Underneath my yellow skin

More about neurodivergence and normality

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I want to talk more about how I would have benefited from knowing I was neurodivergent at a young age. I was going to write about that yesterday, but I got sidetracked. I wrote about why I did not want to be a mother instead and how that also would have been helpful–if someone affirmed it was ok for me to not want to be a mother, I mean.

I grew up believing that I was broken. I also believed that I needed to earn my right to live every day. This was tied directly into me being a weirdo and AFAB. My parents truly believed that girls were inferior and needed to adhere to rigid gender roles. Boys, yes, too, but not quite as much or as restrictive.

It’s funny. I was reading an old Ask A Manager post about hierarchies at the workplace. A commenter mentioned they were autistic and did not understand hierarchies. They went on to argue with people about it because they kept trying to explain to her how hierarchies worked in the work place. She kept saying she understood what they were saying; she just did not agree with it. I found ith fascinating how upset/frustrated people were getting even though she kept her comments chill and matter-of-fact.

This was from a few years ago, and much to my amusement, I had commented under this person, thanking her for saying that was part of autism. I had always found hierarchies an anathema, so it was just another piece of the puzzle. Beneath my comment was a comment from another autistic person who was one of the good ones  (people in a minority who are anxious to prove to the majority that they are better than all the other people of that minority, though the good ones would not phrase it that way) and someone I really dislike. She’s so eager to put down autistic people in general if they need an kind of assistance. In fact, I would say she had a large amount of internalized ableism, and I often found myself muttering cusses at her because she wants to make sure everyone knows she would never act like those other autistic losers.

Anyway, she said something that really rubbed me the wrong way, and I was sharp in my response to her. At least, internally. I think my tone was icily civil. But I have no patience for try hards who don’t hesitate to step on others in their minority to be provisionally accepted by the majority.

I ain’t got no time for that bullshit. I was a cool girl when I was in college, and I learned the cost of trying to be one of the good ones. You were always on the precipice and only tolerated as long as you did not act up. That’s why I argued in the Discord I’m in against people who were making fun/putting down how visible autism was becoming these days.

This happens all the time. Any time something niche (for wont of a better word) gains any noteriety, people decry the whole field. Of course, the people in the Discord were all, “I’m for mental health being more open” blah blah blah. Right. Sure. That was quickly followed by a ‘but’ as it often is.

I went off. I said that my life would have been so much better if I had any inkling as a child that I was autistic. But that wasn’t even a hint of a possibility for several reasons. One, no one had autism when i was a kid (I’m been very sarcastic, in case you can’t tell. Kids had it; it just wasn’t recognized except maybe in some little white boys).


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Knowledge is power

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Knowledge is power. It’s a facile statement that is a trope, but it’s also true. I know not everyone feels that way, but I find comfort in information. The thing I regret from when I was younger was that I did not know that what I thought was wrong me wasn’t. I mean, it was wrong in the sense than it was different than the norm, but it wasn’t wrong as in I wasn’t broken. I certainly felt that way, but that was because others treated me as if I were broken.

One of the only real arguments K and I have had was about how mental health is more out in the open these days. We weren’t arguing about that–we both think that’s a good thing. She was just frustrated because she felt that it sometimes got in the way of getting shit done. On the daily, I mean. She said when we were kids, we dealt with it. That hit me the wrong way because some of us did not deal with it very well. I was passively suicidal for most of my life, and I hated being alive. I knew I was depressed and that I had anxiety, but not to what extent. And if I had any inkling that I was neurodivergent, that would have made such a difference.

I spent my childhood/teen years being told that I was too sensitive, too much, just too too. I was too everything, and I needed to make myself smaller. This was in part because I was perceived as a woman, and my only value as a woman was to serve the men around me. And to have babies, but that was also in a way at the behest of the man who owned me. Er, married me. I can’t tell you how many times my mother pushed me to have children. She used all the tactics in her arsenal–guilt, manipulation, and persistence.

I don’t know how I resisted, but I did. This was the one thing I knew about myself to be true–I would have made a terrible mother. More to the point, I did not want children. At all. In fact, I was the opposite of wanting children–I did not want them with all my heart. I would have done anything to avoid having them, and it would have made my life a living hell to be pregnant/have children.

