Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Neurodivergency

How my brain works (and doesn’t), part seven

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Sometimes, I just want to give up. Well, lots of times. It’s much less of an impulse now and not nearly as strong, but it’s still there. My brain is tired. I am tired of always trying to be “normal” or anyithing remotely close to it.  Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about struggling to differentiate between my brain being broken and it working as intended (but just differently than other people’s).

I could just say fuck it and go to bed at six or seven. There’s no real reason I can’t do that–it’s not like I usually have to get up at a specific time. Well, one day a week and two other days every other week I have a set time to get up, but that’s not a big problem. Only one is in the morning and would be a real problem.

I want to be…not normal, per se, but not such a weirdo. I’ve written about this before. I’m not one of those who is slightly odd or just one deviation from normal. I’m a freak. However, not in the way that, say, artists are freaks. I don’t drink or do drugs, so that makes me an outlier for that group of people as well.

In fact, I don’t do groups in general because I will never fit in. That part doesn’t bother me because I’m used to it and I’ve given up the hope that I will find a group that is my people. Not because I don’t think there aren’t people who are my people out there–it’s because groups tend to fall to the lowest common denomination.

Hm. That’s not quite what I wanted to say, either. It’s really hard to explain without making it sound like sour grapes. I’ll try my best. When a group of over, say, ten people (actually, maybe even over five) gather, there has to be a code of conduct, whether it’s verbalized or not. Maybe not so much a code of conduct, but any group needs norms.

The problem is the more people a group has, the less the ability and/or desire to monitor behaviors. And, because groups are microcasms of the world around them, that means that all the things that are wrong in the world at large will always be present in a group.

This is why there needs to be explicit rules and miscreants need to be dealt with swiftly. Conventions learned this the very hard way. Many of the comic/gaming ones are, well, were filled with misogynist bullisht. And racist bullshit. The groups who put on the cons tried to ignore the problem for a long time, but it reached a tipping point, and it exploded messily all over everything.

I don’t know how the tipping point happened, but afterwards, many cons started having posted code of conducts and got more serious about making their minority con attenders feel safer. It’s become a standard, and now it’s weirder not to have a code of conduct than it is to have one.


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Why my brain doesn’t brain, part six

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I want to talk more about how my brain works–or doesn’t. In the last post, I went way off the tracks as is my wont, and I never really made my way back to the main road. Who knows if I’ll do the same thing today? (I will. I always do.)

I was talking to my mother tonight, and she was lamenting that she hadn’t been shopping in a real store in such a long time. Nor does she really feel comfortable shopping online. She was castigating herself for not doing the former, putting it in very negative terms. I was saddened for her because of the huge amount of shame she was carrying because of it. And I understood because I did the same thing to myself more often than not.

She was shaming herself and saying she was getting agoraphobia as a reason for not going shopping. I stopped her and said that she had a lot to deal with, so it made sense that it would be harder for her to go shopping. In other words, it didn’t always have to do with mental health. This was something I had a hard time deciphering. Sometimes, it was my mental health issues acting up. Sometimes it’s something that anyone in the situation would do. And sometimes, it’s just the way my brain works.

In other words, it’s not always a mental health issue–though sometimes it can be, of course. Anwdn it’s not always my particular way of thinking. Sometimes, anyone would react in the same way in the same situation. It’s just hard to tell when I’m used to defaulting to there’s something wrong with me.

One thing I talk about with A is how to decide which flaws I want to actually change and which I’ve accepted. This is getting past the point of shaming myself for everything I think of is wrong with me. For example. I work to the back of a deadline. My mother and I used to have friction over this when I did editing for her. She would give me a date, and I would assume that was the date she wanted it by. It was usually a date far in the future, so I would file it in the back of my brain and move on.

A week or two later, my mother would ask how it was going, and then  be not happy when I said I hadn’t even started. We did this song and dance for far too long (Midwestern and Taiwanese cultures at work here) until I finally brought it up to her. She said that the date she gave me was the ‘last resort’ date. Secretly, she wanted me to get it to her about a week or two after she sent me the piece to edit.

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More about my weirdo brain, part five

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I want to talk more about my brain and how for the longest time I thought it was broken. And why it’s important to talk about mental health issues.

Side note: (And, yes, this soon into the post). There is a toxic positivity that pervades American thought that says if you work hard enough, you can overcome anything. Any time there’s a success story, it’s trotted out as proof that hard work and a positive attitude are all that’s needed to succeed. Which is not true at all. Yes, both of those things are needed, but so are luck, synchonicity, and did I mention luck? Luck plays a huge part in success, no matter how much Americans want to deny it, ignore it, or are oblivious to it.

