#autistic things
Explaining sensory discomfort like basically my nervous system is cringing
Autism in media: I got bored so I read three science textbooks and completed all these equations and now I’m working on the coding for this app-
Autism in real life: I’m so bored that every bone in my body feels like it’s being turned into one but don’t even talkto me about doing something about it
To all my neurodiverse/mentally ill/traumatised asexuals and or aromatics:
You’re still valid. I love you. Your sexuality is valid despite your circumstances.
ADHD culture is loving to send voice messages but hating to receive them
Me:Maybe I don’t have ADHD… Maybe I’ve been faking it for attention after all.
Also me when I watch anything: Speeding up the playback because I don’t have an attention span, adding subtitles because auditory processing issues, turning the volume up to god Themselves to prevent a Thought from coming, and ending up scrolling through memes the whole time
Does anybody else wake up and… the day just feels wrong?
And does anyone have any advice on how to cope with it because I am Frustrated
Recently a couple of the autistic kids I work with have inspired me with openly, unapologetically owning it.
Like one kid saying “if I don’t make eye contact it’s because I find that hard and it’s easier to concentrate on what you’re saying if I’m not looking at you.”
And another one asking for clarification of an ambiguous statement to check understanding instead of just hoping for the best.
And one saying “I’m going to stim now, this conversation is hard”
I have so much respect for them for being able to voice those things! It’s inspired me to try harder to do that instead of masking until I meltdown because I’m so scared of how people will react.
This is what I wanted to be in the 80s and 90s and people would pull me aside to tell me it was inappropriate.
It was revealed that 90% of autistics have trauma from repressed stims, not to mention those who were put through ABA.
If we can start to raise more and more autistic kids who are openly, unapologetically autistic, think about how powerful that would be for our future.
A bit unrelated from my usual posting, but I found this cool dude at the park today!
The Autism loves making schedules, drawing up planners, writing out every detail of everything that is and will happen
The ADHD forgets we even made the plan two days later even though we spent over four hours on it
we as the autistic community have GOT to start talking about how a special interest can be toxic
you might have a toxic special interest if:
- it interferes with your ability to care for your own needs, be they physical, psychological, or social
- they bring out your worst behaviors (might overlap with a toxic fandom)
- they are demonstrably harmful to minority communities/the world at large
i once had a therapist tell me to think of special interests like relationships. they CAN be bad for you and sometimes you have to end them.
my special interests become toxic more easily than I’d like to admit. Special interests are not funny or quirky or ‘haha I really like this, maybe it’s a special interest’. They take over my life until it’s the only thing I can think about. It’s now become a habit to bring my switch to college because, although I never end up playing it, when Animal Crossing was my SI, I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything unless I was playing. That’s how much it consumed me. It’s a feeling that is impossible to explain.
functioning labels are problematic but i want other autistic people who wouldn’t be classified as “low-functioning” to understand two things:
- intellectually disabled autistic people and autistic people who are nonverbal and in need of things like care teams to support them in their every day life are in a different material circumstance than autistic people who are neither, and are the primary targets of ableism against autistic people (especially in terms of hate crimes such as parents who murder their autistic children.)
- don’t shame or attack people who have been labeled as “low-functioning” for identifying as such because it’s their way of expressing this material difference in their circumstance from the rest of the autistic community and their particular risk for ableist marginalization against autistic people. the problem with “functioning” labels is moreso to do with coercive application to autistic individuals (from medical professionals or parents, etc.) and its usage to deny care or autonomy. it’s different when an autistic person labels themselves as low or high functioning.
some people have taken to using low support needs/high support needs to express this difference, since it refers to the reliance on external care for everyday life rather than “functioning” per-se.
others use verbal/nonverbal - contrary to popular misusage of the term, nonverbal doesn’t refer to a temporary state and instead refers to autistic people who cannot speak period. many nonverbal autistic people prefer for that label to refer to them exclusively instead of situations that would more accurately be described as selective mutism.
anyway, point being, intellectually disabled autistic people and nonverbal and/or high support needs autistic people are generally often left behind in the online autistic community and we need to do better by our siblings. they shouldn’t be robbed of language to accurately express their experiences and differences from verbal/low-support-needs autistic people. this is not to create unnecessary division but to acknowledge that are needs and experiences are not always the same and that nonverbal/high-support-needs autistic people should have their own voices, thoughts, feelings, and opinions (often ignored) about their experiences prioritized over ours rather than us contributing to that ignorance and silencing.
Today I can confirm that combining quince and garlic together may seem like a crime, but it’s an oddly satisfying palate. Not sure if it’s because of my unorthodox neurodivergent tastes or whether it’s actually good, and I stumbled upon a gastronomical delight. ♀️ Either way, quince + garlic with crumbed feta + kale on toasted + buttered sourdough is top notch food.
I just realized that I probably really offended a lot of PoC as a kid/teen by asking to touch their hair, but I was doing it because I was small and autistic and hair-touching felt nice and no one ever explained to me that asking random people if I could touch their hair was inappropriate.
I retroactively apologize. I promise I asked a lot of white people if I could touch their hair too.
reposted from my old blog, which got deleted:
Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch.
She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage.
Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings.
“Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child.
Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin.
“I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.”
“I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.”
“Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.”
Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine.
“We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…”
“Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.”
Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has.
“Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.”
Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project.
She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still.
“Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once.
Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.”
Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.
They all live happily ever after.
