Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: neurodivergent

A freak like me

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I’ve been talking about gender for the last few posts and how I don’t get it. Now, I want to get more broad (heh) in general because that’s how I feel about so many things.

A few years ago, I started chatting with someone in a Discord I’m in out of the main forums. In private messages, in other words. She and I have a lot in common, and we clicked once we started DMing each other.

She and I got to talking about neurodivergency because I had struggled with fitting in all my life. After we messaged back and forth for a length of time, she asked if I had ever thought that I might be autistic. That never occurred to me because I had the stereotypical image of autism in my mind. My brother? Yeah, he was on the spectrum. Me? Hell, no!

It was only after talking with her and simultanuously watching a few videos on autism that I slowly realized the stereotypes weren’t right. Or rather, they only depicted a very narrow kind of autism, which, not coincidentally, centered on young white boys.

(Lengthy rant on sexism in health issues inserted here.)

The biggest thing that shocked me to learn was that it’s not true that autistic people are not empathetic/don’t feel emotions. I mean, there are autistic people like this, true (like my brother), but there are also plenty of autistic people who feel too much emotions. Or, they feel other people’s emotions, but don’t know what to do with them or misinterpret what those emotions are.

There’s a saying when it comes to autism–if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism. There are throughlines and shared traits, yes, but every autistic person is diferent. In my case, I had to deconstruct the image of a person with autism because it was getting in the way.

There are some common traits, of course, such as hyperfocus on certain interests, stimming, and  uncomfortableness in social situations, to name a few. The problem is that for non-male people (women and others), those traits are liable to get overlooked, chalked up to something else like anxiety, or used against said people more harshly than they are against autistic men (which is already harsh).

How often do you now hear about men acting badly, “Oh, maybe he’s on the spectrum” as a way of excusing his appalling behavior? And yet, you don’t hear it about women and other non-male people hardly at all if ever. They don’t get the same grace and/or amused tolerance.

Side note: By the way, you want to know if someone is acting badly on purpose or if he’s ignorant about it? Look to see if he’s acting the same way with people who have power over him or with men in general. If he’s trulyy autistic, then he’ll be awkward around everyone–not just grossly so around the women he wants to fuck.


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The way my brain works

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My brain is weird. I’ve known this ever since I wsa a kid, but back then, I just thought it was that my brain was broken. My mom was a psychologist, but she also had very traditional Taiwanese ideas about, well, everything. She had definite ideas of what a girl child should be, and I failed miserably in every aspect. A girl should be demure, quiet, acquiescent, nurturing, always thinking of others, docile, and most importantly, she should never ever EVER be noticed. Ever!

It’s ironic because she was everything she told me not to be. Opinionated, athletic, sporty, and more masculine than not. She was just continuing the dysfunction that she learned in her own home, from her own mother who was also a raging hypocrite when it came to what she espoused girls/women should do and what she actually did.

If my mother had been able to break away from the idea that she had to be a wife and a mother, her life would have been so much better. Instead, she bought it hook, line, and sinker, and did her level best to make me as miserable as she was. I’m grateful that I realized at a fairly early age that I did not have to get married and/or have children. I’ve never wavered from that, and I’m profoundly glad that I, the most indecisisve and pushover of people, stood firm for once in my life.

What does this have to do with today’s post? Not much, but I just wanted to muse about it for a bit. Also, part of what I consider my broken brain is that I can’t for the life of me go from point A to point B in a straight line. I like to joke that I don’t do anything straight, but it’s true. Everything is interconnected in my brain, so I can’t just focus on one thing or the other.

I started teaching myself the Bagua Knife Form yesterday. I wasn’t going to do it until I finished teaching myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form, but, well, my brain said, “Here me out. What about now?”

I have taught myself roughhly three-fourths of the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. I am pleased with how fast I’m learning it, but not entirely surprised. This is one of my favorite forms, and it was fairly easy for me to learn.

It’s the same as the Sword Form. That was the first weapon form I learned, and I stormed through it. I was so eager to learn the whole thing, and once I was done, I taught myself the left side in short order. I do need to do a bit of clean up on it, though.


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Change of ways in 2026 (part three)

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I need to tackle my brain issues in 2026. I have recently realized that I’m neuroatypical, though I’m not exactly sure of the particular flavor (probably autistic and maybe ADHD, too). One issue I have is that it’s really difficult for me to do something if my brain is against it. One lifelong example that is currently flaring up again is my sleep issues. Or rather, my going to bed at a normal human being time issues.

