a stable plan

When I shop for groceries, I always make a list. I buy exactly what's on the list, no more, no less. Relatively normal so far, but wait. Everything I buy corresponds to a specific meal, including exactly how many meals I can make with a given item. I then consume everything in careful order of perishability. 

I know what I'll be having for every meal, for the next seven days, when I'll need to go shopping again. My fridge never has old food in it, aside from a few condiments. If I didn't shop this way though, my fridge would never have food in it at all. This is the level of organization I need to deal with going to the grocery store. 

Incidentally, this is why I usually decline when offered to tag along with anyone else. Planning around other people can be challenging. Is this a being on the spectrum thing? I'm not inclined to be organized. I do this because I'm so severely disorganized.

My mental health has been very unstable these last few months. Sometimes I've been ok, but then I keep crashing hard. Dangerously hard. I need to hold it together and move, but you'd be naïve to think necessity will force me into doing what I need to do. Stabilizing my mental health is more important than ever at a time like this.

I'm not sure what I need to do or when. I keep trying to make a plan, but the plan depends on where I'm going. How I pack and organize my stuff depends on what I'll be able to use, store, or leave behind, but that depends on where I'll be living and for how long. I've realized that a major source of instability is not knowing that. I keep thinking, it's crazy that I have to manage all the typical stress of moving, without anywhere to move to. This is an awful lot of work just to be homeless.

I've been finding it extra difficult to search for a place, when finding one might be impossible, necessitating a completely different plan. I'll get some help from my family out in Colchester, but they can't seem to decide how much they're willing to help, and unfortunately, I may need a lot. I'm acutely aware of what an imposition that is, but I'm drowning here, thanks to the housing crisis of a political system that only serves the wealthy. 

Some rich scumbag buys the place and evicts me like its nothing, so that he can gut everything and renovate it into much more expensive housing. Now I'm screwed, just another victim of gentrification. Other countries just build housing for people. Here, we make it illegal, to keep real estate prices going up.

More to the point though, is that I need to know what I'm doing, so that I can plan around it. When I have time to think about all the ways to make a given circumstance manageable, I calm down and can think about dealing with it. When my options keep changing, it's like having the rug pulled out from under me again and again. I can't depend on any of it. don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to plan for it. 

Without a plan, all the normal stress of moving is compounded, involving terrifying unknowns that I'll be expected to deal with when I'm having a meltdown instead. That's not going to go well.

This is why I initially jumped on the prospect of living in a tent in their yard, instead of thinking about it as a last resort. Despite all the problems with that, I was relieved having something to plan for. I focused on all the ways I could make the most of the situation. 

When they changed their minds and decided I couldn't do that, I fell back into the chaos of trying to figure out what I was going to do. I start thinking something else might work out, and then fall apart again when it doesn't. I need to know what I'm doing, or I'm not going to do anything.

Planning has become a critical tool in how I manage my mental health. Without it, I can't function. This is not an issue I need to overcome. It is how I've learned to overcome a much worse issue.

housing crisis

I tried so hard to be optimistic, but the situation is worse than I'd realized. Under the best of circumstances, finding a place to live and moving there is a lot for me. Something I've never done without someone else finding the place for me, one way or another. I'm doing so much better these days though. I felt ready to handle it this time.

Then I saw what they're charging for rent now. It's more than doubled in the last decade. I have more money than I've ever had I before, but still not enough to afford the rent for the cheapest one bedroom apartment. I thought I was seeing a few listings in my price range, but realized those are for renting a room, or sharing an apartment with strangers. Half of them are outright scams. Some people are capitalizing on the desperation, advertising non-existent apartments and asking for an application fee in advance.

I'm on a waiting list for subsidized housing, but the wait could be a year or more. I need to be out of here by August 1st.

I'm far from being the only one impacted by this. People handle it in different ways. Some live with parents or family, if they can. Others end up homeless, if they don't kill themselves to avoid it. Many are forced to randomly live together to share the rent with strangers, but no doubt, that poses all sorts of problems. Unlike landlords, bound by law to have good reasons for rejecting applicants, people looking for randos to live with need to be more discriminatory. 

