Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: neurodiversity

What is truth and what is lie? (Part two)

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about when I had no problem lying and when I had to tell the truth. It gets murky because I am not always sure about what is really the truth. Also, memory is expansive, and we know that it changes every time you think about soomething.

I said yesterday that I had no problem with lying about insignificant things. Yes, the hot weather is wonderful. Isn’t it great that it’s summer and the sun is shining? The answers to that is no and yes. Summer isn’t great, but I do like the sun shining–as long as I am inside and the sun is outside.

What else can I lie about? Movies, food, music, TV, and almost anything else pop culture. Hm. Well, I don’t lie, but let’s say I evade, obfuscate, and skirt the truth. I learned in my mid-twenties that many people really do not want to hear anything negative about things they like. I got dumped for not liking Pulp Fiction and saying why I did not like it (only after being asked by my then-boyfriend). He had been so sure I would like it (this was years after it was released, and it was his favorite movie).I had seen the trailer, and I was pretty sure I would not like it. He insisted I would.

I did not. I hated it from the first shot until the very last. I disliked the hypercuts, the slickness, and the glorification of the ultraviolence. Not to mention the rampant sexism and latent racism, and all the other problmatic issues with it.

I tried to be even-handed and diplomatic when I explained why I did not like the movie. After I was done (it took about fifteen minutes), there was complete silence. He had a look of shock on his face, and my heart sank as the silence dragged on. When he spoke, he simply said, “I can’t be with someone who has that world view” and then dumped me.

I have had other people be really upset when I said I didn’t like a movie, a band, a TV show, or anything else. I did not understand that because nobody liked what I liked. If I got into a TV show, for example, it would for sure be canceled within a year.

Because of this, I have no attatchment to what I like. Or rather, I don’t take offense if someone doesn’t like what I like. I would prefer not to have it sneered at, but if someone doesn’t like it and presents thoughtful reasons why, then I’m fine with that.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to cotton on to the fact that many people are deeply invested in the things they like. Once I realized it, I tried to curb my impulse to say what I really felt. It was really hard because it made me feel like I was going backwards into my childhood again.


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The difference between the truth and a lie

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I am neurodivergent. Probably. I have no official diagnosis, but it’s something I’ve slowly come to realize over the past few years. There are many reasons I never considered that I may be autistic, and I want to focus on one of them today. It’s the truism that autistic people can’t lie. They have to tell you the truth, no matter what.

I can lie like the proverbial rug. I can lie glibly and without blinking. I can lie and make you believe it’s the god’s honest truth. There are just many different factors that have to be met in order for me to do that. Or a combination of several of them, if not all.

1. If youu’re a stranger to me or someone I only see in passing, I will lie about all the little things that people consider small talk. An example. I hate the heat. And to me, anything over 70 is hot. I start getting grumpy at around 65 degrees, and if we go over 80, I will be a very unhappy person.

And yet, if someone like a cashier at the grocery store starts talking about how wonderful the weather is and it’s 90 and sunny, I’ll just nod and smile. “It sure is summer!” I’ll say without hesitation. I will never acutally say I’m happy for it to be hot, but I’ll give the impression that I agree.

In this case, it’s a very low-stakes situation with no consequence for lying. I’m not going to have a frank conversation with someone I’m so superficial with. There’s no point, and my brain is fine with this.

By the way, I understand that many autistic people find this difficult because they can’t fathom why they should lie about something so inconsequential. It can fuck them up in the workplace because they don’t understand that small talk is just a social lubricant to keep the wheels spinning easily.

I don’t give a shit about any of it, but I was forced at a very early age to learn how to do it. Not because of society, though that was a byproduct (that I learned how to be socially competent for the most part), but because I became my mother’s emotional support human when I was young (eleven or so).

As a result, I have become very adept at suppressing my own emotions, reactions, and inner workings. So much so, in fact, that I–well, let me back that up a bit.

Ever since I was a kid, I had no idea what I felt. Again, this was because I became my mother’s emotional support human at a young age, but it’s also because, I think, of my neurospiciness. This is a hard one to tease out because I was defeated by life by the time I was seven. I remember realizing that I would die one day and being both terrified by the idea and drawn to it.