I have always been a night owl. From a very young age, I would stuff a t-shirt under the door when I was supposed to be in bed so I could read for hours more. I taught myself to read when I was three or four, nad I haven’t stopped reading since. I would read into the wee hours of the night using a flashlight, and I never fell asleep until well past the point when I was put to bed.

When I was in college, I had a 7:45 a.m. class on Tuesdays and Thursdays one semester. I would go to bed around 3:30 a.m. and then get up at 7 a.m. for that class. I was so sleep deprived, I once wokke up and could not find my portable alarm clock. It was a cute and lavendar,, and I kept it on the side table by my bed.

One day, I slapped the table and the alarm clock wasn’t there. I looked all around my dorm room for it, but could not find it. I gave up after ten minutes or so,, then opened my mini-fridge to grab a Diet Pepsi. There was my alarm clock, and I had no menory of putting it there. My brain was so sleep-deprived,, it simply did not retain that information.

I slept roughly five hours a night until I started Taiji. Then, slowly, but surely, I eked my way up to six-and-a-half hours per night, waking up twice and having difficulty falling back asleep each time.

This was my life until I had my medical crisis. I slept almost all the time in the hospital, which was not surprising, obviously. I would guess I slept at least fourteen hours a day, heavily added with some seriously impressive sedatives.

When I got home, I went to bed by ten at night and got up at six. Eight solid hours of sleep a night, which was unheard of for me. Not to mention going to bed by ten. At night! It was great to get that much sleep; truth to be told, though, it was really weird. I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth, though. I had never felt that rested in my life.


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Even more about my one true love–martial arts weapons

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One thing I need to remind myself is that I can’t learn it all at one time. Martial art weapon forms, I mean. There are so many I want to learn, and it’s sometimes dauntting/discouraging to realize that I probably won’t learn them all in my lifetime.

Something  I want to talk about first, though. It was what I brought up previously about taking this long to feel like I’m actually not a newbie/novice with the weapons. I talked about why that might be, but one thing I did not bring up was my suspected neurodivergence.

I knew from a pretty young age that there was something wrong with me. Or rather, that I didn’t fit in with society around me. There are several reasons for it–notably, being 2nd generation Taiwanese American in a VERY white suburb in Minnesota–but one I did not figure out until relatively recently is that my brain doesn’t work the way other people’s do. I mean, I knew at a young age that I thought differently than other people, but my conclusion was that my brain was broken or that I was wrong.

As a result, I studied people around me and started mimicking them. This wasn’t a conscious decision at the time, but a way to survive in a world that was very much not made for someone like me. It’s called masking, a term I learned in the last few years as I’ve researched neurodivergency.

There are many ways that I mask because I belong in several different minority categories, plus the way I think is weird in general. I don’t see societal norms as a positive, but I have learned to keep that to myself. What do I mean by that? I mean that I never wanted to get married and have children as an example. This is something that is venerated in both of my cultures (Taiwanese and American) to a ridiculous degree. My mother drummed it into my head at a very early age that my only value as a (perceived) woman was to get married and procreate. Oh, I had to go to college and get educated, but that was as a backdrop to me meeting the man (had to abe a man, of course) of my dreams and popping out the children soon thereafter.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. My mother mentioned that she had my brother at my age when I turned twenty-six and then would not stop pushing me to have children for the next fifteen years.  Almost every time we talked on the phone, she would somehow push her agenda. One time when I had a serious boyfriend (and I had been very vocal about not wanting children) who said that maybe he wanted to have children (after initially saying he didn’t want them), my mother said that maybe we could compromise and have one child.


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I’m such a weirdo–and why I’m miffed at Ghost of Tsushima

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In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I had lost all enthusiasm for Ghost of Tsushima. There were reasons for that in the end of the second act, and I want to talk explicitly about it. This is the big warning that I am going to spoil the shit out of the end of the second act/beginning of the third act.

*SPOILERS WARNING*

So many people loved the story in the game. I was surprised because I found it so generic. Only one person said he didn’t really gel with Jin because Jin was such a blank slate (Blessing from Kinda Funny Games), and the others said he was that way beacuse you can imprint yourself on him. Which I get, but I did not find him very interesting until the end of the second act, but I really resent how I got there.