The ads are almost all the same. Young working people, often in college, looking for other young people to live with. They get plenty of responses from others in similar situations. What are the chances they choose the old unemployed guy with disabling mental health problems? Is it just my mental illness talking, or is that a long shot?

It's a difficult solution, and of course, I'm extra sensitive to it. I'm trying to accept that it may be necessary, but it's tough to imagine trying to cope. Maybe it would be good for me, right? It may be a last resort as the end of July approaches. Failing to figure out what else to do, I'm thinking that I need to focus on getting my stuff out. I can streamline that down to a single car-full. Store it somewhere. 

Then on July 31st, I can go wherever, without necessarily moving in there. I'll then qualify for homelessness assistance, but I don't know what that entails. I can double down on trying to find anyone looking for roommates or renting a room. It might be easier to focus on finding a place, if I move out first.

Sure, that sounds nuts, but I can't deal with this. It's not going well, and I need to just stop thinking about it.

condescending

When we're benevolently condescending towards someone, it's typically someone we deem lacking the faculties to perceive the condescension. For example, if someone is deaf, that can make speech difficult. They can't hear themselves, so it comes out differently than intended. It can sound like they're not cognitively developed enough to speak clearly, but if we talk to a deaf person the way we might talk to someone who is cognitively impaired, from their perspective, we're just being ignorant and insulting.

A more common example would be how we talk to young children. If we talk to an adult the same way, it is insulting, even when intentions are benevolent. We condescend towards children because we're cognizant of the fact that their minds are less developed than ours. They haven't experienced as much as we have. They have a lot to learn, and we adjust accordingly, not to be insulting, but to communicate more effectively.

When we do the same to someone that has been through just as much as we have, if not more, it says a lot about how we think about that person. It shows how we're interpreting someone's appearance and behavior, such as whether they speak clearly and coherently. If they don't, it makes sense to assume they can't.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why people respond to me as they do, but I've come to realize that they aren't necessarily wrong for it. Under ideal circumstances, my cognitive abilities are fine and then some. When I'm out in the world though, under stress or depressed, trying to navigate social norms, distracted by everything going on around me, my cognitive ability is impaired. This is the only version of me most people know.

What difference does it make if I'm a different person when I'm alone? It makes a whole lot of difference who I am out and around people. If who we are is not the abstraction in our heads, but how we behave out in the world, no wonder people are condescending towards me. I struggle like hell to function like a normal person and can't even explain why. 

We understand why deaf people have trouble talking. It's not so clear why I do, but I am not so impaired as to be oblivious to the condescension.

last summer

When I talk about my hopes for this summer, I'm talking about the possibility of another chance to fight. I'm talking about lots of highly motivated training. Last summer, I didn't blog about my hopes for fear of somehow undermining them. Almost superstitious, but I didn't want to take any chances. You never know who might be out there with a voodoo doll, daring me to express a glimmer of happiness.

I've worked on my cardio to say the least, although ironically, I've never believed it was about my cardio. I remember jumping from one possibility to another, entry after entry. Hindsight's given me some perspective, so thought I'd sum up the possibilities. Any of them might be true, maybe a combination of factors, or maybe none of them. Maybe just my cardio, or something else entirely.

First, there's my age. I figure there's a good chance it was at least a consideration. Here's another fight from the same venue I posted the other day. One guy's 49, the other 57. Were they showing their age? Sure, but it seemed fine. There might be reluctance to match a 49 year old with a 23 year old, despite being in much better shape than these guys.

I wasn't even being ambitious enough for an event like this. I just wanted to fight at my own gym. A low key event with shin guards and foam helmets. Age doesn't seem like much of a reason to deny me on its own.

Another possibility is that he wanted another guy to get the fight, who's since moved on to bigger leagues, as I knew he wanted to do. This was his chance to get his feet wet, it helped get him started. The only problem being that he outweighed his opponent by 17 lbs. He outweighed me by 15 lbs. Already very lean, they had him cutting 12 lbs, and I suspect simply putting me name in the mix would give the other team the option to fight me, instead. 

