomena completely wrong? People often read too much into superficial aspects, failing to even consider the ways in which that can be misleading. Could this be such a case?

What I don't do is presume to understand other people. I never know what anyone else is thinking, feeling, or experiencing. I do my best to ascertain that, precisely because it is impossible to know. It is neurotypical to assume others are like us, until given evidence to the contrary. I've read that people are predisposed to assume that we feel, think, and experience things pretty much the same way. Our "theory of mind" may be based on these presumptions of others, whereas I diverge not in lacking empathy, but in thinking so much about it.

Lacking this presumed theory of mind, a person might diverge in a number of different directions, with whole chain reactions of developmental consequences. It may be atypical that I leaned so far into trying to compensate, but lacking an instinct to presume shared normalcy may be the common denominator.

My father's favorite thing in the world seemed to be reading fiction. He also liked movies and television shows. He didn't like much of anything else. He didn't have friends or much interest in other people. He didn't care about his own appearance, and barely noticed anyone else's. He was always complaining about how everything made him uncomfortable. He had a hell of a time finding clothes he could stand to wear. All pretty textbook autism.

I read that some autistics don't like fiction because they don't relate to the social dynamics involved. If that has any basis in reality beyond the guesswork of neurotypicals, it isn't the issue at all in my case. I don't like that it isn't real and that it's passive. If I'm just passively absorbing information, I want to be learning about things that actually exist. 

If I'm instead trying to to enjoy myself, I want it to be more interactive. I get so irritated when video games have too much story, but I don't even play games anymore, lately. I just want to train. On the days when I can't, I just sit here obsessing about it, doing nothing. I'm highly sensitive but trying to get used to being punched in the face. I've made a concerted effort to take more interest in people and appreciate the massive benefits over doing everything alone, but it certainly isn't what comes naturally to me. 

I desperately depend on my routines to function at all. I handle uncertainty very badly. I crave novelty while avoiding it like the plague. I struggle with loud noises and bright lights, but I also care more about how my clothes look than how they feel. I care what other people are thinking, but I'm never really sure.

My whole life I've been hoping they're not thinking I'm autistic.

executive dysfunction

Executive function is a technical way of talking about the part of the brain that makes decisions. We decide what to do, we decide how much attention to pay our feelings, we decide what to think about. Any time we're talking about mental health, it's important to remember that we all have the same system of basic functions, which never work perfectly. In discussing mental health problems, we are not taking about a different system, but degrees of severity in a system that we're all familiar with.

We all know what it's like to consider doing something we really don't feel like doing. We know it can be worse if we're sick or exhausted. A person with serious problems of executive dysfunction might say they're having a very difficult time doing things they don't feel like doing. Knowing what that's like, we're told it sucks, but you have to just do it. Failing that is then seen as failing a trial the rest of us have succeeded.

This is where people often jump to character judgments. Such a person is lazy, misguided, not really trying. Usually, the executively dysfunctional person themselves will feel the same way. We're failures and it's obviously our own fault.

Then maybe we learn about a condition like ADHD and how it causes this. We find ourselves wading through ADHD memes and realizing lots of other people have surprisingly similar problems and they're calling it ADHD. What a relief to understand that it's not a character flaw, but a neurological condition, and we're far from alone in trying to navigate life in spite of it.

Here's the problem though. Everything about us is a neurological condition. We can label and categorize variations in neurology, we can define some of it as neurotypical or neurodivergent, but we are all the way we are for a vast array of reasons coalescing around how our brains work. Nobody should feel bad about who they are, because who we are isn't something we have any real control over. We don't exist without everything that goes into our existence. There is no self perched above it all, beyond the reach of cause and effect.

So why should having a diagnosis put us at ease? I tell myself all this, but it still feels like an excuse, when we talk about how difficult ADHD makes doing the dishes. Everyone hates doing the dishes. Over the decades, I've gotten a lot better at overcoming the problem, so I know it's not impossible. We are under the control of all these factors that go into who we are, but one big factor is what we're doing. If you're lifting heavy weights, you will get stronger.