*
Here’s another story:
Gregor grew fast, even for a boy, grew tall and big and healthy and began shoving his older siblings around early. He was blunt and strange and flew into rages over odd things, over the taste of his porridge or the scratch of his shirt, over the sound of rain hammering on the roof, over being touched when he didn’t expect it and sometimes even when he did. He never wore shoes if he could help it and he could tell you the number of nails in the floorboards without looking, and his favorite thing was to sit in the pantry and run his hands through the bags of dry barley and corn and oat. Considering as how he had fists like a young ox by the time he was five, his family left him to it.
“He’s a changeling,” his father said to his wife, expecting an argument, but men are often the last to know anything about their children, and his wife only shrugged and nodded, like the matter was already settled, and that was that.
They didn’t bind Gregor in iron and leave him in the woods for his own kind to take back. They didn’t dig him a grave and load him into it early. They worked out what made Gregor angry, in much the same way they figured out the personal constellations of emotion for each of their other sons, and when spring came, Gregor’s father taught him about sprouts, and when autumn came, Gregor’s father taught him about sheaves. Meanwhile his mother didn’t mind his quiet company around the house, the way he always knew where she’d left the kettle, or the mending, because she was forgetful and he never missed a detail.
“Pity you’re not a girl, you’d never drop a stitch of knitting,” she tells Gregor, in the winter, watching him shell peas. His brothers wrestle and yell before the hearth fire, but her fairy child just works quietly, turning peas by their threes and fours into the bowl.
“You know exactly how many you’ve got there, don’t you?” she says.
“Six hundred and thirteen,” he says, in his quiet, precise way.
His mother says “Very good,” and never says Pity you’re not human. He smiles just like one, if not for quite the same reasons.
The next autumn he’s seven, a lucky number that pleases him immensely, and his father takes him along to the mill with the grain.
“What you got there?” The miller asks them.
“Sixty measures of Prince barley, thirty two measures of Hare’s Ear corn, and eighteen of Abernathy Blue Slate oats,” Gregor says. “Total weight is three hundred fifty pounds, or near enough. Our horse is named Madam. The wagon doesn’t have a name. I’m Gregor.”
“My son,” his father says. “The changeling one.”
“Bit sharper’n your others, ain’t he?” the miller says, and his father laughs.
Gregor feels proud and excited and shy, and it dries up all his words, sticks them in his throat. The mill is overwhelming, but the miller is kind, and tells him the name of each and every part when he points at it, and the names of all the grain in all the bags waiting for him to get to them.
“Didn’t know the fair folk were much for machinery,” the miller says.
Gregor shrugs. “I like seeds,” he says, each word shelled out with careful concentration. “And names. And numbers.”
“Aye, well. Suppose that’d do it. Want t’help me load up the grist?”
They leave the grain with the miller, who tells Gregor’s father to bring him back ‘round when he comes to pick up the cornflour and cracked barley and rolled oats. Gregor falls asleep in the nameless wagon on the way back, and when he wakes up he goes right back to the pantry, where the rest of the seeds are left, and he runs his hands through the shifting, soothing textures and thinks about turning wheels, about windspeed and counterweights.
When he’s twelve–another lucky number–he goes to live in the mill with the miller, and he never leaves, and he lives happily ever after.
*
Here’s another:
James is a small boy who likes animals much more than people, which doesn’t bother his parents overmuch, as someone needs to watch the sheep and make the sheepdogs mind. James learns the whistles and calls along with the lambs and puppies, and by the time he’s six he’s out all day, tending to the flock. His dad gives him a knife and his mom gives him a knapsack, and the sheepdogs give him doggy kisses and the sheep don’t give him too much trouble, considering.
“It’s not right for a boy to have so few complaints,” his mother says, once, when he’s about eight.
“Probably ain’t right for his parents to have so few complaints about their boy, neither,” his dad says.
That’s about the end of it. James’ parents aren’t very talkative, either. They live the routines of a farm, up at dawn and down by dusk, clucking softly to the chickens and calling harshly to the goats, and James grows up slow but happy.
When James is eleven, he’s sent to school, because he’s going to be a man and a man should know his numbers. He gets in fights for the first time in his life, unused to peers with two legs and loud mouths and quick fists. He doesn’t like the feel of slate and chalk against his fingers, or the harsh bite of a wooden bench against his legs. He doesn’t like the rules: rules for math, rules for meals, rules for sitting down and speaking when you’re spoken to and wearing shoes all day and sitting under a low ceiling in a crowded room with no sheep or sheepdogs. Not even a puppy.
But his teacher is a good woman, patient and experienced, and James isn’t the first miserable, rocking, kicking, crying lost lamb ever handed into her care. She herds the other boys away from him, when she can, and lets him sit in the corner by the door, and have a soft rag to hold his slate and chalk with, so they don’t gnaw so dryly at his fingers. James learns his numbers well enough, eventually, but he also learns with the abruptness of any lamb taking their first few steps–tottering straight into a gallop–to read.
Familiar with the sort of things a strange boy needs to know, his teacher gives him myths and legends and fairytales, and steps back. James reads about Arthur and Morgana, about Hercules and Odysseus, about djinni and banshee and brownies and bargains and quests and how sometimes, something that looks human is left to try and stumble along in the humans’ world, step by uncertain step, as best they can.
James never comes to enjoy writing. He learns to talk, instead, full tilt, a leaping joyous gambol, and after a time no one wants to hit him anymore. The other boys sit next to him, instead, with their mouths closed, and their hands quiet on their knees.
“Let’s hear from James,” the men at the alehouse say, years later, when he’s become a man who still spends more time with sheep than anyone else, but who always comes back into town with something grand waiting for his friends on his tongue. “What’ve you got for us tonight, eh?”
James finishes his pint, and stands up, and says, “Here’s a story about changelings.”
