Underneath my yellow skin

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Talking my mad shit, part five

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As good as I am at reading social cues, there are a few areas in which I falter. One, it’s harder to do it online than in person. That makes sense because you can’t read tone online as easily as you can in the real world.Two, I have such a hard time with dry senses of humor, and that does not always come across online. The driest of dry senses of humor, I mean.

I will be honest. I went to bed after writing the first few sentences above, so I’m not entirely sure what I was leading to with that intro. I have things to say, though, so we might as well dive into it.

I’ve noticed that when I’m tired, my ability to read a room drops considerably. That’s not strange, of course, because sleep is so important. I’ve been having a hard time with it lately (more so than usual, I mean), which is impacting my ability to think. It also makes me more irritable than usual.

I realized some time ago that it’s so tiring to have to mask all the time. I didn’t realize it was masking at the time, but I knew I couldn’t show my real face. I am so finely calibrated to reading a room, it upsets me greatly when I get it wrong. It’s like, “I put in all that effort, and it’s still not enough.” There’s this idea of the double empathy problem, which I’ve only heard about in the last few years. In a nutshell, it points out that just as autistic people have an ’empathy problem’ for allistic people, so do allistic people have an empathy problem for autistic people. In other words,  it’s a two-way street. The article I linked above mentions that if autistic people have an empathy problem for allistic people (which is debatable*), then the same can be said about allistic and their lack of empathy for autistic people.

I will admit that I get salty when people in the majority admonish people in the minority to realize something about the majority world that is incredibly obvious, as if we would not be excruciatingly aware of it. For example, I was in a post about gender, and I mentioned something about being agender. It was just an aside and nothing wild–just that I was agender and I did not use gendered pronouns or something to that extent. A  cis het woman I had previously noted as being a bit weird about agender (but not about trans people) before went on this long rant about agender and trans people that was truly unhinged.

This was in a post about a trangender customer support rep being misgendered, by the way. The woman who responded to me (though not directly, interestingly enough), let’s call her Lucille just because, went on a long screed about how being a woman was deeply important to her. Fine. I’m not out here trying to dictate how others feel about their gender. If she had left it at that, I would have noted that it wasn’t relative to the topic, but whatever.

Then she went on to say that if she met someone with the standard hallmarks of a gender, then she would address them as that gender. Uh. I knew from previous comments by her that she wasn’t stereotypically feminine herself. In this rant, she went on to say that, but then insisted that she would use hallmarks like long hair to label a person a certain gender. What? She went on to say that she would be upset by being misgendered when she just said she would do the same thing to someone else for the opposite reason (the hair thing specifically).


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At a loss for words, part six

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I honestly don’t understand many societal norms. People (read, my mother mostly) think I’m a contrarian, but I’m not. Or rather, that isn’t my intent. It’s just that I truly don’t understand the mindset of society much of the time.

I was reading an old Ask A Manager post (from about ten years ago, I think) about whether a woman had to shave her legs for a job interview 9or for a job in general). There was a sizeable number of people who insisted that it was ‘gross’ if she didn’t. That body hair, and in particular women’s body hair, was gross/unprofessional/unacceptable in the office.

It reminded me of a much more recent post (meaning after my medical crisis or maybe right before it, but definitely during/post COVID) in which there was an argument about bras in the workplace. Again, some people were more than adamant that a woman HAD to wear a bra in the office because it was gross otherwise. I don’t remmeber if the word ‘gross’ was used in this case, but there was many an ‘unprofessional’ being thrown around.

I made a comment that if I were covered up and nips weren’t showing, why did it matter? I said I would absolutely walk over this (the Letter Writer had mentioned that in her office, they were–OK. I just looked it up. It was in 2023, and the vast majority were women who were virulent in their support of bras. Or rather, virulent in their disdain for women* who decided not to wear them.

There were women who said it was a privileged position to choose to quit over it or make it your hill to die on, but that’s the whole point of having privilege/hills to die on. As to the first, part of checking your privilege should be followed by doing things that people who aren’t in your privileged position can’t do in order to make life better for everyone. Otherwise, what’s the point? As to the latter, you don’t get to decide what is a a hill to die on for someone else.

There were several people who were adamant that it was professional and that you should follow the dress code of your office (though it wasn’t in the dress code of the LW). Someone asked quite reasonably if the dress code was that you could not wear a bra in the office, would they ‘suck it up’ (which someone mentioned) and rip off their bra?

I wasn’t surprised that most people were pro-bra; I was surprised how vicious they got in going for the status quo, though. As more than one person pointed out, things didn’t change without people agitating for that change.

The number of women who said no one wanted to see the jiggling and/or they wouldn’t hire a woman that didn’t wear a bra, sadly, was not surprising. Women often are the ones to hold up the patriarchy, which is one of the greatest tricks of man. If they  can get women to do it for them, then they can spend less time on it.

(Resisting to go on a rant about the patriarchy and dieting, which is not the point of this post.)

I can’t understand getting all worked up over something so meaningless. Tellingly, one person did the slippery slope argument and said that what next, no pants? It’s always wild to me when people do the slippery slope argument and then bust out something ridiculous. My mother did it when I told her I was bi–she said, “What next, animals?”