Take my medical crisis. A few months before it happened, my brother had a friend who got pneumonia and went to the doctor. The doctor said because he could breathe, he should just take the meds the doctor prescribed. Then, the doctor sent him home. This was during the pandemic so hospitals were struggling with the overload of patients. My brother’s friend woke up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe. His wife called 911, and an ambulance was sent. During the ambulance ride, Regions Hospital called the ambulance to tell the EMTs that they, the hospital, had no rooms. The ambulance had to go to a different hospital, and my rbother’s friend had a heart attack and died.

A few months later, I woke up and could not breathe (Or I was still awake. It was three in the morning, so the latter is more likely than the former). I managed to call 911, and the police managed to get to my house in less than four minutes. How do I know? I’ll get to that in a second.

I managed to follow the instructions form the 911 operator. I kept talking to them while I stumbled to the front door. I unlocked it and then promptly passed out. I do not remember any of this, by the way. I had to be told about it later.

The cops knew to bag me when  they came because I wasn’t breathing. When the EMTs came, I had a cardiac arrest. I had another on the way to the hospital. Oh, and the thing I always forget or just tack it on as an after thought–the ischemic stroke.

I was unconscious by the time we got to the hospital. I stayed that way for a week. I eventually found out that it all started wiht me having walking (non-Covid-related) pneumonia. So my story was very much like my brother’s friend, except I got all the lucky breaks. This was ALL luck. Or as I like to say, I got through with the help of love, Taiji, and luck.

You could argue that Taiji was on me–meaning that I actually have worked on it. It’s something  I have done and continue to do. But the other two? I had no control over that. Oh, sure. You could say that my friends and brother love me for me, which is about me. However, it’s still not something I actively did, if that makes sense. And luck? Well the word itself is self-explanatory.


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My brain and me, part four

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Let’s talk more about how my brain is weird. I’ll give a very recent example. Tonight (last night? About five hours ago), my carbon monoxide detector/smoke alarm went off. I thought it was four quick, sharp (and loud) beeps in rapid succession while the lights flashed green. I looked it up, and four beeps meant CO. Before I go any further, here’s my post from yesterday.

I’ve had one go off before, and it was because it had reached the end of its life. I read a lot of conflicting information about the beeps, but I finally decided that calling 911 and just explaining the situation as I did the last time was probabl yfor the best. Three policemen came, and I explained what happened. We tested the detector/alarm (I had put the two batteries in wrong, so we put them in the riht way and tested it.) It was actually beeping five times. We counted several times. That meant it was at the end of its life, but why is it so close to the actual alert for CO, I don’t know.

They checked the gas levels all over my house, and there was nothing. The lead cop told me to buy a new one (I only had one) and to monitor how I was feeling. I knew the basics–flu-like symptoms, dizziness, etc. The lead cop told me that I really don’t want to turn chherry red.

I’m not overly concerned, but there is a nagging thought in the back of my mind that maybe there is gas somewhere. And I should have tried harder to get the detectors (I’m getting them tomorrow morning). I don’t think that’s so unusual, but I don’t know.

That’s the worst part of having a weirdo brain. Not knowing what is normal and what isn’t. I don’t think this is that unusual (to be worried even though there’s no real reason to). The higher the stakes, the more the worry explodes. And even though the chance of dying from CO poisoning is minimal, it’s impossible to detect except for with a detector.

I don’t know if I’m overreacting or underreacting. Or maybe just reacting? It’s so hard for me to gauge. Also, I’m tired AF because I only got three-ish hours of sleep last night. So knowing whether I’m fatigued or not is not that possible. I was joking with the lead cop that who wasn’t fatigued these days? He had a girlfriend and a child, so he knew all about tired.

He sent his cohorts back to the cop shop to get the CO monitor, and we chatted while they were gone. I learned about his prior jobs and how he ended up in New Brighton on the night shift. It was a nice little chat, and I proved I can be normal when I need to be. Granted, I had a vested interest in keeping the cops on my good side, but still. I was able to talk like a normal person, and that felt good.


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Me and my brain, part three

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Let’s talk more about me and my broken brain. I say that with my tongue firmly in my cheek, but I still half-believe it. Or rather, I know that I think very differently than most other people. I have accepted that, and I’m mostly ok with it. The hardest part is when I say something that I think it totally vanilla and get an outsized reaction to it. That’s when I completely retreat into myself and shut down. I hate when I’m trying my very best, and it’s still not good enough.

