Underneath my yellow skin

THinking about thinking (and my brain), part four

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Let’s talk more about my brain and how I think. In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how the stereotypical depiction of autism prevented me from recognizing that I might be autistic until just a few years ago.

One thing I  mentioned was how I know not to natter on and on about my obsessions because it annoys other people. I also don’t mention them for another reason–because they are precious to me and talking about them with people who don’t feel the same way can make me feel some kind of way.

One trait of autism is being easily swayed/manipulated. This was another reason I thought I could not be autistic. When it comes to important issues–I am an unmovable force. Take abortion, for example. Once I realized what it was and how important it was for the autonomy of women, I have not wavered in my support of it. And, by “it” I specifiaclly mean abortion. Yes, I am pro-choice, but in this case, I want to emphasize that I specifically support abortion.

Side note: It irks me how pro-choice has been crafted to mean, “Yes, it’s so terrible that some people have to get abortions, but we support them in their difficult moments”. It can be terrible/hard/traumatic, but there are plenty of people who felt it was an easy decision and felt relief/joy when they had it done. That never gets talked about. No, it has to be all about suffering and tragedy–as does most things that traditionally pertain to women.

Side note to the side note: When I decided I did not want to have children and realized I didn’t have to, I felt such a sense of relief and joy. I could not explain it, but I felt as if a million-pound weight fell from my shoulders. I knew deep in my heart that this was the best decision I hahd ever made in my life, and thirty-five years later, I feel it even more strongly.

That’s another thing that at that time, women were apologizing for–not having children, I mean. I looked for anyone who felt the same way (remember, this was before the internet was the behemouth that it is now). I found one anthology from women, writers and not, who decided not to have children. I was so eager to read it, but to my disappointment, every single one of them apologized, excused, or made themselves smaller as they talked about their decision not to have children.

If I were to write for an anthology about my decision not to have children, I would be celebratory and jubilant. I’m not being hyperbolic; if anything, I’m understating my emotions.

The other thing I read that stuck in my brain was an article about mothers. Not because of the article itself, but because of the commenter who was brave enough to say that she regretted having children and why. Other commenters chimed in with similar sentiments, and it was the first time I saw an honest conversation from women who wished they hadn’t had children.


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More about my brain and how I think, part three

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Let’s talk more about my brain, how I think, and the difficulty  I’m having with sleep. In my last post, I talked quite a bit about how I never really thought I could have autism because the stereotype of it did not feel like it fit me–at all.

I didn’t want to go on a thousand-word rant about the patriarchy because I’ve done it many times before, and it wasn’t the point of the post. But let’s all acknowledge that we know that the patriarchy has a long reach.

It’s not often than I say plainly that the patriarchy is the reason I reacted in a certain way (or didn’t), but it’s completely true in this case. I had no idea I could have autism because the image of it in my head up until maybe four years ago was of a boy (probably white, but not necessarily) between five and fifteen.  Someone who fidgeted and stimmed constantly, and, of course, someone who was awkward in social interactions and could not make (or sustain) eye contact.

None of that fits me. Except maybe the last. I don’t make eye contact, but I can do the ‘look at their nose’ thing.

When my autistic friend told me to take an online autism test unmasked as much as possible, that was eye-opening. The test itself talked about masking and how so many autistic people did it automatically. They wanted you to take the test as unmasked as possible, and they even padded the scores to include masking.

Knowing all that, I still struggled taking the test without automatically masking. I have been doing it most of my life–for fifty-years plus. I don’t know how to be unmasked any longer. It had a Likert scale and would make statements like, “I feel comfortabel with my social skills in a crowd”. Then, of course, you had to pick a number. 1 was like highly agree, 2 agree, 3 neutral, 4 disagree, 5 highly disagree or something like that.

The instructions explicitly said to put down the number that described you before you put on your mask–and I had no idea. As I said, my mask was installed in me at such a young age and so firmly, I just could not imagine myself without it. I tried. I knocked a point off here and there, but I honestly had no idea what to score myself. That’s how ingrained the mask is on my face. Er, on me.