This feels less likely, how dare I even suggest it, and yet the pieces add up awfully well. Maybe the coach told himself eh, the old guy probably shouldn't be fighting anyhow, so it's ok. I train with this guy all the time. Here he is a few months later.

The third possibility feels most likely to be the whole problem, or none of it. It is what shattered me, questioning what I've always thought was just low self-esteem. This wasn't just people being condescending and weird, but tangible consequences. One of the only things I've ever had any confidence about, shot down like I wasn't to be taken seriously.

People have been treating me strangely my entire life. I thought it must be due to my endocrine problems, but maybe it's never been about that. I think it's visible in how I carry myself, how I flounder expressing myself and socializing, maybe even in my bone structure. Autism is genetic, and if it interferes with social ability, maybe people immediately pick up on it and read too much into it. 

If someone is anything from schizophrenic to brain damaged, I can understand thinking it might not be a good idea to put them into the ring, and it sure seems like people often don't know what to make of me. They don't need to have any concept of autism to see someone behaving like an autistic person and make assumptions. 

I don't know if this is really true though. I can't figure out what people see or why they react to me the way they do. I know it's possible I'm getting it all wrong, which is a whole different kind of crazy. I just figured if I work hard enough, I can blow past expectations powerfully enough to crush all of it this time around.

Then it turned out I suddenly have to move and rent costs are insane. I've been so stressed, I keep faltering. I haven't been training enough. I don't know where I'll be living when the next event rolls around. I don't know if I'll be able to keep training at all. Even if it all works out ok, I'm struggling in the meantime to stay focused on being optimistic. It's not easy finding the motivation to go get beat up like I need to.

wiring vs chemistry

There is an important distinction to be made between mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety or even personality disorders, and being on the spectrum. Mental illnesses develop in response to conditions and can be alleviated by changes in conditions. People develop depression, and they can overcome it. Personality disorders can be complex, but we're not born with them. None of it is easily defeated, but it's always possible, always something to strive for.

Being on the spectrum is less about chemistry and more about how we're wired. People are born this way, and it will always be how their brains work. We can learn to manage it, mitigating the problems our differences can cause, but it will always be a part of our lives. ASD is not an illness. It's who we are.

Today has been another dreary day wasted feeling terrible. I woke feeling terrible and never pulled out of it. Problematic wiring can certainly lead to bad chemistry. I am not miserable for being neurodivergent, but because I am failing miserably at managing it. That is, I am unable to meet my needs or function in society, and the rest of the world isn't much help. I was really hoping this summer I'd be able to turn things around, but surprise, I'm on the verge of homelessness again, instead.

I'm stressed and overwhelmed, procrastinating dealing with it every day. In theory, I should be able to sort it out, but that's always been a problem. In theory, I'm a normal functioning person, when in reality, I never quite get there. In theory, dealing with people goes easily. In reality, it's all drowned in white noise, exhaustion and anxiety.

I have until August 1st to be out of here. Maybe I will pull it together at the last minute and everything will work out, but in the meantime, my mind is a wreck. I spend all day every day planning to at least get to the gym, and then don't do that, either.

priorities

Training has become my whole life. Before training, I had no life. If I have to stop, that will end my life. This is not simply a special interest that I'm being hyper-reactive to losing. It's me looking at the causal array of consequences that will occur. There's no reason I'd have to stop training, as long as I find a place to live. This is directed at those who think giving it up is a reasonable option to suggest, for any reason. You don't understand what you're suggesting.

My entire life has been swallowed up by this state I refer to as having no life. It is not some cutesy catch phrase for having the sads. To explain it though, how far back do we have to go? Do I need to explain the neurophysiology of why humans need social connection and a sense of purpose or direction in their lives? Do I need to dig up statistics showing how many people literally die when they lose these things? Do I need to remind anyone that my own mental health is pretty far from being stable? Do I need to explain how getting myself to the gym has been the only thing holding me together for years, or why I can't just take up crochet, instead?

I don't know where to start. Keep it succinct and nobody understands. Go into detail, and nobody listens. I've lost so much these last few years. I hold onto this, all that I have left, with everything I have. It's the only hope I have left that my life will get better. I have no reason to live without it. 