Which, honestly, is how I feel most of the time when I interact with the normies. I’m always calibrating what I should say and what I shouldn’t. And usually erring on the side of not saying something if it’s even close to questionable. That’s why I’m miffed when I say something that I consider safe and then I get shit for it, anyway. Oh, and here is my post from yesterday before I go any further with this post.

You know what’s also frustrating? Neurotypical people saying that everyone has to mask or hide parts of their true selves at work (or other times). While it’s true that everyone has to mask to o certain extent, it’s the extent and amount of effort that matters. And it’s discounting how much more neurodivergent people have to mask than normies.

Side note: I could say that about any minority, by the way. It’s a point I wish normies would truly internalize. Minorities have to go the extra mile-and-a-half past where they (the normies are) just to be considered equal. Plus, we always have to make the calculation of how much of ourselves we can show. In some ways it’s better now than it was when I was in my twenties, but in many ways, it’s much worse.

One of the big ones is queer issues, especially trans issues, obviously. It’s horrifying how quickly and viciously the current administration is attacking civil rights for queer people. Every time I check the news, they are trying something or the other to do harm to me and my kin. It’s reached the point where I don’t want to hear anything on the news because it’s just going to make me angrier.

I was talking in the Discord I’m in about dating. I mentioned that I haven’t dated in quite some time in part because the last two times I thought about dating, rather big events interrupted that train of thought (the pandemic and me dying (twice!), respectively). I know it’s superstition, but I’m worried about trying for a third time.

Also, I’m overwhelmed every time I go on the apps. There is just so much there, I don’t really know what to do. One person in the Discord suggested doing backstage steps first. Such as writing out what I was looking for to make it clearer in my mind. I told her that was what actually worked for me, anyway. Breaking things into micro-steps, I mean.


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How my brain works (or not), part two

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For the first forty years of my life, I thought my brain was broken. I didn’t think like other people, and for the first few decades of my life, I thought that meant there was something wrong with me. It didn’t help that I had very old-fashioned Taiwanese parents who were more than willing to criticize every aspect of me. I was too loud, not feminine enough, too fat, just too much in general. Here is the post I wrote yesterday in which I wrote a lot about politics. Which is a side tangent, but also not a side tangent. Which I also said in the post.

I thought I was worthless and broken when I was a kid until I was in my twenties. Hm, scratch that. It was until my mid-thirties. Then, I started taking Taiji, and that helped me feel better about myself in agonizingly tiny incremental steps. It wasn’t until about five years ago after my medical crisis that I realized I was probably autistic (with the help of a friend who was also autistic).

I thought I couldn’t be because of how strong the stereotypical depiction of an autistic person as a young, hapless, white man who stims, can’t look people in the eyes, and makes clueless comments all the time is so pervasive. Oh, and that he has little to no empathy. It’s the last one that made me think I had no chance at being autistic. For several years, I thought that I might have ADHD because that fit better. The lack of focus until I hyperfocus. The scattered attention. Those were the main ones.

I knew there was something wrong with my brain–I just wanted to figure out what it was. This is one of the arguments I’ve had with K. She thinks that there is too much emphasis on…how do I phrase this correctly? We are both proponents of mental health awareness. She’s just less enthused about how much it’s emphasized now. She said we dealt with it as kids and figured things out. I pointed out in a snappish tone that some didn’t figure it out. Like me.

I spent so many years thinking it was me when it mostly wasn’t. I mean, it’s always partly one’s one fault because no one is perfect. However, the way I thought was not my fault–or rather, it wasn’t because my brain was broken or wrong–it was just different. And had I been told this when I was a kid, I would have had a much easier time in life.

You would think that having a psychologist as a mother would have made these things much better for me, but that would only be true if she was a good psychologist. Which, sadly, was not true. Her flaws as a human being interfered with her ability to be an effective psychologist. In fact, she went back to Taiwan so she could escape some of the constraints she faced here in America. Like mentioning religion in a session.

Honestly, the vast majority of my self-esteem issues stem from her constant and persistent criticism of every part of my being. I cannot name a single thing she liked about me when I was a child. I was never enough, and she pushed me to do a wide variety of things I didn’t want to do. Like a typical Asian mom, my brother and I had to take music lessons. I did piano for a few years and then cello for eight or nine years. dance lessons for twelve, and I played ping-pong, volleyball, and softball. Not on a league, but just played them. Oh, and tennis.


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Overthinking it v. thinking it through

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I tend to overthink things. By a lot. I’m not talking about spending five more minutes on something than I should, but obsessing over something that I should just let go.

For example, gender. I have talked about it ad nauseam, and I know that it’s not good for my mental health to do so. I also know that for whatever reason, I can’t ever come close to understanding gender. Sometimes, I feel like I’m about to grasp it, but then it slithers out of my hand.