I scored in the low range (meaning the very bottom of I could possibly be autistic). The thing that was important, though, was that it opened my eyes to the idea that I might be autistic. It might be harder for me to find my way to what the actual truth is (and I don’t know if I’ll get tested or not), but just knowing it’s possible that I have autism has lifted a huge weight from my shoulders.

The thing is that even if it’s not autism per se, it helped me realize that I definitely have some kind of neurodivergence. I’m pretty sure it’s autism–just heavily masked. When I look at a list of the traits, I fit most of them–at least in my heart. Oh, and there have been studdies that suggest that transgender and nonbinary people have a higher rate of autism. Which is very interesting to me.


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Diving deeper into how I think, part two

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Let’s talk more about how my weird brain manifests itself. In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how my neurodivergent brain thinks very differently than how normies think. for the longest time, I thought there was something I could do to make my brain work more normally. I didn’t want to do it, mind, but I always thought it was possible.

I did briefly consider in my early thirties that I might have ADHD. I had the hyperfocus part down pat, but too many of the other symptoms/traits didn’t fit. At that time, I had a great memory and was never late. I did ping from one thing to another, but I was also able to focus–not just hyperfocus. It really was only the hyperfocus and the changing from interest to interest that pinged the ADHD meter.

I can’t stress how much at the time (twenty years ago) that autism was portrayed as a young boy’s diagnosis. It was definitely considered a kid’s thing–and only boys got it. OBVIOUSLY. Most people never even said that because the thought that it could be present in girls was unthinkable.

Side note: This is how medicine works in general, by the way. It’s heavily skewed towards white cis males, so much so that some studies that talk about pregancy use ‘he’ when talking about the patient. This is an extreme example, but it’s littered throughout medical documentation. Also, Asian people need much less meds than do white people–but that isn’t mentioned, either.

I realized this when I tried sleeping pills when I was in my late twenties. The psychiatrist didn’t even examine me. She just listened to me for two minutes, then wrote a scrip for sleeping pills. I felt really seen, I’ll tell you what (that’s sarcasm).

I took a pill and did not wake up for over sixteen hours. Same when I cut it in half, and then in half agaian. No, I didn’t sleep quite as long, but it was still longer than I wanted, and I felt so groggy when I woke up.

When I tried Valerian, I felt as if I could not make my thoughts connect. I was three steps behind, and my tongue felt so thick. I am always chary about taking drugs because they affect me so much. And, sadly. many medical people don’t listen when I say that I react strongly to meds. when I was unconscious in the hospital and the medical professionals were trying to wake me up. My mother said to my medical team that I was more sensitive to drugs because of the Asian thing, but they apparently didn’t listen or pay attention.

Not surprising, really, as medical people are pretty notorious for ignoring information that does not agree with their preconceived notions.

This is one reason that I had no idea I was autistic. I’m AFAB; Asian; have a very high EQ; have excellent social skills; and I don’t do any kind of stimming. That was all I knew about autism, that it was for boys who couldn’t stand still, who stimmed, who thrashed when touched/hugged, who could not maintain eye contact, who could not relate at all to other human beings, and who were did not feel anything at all.


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Celebrities and keeping my chill

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So, in the Discord channel I’ve been talking about in the past few days (because it’s a place I can go and talk about a variety of tihngs I normally wouldn’t), there’s someone who works in a bar/restaurant in LA. He mentioned that he got to meet Mike Ness, the lead singer of Social Distortion when he (Mike Ness walked into his (the person in the Discord) place of employment. The latter, let’s call him Bob,  got to talk to Mike Ness and said that while he (Bob) wasn’t the type to ferak out over celebs, he was pretty stoked to meet Mike Ness.

I chimed in and said I loved Social D, even though I had only heard of them for the first time a few years ago. I did not say this in the Discord, but Mike Ness could still get it. I said that the only person I would get a bit giddy meeting would have been Alan Rickman (yes, still). Other than him, though, I didn’t think I would be at all freaked out.