It’s not something I talked about much because it was such a taboo. It would have been a relief to be able to say it loud and proud, but even I knew better than that. Well, I did after I got a few very negative reactions to saying I did not want children.

By the way, I’m sad that this is still the case. Naively, when I was in my twenties, I thought things would be better for the next generation, but I’ve heard it hasn’t changed much. Young women are still pressured to have children, and the rise of trad wives is very depressing. Yeah, I’m just going to say it–it’s fucking sexist. And, no, I don’t think most women really want it. I’ve seen a few videos from trad wives who either snapped or had their husbands cheat on them. I have to admit that my internal response is, “What the fuck did you expect?”, but it’s so out of my experience.


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Flu shot still kicking my ass

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My god. This flu shot has really kicked my ass. I was mostly fine the first day except for my burning arm (common reaction to getting a vax for me. After my first Covid shot, the hot bump lasted until my next shot–six weeks later). Then, the fatigue hit, and it hit hard. And the chills. And it hasn’t gone away yet. It’s been nearly a week, and it’s still pretty bad. I ended up napping at my desk again, on and off, for three hours. If i didn’t know this was how I reacted to vaxxes, I would think that maybe I had the flu.

I need to go to my yearly doctor appointment, and I need my Covid booster. If I can get an appointemnt within the next week, I’ll probably get the booster then. Otherwise, I can get it at my pharmacy. I don’t want to get it, though. I hate how they make me feel. I know it’s better than getting the flu or Covid, but it stil makes me feel pretty shitty.

By the way, back when the Covid vax first came out, I was still on Twitter. There was a debate over whether people should mention that you can get a bad reaction to the jabs. There was a prominent Democratic tweeter who said that it was bad to mention it because it would deter people from getting their vax. It would have been fine if he stopped there (though I would have disagreed with him), but he went on to say scornfully that the effects weren’t that bad, anyway (implying that anyone who had a problem with them was a big baby).

When I tweeted that I preferred to know all the possibilities because then I wouldn’t be unpleasantly surprised when I got the jab, a woman implied it might deter someoene from getting the shot. I mean, it might, but I don’t think we should treat people like recalcitrant children who need to be tricked into getting their shots. This is a pet peeve of mine, and I’m not sure where it stems from. I hate being told to do something for my own good or that it’s ok to lie to me to make me do something someone else wants me to do. That’s manipulative and not to mention gaslight adjacent.

I have always been a ‘give me as much information as there is available’ kind of person. I want to know the possibilities rather than have to imagine them. I don’t think this is a controversial statement, but apparently, it is.

I’m really struggling with this flu shot. I want to make it clear. I always have an intense reaction to my vaxxes. It’s never ‘just a little prick and a bit of stiffness’. I know this going into the shots, and still, I’m not prepared for just how shitty they make me feel.


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Special interests, hyperfixations, and obsessions, oh my! Part four

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The flu shot is still kicking my ass. I snoozed yesterday for a few hours at my desktop (contorting myself into some truly uncomfortable positions) and then crashed hard at around 2 a.m. I wok up around eight and theen snoozed a bit more. So in total, I probably got ten hours, but broken up and not completely restful. I’m snoozy now as well. I thought I got of fairly easily with my flu shit this time around, but I guess not. I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mac truck.

Back to obsessions vs. special interests vs. hyperfixations.

A was telling me that there wasn’t necessarily a clean differetiation between special interests and hyperfixations. We’ve talked at length about how the stereotypical way autism is portrayed is, of course, influenced by the sexism–as is everything. It can’t be helped. We live in a sexist highly patriarchal world. The flavor is different in each country (and even down to each region), but there are very few places that aren’t touched by it–if any.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post how girls’ hobbies aren’t considered worthy of being hyperfixations the way boys’ hobbies are. I extrapolated even further that you have to split up those hobbies even further. Like, video games. Serious hardcore games are acceptable as special interests whereas casual games or cozy games aren’t. It’s funny how in the cozy game scene on YouTube, there are many female content creators, but very few in the hardcore gaming world. And the women in the latter are very bro-coded. They talk like guys and act like them, too. Calling each other “bro” (Gen Z’s version of dude, I guess) and calling everyone bitches. Sneering down on women and gatekeeping with the best (worst) of them.