If we rest on notions of this simply being the way we are, we will not get stronger. In order to grow, we need to do what we find difficult, but if we try to lift too much, we fail and injure ourselves. When we have a diagnosis, it can help us calibrate our expectations. We might not be able to handle what neurotypicals do, but we need to figure out what challenges we can handle. Aim low enough that we won't fail, which means facing our limitations, but don't aim so low that you don't need to try.

While I've just about conquered the dishes problem, I don't understand how people can spend ten hours a day, five days a week, doing things they don't feel like doing. I don't understand how people hold jobs. This is possibly the most fundamental way to explain why I don't work. The nature of my disability is such that I cannot even approach that level of executive functionality. My mind rebels far before reaching such an insane threshold.

ADHD alone typically doesn't stop people from working. They might be terrible workers, they might lose their jobs a lot, bouncing from job to job, with difficult stretches in between - but I've never worked. My case is different. I suspect that my endocrine problems are the other half of that equation. In addition to acute executive dysfunction, I had abysmal energy levels due to the deficiency. I could barely stay awake doing much of anything. Think about what a brutal combination that is.

A lot of what hormones do is gradual, developmental, it takes time. It's not like the time a drug might take to peak in the system, but rather time to alter the course of our ongoing physiological development. There is no peak to reach, but a whole process that's now moving in a different direction, upon supplementing a deficiency. There will be differences months out, more differences years out, and even more differences decades out.

So, having been on somatropin for seven years or so now, I've gradually been doing better in a lot of ways, but it only addresses half the problem. My excuses are good, but that doesn't make my life any less of a wreck in consequence. Excuses do not walk the dog. This is not to shame anyone, but it's a reality we have to be honest with ourselves about.

dis/connections

Before I started this blog, I had a Livejournal. I stopped using it shortly after moving to Chicago with Jenny. Finally I had a relationship, screw everyone else. When I started blogging again, I wasn't interested in the social media side. I wanted it to be public, but I wasn't looking for conversation or likes. I didn't tell anyone about the switch because I didn't want to be social.

One of my old friends did find it, made a few comments, and disappeared. I regret not even noticing the new comments until he'd gone away. That was typical of the relationships I'd had most of my life. Noticing too late, not sure what to do, not really caring. Handfuls of random people I didn't pay much attention to, and then I'd disappear and forget about them.

Sometimes they'd get mad at me over some misunderstanding and I'd never hear from them again. I never even tried to explain it was a misunderstanding. Not that I didn't care, but I didn't care enough. It felt exhausting and futile. It felt safer to just drop it, to focus on my daily routines of escaping everything. Sorry, Mike.

I'm disgusted with myself and how I engaged with people, but at the same time, I know that I was a mess. I'm pretty confident that ADHD is my core mental health issue, causing a lot of my anxiety and depression, but for most of my life, it was masked by my growth hormone deficiency. I was so tired, so fragile and weak, it changed the way the ADHD presented. It also made it worse. I couldn't handle trying to be social when I was so tired, just wanting to be alone with my coping strategies.

I haven't looked back at my old Livejournal in many years, but they emailed me some promotional thing, and there I was. Reading my old entries, then reading the comments. All these people I haven't thought about, some I knew better than others. Some tried to be friends with me, but I'd always just drift away. That was my nature, always adrift. Disconnected.

I've felt like writing more lately, so I posted something there too. A brief entry at first, why not. A week later, after failing to make it to the gym on account of feeling lousy for no good reason again today, I found myself writing a new entry there. A summer of these last few years in Vermont. As if anyone from my past might read it. Never know. Maybe they get the same promotional spam.

non verbal

It was difficult to distinguish the autistic children I grew up with from the severely retarded - another example of a term that's been ruined. We're not supposed to use it at all anymore, but "developmentally disabled" or "cognitively impaired" is too vague to communicate what I want to communicate. I'm talking about severe retardation, and I don't know of another term that would suit my purposes here. 

It was impossible to have any kind of conversation with any of them. If they were verbal at all, they only used words as tools to express needing something and the like. Any effort to socialize would either be ignored entirely or met with some sort of shrieking tantrum, because you've invaded their boundaries. 

One of them I got to know a little better than the others, as his mother would babysit me sometimes. He was more laid back than most, hardly ever did any shrieking or throwing of food. He could talk, but he would only talk to himself, pacing back and forth muttering incomprehensibly. He had no interest in playing with me or really playing at all.