My brother and I talked about if we ever met Obama, how we would act. I respect him a lot*, and I would enjoy speaknig with him about weighty issues and topics, but I would not be starstruck. There is no one alive I can think of who would make me squeal or freak out. And it’s not because I’m better than other people or anything like that, but it’s because…well, for a few reasons.

One, I believe that everyone is equal in terms of hierarchy when it comes to worth as a human being. I know that’s an incredibly awkward way to phrase that, but it says what I mean the best. I mean that everyone is worthy of a base degree of civility just for being a human being.** I can appreciate someone who shines in their area of expertise/popularity/fame, but I don’t think of them as better than me as a person.

I think this is partly beacuse of my neurodivergence. Not that my way of thinking about hierarchy is necessarily tied to neurodivergence, but that the way I think might be. Or rather, the latter might be influencing the former. It’s true that neurodivergent people don’t necessarily see social constructs in the same way as do ‘normies’.

I mean, that’s kind of our thing–being socially awkward, I mean.*** It’s only with several decades of intense training (by carefully scrutinizing other people) that I can mimic normies to a probably unhealthy degree. In fact, I do it better than many normies do. That doesn’t mean I like it, though. Donig it, I mean. It’s second nature by now, and I would feel uncomfortable not doing it–but that still doesn’t mean I like doing it.

I have a flat affect by nature (and by nurture). When I explained to my autistic friend how I processed information and transformed it into emotion, she said that it was a very autistic way of doing things. Note, she wasn’t saying that it meant I was definitely autistic–just that it might be a reason for it.


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Groups, labels, and feeling at home, part two

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One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot throughout my life is how much my sense of being an outsider is me and how much is them. Them meaning society. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how there’s a channel in the Discord to which I belong that is really good for discussing various topics. It got threateneed to be age-verified when Discord switched to that (not getting into the inane politics behind it, but just, ugh), and some people who never visited the channel thought that was just fine.

Here’s the thing. It’s the one channel I felt comfortable talking about queer things, nonmonogamy, and an array of other things that did not fit into the other channels. In fact, the channel was created (before my time) when there wasa a college student (19 or 20, I think) asking questions about sexual slang. I gather this was in one of the general channels, and some people were uncomfortable with it.

Then, one of the owners of the Discord created the channel for After Dark topics and said, “Don’t make me regret this.”

We got that lifted when the threat of intrusive age-verification became a reality, for which I am profoundly grateful. In this channel, we have talked about music, dating, lightly touched on politics, and, yes, sex. We’ve talked about nonmonogamy/polyamory (and what the difference is), whether men and women can truly be friends (and introducing nonbinary/agender people into the question), and have encouraged people to go on dates.

The last few days the channel has been super-busy. No idea why, but the messages have been flying. We’ve pondered what ‘milkshake’ means in the classic R&B song of the same name by Kelis. Boobs? Butt? Blowjobs? Je ne sais quois? I’ve always thought it was the first, but I’ve heard people say it’s the second. Never heard the third or fourth until today. Other people said it’s what she has within–pretty much the same as the fourth.

How did we get on this topic? Because it’s been stuck in my head for several days, and I shared that in the channel. I think it was tangentially related to something that was going on in the channel–though I’m not absolutely sure. My brain works in werd ways (which is the whole point of the last ten or so posts), so who knows what connection it made?

Side note: when I was  younger, I would write or talk in ways that just assumed others could see the connections I was maknig in my brain. They were so clear to me, I couldn’t understand why they weren’t as clear to other people.

We also talked about dating woes people have had and muffins. Those are not related topics, byway. Oh, and it was muffins and cupcakes. We were discussing the difference between them because someone shared a meme about them. It had something to do with what the actual difference was–was it just the frosting? And then we migrated to talking about did that mean muffins were tops and cupcakes were bottoms? Because muffin tops were a thing.