Then, I say to myself, “I’ve made my peace with it.” I may even believe it for a minute or two. However, the dissatisfaction slithers in, and I’m in despair once agian. What is gender? Why can’t I feel it or understand it? Why am I such a freak–yet again? Just once, can’t I be normal?

The answer to that is a most emphatic no. There is nothing about me that is normal. Not my hobbies to my lifestyle to my pop culture tastes to everything else. I have mostly gotten used to it, but it niggles at the back of my mind now and again.

Especially in a time when my federal government is actively hurting me and mine. I have said that I’m relieved at the last time I had to declare my gender on my driver’s license that I chose F. Even though it’s the first time they included NB, and I would have chosen that if I was thirty years younger. This time, though, it was right before the elections. There was much muttering from certain people* about the queers something or the other blah blah blah I always close my ears at this point.

I will say it’s always amazed me that people can get so wound up at a tiny minority of people who have no impact on them at all. Not directly. And, no, “they’re ruining women’s sports” or “they’re a menance in the women’s bathroom” are such bullshit.

By the way. Those arguments are never made in good faith. Do you know how I know this? Because the same people are not concerned about domestic violence abuse victims, the vast number of sexual assualts in America, or any other array of issues that face women, nonbinary people, genderqueer people, agender people, and, yes, indeed, even men in this country. The only time the conservatives roll out ‘but the wimminz’ bullshit is when it comes to their transphobic bullshit.

Pardon me if I don’t believe them when they bleat about caring for women when the do everything they can to make life harder for women in so many ways*. Pardon me again for giving such heavy side-eye at the faux concern.

Here’s the thing. There always has to be a bogeywoman the pols can point at so the slavering masses. For me, it started wiht  Reagan and the ‘welfare queen’. Thus began the stereotype of the black woman trying to game the welfare system while driving a Cadillac to said welfare appointments. Reagan also systematically further disenfranchised gay men during the first AIDs crisis, but I’m not going to talk about that, either.


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Sex and dating, dating and sex, part eight

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I’ve decided that I want to do ten posts about this topic, so three to go. Why? Because. This is one way my neurodivergent brain works, by the way. It insists on making patterns when there aren’t any. I know that’s normal to some extent with everyone, but my brain does it to a bothersome degree. I know it’s going to happen at some point, but I’m powerless to stop it. It’s easier to go with it and let it wear itself out–or not. Some of my obsessions continue whereas others are left in the dust.

One thing I’m working on is being not ashamed about the weird way my brain works. Look. I know I’m a freak. I’ve known it since I was a kid, even if I could not articulate it. It’s interesting. There is someone in the Discord I’m in who is clearly neurodivergent and not at all interested in masking. Yes, it’s a ‘he’, which is significant. He has upset/offended several people in the Discord, including me because of the way he’s phrased things.

He likes to state his opinion as if it’s fact, and many of them are inflammatory. I’m not against it, but I also think that you should have some care as to the feelings of other people. It’s hard for me to say because I’m too much to the other side. As an AFAB, I was taught to always care about other people’s feelings first. That’s not good, either, but I do think there needs to be a balance.

It’s frustrating because this person, let’s call him Jack, makes me want to defend him on some occasions, not because I necessarily agree with his viewpoint, but because I don’t like groupthink. All groups have it, and this is not the worst at it, by far, but there is a slight stifling that goes on that I do not approve of.

There are times when I eye a conversation and decide not to wade into it. Sometimes, it’s because I’m not up for an argument, and sometimes, it’s because I know that my opinion is so out there, it’s not going to be welcomed. Therefore, I’m self-censoring, which is not ideal. It’s what I do much of the time, though.

I do envy Jack for not giving a shit about how he says things, but I also think he needs to think a bit. He tries to defend himself by saying it’s how he and his friends talk. Well, we’re not his friends. Also, that’s a bad excuse for being a jackhole. Even if it’s not deliberate, it’s still off-putting.

I don’t know where I draw the line between being yourself and being a jerk, but he goes well past that line. Also, again, it’s dudes who are allowed to be their authentic selves while women and AFAB people are more penalized for not fitting in.

In Jack’s case, it’s also because he’s mostly online and on the younger side. And he hangs out with people just like him (I’m guessing the predominance of them are guys, too). It’s easy to think if everyone around you thinks the way you do, everyone in general does as well.

People have been very impatient and brusque with him. Neurotypicals, I mean. Or more specificially, people who are not autistic (since autism and ADHD are different things). I can often see what Jack is trying to say, but do I want to defend him? Sometimes. Othertimes, he makes me angry, too. Especially when he talks as if he’s the authority on America (he’s not from this country and doesn’t live in it).