My priorities are fine. If I deprioritize getting to the gym, everything else falls apart. 

support needs

In ASD discourse, they talk about differing support needs, instead of differences of severity. The problem is that I look at "support needs" as synonymous with deficit and disability. I don't understand the word games we play to destigmatize things that are inherently undesirable. Stupidity is stupidity, no matter what we call it.

I understand that it makes people feel bad. I understand that all too well, being disabled myself. I just don't think it helps the situation to go renaming everything. It only serves to confuse people, from those who want to help to those who need the help.

I find the notion of support needs just as stigmatic, and I wonder if that has anything to do with my upbringing. I don't feel entitled to any support. My sister and I didn't even get the normal support kids are supposed to get, let alone anything additional. We had to fend for ourselves a lot. My sister handled it by getting a job and moving out when she was thirteen. My support needs being a little higher, I handled it by giving up on trying to do much of anything.

Maybe this is why I'm a communist. I believe we should all be entitled to share in the fruits of modern civilization, that letting nature crush those with higher needs ultimately leads to a weak civilization. Ideally, we should all get the help we need to flourish so that we might give back to society in our own ways.

In reality, this is just not how it works. In reality, we need to survive, we need to find our own way to flourish in a world that will crush us if we fail. Not only because I'm a citizen of this modern American dystopia, but because that's how we were raised. Our father in his own world, our mother always had other priorities. When I needed more help than other kids, I got less. That's just how life works, as I know it. Higher support needs might as well be a death sentence. Destigmatizing it means accepting that, when we should be fighting for our lives.

When we lift each other up, that does not make our needs go away. It gives us means to find other redeeming qualities in a world where of course that fucking matters. Pretending we're all equal no matter what does not help anybody. 

Others grow up having their needs met, lending them the privilege of seeing things differently. While they're worrying about which words make them feel bad, I had to figure out how to survive, despite unmet support needs. I had to make sacrifices. I had to sacrifice life.

more words

Why am I fixating and obsessing over this concept of autism? When I say it's just a word, I'm saying that to me, it doesn't mean enough to explain my situation. I don't understand why I'm like this. I don't understand why I live like this. Slapping a label on it doesn't help, if that label doesn't represent much of an explanation.

What I'm actually fixating on is not how I think of myself, but how others think of me. Is this the word that explains why people have treated me this way my whole life? Is this the word they use for those they think are like me? Does this explain how I present, the range of ways in which I struggle to meet social expectations and the sort of dysfunction others read into that? Is this the word for what others see?

This is why it's making me feel hopeless. It's a word that represents what I am, and not just my circumstances, in terms of who others understand me to be. It's something that isn't going to change, no matter what I do. Everything I do is forced into the context of an autistic person trying to do it. Even as I overcome all these hurdles to try to make more of myself, I only run head first into social dynamics that shut me down like it's nothing.

What people think does matter. It matters a hell of a lot. When we apply for a job or an apartment, or see a doctor, or try to make friends or meet someone attractive, or try to prove readiness to get into a boxing ring, of course what other people think matters, but maybe I'm still getting it all wrong. I can't tell. 

People are nice to me, but they aren't interested in me. They don't admire or support my endeavors. I am tolerated as long as I'm not an imposition. I'm allowed to exist at the fringes, taking college courses or training at the gym, but people expect me to stay there. Good for you, engaging in healthy activities, but don't get in the way of everyone else actually trying to get anywhere.

forever a white belt

I need to explain a few things about competition; why I keep talking about it, and why I never do it. For one thing, it's how you progress through the belt system in BJJ and Judo. They're not like Karate or Hwa Rang Do. There are no belt tests. Different gyms handle it differently, but where I go, win or lose, competing is the main criteria. As long as someone is training regularly and competing, they'll be regularly promoted. 

Having never competed, I'll never move beyond white belt. I don't typically care about belts, but that's pretty harsh. It's also just odd being able to tap out blue belts who are bigger, stronger, and half my age. Competition is considered really important. If you don't compete, you're never really being tested.