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The fleeting feeling of belonging

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There’s a channel in the Discord that is my favorite channel. Why? Because it’s a place where we go to chat about love, lust, and a bunch of other things that was kept out of other channels (this happened before I joined the Discord).

We joke about it being where the filth goes to die, but it’s actually more wholesome than that most of the time. It’s about 90% love, identity, and struggles. It’s maaaaaaybe 10% filth, and even then, it’s rarely more than Rated R (in my opinion).

Side note: It fascinates me how in Kpop the showing of the stomach is considered something to scream and go gaga over. I think it’s because of how repressive the society is in general and how Kpop stars are supposed to be pure and innocent. See Victorian England for a similar vibe in which the showing of an ankle could be considered scandalous

I know I’m weird that I’m on the waaaaay other end of the spectrum in that I’m not shocked in the arts when actual genitalia is shown (not in and of itself. If it’s shown for shock value, I roll my eyes, but I’m not scandalized by it), let alone abs or tongue or whatnot. So take with a grain of salt what I’m saying about this channel.

Anyway, recently, Discord along with other SM services had warned that any +18 channels would have to go through a ridiculous and invasive verification process in order to continue being allowed into those channels. The channel I mentioned above had been made +18 at some point, and we were all concerned about it. We were talking about it in a more general channel, and some people wanted to keep it as is so the content creators the Discord belonged to would not get in trouble with Discord. These were people who did not even go into the channel.

Those of us who used it were arguing against keping it as it was because none of us wanted to do the verification process, but we didn’t want to give up the channel. People were focusing on the grot, and I finally said, “Here’s the thing. Grot is maybe 5% of the channel, and the rest of is it very wholesome. More to the point, it’s a place where queer people can gather and talk about things we don’t want to clog other channels with.” Some of those included talks about nonmonogamy, gender identity, friendship between different genders, and more. There were a few straights who chimed in now and again, but a big chunk of us were queer. In fact, that’s how I found out there were more queers in the Discord than I had realized.

It ended when one of the owners of the Discord inquired what was going on. He had forgotten he had made that channel 18+, and when reminded of how it happened, laughed and said it had been a joke. He took off the restriction after making us promise we’d all be good. We did; he did; and the channel continues to thrive.


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Sleep, perchance not to dream, part three

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Sleep. My enemyy. I wrote a whole novel–no, forget that novel. We don’t talk about that one. Let’s move on. I have been fighting with Morpheus since I was a kid, and I am giving up hope that I will be able to adjust it any time soon. I spent all of the last post talking about how much I’ve struggled with my sleep–and it doesn’t seem like there’s anything I can do to fix it.

I feel beaten down and defeated–and I know at least some of it is my own damn fault. Nerodivergence or not, I–you know what I’m not going to finish that sentence, either. I’m very hard on myself, and I think even when I can recognize that I am neurodivergent, I don’t fully accept that it has an impact on me. Or I downplay it and feel like I’m a lazy person, anyway.

It’s hard to say because while it is a big deterrent, that doesn’t mean it’s not up to me to do something about it. I think the problem is that I need to do the one thing I really, really don’t want to do–which is set a firm bedtime. The problem with that is setting a firm bedtime doesn’t mean I’ll be able to sleep on time or enough. In fact, when I put an emphasis on my sleeptime or forcing myself to go to bed, I become very aware of time passing. That makes it harder for me to fall asleep, and I just lie on the couch with my eyes wide open. Even when I close them, I can hear the metaphorical clock ticking in my ears.

The problem is that the little tweaks I do don’t work. Moving my bedtime up or back by an hour–nope. Melatonin–nope. Sleeping pills–a hard nope. Warm milk, herbal tea, warm bath? Nope, nope, and nope. Exercise before bed? Nope. Exercise during the day? Nope. Valerian? Fuck no! Reading before bed? Nope. Napping earlier? Also nope.