Here’s when I’m going to be more specific. I am going to go into the details of the story because I can’t get over it. Again, I know it’s just me because most people (guys) were creaming in their jeans about how great the story was. The (guys) is important because this kind of power fantasy is more appealing to men than non-men in general.

Anyway.

Back to the end of the second act. Here’s the thing. I had an ex who had a description for situations in movies in which the action seems backwards-designed. He called it, “Please move your face to hit my fist” and what he meant was that the action was written in such a way that this had to happen in order for this to happen in order to get the end result the director wanted.

I bring this up because I strongly felt this at the end of the second act. Yuna, who has had my back the whole game up to this point (but with the very clear motive of getting her brother off the island) inexplicitly says that she can’t go with me on a mission because my uncle gave her the boat she wanted to get to the mainland. She says that Ryuzo (my childhood friend turned enemy, more on that later) was my problem so she wasn’t going to help me.

I was like, “Excuse me, what?” I had helped her rescue her brother,  get her revenge for her village and her friend, and now she’s doing me like this? It didn’t make any sense to who Yuna was as a person, and what’s more, I had a sinking feeling it was setting me up for something that was supposed to be Very Emotional.

I was not wrong. I got betrayed by Ryuzo and captured, along with Taka, Yuna’s brother. He idolized me and followed me to the camp (wherever I was going. I forget the details because they were so bland and generic). We’re tied up and Khotun Khan (the main baddie) unties Taka and hands him a sword.

Taka has been portrayed as not a fighter. He is a blacksmith and the one who fashioned my grappling hook (which I hate). We had to save him, and Yuna told me the sad tale of their childhood. She had always looked after him and protected him, whicgh was why she was doing everything she’s doing. This was all fine and good. This was a serviceable story, and I really liked Yuna. In fact, I liked most of the NPCs and their stories–much more than I did Jin. I didn’t dislike Jin, but he was just so forgettable (again, until the end of the second act/beginning of the third).


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Neurodiversity and me, part two

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In yesterday’s post, I talked more about the family dysfunction that papered over my neurospiciness for far too long. I mentioned how my mother struggled with my brother because he has the classic male symptoms of autism.

By the way, when I said to him a few months before my medical crisis (in early September of 2021) that something was because he was on the spectrum, and he went quiet. I said it that way because I assumed he knew. He’s a textbook case; he really is.

A few weeks later, he mentioned it to me. He had not known he was on the spectrum so my comment hit him hard. He’s like me in that once he hears of something, he researches it. He hit up the Googles and was shooketh at how accurate it was. he told me that it really helped him make sense out of–well his life.

Side note: I regret I did not tell him earlier. I know it’s not my job to tell him about himself, but I’ve known for decades that he’s on the spectrum. I could have said him so much grief had I told him earlier. Truth to be told, I thought it was so obvious, I did not need to bring it up.

And, yes, I was (and am) his younger sibling. Still. I can’t help feeling gulity because it’s been drummed into my head that I am responsible for the feelings of everyone around me. For example, when my brother got divorced almost two years ago, my mother asked if I was going over to clean and cook for my brother.

She said these words out loud. As if they were normal words. You have to know that if the situation was reversed, she would not have asked my brother the same thing. It was because she perceived me as a woman and of course it’s a woman’s duty to cook and clean for the men around her!

Here’s the funny part. My brother is a much better cook than I am–and he enjoys it. He has two older teenage boys in his house who are perfectly capable of coking and cleaning, too. I finally told her, “I don’t do either of those for myself; why would I do it for him?”

My mother did not appreciate that. At all. She actually snapped at me in a snide voice with a nasty tone that he was so busy and could do with the help especially since the divorce. My ex-SIL did not do much of the cooking or cleaning, anyway, for much of the marriage. And, again, there were two late-teen boys who were bodily able to cook and clean.

But, see, in my mother’s brain, there is only One True Way to woman, and what I was doing ain’t it. What I was doing was NEVER it.

If she weren’t my mother, I would have much more compassion for her. Because it’s very sad to be stuck in her head. First of all, she is very anxious. I would say diagnosable anxious. Like, put her on some meds anxious. With a side helping of germaphobia. No, that’s not a real word, but it describes perfectly what I mean.


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Hidden disabilities and me, part five

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In yesterday’s post, I talked more about the medical model of ‘fix the broken thing’. I also ranted about a variety of things as is my wont; now, I’d like to actually talk about the social model of disability. Or not. We’ll see where my brain goes.