I have tried to find female gamers who aren’t like that, but it’s so fucking hard. Or genderqueer/nonbinary/agender, but that’s even harder.

Even in the cozy games world, the few bigger content creators I know of are men. And I just can’t do it. I’ve had my lifetime quota of cishetwhite dudes, and I am simply unwilling to add another to my life.

Even in K-Pop content creation, the vast majority I’ve seen are male, and most of them, male and female (can’t find any genderqueer people) are casually sexist. Or not so casually sexist. “Bros” galore, which really irritates me. Even more so than “dudes”. Guys is the one I mind the least, but I still would prefer non-gendered expression af address, thank you very much. Plus, many of the Western reactors don’t know much about Korean (Eastern) culture, which is aggravating. I am NOT going to get into that right now, but it’s pretty constant.


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Special interests vs. hyperfixations, part three

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I was talking to my friend, A, about sepecial interests versus hyyperfixations because of my puzzlement over which is which. She was saying that it wasn’t that clear cut for many autistic people, specially those who are not cis boys. It’s a point I’ve read about before, how male hobbies were considered more acceptable as hyperfixations/special interests than female hobbies. This is true. Think about typical nerdy hobbies (board games, video games, etc.), and they are considered acceptable special interests. Fashion, makeup, clothing? Not so much.

Then, you have to split it up even more. Bear with me.

Let’s take video games. There are acceptable games for hardcore gamers and nonacceptable games. Casual games are, of course, not considered real games to the hardcore brogamers. If  you can’t tell, I roll my eyes hard at that subset of gamers because they are tedious at best and toxic at worst.

FromSoft went from being niche to being cool within the space of a decade. No matter where they fell on that spectrum, though, they were considered the gold bar of hard games. You were a real gamer if you played them–unless, of course, you didn’t play them in the correct* way.

I don’t play the games for the difficulty. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. I like the incredible worlds, environments, and level design. I put up with the difficulty because I enjoy everything else so much. I used to buy into the “you’re not a true From fan if you summon” bullshit, but not any longer. I’m on the “it’s a fucking game. Whatever makes it fun for you, go for it” bandwagon, and I have been for the entirety of Elden Ring.

If people want to solo the games, that’s their business. If it’s fun for them, so be it. I just hate that it’s considered the gold standard way to play the games by the self-appointed gatekeepers–at least it had been for Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. It lesesned with each game, in general, even as it intensified in certain sectors. I remember when  I first played Dark Souls, it was several years after it came out. I bought into the insistence that if you didn’t solo all the bosses, you were shit. I ran headlong into a wall in the form of the Black Dragon Kalameet in the DLC. In addition, there were no summons for that boss, anyway. I can understand why. It’s a tedious fight with some bullshit attacks. It’s very much not a fun fight because Kalameet has so much goodamn health and way too much hyperarmor.

Anyway. In desperation, I went to look up tips for fighting Kalameet. I immediately found the toxicity of the FromSoft forums that persisted no matter the game. 1. Any build you do is wrong. No matter what build the original poster (OP) said they were using, there was at least one asshole who insisted on pushing his own build as the only way to beat the boss. 2. Git gud. I quickly grew to hate reading that phrase. Not only is it dismissive, it’s so fucking meaningless. I mean, that’s why people are asking for advice, damn it! Because they want to ‘git gud’, though they probably wouldn’t phrase it that way.


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Kvow when to walk away; know when to run, part two

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It’s funny. When I have a hyperfixation, it’s intense for the amount of time I’m into it, then it completely disappears. Whereas a special interest lasts forever (so far), but it waxes and wanes over time. I think  I have a hard time thinking that the latter applies to me because while I get obsessed with myy hyperfixations, I don’t with my special interests. Well, not to the same degree. And not depending on what it is.