Side note: I have this thing about not trying the last and desperate option because–and I admit, this is screwy logic–then I’ll have nothing left. When I was deep in my depression and had tried so many meds, my therapist suggested EKG. I demurred because I felt that was the last option. If it didn’t work, I would be totally bereft.

I know it’s faulty logic, but it’s the way my brain works. It’s the same with the end of things. I hate the last in any series because it means the end of that series. I really liked a British series called Prime Suspect, based on the books. It’s about a female cop (detective? I think?) who had to fight sexism as much as she did the baddies. By series I mean there was a movie every year or so–looking it up, it spanned 15 years, had 7 series and 15 episodes. So I was basically right. The last series, series 7 had 2 episodes. I could not bring myself to watch them, and I still haven’t. I just could not bear to see the series end.

Now, I could go back and watch the whole series (if I can find them to stream. I don’t have any of the streaming services that offer the series, apparently. Sigh), but I’m not sure I want to do that. I adored Helen Mirren back then and for decades to come. Fairly recently, though, she’s said some things that make me like her less. Also, I don’t know how well the series will hold up. But it was incredible at the time.


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Strugglring with sleep, part two

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I’ve decided that this is part two of the posts about my sleep rather than part eight in the series on my broken brain. I really should stop calling my brain that because it really isn’t broken (much), but I find it amusing. Well, I do now. This is the post from yesterday in which I complain a lot about my struggles with sleep.

In the beginning, I called my brain broken because I really felt it was broken. I was not on the same wavelength with anyone, and I felt like an alien. But not an acceptable alien. Because of my dysfunctional home life, I was pretty feral when I entered school. Meaning, I was not properly socialized. I had no idea how to act around my peers or teachers or anything like that. My mom liked to talk about how brave I was wehn I was two (I chased off the bullies bothering my five year-old brother), but by the time I entered elementary school, that was firmly ground out of me.

I also had difficulty with sleep from a very young age. As I mentioned in my last post, I have not gone to bed before midnight my whole life*.

Side note: I think it’s important when you’re thinking of sleep that we rocognize that people have different circadian rhythms. There is nothing wrong with going to bed later and getting up later except it puts you off the rhythm of the world in general. I think the fact that I have never gone  to bed early, not even when I was a child, says that it’s innate within me and not something I’ve learned one way or another.

I firmly believe that the mental health issues that arise from going to bed late are because of the hardships faced with trying to constantly fit into the early-birds world. It wouldn’t be so frustrating if the early birds weren’t so morally smug about it. Or if they didn’t look so down on people who went to bed later and got up later. Nobody scoffs at them for going to bed before midnight or points out how unproductive they are because they’re in bed by ten.

Though, come to think of it, if you’re a grown adult, most people expect you to stay up to at least ten. There’s always a narrow strip of territory that is considered normal, and woe be the person who strays from that narrow path. I do think early birds get more of a pass than do night owls, but, again, that’s if they don’t stray too far the other way.

One thing I find really frustrating is how morning birds want to attach ‘lazy’ to those of us who sleep in the morning. They like to crow (and yes, I’m going to stuff in as many bird references as I can) about how productive they were and all that they got done by noon.


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Sleep is as sleep does, (my brain), part seven

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Let’s talk more about burnout, sleep, and how the hell I can do better with both. I’m pretty sure the lack of the middle one is causing the first one, but I feel helpless to do anything about it. My sleep is wild these days. I had to get up before noon for my class, and I went to bed fairly early for me (5 a.m.), and I planned on getting up a quarter to twelve. Instead, I fell asleep, snoozed, and got up several times. At eleven or so, I woke up and just could not go back to sleep.

I have a weird thing in which if I have to get up at a certain time, then I’ll wake up early and keep on waking up until I give up and get up for good. It’s so frustrating because I could get an extra hour of sleep if  Iwould just stay asleep, but my anxiety does me in every time.