The basic premise is that it’s not the person who’s wrong, but the society. Or rather, our society is set up for ‘normal’ people. In many different ways, but in this case, let’s give a ‘for an example’. Let’s talk about time. Most jobs are 9-to-5, if not earlier.

Side note (but a related one for once): I have recently learned of a disorder called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS) in which people affected can’t consistently go to bed at a ‘normal’ time. 2 hours or more than the recommended/normal/randomly chosen time to go to bed. It’s fascinating because one of the suggestions for adjusting your schedule to a more ‘normal’ one is to push your sleep schedule forward/ahead an hour at a time.

Let’s say you go to bed at 3 a.m. normally. The old advice would be two go to bet at 2 a.m. until you get used to it, then 1 a.m., etc., until you get to the desired time. I have tried that. A few nights of fucking that up and it’s back to the old time again.

The suggestion I mentioned was to go to bed at 3 a.m. for a few nights, then 4 a.m., then continue that until you get to the desired time in the opposite direction. I have not tried that, and it’s so involved. It would take months to do that.

I have a wild third option. What if we, hear me out, allow people to follow their natural biorhythms? Outrageous, I know! Acutally letting people sleep at a time that’s good for them? How dare I? Look. I know that there are reasons for business hours being what they are. Well, no. I don’t, actually. I mean, I know that it’s ‘always been this way’ (yeah, right) and that there is some sense to getting it done first so you can have time afterwards for personal life.

But I just don’t function at eight in the morning. I am at my best at two in the morning, which is not normal at all. After my medical crisis, I did sleep from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for a year. That was a magical time, honestly.

It’s not me, though. My sleep schedule started sliding back to what it had been before (4 a.m. to 12 p.m., basically), even though I tried to ffight it. I’m struggling with it again now. I’ve gotten it to 3 a.m. to 11 a.m., but it keeps bumping towards later.

My best thinking time is when the rest of the world is asleep. That’s when I feel the most alive, when my brain is the sharpest, and I am at one with the universe.


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Hidden disabilities and me, part four

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Yesterday, I talked about the medical model, family/cultural dysfunction, and other things related. Today, I want to expand more on this, but also talk about the social model. What is the social model? Well, first, let’s talk about the medical model. Grossly simplified, it looks at the ‘problem’ and comes up with a way to fix it. For example, if someone  has a broken leg, then they would put a cast on it as a way to make it better. Obviously, not everything is that cut and dry, but that’s the basic gist of the medical model. Something is wrong, so we have to find a way to fix it.

There are complications, of course. I mentioned in the last post that there are many biases that influence medical people. Fatphobia is a big one. Also, the fact that the patient is assumed to be a medium-sized white man with no discernible features.

Now. Mental health issues are different because they are not as easy to measure (well….ok. Not the point, Hong. Move on), but treatment follows the same path. Find the problem, say depression, then attempt to fix it. Through medicine or therapy, maybe both.

There has been an explosion of diferent kinds of therapy in the last decade or so. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has become the darling of therapies, and my cynical side says that it’s in a large part because it’s the easiest to dispense/do.

Focusing on changing behavior is much easier than changing ideas, thoughts, trauma, etc. I have always disliked CBT because the premise is that there is something wrong with the person’s behavior/thoughts/ideas and those need to change. Basically, it ignores strucutural/systemic issues and focuses on the individual. Something is bothering you? It’s your fault or you’re perceiving it incorrectly. Racism? Sexism? Homophobia? Handwaved away.

It’s commonly known that people who are depressed are more broadly perceive the world realistically than people who are more optimistic. Therefore, someone telling a depressed person that it’s all in their head will gain no purchase beacuse the depressed person is more likely than not to be correct.

America is a hellscape right now for social justice rights. That’s my perception, and it depresses the hell out of me. Am I wrong? Nope. Therapy can help me find ways to cope with it, but it cannot change the reality that America is going in the wrong direction.

In additon, I had a shitty childhood. I have a very dysfunctional family. You can’t magic that away or pretend it’s not true. I cannot respect any therapist who won’t acknowledge this.