What's remarkable about autism is that it's not mental retardation in any sense, despite any similar outward manifestation. It can resemble it behaviorally, but the underlying reasons for the behavior are entirely different. It is more mysterious than a straight forward impairment of ability or capacity, but rather seems to be an impediment to their experience of the external world, including their own bodies.

They see, hear, feel, but how their mind interprets the data seems to be different. Muted, confusing, unreliable, it is difficult to say, given only the information they give us, but that is my interpretation of what was going on with these kids. 

To say they had difficulty socializing is misleading. They were trapped in their own minds, such that they didn't understand socializing. They'd ignore someone, not due to an attention deficit, but because they were barely aware of a person's existence, never mind why it matters. They don't experience other people, until people force their way into their awareness, which must be jarring. Lacking basic social experience, because of how they're cut off from it, they express their distress in more infantile or animalistic ways.

As they get older, they do gain that experience eventually. It may take a lot longer, simply because the information comes in at an erratic and confusing trickle. They learn to adapt, they learn to communicate, they learn why it matters. As adults they can seem more normal, but still distinctively autistic.

When I talk about them being non-verbal, it occurs to me how even this could be misunderstood. When I am depressed or anxious, I have trouble talking. I can't think of anything to say. I might refer to that as non-verbal. There is no comparison though. It's not a lesser degree of the same impairment. I might look at that symptom on a list of diagnostic criteria and think it resonates, if not for having known autistic people and what non-verbal means in that context.

I would say they clearly have a distinct disorder with no correlation to most people who are diagnosed as being somewhere else on the spectrum, but I'm neither authority nor consensus. Words and their meanings change whether I like it or not, but I can say that I think the concept of autism has been stretched to cover a range of different and unrelated disorders, such that it's become useless as a descriptor.

Autism is just a word. We can believe words mean one thing or another, but it's what they mean that matters. I've spent my whole life trying to figure out why I'm like this, but there are lots of reasons, lots of explanations and ways of diagnosing the problem. In the end, what matters are consequences. Whether we're too hard on ourselves or too forgiving, we have to face a world that doesn't give a shit one way or the other. We have to make the most of the reality of our lives, regardless. What we think only matters in so much as it effects what we do.

i'm an excellent driver

I keep seeing these memes like.. I keep losing my car keys, it must be ADHD. I sleep late, I procrastinate, I'm a slob, what a relief to realize it's just ADHD! I saw one this morning lamenting how futile it was trying to explain that being rude to people wasn't actually rudeness, but autism. I suppose it could be indicative of autism if we think our explanations should negate the net consequences of our actions. 

Being rude isn't about you. It's about the effect your behavior has on others. It is indicative of autism to lack "theory of mind," centering everything around ourselves, failing to understand what others might be experiencing. This can be a subtle distinction, specific to autism, but also appearing at times like the indifference of narcissism, psychopathy, or common selfishness.

Whatever the pathology, there is a causality to it. A tangle of reasons we're like this, tying us down to notions of who we are. No matter how we explain it, there are real world consequences and reasons we might want to do better moving forward. Some people, whether autistic, narcissistic, or just stupid, lack the capacity to reflect objectively and critically on themselves, to decide how they might work on being a better person. If we can stop and look at our behavior and understand that it's problematic, we are way ahead of them already.

None of these labels should bind us. We are all the way we are because of reasons. It is nice to have explanations for our shortcomings, but we should never stop working to overcome them. That's just healthy. That's growth.

I saw a post earlier about how it's common for autistics to feel left behind, as we fail to meet one normative milestone after another. I didn't graduate high school, I didn't drive, I didn't get a job, go to college, get a career, start a family, etc.

There are all sorts of conditions which can prevent a person from achieving such milestones and living in society in often going to make us feel bad about it, whatever the label we attribute. It is an interesting defense to view said milestones as symbolic, concerning ourselves with what others think of us for not achieving them. The main problem with not having a girlfriend or a job is not what other people think. 