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Balatro, me, and life in general

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Let’s talk more about Balatro (LocalThunk) and life in general. How am I going to tie them together? You shall see. I talked at length yesterday about the challenges in the game and how the last one wrecked me.

I do want to start with a positive. I just did a casual run with the yellow deck, black stake (which I had yet to win) just to see if I could apply what I learned from the Jokerless challenge to a vanilla run. I have been working on the different stakes on different decks for quite some time. White stake is the base stake. I have that on all fifteen decks. I also have the red stake on all decks (the next level up). I have green on all but three decks, and I have black on a few. I have gold (the highest) stake on four decks. I have been struggling with orange on plasma, and I am not having a good time.

After finally beating Jokerless yesterday, I was curious to see if what I had learned from it would help me with the vanilla runs. I did not want to do plasma deck because it’s its own thing and you need to have a very different mindset to play that deck. People in the Balatro know say that it’s the easiest deck of all, but I have really struggled with it. Blue deck was my fave (+1 hand per round) and erratic deck was the most fun (you didn’t know what cards you were going to start with. It changed every time, which was why it was the erratic deck.

I decided to try yellow deck, black stake just because. Instead of using either my two-pair build or my high card/pair build, I went for a straight build. This was all I did for the past two days, and it’s emblazoned in my brain. The yellow deck starts with $10, and now that I know one ace-high straight clears the small blind (300 chips), I would start over if I did not get one. I took the joker that lets you make straights and flushes with four cards and scary face (+30 chips for each face card). When I got the joker that makes every card a face card, well, that made things much easier. Plus Brainstorm that replicates the joker to the leftmost position.

I cruised this run, to be honest. Except for one round that just would not give me what I needed and I had to rely on some sloppy play to get through. Oh, and Mr. Bones, the joker that saves you if you make 25% of the chips you need (and then breaks). I got my straights up to level 18 or so and then did the dang thing. The final boss was Crimson Heart, which disables one joker per hand. Not the worst because it’s a different one per hand, and you can work around it.


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NaNoWhatMo? WTF am I writing?

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I want to talk more about NaNoWriMo which starts in two days. Here is my post from yesterday about it. I want to get back into writing. I miss it a great deal. I mean, yes, I write a post a day, but before my medical crisis, I wrote a post a day plus 2,000 words of fiction. Every day. I would love to do that again. As I’ve mentioned, I did continue to write after my medical crisis, but it was shit. Now, I am hard on my writing no matter what. That’s not unusual for writers. We are (usually) our own worst enemies. In this case, however, the negativity I have towards my writing is valid. Of course I would say that, though. Nobody has a great assessment of their own anything, really. But to me, my writing as of late has been shit. Maybe I needed to push through it to get to the good stuff (which is often the case), but last year or the year before, I tried to write the second book (though I didn’t realize it would be the second book at the time) of my mystery trilogy. I wrote over 50,000 words, and the words never started to shimmer.

I mentioned this before as well that I don’t consider myself anything but a conduit for the words to flow through. I don’t feel like I was the creator of any of my novels, which may actually be the problem now. The words are not flowing through me. Before my medical crisis, I could sit down and write effortlessly for hours. After my medical crisis, I had a much harder time doing that. Yes, I could still write the 2,000 words a day, but it wasn’t nearly as effortless as before.

My goal this NaNoWriMo is…well, I’m not sure. Writing the 2,000 words a day, obviously. That’s my own personal goal because it’s what I used to do. It’s also to see if I can actually finish a novel as I did before. Or my memoir. Speaking of the latter, if I write it, it’s not going to be a straightforward memoir. As I’ve said a few times, my life is not interesting enough for a memoir. Except for the one situation that is unique and has never happened to anyone else.

The problem is, will anyone believe it? I almost can’t believe it myself. Yes, I’ll reference my brother’s CaringBridge journal in which he details what happened to me–but, wait. I’m not sure he mentions that I had two cardiac arrests and a stroke as that happened before he came into the picture. (And the non-Covid-related walking pneumonia which kicked it all off.) He told me about it when I woke up, but no one needs to believe that.