I also need to clarify that this is very different from competing in kickboxing or MMA. Nobody has to allow me to compete in BJJ. I just hear about an upcoming competition and give it a go. These BJJ competitions are much less appealing to me, but they're also without all the drama surrounding my coaches not thinking it's something I should do. Even if they think it's a bad idea, they aren't going to try to stop me, whereas in kickboxing or MMA, they are gatekeepers. It is possible to compete without their involvement, but that requires a whole array of things I don't have.

There was a fight recently, at a venue my gym participates in sometimes, where one of the fighters clearly lacked experience. Watching him fight, I wondered what kind of terrible coach would allow it. They're supposed to protect people from themselves, as well as protect the reputation of the gym, by not putting anyone in the ring who isn't ready to be there. 

So, looking into it, I saw that this guy was unaffiliated. That means he didn't have a coach giving him the go ahead or support. This was a great example of why that matters.

The reasons I haven't competed in BJJ are completely different, although not entirely unrelated. Having my self-confidence torpedoed sure hasn't helped. The primary reason I don't compete is unusual though. Not something most people would even consider. I was rereading some old entries when it occurred to me to address this. I hadn't even thought about it.

Competitions are an all day thing. They're almost never local, taking from an hour to five hours, just to get to. There is a ton of waiting around for your turn. I was exhausted just spectating that one time. I'm dependent on others to get me there and get me home, while doing anything that takes so long is a major endurance trial for me even on my best days, let alone my worst. When my turn does come up, I'd already be feeling drained and profoundly uncomfortable. I'd be dependent on people who don't understand any of that.

Even going to the gym picnic out in Colchester was an ordeal and an accomplishment for me, before crawling back into my apartment feeling defeated. The matches themselves would be the easy part. I would be competing with my own limitations most of all. I might not be able to handle it, I might be miserable, and that's before losing to anyone. If there were ever a BJJ competition at my own gym, of course I'd compete. Without hesitation. If it went badly or just dragged on too long, I'd simply walk home.

ball and chain

Why is life so hard? We look around us, we look at social media or mainstream media, we compare because we're trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Is this normal? Is this manageable? What is everyone else doing, because what I'm doing has not been going well at all. Is something wrong with me?

If you turn to your local community, you might find everyone has problems, everyone is struggling, you might help each other. Maybe we work together to solve our problems, or maybe we just take comfort in knowing we're not fighting alone.

Or, maybe you look around, and other people seem to be doing ok. They have problems but they're not being crushed by them. They acquire tools to make it all easier, they form social relationships, they work but they also have fun. Wait, how fucked up am I that all of this is beyond me? Why is life so hard?

From my perspective, my burdens are massive and I am strong for every step I take in spite of that. From their perspective, I am weak and struggling to barely do anything. Why is life so hard?

We might call it autism. We might say that we have a disability, like a ball and chain we drag everywhere with our powerful legs, strengthened by a lifetime of this. They only see that we are slow and we walk funny. 

None of this is right or wrong. It makes sense from our perspective. It makes sense from their perspective. It makes sense that I hate their perspective so. I hate that they see me this way. I hate that it only makes sense and I can't even blame them for it.

Giving it a label like autism can be meaningful, because that makes it objective. It explains why life is so hard, for me and not everyone else. It indicates that it's not subjective, not something I can think away, or even hide all that well. The objectivity of it upsets me, because that means it exists not only in my head, but in what other people perceive me to be. It validates the way that they respond to me, when I've been hoping all my life that it was all in my anxious imagination or that I just need to learn social skills or that they're just being jerks.

critical mass

I've been feeling severely depressed since yesterday and I don't know why. It could be a number of things compounding the ever-present number of other things. It would be useful to know what specifically triggers this because it chain reactions into making everything worse. 

• I end up with no food in the house, because I can't deal with acquiring food.
• I only get three hours of sleep just because. 
• I don't do my laundry, so I can't even go to the gym, even if I could achieve the herculean feat of getting myself out the door.
• I don't do assorted other errands causing a range of problems. 
• I don't get any sunlight, human contact, or physical activity.

Feels like all I can do is wait to feel better, which typically happens eventually, despite doing everything possible to make myself feel worse. This could depend on what's making me feel like this in the first place.