Each of these "milestones" is an achievement because of how much better they make our lives. There are dysfunctional relationships and lousy jobs, but those are just failures of a different kind. Being relatively successful in each of these spheres is life-changing in how rewarding it can be. The real reason for feeling bad about being "left behind" is not what others think, but the hard truth that we are missing out on substantial aspects of life that others take for granted.

When someone asks me what I do, the worst part is not what they're going to think if I tell them I've been sitting around doing nothing my whole life. The worst part is the fact that I've been sitting around doing nothing my whole life. I hate being reminded of it. I've missed out on damn near everything and looking back on it all is horrifying.

My financial situation has gradually improved such that I can finally afford a car for the first time. I did drive for a few months long ago, but I couldn't afford it. It makes me nervous, but I am a decent driver. If anything, just a little too careful. I'm acutely aware that cars are dangerous, no matter who's driving them. That said, not having one was always about the money, more than anything else. 

There are so many ways my life has been stunted by not having a car. So many things I'll be able to do, that I couldn't without one. So many things I never even thought about doing, because I've gone my whole life with this limitation. I don't even think about all the things that sure would be nice, if only I had a car.. but there are so many.

As I'm approaching this milestone so late in life, I am not thinking about how others will see me. I'm thinking of how much it will benefit the material conditions of my life, and how that will in turn facilitate my capacity for growth.

rain man

I think about a word like "autistic" and why I feel the way I do about others thinking I might be, and have to remember, it's just a word. A word that people have different ideas about. A word that means something different to lots of other people. 

It doesn't matter who's right about a definition - all definitions are arbitrary and fluid. They change over time, they change across cultures, they change between individuals, agreeing on the same dictionary definition, due to different correlations and context. The important thing is to understand what others are trying to communicate, when they use their words. We need to understand their version of their words.

When I think about the autistic kids I used to know, they were a lot like Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rain Man. They weren't savants, but similar in affect. These were not people who could mask their condition. These are rarely even people who would think to mask their condition. Nobody would diagnose them with ADHD, instead nor in addition to autism. That would be like diagnosing a blind person with astigmatism.

When people talk about autism these days, that's often not what they're talking about. Especially if they know terms like on the spectrum or neurodivergent. Most people are at least somewhat familiar with the Rain Man type, and this is where things get very fuzzy. Different people will factor in severe autism with spectrum autism to substantially different degrees such that they aren't necessarily talking about the same thing at all.

Is an autistic person competent to drive a car, hold a job, or fight in a boxing match? This depends on which version of autism you have in your head, and how much you factor that in, when considering someone you understand to be autistic. It's further complicated by the fact that most autistics develop their mental faculties late, such that by the time they're adults, they are capable of driving cars and holding jobs, even if not entirely independently. Generally, this type still does not mask their autism. They don't seem to have that sort of mindset or capacity.

If someone is doing any kind of masking such that they're passing themselves off as normal, that's somewhere else on the spectrum. It is a whole other way of thinking that is in itself more neurotypical. I'm trying to make this differentiation clear, to show how broad the meaning of this word can be, and the confusion that can cause. If someone thinks I might be on the spectrum, are they thinking of Rain Main or are they thinking of zoomers on Tik Tok? 

If the latter, yeah sure, maybe. 

If the former, what, no, are you stupid.

Take another word, a different sort of word, "woman," and again, people mean different things when they use it. They argue about who is and who isn't, but this depends entirely on how you define the word and what you're really talking about. 

This is the nature of words. People are prone to assuming they mean the same things, especially when a simple dictionary definition can be agreed upon, but get into the details and they're really talking about different things, talking past each other, failing to understand the array of divergent conclusions we come to from different starting points.

pedantics

Is it characteristic of being on the spectrum that I like my definitions unambiguous and immutable? I can seem pedantic on all sorts of subjects, hung up on how we define something. I suspect a lot of what people argue about comes down to how they define things. The language we use and our understanding of it is fundamental to how we think.

Among all these words I fear losing their meaning is autism. I grew up with autistic kids. There's an autistic adult here in Vermont that I train with at the gym sometimes. I have to be clear though, and it's difficult, because by "autistic" I mean a condition there is no longer a specific term for. The word has broadened in meaning such that there is no longer language to describe the people I'm referring to. Nor can I think of a good way to distinguish them from the chromatic spectrum of people who identify as autistic on social media, but there is a clear difference. It's not something that can be "masked" any more than Downs Syndrome or cerebral palsy. Rainman couldn't just fake being neurotypical.