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Where I draw my line (accepting differences)

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Yesterday, I was talking about a post on Ask A Manager that talked about how to deal with a man at a convention who was annoying/harrassing several attendants of the con. I meandered hither and yon and never addressed the first person who said it was ableist to ban someone because of their disability.

It’s interesting to me how much energy is given in defending autistic white cis boys/men and how little into doing the same for non-male people with autism. Mainly girls, but also nonbinary/genderqueer/agender people. I think the third category is completely ignored as is almost always the case. But with autistic girls, they are not afforded the same benefit of the doubt.

First of all, many are not even diagnosed. If they act out in the stereotypical male autistic way (stimming, shouting, melting down, etc.), they are more likely to be reprimanded or punished for it. I’m grossly simplifying matters, of course, but I’m not wrong, either. It’s that way with many things that are considered typical male behavior (including ADHD).

That gender issue is the reason I never even consider that I had autism, but I’ve talked about that elsewhere. Back to the post.

The commenters were pretty good at dissecting the one comment about Alex potentially being banned for his disability (versus being banned for his behavior). If anything, he was given more leeway because he was neuroatypical as the past committees tried to find ways to accommodate that.

Side note: I think one of the best suggestions was to have a code of conduct that could work for everyone. Someone else added that there should be a specific notice about sexual harassment. Several people suggested the code of conduct, which I appreciated. But those who were saying that there should be specific rules for Alex were off-base, I think. If it’s a very small fandom then perhaps you can have rules per person, but it quickly gets ungainly.

The sceond defense of Alex was that it’s not up to neurotypicals to decide if a neuroatypical perosn’s behavior is weird or not. I agree when it comes to behavior that does not directly affect the neurotypical person such as stimming, not looking someone in the eye, etc. However, when it comes to interactions, yes, the person being interacted upon gets to decide how much they want–especially in personal interaction (as opposed to work).

Side note: It’s the same when people say that you should date all races. That it’s racist not to. Well, the latter is true, but as a person of color, I do not want someone to date me out of guilt or obligation. I have had a few white women espouse this belief, and, uh, no thanks. I don’t need your pity date, thank you very much. I don’t want to date someone who is not eagerly wanting to date me!


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When neurodivergent and creepy intersect

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Many times, creepy dudes try to excuse their behavior or other creepy dudes’ behavior by whataboutautism?! Meaning, they pull out the ‘maybe they’re on the spectrum’ card at the merest whiff of the c-word (creep).

I was reading today’s Ask A Manager column, and there was a question about a middle-aged man at a con (that is almost all women/young girls) who monopolizes conversations, can’t read social cues, and in one case, stalked a woman in a social media group for this particular fandom and had to be banned. Then, he sent gifts to her house as an apology. This same woman will be attending the next con as a speaker.

Before I dive into it, here’s my last post about compartmentalization.

Some other details: in the past, Alex (the man in question) had a chaperone to smooth over the interactions (paraphrasing the LW). In a nutshell, he would monopolize someone’s time and not read any cues that they wanted him to stop. If someone was definitive with him, he would simply move onto the next woman/girl and do the same thing with them. The Letter Writer, who is on the committee for this year’s con, said this committee couldn’t babysit Alex this time around.

The majority of the commenters said just to ban Alex. A sizeable minority suggested some version of babysitting, including a stoplight solution (three different buttons. Green for ‘I’m up for chatting’. Yellow for ‘I only want to talk ot people I know’. Red for ‘Stay the fuck away from me’. More than one person pointed out that it wouldn’t work in this case because the problem was specifically Alex and not talking to people in general.

One thing that ran through the comments was how much energy was devoted to one man at the expense of everyone else. Several women had complained about Alex. The LW hastened to add that there was no evidence of anything untoward (I’m assuming meaning grooming-like behavior), but that the girls did not like it and did not know how to tell him to stop talking to them.

I firmly believe that many times when people talk about how creepy men are just misunderstood or on the spectrum, they are full of shit. Oftentimes, it’s neurotypical men who are creeps themselves who toss out this excuse because they want a shield for their own creepiness. Also, it’s been pointed out that being called a creep is considered worse than actually being a creep, much like being called a racist is a hundred times more hurtful than actually being the victim of racism.