• Speaking of sunlight, it's been raining and overcast for three days now. It feels like superstition, but that often seems to coincide.
• A few days ago, I learned that the housing subsidy application I filed two months ago had stalled because they need more info, and weren't even bothering to tell me. As I'm running out of time, it's endless problems trying to get any help.
• There's a BJJ competition coming up this weekend, so of course all this goes wrong just beforehand, lest I have any kind of positive experience to help me feel better about life. 

The coach that usually handles this stuff is away this week, so it seems to be in the hands of a coach whose class I never go to because we don't get along. The one who even went so far as to say to me, not everyone should compete. So I found out about it late, I don't know what's going on with car pooling, and I'm too depressed to deal with finding out. I don't have a clean gi, and I need food and sleep to even consider going, anyhow.  

I thought I'd get it sorted out at the gym last night, but that didn't happen. I had plans for groceries and laundry today, as well as a trip to the housing authority office a few blocks away. Maybe I'm overwhelmed by planning to do a few things on the same day, because I'm autistic and can't handle life's normal bullshit without melting down.

Maybe it's all of it, because the stars always seem to align to crush my will to live. Most brutal of all always being what we're inclined to overlook in this hyper-individualist society - that I'm always going through it all alone. That is what has been shown time and again to be the difference between recovery and trauma that wrecks mental health.

This does not mean I want to be dragged into hours of phone calls with my family. It makes me feel subhuman when people fail to see that it's branching out and meeting people in the world that matters. You don't think I have normal impulses and needs for connection? I don't think anyone would overlook this if they didn't perceive me as different; inferior, I should be happy just to survive.

When they say I shouldn't compete, what does that tell me? I don't get to partake in the normal healthy experiences everyone else does. The positive experiences they take for granted aren't for someone like me.

What do people think I am? Autistic? What does that even mean to people who have no idea what it means? They don't even seem to know. They get confused if I ask. They have no problem discriminating but can't be bothered to really think about it. They're only vaguely aware that they treat me differently at all and won't face why. 

What am I supposed to think? How else should I feel? Just accept my unfortunate station in life? Fuck you. 

just a word

If I try to explain my theory of mind theories in person, it's a challenge to keep it succinct enough to be worth saying at all. Is it a form of masking that I'm conscientious about this? I'm always abridging what I want to say, because if I go into adequate detail, I'm just going to confuse and bore people. I have trouble thinking clearly enough in the moment, anyhow. 

Sometimes I am motivated to write precisely the things no one wants to hear. One might say my blog is intentionally unappealing. It is the discarded remnants of conversations I've had where I was less than genuine, because to be genuine would be problematic. I want to get the gist across, to express the basic angle I'm coming from, without getting into any lectures of extended implications and supporting evidence. 

I find it interesting to think about what's going on in the brain at a lower level, before it manifests into the behaviors people ascribe all their understanding to. Maybe this is what they call top-down thinking. We start from a premise and then explain it, using what we already know. 

In neurotypical theory of mind, we start from the premise that others are similar to ourselves. This streamlines the process of relating and empathizing, by glossing over any need for facts. It tends to work most of the time, as humans do share a lot of similarities more often than not. 

Oxytocin may play a key role in this, and that also produces in-groups and out-groups. We relate and empathize in this streamlined way, with those we consider our own kind. We can learn to define that more broadly or narrowly, but it is neurotypical to be averse to those who are different. To be deemed somehow different is to get the ugly side of oxytocin.

It is not difficult to understand the direct impact a person might experience, if they struggle to trust or relate to anyone, but if this is rooted in neurologic dysfunction, it likely goes all the way back to infancy, before we have any cognitive framework to make sense of it. Some of the more severe manifestations of autism may be the consequence of lacking a basic sense of affinity for caregivers. Development occurs without emulating or learning from them. Facial expressions, language, even how to eat.

Apparently some in the autistic community oppose talking about autism in different degrees of severity. It's a spectrum, they argue. We're all different, but nobody is more or less autistic. I don't know why that would be the case, or know of any evidence that is the case. So I'm left to wonder what would motivate  such a bias.