When I used to fly frequently, I would often get an early morning flight because it was the cheapest. If i had to be at the airport at, say, four in the morning, I just was not going to sleep that night. Even as I’m writing this, I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. I’ve nodded off, slept for a few minutes, started awake, and repeated the cycle.

There’s no reason I couldn’t just go to bed now, but I won’t for whatever reason. I know what will happen, though. If I stay awake for ten more minutes, I’ll be up until five or six. This is just the way my brain works for whatever reason.

I’m exhausted, and then I can’t sleep. This cycle is the worst, and I know that I don’t help myself. I think the thing I need to do if I can is take out the self-judgment. I was talking to A about how hard it is not to be negative about oneself in addition to the actual problem. After all, we’ve been told all our lives that we’re lazy; that our brains were broken; that we just needed to try harder.

I can’t tell you how many different things I have tried to get better sleep. In fact, I listed several ways I tried to get better sleep in my post from yesterday. Every time, I had hope in my heart that this would be the answer, it wasn’t. There is nothing that has worked–except Taiji. And that took several years before it helped in the sleep department. Before I studied Taiji, I got four to five hours of sleep a night. Afterwards, I pushed it up to six, maybe six-and-a-half, inch by inch. Now, I get six to eight, depending, and it’s mostly on me if it’s less because I set my alarm for the same time no matter when I go to sleep (unless I have to get up earlier).

Why? Because I’m hoping in vain that it’ll spur me to go to bed earlier. I have mentioned that I would like to go to bed by 3 a.m. Now, it’s more than  half hour past that. 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. is my ideal schedule, but I have rarely been able to stay on that schedule. After I got out of the hospital (after my medical crisis), I was sleeping 10 p.m. to 6 p.m. I never did that even when I was a kid. I have never gone to bed before midnight–even when I had a 7:45 a.m. class in college. In fact, during that time, I rarely went to bed before 3:30 a.m.


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The importance of sleep (and braiiiiins), part six

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Let’s talk about sleep. Again. Forever. I struggle so much with it on so many level. Before I get into it, here’s my post from yesterday about how autism and ‘socially awkward’ are often used as an excuse for creepiness.

I’m mad thinking about it again. Why are we so quick to excuse bad behavior from men*? Or to say “that’s just the way he is”? Or, even worse when little boys pulled the hair of little girls, “He’s just showing that he likes you”?

By the way, stop that bullshit. Seriously. Stop it the fuck right now. We do not need to be teaching little girls that abuse is acceptable. And, no, I don’t think that’s being hyperbolic. A boy hurts a girl, and she’s just supposed to accept it because he “likes” her? No. Not appropriate and not acceptable.

In the same vein, don’t make kids accept hug or force them to hug anybody. Bodily autonomy is important. I have heard because it excuse it because faaaaaamily. But family can do bad things, too. The vast majority of abuse of children is by family members.

I have very few absolute opinions–one of them is that kids should never be made to hug anyone they don’t want to hug. I have read the reasons why people are for it, and none of them make one whit of an impression on me. They just sound like noise in my ears and mere excuses. “You want to make Granny feel welcome!” A warm smile and a “so glad to see you” can do that.

Hm. I just thought of something. I am very much someone who doesn’t are about labels in general. Male, female, Christian, Jew, Muslim, age, etc. I understand that it’s important to most people, and I can respect that. I mean, if those aspects are clearly important to someone, then I’ll be respectful.

I vould add familial labels into that basket. This is heresy as an Asian person, but I don’t think someone should be accorded more respect just because of their position in the family. To make it clear, I think everyone is deserving of a base level of respect as a human being. But I do not and never will agree that someone deserves more respect because they’re a day older or a man.

I think it’s because of my mindset that I am so absolute about not making kids kiss and/or hug anyone they don’t want to, regardless of family connection. And partly my neurodivergence, too. If you would not make your kid hug a total stranger, then why make them hug someone they see once a year? Or even more often than that.

Kids have such little autonomy as it is; they should not be forced to give up even more of it. This is a hill I would die on.


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