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Me as a cohesive whole

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In the last post, I was talking about how different parts of myself can’t be compartmentalized. I also mentioned that I was a socialist and an anarchist, but those aren’t separate things. I’m also a pragmatic capitalist. And yes, I made up that term just now. What I mean by it is that I acknowledge that people want to make money. People want to thrive, and I have no problems with that. What I do have a problem with is not making sure that everyone is able to survive.

Look. I take this as a basic requirement for being a part of a society. As a collective, we should do what we can for every individual of said collective. I know this is not something all Americans believe (or even most?), but it’s at the very core of my own beliefs. Which is why I identify as a socialist. But, I also know that people need to be allowed to shine at different levels, which is the pragmatic/capitalistic part of me.

As for the anarchist, one reason I didn’t consider it is because I do believe in a (limited) hierarchy and (limited) government. I truly don’t think we could get any shit done as individuals without anybody in charge/leading. It’s hard enough when it’s just a bunch of friends trying to figure out where to go on a Friday night. If one person doesn’t take the lead, no one is going anywhere.

To me, it seems pretty simple that a society/community has a responsibility to all the members of the community to ensure that they have shelter, food, and an access to healthcare. I have explained before that when it comes to healthcare, I think everyone should have basic coverage. No one should go bankrupt or lose their home because they have to go to the hospital. Everyone should be able to go to the doctor once a year. At the bare minimum.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask, honestly. In America, any time someone wants to grouse about paying for this and that (with taxes), my retort is and will always be, “If we cut a billion dollars from the defense budget, we could cover everything else.” I’ve felt this way for decades, and you cannot dissuade me from this position. We spend the most for defense, no matter how you look at it. $900+ billion, which is three times the amount that China spends. It’s 3.4% of our GDP whereas China’s is 1.7% of their GDP. Russia is third with $109 billion, which is 5.9% of their GDP.

You’re telling me we can’t cut a measly billion dollars from that? I don’t buy it, and I never will. EVER.

Back to anarchy.

I am not a strict anarchist as I’ve mentioned. Honestly, I’m too much of a minority to be one of those. Sad, but true. If no one was in charge, people like me would be the first to go. Not to say we’re not, anyway, but I give us a better chance of surviving with a good government in place. Do I like that? No. Would I prefer not to have a government/hierarchy? Yes.


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Oh what a feeling (realization)

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I’m back with more about masking, what I consider ‘normal’, and why I’m a social anarchist. And, yes, these are all connected. Maybe just in my mind, but they are connected. Also, this was the last post I wrote.

By the way, I will forever be grateful to Ian for pointing out that he thought I was an anarchist. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me taht I might be one. Probably because of the very negative portrayal of anarchists in the media. I know, I know. Grain of salt and all that, but when a message is constantly pushed in your face (like neurodivergent people are broken/flawed, ahem) , it’s easy to unthinkingly accept that propaganda as truth.

Here’s the thing about rules (to me). I follow them when they make sense. Such as road rules. It makes sense to follow traffic signals, for example. If people driving on the road relied on everyone negotiating who had the right of way, well, there would be a lot more deaths on the road than there already are.

Same with taxes. Grossly simplified, I believe in the collective common good and doing what we can for those among us who have the least. I think everyone should have a roof over their head, food to eat, and the ability to see a doctor when they need to (for a few very basic human rights). I believe it’s our duty to ensure that for everyone in our society. If that means cutting our defense budget, so be it.

Oh, by the way. This observation by Ian happened because I was saying that I was a libertarian with a small l in most situation. He said that I seemed more like an anarchist to him, and something clicked inside me when he said that–with some caveats.

I do believe in government. I don’t think having no government would be an improvement over having one. It’s not even that I don’t believe that individuals will do the right thing  (though I don’t), but more that you can’t run a large institution like a country without there being some structure. Even something as basic as roads. How is that going to happen if there isn’t an umbrella organization (government) that makes it happen? There are things that individuals simply can’t do.