My biggest special interest is martial arts weapons. Just the whole category. It’s the most important thing in my life. I just read the definition of special interest, and  Idon’t think I have anything that qualifies. It’s supposed to be an obsession that drives you to be the absolute expert in that category. It defines your identity and it it’s an integral part of you. While martial arts weapons certainly is a building block of my identity and an integral part of me, I cannot say that I’m obsessed with them. Again, I practice them every day, teach myself a new one on the daily, and watch videos of different weapon forms. However, I do not consider myself an expert nor do I have any interest in becoming one. I just enjoy them for the sake of doing them. My teacher says i’m a master because I’m teaching myself, but I don’t feel like a master.

I like that I can keep my interest in the weapons high, but not all-consuming. I have a harder time regulating my inteerst in certain video games. I can play some of them in a sensible manner, but others are more likely to get me all tripped up. When Elden Ring came out, I ate, breathed, and slept the game. I played for hours and forgot anything else existed. Now, four-plus years later, I can play it casually and not let it consume me. It’s still my chill-out game that I play when I want to relax.

It’s funny because I’ve started over a dozen playthroughs of the game. I’ve finished it at least five times and probably more like seven or eight. I’m now at the point where I lose interest because the second half of the game is not as good as the firstt (it’s the same with all the From games,  really). And I’m just now discovering some of the more powerful pyros. It’s funny because I’m all about the pyros. In this game, though, there are so many good incantations that I slept on the fire ones. The ranged options are the best in this game by far.

I mean, it doesn’t really matter if it’s an obsession, a special interest, or a hobby (my passion for martial arts weapons). In the end, all that really matters is that I enjoy learning/teaching myself weapon forms. It just bothers me, and I would like to settle it in my mind.

I would also like to be able to get solid sleep. That has nothing to do with me being autistic or not, but, wow, the struggle is real. I just woke up f rom a nap after not being able to sleep much last night–for no reason. Not that I need a reason not to be able to sleep–it happens more often than not.


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Rabbit holes, obsessions, and when to leave them

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Before I get into the topic of this post, I’m riding the blue wave that is happening across the country tonight. It’s the midterms, and Dems are flipping seats left and right. The (Republican) governor of Texas conceded to his Democratic opponent–who is a Latina. Gina Hinojosa. Greg Abbott had been governor since 2015–and it’s quite the shock that a Democrat won. Same in Georgia, except the winner was a black woman. Keisha Lance Bottoms. And, closer to home, Peggy Flanagon is the first Native American woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate, and I’m proud that I got to vote for her. I have more mixed emotions about our new governor, Amy Klobuchar, but it’s exciting to me that four out my five representatives (governor, US senator, US representative, MN rep, and MN Senator) wil be women. It also tickles me that Amy Klobuchar might be able to directly appoint her replacement once she becomes governor (she’s a US senator, currently).

As I read all the results about an hour ago, i let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. There had been rumblings that we would have a blue wave, but I didn’t dare to hope. Things were so bleak and terrible, I half-believed that tthere would be shenangians and the Republicans would steal everything.

Instead, the Dems have taken back the House and the Senate. Several key seats have flipped. As I noted above, the South has risen, and it’s become blue! Or at least purple with blue happening in key positions.

Now, on the one hand, this isn’t unusual when the current administration is doing a shitty job or the economy is tanking (or there’s a pandemic) for the opposing party to win key seats. However, what is unusual is who won these seats. There are a lot of ‘first ever’, and they are mostly women of color.

This reminds me of when the entire Saint Paul Congress-elect in 2024 were women. They still are. Six out of the seven are women of color, and they are all under forty. Now, the St. Paul mayor is a Hmong woman, KeohlyHer (started this year), and she’s the first female and the first Asian American mayor of Saint Paul. They all worked hard to do this, and it was historic.

I have hope for the first time in a long time. Normally, I would steel my heart against it, but I’m just riding it out this time. We fucking deserve it after the hellscape of the last two years, and I’m savoring every  minute. If it causes the orange-haired blowhard to have a meltdown, even better. I mean, he has one on the daily, anyway, so might as well get something out of it.