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Hidden disabilities and me, part three

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I want to talk more about being a weirdo and slowly finding out that it’s not me. In the last post, I mentioned  that I had a rough childhood/teenage years/early twenties because I did not realize that it wasn’t just me. To clarify: I am weird. I am odd. I don’t fit in the mainstream for many reasons. I don’t like most of the popular culture popular things, which I have made my peace with at this late date in my life. But there were things that tripped me up (literally) that I figured was my own fault.

Like being clumsy.

It’s something I’ve dealt with all my life. I have run into things, fallen over things, tripped on things, etc., ever since I can remember. These are incidents that have happened to me: When I was two, I jumped off the bed (following my brother, apparently) and hit my head against the headboard. I had to go to the hospital to get stitches; I got my fingers slammed in the car door by my mother. Miraculously, no lasting damage; I broke the garage door window by hitting it to kill a mosquito (I maintain that this wasn’t completely my fault because the glass should not have broken that easily). Those were the big ones, but there have been countless incidents of me burning myself on the oven, running into the wall, stubbing my toe, etc. Oh! There’s one more incident–I dropped a weight on my big toe (a free weight). That’s another. Probably a 10 or 12-pounder.

Since I started learning Taiji, I have fallen off a ladder twice. Another thing. Driving, I have had several mini-issues with things like knocking the side mirror as I’m pulling into my garage, scraping the door against a mailbox, etc.

I have had bruises on almost every bit of my body. In fact, I would say that it’s a rare day when I don’t have a bruise. Oh, and I am keloid so I scar/bruise more visibly than other people. Currently, on my arms, I have five or so scratches/burns whatever that atre very visible.

I have called myself clumsy since I was little. As I wrote before, it doesn’t help that I am dreamy and don’t really pay attention to my surroundings because I am always in my thoughts. That’s why I think that it’s mostly me–because I am not in the present very often. Even when I’m practicing Taiji, my mind tends to wander a great deal.

The more I learn about autism, ADHD, and now dyspraxia, the more I think that maybe it’s not just all in my head. Or even if it’s in my head, that there’s a physical reason for so many things that I thought were just flaws. One of the problems with sexism (trust me, this is related) is that most of the known symptoms for these are more commonly found in men. Some of them are across the board, of course, but the ones that are not emphasized are more often found in non-men.

That’s not surprising. Eevrything medical is related to men. Men are the subjects of all the studies, even for pregnancy, and the recommended treatments are based on the average white dude. This is changing, but not fast enough. As an Asian non-male person who is twice as effective by mids as a wihte dude, it’s frustrating. Apparently, when i was in my coma, my mom kept telling my brother to bring up the fact that I was sensitive to medicines when I wouldn’t wake up and the docs were calibrating how much sedation to give me.


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My particular brand of neurospicy

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For the first twenty years of my life, I felt like I was an alien without the manual for being human. Part of that  was because I was the kid of two immigrants who did not want to be in America. Or rather, one of them did not  want to be, and he was the king of the castle. We had very little interaction with American culture as my parents spoke Taiwanese at hom (to each other, but not to my brother and me), had only Taiwnaese friends, and did not watch any American TV. We did not go to the movies or listen to the radios. My father demanded Taiwanese food, and my brother and I wanted American food. We preferred pizza, mac and cheese, and the like.

Side note: My favorite part about church was that we went to a fast food restaurant afterwards. Usually McDonald’s or Burger King, but sometimes arby’s or Wendy’s. Then, for one glorious meal, I could eat a delicious Big Mac or a chicken parm (at BK) or a roast beef sandwich without being shamed for it.

Side note II: For decades, I thought my mother liked cole slaw and always gave her mine when we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Turns out she did not, but she felt she had to eat it because she did not want it to go to waste.

I did not realize that I was also just…diffreent. I didn’t think of things in the way other people did, but I didn’t know why or how to correct it. For example, other girls liked to play with dolls; I never did. I like stuffed animals because you could cuddle them and they felt squicshy and comforting. I didn’t realize until much later that this was because of my sensory issues, but I always felt better after hugging a plushie.

I also felt as if other kids were talking to each other in a language I could not undrestand. I remember going through the motions and hoping that no one would notice that I did not know what the hell I was doing. I basically shut up and didn’t say anything that would make me a target.

In addition, my father had a weird idea of what was supposed to be kept ‘secret’. The example I always give is when I was a kid, he and my mother were out playing tennis with some friends. Another woman from church called and asked for my father. I said that he was playing tennis with some friends and thought nothing of it.


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