Anyway. To veer sharply back to the topic at hand, I think part of the reason I’m an anarchist is because of my neurodivergency. What do I mean by that? I mean that the fact that I don’t see things in the way most people see them is one reason that I can strip away the window dressing (most of the time) and focus on the window.

Side note: I’m also a socialist, but that’s another post altogether. I feel the two go hand-in-hand, actually.


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When the mask cracks and/or slips

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In my attempt to write about how I’ve struggled to be normal all my life, I got massively derailed into delving into my family dysfunction. It’s related, but not what I really wanted to talk about. I ended the last post by noting that old people sometimes cite their age as an excuse for retro behaviors/beliefs. I mentioned how I hate that because they neatly skip over the fact that they’ve been alive in the decades since that birth and have had every opportunity to update their beliefs.

That’s not what I want to talk about, though. One reason I realized that I might be neurodivergent is…well, let me take you through the steps.

I am extremely adept at reading social situations. As I have mentioned before, this is because I had been groomed by my mother to be her emotional support person. She expected me to listen to her complain for hours at a time about my father and to soothe shattered emotions.

I was talking to A about how I was way-too-empathetic, but it wasn’t natural. I explained how my brain worked when someone told me something highly emotional (or just any big event). Let’s say it was getting a new job. This is how it would go.

Friend: Hey, Minna. I have news.

Me (thinking): News. What does that mean? How do they sound? Happy or sad.

Friend: I got a new job.

Me (thinking): New job, new job, new job. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Have they mentioned this before?

(My brain frantically trying to remember if friend has mentioned anything about their job in the last few months while not showing any outer turmoil.)

Friend: It was rather sudden. It only happened in the last three days.

Me (stil thinking): Am I supposed to know about this? It happened suddenly. Does that mean good or bad?

Me (out loud): That is quite sudden! (Hoping they will reveal more.)

Friend: It comes with a 20% pay increase and double the PTO. And full insurance! I’m so thrilled.

Me (in relief, scrambling to come up with an appropriately enthusiastic tone): Oh, that’s great! I’m so happy for you. What thrilling news!


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Living my life as best I can

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Labels. It’s not the main thing I want to talk about, but it’s important. Why? Because as much as I’d love to be free of labels, it’s not going to happen any time soon. More importantly, as long as we live in a society that thrives on slapping labels on people. We must know who is in and who is out, musn’t we?

(Which is my issue with the Democrats hammering on the ‘weird’ meme. I get it, but I’m still not happy about it.

In my last post, I mentioned that I had some empathy for my mother when she was younger beacuse she basically was a single parent of three children (the third being my father) in a foreign country when she was in her late twenties. She worked forty hours a week (taking the bus back and forth, which was half an hour to forty-five minutes each way, depending on traffic), then came home to cook for my brother and me. My father was never home before ten p.m. because of the affairs he was having. Yes, that was the reason, and my mother barely kept it from me.

In fact, as I have mentioned, she started using me as an emotional support person when I was eleven.

She did all the chores around the house, too. Except for mowing the lawn and a few other ‘manly’ chores (like taking out the garbage). I’m sure she helped with shoveling the snow, though, because we lived in Minnesota. We got a LOT of snow.

It really wasn’t fair.

My mother worked forty-plus hours a week (plus commute), then had to do the cooking, the cleaning, the sewing, and anything else around the house. Plus, my father had all these unspoken rules that my mother (and my brother and I) had to follow. the biggest one was that no one other than my father was allowed to show any negative emotions. If I got upset, angry, or scared at all, I got yelled at.

I distintcly remember when I was a teenager, my father and I had a huge fight. I don’t remember what it was about, but it was loud and angry. On both sides. I ran to my room and slammed the door. A minute later, my father flung open the door and screamed about how I was not allowed to do that in his house.

That was the day I knew that I could never ever have an honest moment with my father. Should I have yelled at him? No. Should I have slammed the door to my room? Also, no. But I was a teenager. Acting out is a very teenaged thing to do. What he should have done, I don’t know. but acting like a more out-of-control teenager in return was not it.


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