I've been getting lots of "look at me I'm mentally ill" memes in my feed lately. So much, why am I like this, oh it must be autism, it must be ADHD. So much struggle to understand and define ourselves in a world of chronic disconnection from each other. Growing swaths of young people struggling to understand why they're not successful in a failing societal framework.

ADHD suffers from an inverse problem. One person listed off some of the more severe symptoms, commenting that it's absurd that this is named such that people think it's like a problem-sitting-still-disorder. Lots of people have attention span issues but conflating that with ADHD is like conflating common forgetfulness with Alzheimer's.

So, it took me forty years to realize how well this badly named condition actually fits. I wonder how many people with ADHD feel that same need for a more substantial diagnosis than problem-sitting-still-disorder. Increasingly, people with common attention span issues end up being diagnosed with ADHD, too. With such expanding definitions, it's no wonder diagnoses are surging. 

I also wonder if there should be a third term for these people somewhere between OG autistic and ADHD. I don't want to presume they're all ADHD. I think they may not even be on the same continuum, but three separate conditions with some overlap.

multipolarity

It occurs to me I may come off as conservative, with all my denunciation of liberals. I forget how ridiculous mainstream discourse can be, and being the mainstream and all, what a lot of people are going to think. The political compass has become so convoluted, but no, I'm not growing more conservative in my old age. I'm literally a communist, you idiot.

It's liberals that are confused, when they think that's got nothing to do with leftism, but what I think of gender ideology does. Talking to people about what distinguishes left from right yields a range of conflicting answers. Republicans think CNN is leftist extremism. Liberals think communists are extremists. 

Some will argue that 'tankies' like myself aren't left at all, buying all the propaganda conflating capitalism with democracy, and communism with authoritarianism. Did you know that the country with the highest percentage of people to believe their own country is democratic is China? The US is nowhere near the top of that list.

I've long thought the left to be about egalitarianism more than anything else. The right being more about conserving hierarchies. The left wants everyone to have some. The right wants haves and have nots, us and thems, especially when it comes to power and money, aka capital. This has broad implications on everything from foreign policy to policing. Liberals are capitalists, wanting better safety nets while preserving the hierarchies that make them necessary. Liberals are center-right.

This is just my opinion though. If you want to take away my leftist card because I don't think liberals are any better than conservatives, take it. If people can't agree on what being left means, it doesn't mean anything.

bring the pain

When I think back on my adolescence, when I stopped taking growth hormone, I often wonder why I hated shots so much. Why I never got used to them. When I learned to give them to myself, it made it worse. I couldn't go back to letting my mom do it, but I couldn't do that to myself either. I'd literally sit in bed for hours, just holding the syringe. 

A few times I did it eventually, but then I just gave up. I was very depressed. I was lonely. Being a little taller wasn't going to make any difference. Finally, no more godawful needles.

I've been giving myself injections every day for the last seven years or so. They're not awful. They sting sometimes, but jesus fucking christ, it's not that big of a deal. I don't understand why now I can look at the minor pain of getting a shot and shrug. It's annoying, but not something to cry about. I was almost forty, when I discovered that ability to do things that I didn't feel like doing. 

I don't understand how I was so bad at giving myself a shot, or anything else for so long. I still procrastinate a lot. When I'm depressed, I'm a failure of a stoic, but I always give my shots, and there's no hesitation. Just get it over with. Minor pain like that just seems trivial to me now, but I don't understand why. The instinct is there to take credit for it, but I'm skeptical that it has anything to do with me on a cognitive level.

I am still mortified by emotional pain. I avoid all sorts of risks, when I might get hurt emotionally. As I write about giving myself shots, I couldn't help but notice the correlation. I'm still a crybaby when it comes to emotional pain, missing out on valuable aspects of life, for fear of being hurt. Answering why feels all too easy. It hurts a lot. I'd be a fool to pretend I can just take it. I won't be fine. 