We're not supposed to consider it a disability but what does it mean to have higher support needs? What does it mean to be more severely impacted by all the ways autism has made life so difficult? What if the degree to which we lack trust and affinity varies, such that developmental consequences are more or less profound? Mental health is rarely binary, but we want to frame things a certain way, we want to feel good about them. 

Bottom-up thinking is when we look at all the information we have, and build towards an interpretation. Whether or not that makes us feel good falls to the other side of the equation; a consequence, not a premise. We learn to mask how harsh that can be. How is it a disability when we're right and it's neurotypical to be happily wrong about everything? Well, look at my life. That's how.

Tonight, I am depressed despite getting to the gym. It seems worst of all to be depressed after doing the one thing that allegedly makes me happy. Sometimes it just goes all wrong. I wasn't feeling great beforehand and going anyhow didn't help. I come home just wanting to do whatever it takes to insulate myself from the pain, but nothing works anymore. 

This idea that I am autistic could be liberating. Maybe I should stop trying to hide it and follow my impulses. Maybe I'm destroying myself, hopelessly trying to be what I'm not. What, someone who can afford a place to live, someone that other people might actually like? Maybe there are reasons I never get there. 

No wonder my life has been so difficult, but I don't feel relieved. I feel my hopes that it will ever change have been dashed, and everyone who's ever doubted me has turned out to be right. I've spent my life failing to prove them wrong. I will end my life before accepting this.

eye contact

Eye contact is the go-to example often used in autism discourse when talking about masking. Growing up, I was often told how important it is. As a kid, as a teenager, it didn't come naturally to me, and so easy it is to chalk it up to being nervous. There is a presumption that we all have to learn social skills and some learn faster than others. I learned to make eye contact, but to this day I'm always worrying about whether I'm making enough or too much, or where I'm supposed to be looking exactly.

If we don't even try, we look autistic. What if that's because we are autistic? It takes us much greater effort to do, but we do it anyhow, it to mask what we are.

As I've written about in myriad ways, I reject any solid notion of who or what we are. We are always changing, growing, dying, learning and forgetting. It's a mistake to think a label makes it any more immutable. We shouldn't be judging ourselves, and we should always strive to do better, regardless.

Eye contact isn't just this trivial thing people do. We are animals, our lives full of systems evolved to help us adapt and flourish. We use our superior cognitive abilities to blind ourselves to all that, reducing everything to arbitrary choices we make. Eye contact stimulates oxytocin, which produces feelings of trust and affinity. For autistics, that system may not work as it should, so eye contact doesn't do anything for us. We don't feel trust, we don't relate, whether we make eye contact or not.

What does this mean for those we interact with? Do we want their trust? Do we want them to relate to us? Do we want to try to overcome this obstacle to human connection, or do let our current circumstances define our entire lives?

Jenny was big on this idea of being who we are. We are all different kinds of flowers and that's ok. No pressure, no judgment. I believed in that, too. I stopped masking so much. I played Civilization V all day every day for over a year. I stopped making eye contact. Towards the end, she commented that she only ever sees my profile. I barely thought about it at the time.

I've grown a lot. I don't like calling it masking. I thought I was superior to everyone, but I had so much to learn. I still do. We can call autism a disability or a superpower, but no matter what we are or what we call it, weaknesses will be overcome and strengths will atrophy, depending on what we do with what we are.

Existential OCD

 "Existential OCD" is defined as obsessive thoughts about philosophical questions like, what's the point of all this, and why does everything have to die. I'm on the fence about calling this autism, but whatever it is, I do seem to have it.

Looking at my life, the severity of dysfunction.. I've always struggled to explain it. Images taken from Instagram.

As for ADHD, it turns out to have so much overlap, they're throwing it all on the same spectrum. It's all just labels for clusterings of symptoms. What are we talking about neurologically? What causes it? Without these pieces, I don't understand what words mean.

Is anyone "really" autistic? Some people think self-identification is the bottom line. Others put too much stock in professional diagnoses. Even a diagnosis is just an arbitrary label. Words only mean as much as they represent to the people hearing them. When language is too vague, interpretations will be all over the place.