I am so pleased with the results for tonight. Of course I voted. It’s the least I can do. MN has one of the highest voter turnouts in the country (ranked first three times in the last decade, and usually in the top five), which makes me proud. My guess is that it’s in part because you can sign up to vote on election day at your polling station as long as you’re able to confirm your local address. It can be as easy as having a local registered voter confirming your address. Or a bill with your local address. Or a photo ID like a MN license. It’s so easy, and we want people to vote. Ahem.


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Following the breadcrumbs down the rabbit hole

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I’m tired. That’s not what this post is about, but it’s very true. I got a decent amount of sleep last night, and I’m feeling better than I have in the past few days. Sleep really does make a difference–who knew? (Once again, everyfuckingbody!) I have never felt better in my life than the few months after my medical crisis because of the eight hours ofsleep I got a night for months after. It was terrific, I’ll be honest. Yes, my body was beat up and broken from what it went through, but my god. Going to bed at ten p.m. and getting up at six a.m. for several months was glorious.

Ahem.

Back to the point of my post. I want to talk about how easy it is to go down a rabbit hole when it comes to surfing the net. Let’s take YouTube. The way the home page is laid out, there are dozens of videos visible. And, you can scroll down to infinity if you want. Of course, the algorithms will show you videos based on what you’ve watched, so you can have interesting content for dozens of hours. If you say no to certain videos, you just hone your algorithm to give you more of what you want.

Which is not a bad thing, per se, but it means that for those of us who can get hyperfocused on things, it’s not great. By the way, I just learned that in the aautism/ADHD community, there’s a difference between hyperfixations and special interests. The former are obsessions that last from a few weeks to a month or two. The latter are hobbies that consume you for years. It explained so much for me personally.

Some hyperfixations I’ve had in the past: black diamond rings (not real diamonds, obviously); jigsaw puzzles; cute boxers; stuffed pigs. The last might have been more of a special interest because it lasted quite some itme, but I wasn’t constantly obsessed with it. It’s just that I was born in the year of the pig, and I felt an affinity to them. I also had a hyperfixation with kids books, mainly ones I read when I was a kid.

On the other hand, my special interests have lasted for years. At least two of them. Those would be video games (mostly FromSoft games and indie games) and Taiji weapons. That’s a subset of my interest in Taiji in general, but I’m all about the weapons. I don’t know if I would lump in my interest in Bagua in with my interest in Taiji, but they are at least adjacent to each other.

I probably would put them together in the category of internal martial arts because they are in the same category. However, they are very different to each other. On the third hard, my interest in the weapons for each is similar. Si  nce I’m done teaching myself the Bagua  Knives Form, I have my eye on a Double-Headed Spear Form (Bagua) to teach to myself next. But not until next year. I’m being very conservative about how often I teach myself new weapon forms because my teacher warned me not to just add them thoughtlessly. Her point was that it was better to learn one slowly and well before moving onto the next than to just learn them as quickly as possible.

I’m weird in that I don’t necessarily bury myself in my obessesions. Meaning, I practice every day, and it was getting to be too much for me (doing four or five weapon forms a day), so I pared it down two or three a day. That’s much more manageable, and it made me fall in love with the weapons again. I also do forty-five minutes of warmups/stretches and solo forms. This means a total of about an hour and fifteen minutes–which is much better.


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Can we please just stop it?

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Daylight saving time ended tonight. By the way, the name of it really annoys me. In my brain, it should be Daylight savings time. ‘Savings’ and ‘Time’ should be capitalized, too, but that is neither here nor there. For some reason, I thought it was next weekend, not this. Probably because it felt weird to have it the day after Halloween. which, by the way, is my favorite holiday–even if I don’t acutally celebrate it. Look, it’s complicated. And it’s not what this post is about.

When I realized that tonight was when Daylight Saving Time ended,  my annual gripe about said tradition surged once again. We have artificial lig9ht now. We don’t need to follow the whims of the natural world.