I wonder about the parallels there. It's not like I haven't experienced pain, and just need to get used to it. I was getting shots every day for years. As a kid, I never got used to it. Life has been all sorts of painful, and getting used to it? I'm not sure I'm entirely surviving it. 

Risk making it worse? Yeah, that seems like a bad idea. I am acutely aware that I lack the support structure, internal and external, to absorb much of the pain life can throw at me, but eventually it can all get so miserable, we might as well take a risk. How could hell be any worse. Of course it all goes wrong, and we get to find out.

going nowhere

For all the progress I've made, in some ways I feel worse than ever. I keep thinking my brain doesn't seem to be working right. I'm better at doing the things I should be doing, but having classical signs of depression, including some I haven't really had before. I don't enjoy anything anymore. I wake up early and can't fall back to sleep. My attention span has been especially bad, my memory unreliable, my thoughts slow and clumsy.

I am aimless and hopeless. Without alleviating depression, there is no point in doing anything. The dopamine just isn't there. I am aimless because I am hopeless. A vicious cycle forms, wherein the more negative I feel, the less likely anything good will happen to change it. What few opportunities I might have, I only blow. The more depression wrecks everything, the more being hopeless just makes sense.

I've spent my life thinking luck has to go my way eventually. Just let things go well for once, and it could break the cycle. Life just laughs and kicks me in the face some more. There is virtue in carrying on, even more if you take it with a smile. Until you're finally kicked to death, and all that perseverance amounts to nothing. 

I don't know what's wrong with my brain, but I look at how my life has gone and think, well, I kinda do.

puberty blockers

Sometimes I think about that time an endocrinologist asked me if I felt masculine. She thought I might not, given how I present and some of my test results. My testosterone levels were fine, but there was evidence I might be resistant to it. To be honest, in some ways, yes. In some ways, no, I don't feel very masculine.

I've always found it both comical and disturbing that people equate a lack of masculinity with femininity. No, women are not men minus some stuff. Development branches in different directions, accounting for the differences, although of course, everyone's genetics are different, and we go in all sorts of directions. In terms of sex, I just mean to explain what shouldn't need to be explained; that women are not underdeveloped men. They aren't missing any parts. They have their own parts.

Me, I'm missing some stuff. I feel less masculine because I am underdeveloped, but that's not to say feminine. 

I've somehow fallen into the rabbit hole of learning more about gender transitioning, and one thing that comes up a lot is children. Why not at least wait to make such a consequential decision until they're adults, right? It seemed beyond reasonable. Kids can't even get tattoos. 

It's because there is a strong push from the opposing side to transition kids before they start puberty. Their reasoning is that they're saving kids from gender dysphoria. Blocking puberty means less gendered traits to worry about; less gender dysphoria. The transition will be more profound, something many adult transitioners dream of.

In reading about it, learning about the effects of blocking puberty, it suddenly looked familiar. I never made it all the way through puberty myself, but I never framed it that way. I'm ashamed to admit that it's why I'm like this. Not masculine. Childlike. I still don't need to shave. This is why my frame is so small. It could account for a lot that's odd about me. 

Hormones are elaborately interconnected, which is one reason endocrinologists tend to err on the side of caution. You tweak one, you tweak the entire system. Growth hormone plays a role in triggering puberty. I've been stuck in the middle of it my entire life. Much the way growth hormone only causes growing until a certain age, you can't go through puberty later in life. There's a window, and it closes. Interrupting it in the middle though, that's something even trans clinics try to avoid.

The same hormones no longer do the same things, so supplementing them doesn't work. It still works in some ways, but I'll never fill out or grow a beard. I don't care about the beard, per se. I use it as an easy example, but there are all sorts of changes our bodies go through during puberty. Skin, muscle, fat and bone structure changes. The brain changes. A metamorphosis of sorts. 

I did get about halfway through, but stalled out when I stopped taking the growth hormone. We had no idea that would happen. Doctors never mentioned it. We should have asked, but I just stopped when I knew I was within half an inch of my projected height. Close enough, and no more shots, I thought. I hated those shots. 

I was only 15. My mother should have known better than to just stop treatment like that, without seeing my endocrinologist one last time, discussing it, proper closure. Somebody should have told me it wasn't just about my height.. but no, I just stopped.

Doh.