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Dating and tech, part six

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Just when I thought I would have a tech issue-free day….I will say it was not anything big, nor, sadly was it unexpected. It was just my internet deciding to go out for a minute. For no reason. It does this once every few weeks. Sometimes, it’s the internet actually going out for a minute. Other times, it’s just my computer decided not to be connected. The latter is infinitely more frustrating and annoying because if my connection is good, then I should be able to internet.

Fortunately, it usually clears up in a few minutes, and today was no exception.

Let’s talk more about dating! As I have talked about in past, the one thing I appreciate the older I get is that I have a firmer idea of what is acceptable in a partner and what isn’t. It’s interesting to me how different it is for me than it is for most normies.

When I was a kid, I thought I’d grow up, gett married, and have children. Happily ever after and the rest of our lives, etc. To death do us part and all that jazz. It didn’t fill me with joy, but I was indoctrinated brought up to believe that it was the only path for a young woman. It wasn’t even implicit–my mother flat out said that the job of a woman was to have children. When I told her I didn’t want them, she said it didn’t matter what I wanted–it was my duty. She straight up said it!

I was twenty-two when I realized that I didn’t want them. So hard. Like, it was the thing I wanted least in the world. Me dying twice and coming back? Preferable to having children. Of course, I did come back, so that makes me biased, but still. It was such a relief to realize I didn’t actually have to have children, no matter how much my mother pressured me to do so.

Here’s my post from yesterday in which I talked more about my tech issues than anything else. Look. I live online. If I can’t access my computer, it’s a big deal. Yes, I’m very lucky that I have a laptop and a desktop so I can go to one if the other isn’t working, but I prefer doing some stuff on my desktop and some stuff on my laptop, so I highly prefer both to be working.

Around the same time I realized I did not want children, I also discovered that I was sexually attracted to women. And now, to people of any or no gender. Gender doesn’t matter. We like to say race is a construct, and so is gender. That’s not what this post is about, though, so I’ll move past that with dificulty.

Let’s talk about now. I am tired. I’m tired of the hatred of my LGBTQ+ kinfolk, and I just don’t have the will to deal with it any longer. Which means–no cishetdudes for me. It’s too much like all the isms 101, and I don’t have the patience for that. I mean, I never have, but it’s really gone now.


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More about dating…and tech issues, part five

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Day three? Four? Something like that of tech issues. This time, it’s completely self-inflicted, which doesn’t make it any less frustrating. In fact, it’s more frustrating because why the hell did I do that? If only I hadn’t done that! Here’s what happened.

A couple days ago, I accidentally kicked my PC tower. Hard. It was fine, but I had to make sure all the cables were plugged in firmly. They seemed to be, and all was well. Today, suddenly, my PC stopped working. Just out of the blue. I immediately deduced that it had something to do with the accidental kick I had given the PC tower a few days ago.

I checked cables. All seemed fine. I checked the power strip. Also seemed fine. I unplugged it and replugged it in, and then I turned it off and on again. It was all fine. It was late at night (for normies), so I didn’t want to call my brother. I knew that he went to bed by eleven/midnight, and I didn’t know how long it would take me to fix the issue. Though I had a hunch that he would know what it was.

I did some more hunting around to see what I might have missed. I finally realized that I was looking at the wrong cord when I was checking out the  power cord. The actual power cord had come unplugged on the PC tower side, so I plugged it back in. Did that take care of the problem? Yes! My computer booted up, and it was fine. Except.

Why wasn’t my second monitor working? I futzed with the settings, but my computer said that the second monitor was not available. What the hell? I was mad at myself for kicking my PC,  even though it was an accident.

I checked the cable on the back of my second monitor, and the other end was unplugged. I knew it had to go into my PC tower, but I had no idea where. By the shape of the cable, I only seemed to have one option. I plugged it in, but it wasn’t the one. I Googled it, and it said not to plug into the HDMI at the top of the PC tower, but to use the port that was lower. I could not see another HDMI port, but I knew there had to be one.

I got onto the ground with my phone (as my flashlight), and I found the right HDMI port. Finally! Everything was back to the way it should be. Except. About five minutes later, several YouTube videos started playing at the same time. I had about a hundred tabs open in roughly thirty different bunches. I had to quickly go through them to find the ones that were playing. Of course, it was nearly the last bunch that was the culprit, so I got rid of almost all my YouTube tabs. It doesn’t bother me because I’m sure I’ll have a hundred open again in no time flat.


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