I don’t care which one is chosen,  by the way, but for the love of all the gods, please pick one. I understand why people on either side of the divide want it their way whereas I don’t care. Just fucking choose one. It feels so quaint to

Different day and a different note: I’m so tired. And I think I may be coming down with something. It’s so hard to tell what is something that could be life-threatening and what isn’t. It’s harder because of my past medical crisis, which means that, understandably, I’m on edge. I tend to be like, “If it’s still like this ______ (this time, being tomorrow as tomorrow is Monday), I’ll call my doctor.

This is reasonable in general, but not if it’s an emergency. Which I don’t know how to gauge. First of all, I’m always exhausted. I’m running on a permanent sleep shortage, so that’s not a good way to figure out if I’m really sick or not. When I remember what it was like right before my medical crisis, it wasn’t this. I could not move and was completely fatigued.

I just took a nap, and I feel better. Still don’t feel great, but better than before. It reminds me of how sleep deprived I really am and how  I could sleep for days. I don’t like to take naps because they just make me more tired. Also, it’s me falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep, waking up, etc. Usually, I have a video going, so it’s also me going back to the beginning of the video and then falling asleep again.

When I had my medical crisis, one of the few upsides was how much sleep I got–and how good it was. Granted, I was drugged to the gills, which helped. I got a solid eight hours a night for months, and I never felt better in my life. Who knew sleep was so important and did so much good for the body? Everyone, that’s who. It’s just a question of being able to get that sleep.

Related, I’m going through menopause. Or I would say I’ve been through it. But the symptoms I felt from it are what I’m feeling now. Some compressions on my shoulders and chest (not heart), tingles on my face, and cold flashes. Yes, because I’m such a contrarian, I had cold flashes in addition to hot flashes–and much more of the former than the latter. As someone who doesn’t get cold, it was an interesting experience. Not going to lie, I wasn’t pleased by it. Cold is my sanctuary, and I did not like it being used against me. It wasn’t as bad as the hot flashes, though.

Given my past medical crisis, it’s not hard to fear that it was happening again.


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Gender and society in general, part six

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Let’s talk more about gender as it affects how I act in society. In my post yesterday, I wrote about how the label ‘agender’ seems to freak out some people even more than being trans. It surprises me, even though it shouldn’t. Anyone who wants out of the societal norms is looked upon with suspicion.

You would think I would have learned after the negative reac9tions I received to being bi and to not wanting children, but I’m a slow learner. Plus, each big issue only happened every five years or so, so it wasn’t as if I had constant reminders of how out of the norm I was on the big issues.

By the time I reached thirty, I knew better than to talk my mad shit in casual company. As I accrued more and more weirdo traits (not wanting to get married, not wanting to be in a longterm monogamous relationship (being ENM), and not wanting to live with anyone, for example), I kept it to myself. Oh, let’s not forget Taiji weapons and now Bagua. I’m specifying weapons because Taiji in and of itself isn’t that strange. Well, at least the Westernized vision of it. It’s pretty funny, though, that the one movement that is always featured in any movie/TV show which Taiji in it is my least-favorite movement.

It’s called Cloud Hands (more like Moving hands like clouds, but Cloud Hands is the shortened verison), and it pretty easy to do it in a basic fashion. In other words, you can look like a master fairly quickly with this one miracle posture, er….

Of course, if you want to do it well, it takes longer to truly master. That’s a given, and not really the point of this post.

One of the reason I don’t talk about certain things is because I know that I have it easier than other people do. At the same time, being ignored/invisible/denied existence is a special kind of hell on its own. And I do have to deal with bullshit even if it’s not life-and-death bullshit.

So now the newest thing is being agender. If I was thirty years younger, I probably would have reluctantly embraced nonbinary. It’s not really me, though. It’s still a gender, which is not what I want. I am not interested in gender, much as I am not interested in religion. When I was thinking about religion and my (non) relationship to it, I really didn’t like atheist for several reasons. One, I did not have that kind of confidence that there was nothing bigger out there. I mean, to me, it was more ridiculous to believe the Big Bang Theory came out of nowhere. You mean to tell me there was absolutely nothing and then BAM! We get the earth? (Yes, I know there are more steps in there, but no matter what steps exist, it’s still unbelievable to me that it came out of nothing.)


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