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Free to be a weirdo, part four

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Let’s talk more about being a weirdo. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how sometimes, I wished I could be normal. Believe it or not, I’m not trying to be difficult most of the time–it’s just that I was born that way. I was musing about how much easier life would have been if I could have just been ‘normal, but that’s folly.

What I mean is that I can sit and speculate about how different my life would have been if I was normal, but I can’t verify it. It alsways irk me when people state confidently what would have happened if something or the other (big) had been different. Usually, in a toxic positivity way.

The one that really got to me was people who said that they would not change anything about their pasts because it made them who they were. I would ABSOLUTELY change certain things in my life because it would make me better! The heavy emotional abuse? Gone. The nightmare relationship in Thailand? It would be no more. The feeling like an alien and that I should not be alive that dominated my childhood? Erased in a heartbeat.

I also take issue with the people who said that going through trauma made you more empathetic. There are other ways to be empathetic, thank you, and I would like to think I would have been, anyway, without all the abuse.

I don’t know if I would have been a better, more functional person without the trauma I experienced, but I sure as hell would like to have a shot at it. Would I take no abuse and not knowing how it would turn out over what happened to me? 100%, in a heartbeat, no hesitation. How is that even a question?

I know I can’t change my past, obviously, but that trauma still lingers. Taiji has helped a great deal, and so has Bagua. So has love. So has me just saying fuck it to a certain extent. The realization that I’ll never be normal whatever that is was so freeing. I’m not saying it isn’t still a struggle because it is.

Side note: I find it amusing when people advocate for being your true self. What they usually mean is, “Be your true self–oh, not that true self.” What I mean is that most people mean a two-deviation-from-the-norm true self, not a ‘what the fuck is THAT?” true self. Like weird is being a vegan Crossfitter. Weird is not being agender, areligious, into Taiji and Bagua weaponry, and being ENM. Not to mention bisexual. And just not giving a damn about 90% of things society deems important. Oh, and neurodivergent.

Any one of those things would be considered weird. Some of them are considered deviant, evil, vile, disgusting, etc., by a huge chunk of people. Not just Americans, but that’s the society I know best. It’s interesting. I’ve been listening to a lot of Stray Kids content, and while they are pioneers in music and very ‘weird’ for Kpop, they actually adhere quite closely to Korean norms (as I understand them). Personally, I mean.

I’ve watched quite a bit of their content and realized that they would disapprove of me as a person. Yes, they say eveyrone should be their own person, but they have made it pretty clear that their attitudes toward alternative lifestyles (not talking queer, but ENM and gender norms to a certain extent) is negative. They have several songs about what they call ‘very bad guys’, and they’ve had arguments about who’s the worst. The guy who is mean to his ex-girlfriend including telling her how she really felt about him (which they don’t see as mean) or the guy who thought another woman was attractive, didn’t necessarily act on it, but broke up with his girlfriend anyway because he felt guilty.


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Wish (kind of) that I could be normal, part three

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My sleep is shit. It’s always been shit, but there are ups and downs to it. Now, I’m in a down time, and I’m having such difficulty going to bed. In the past, I’ve had trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, and getting enough sleep (though not necessarily at the same time. Though also not NOT necessarily at the same time).

The only time I have not have problems with my sleep was in the hospital and about a year following after I returned home. I was heavily drugged, and it was so wonderful. I understood why people did drugs after that. I felt like a million bucks and nothing hurt. About three weeks after i returned home, I started feeling my body again. Little aches and pains, and I realized, “Oh, I acutally have to return to my body.” I was not happy about it, but there wasn’t anything I could do.

My point is that my sleep is on difficulty mode just like everyithing else in my life. It’s been my nemesis since I was a kid, and I haven’t made much progress in all the years since.

That’s not completely right. I have times when I make painful progress with my sleep, only to fall back into a terrible pattern once again. Then,  I berate myself for not getting to bed earlier. It’s six-thirty in the morning. I should be in bed. I am not, though, and I will probably not be for another half hour at least. More like an hour.

I try not to beat myself up because that doesn’t help. In fact, it hurts in that the shame makes me even less likely to go to bed at a decent time. Normally, I can make incremental changes, but I don’t feel capable of doing that right now. I’m not sure why, but I have a hunch it has something to do with the hopelessness I feel at the world around me.

When I got a tight eight hours a night after my medical crisis, I felt amazing. I could not believe how good it felt because I never get that much sleep a night unless I’m sick. Or if I hadn’t slept in a very long time. Otherwise, though, I am lucky if I get seven hours in aggregate. This is me reverting to the mean, and I’m not happy about it.


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Why am I like this? Part two

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Alternate title: Playing life on hard mode.

Yesterday, I wrote about how I unerringly pick the hardest choice when it comes to identity. And I tied it in with my dislike for hard games. Then I gushed a bit about Shadow of the Erdtree to make my point as to why I play From games (but, sadly, I probably won’t be able to play them for much longer).

Shadow of the Erdtree epitomizes what I love and hate about gaming. Or rather, the whole soulslike genre. I have tried so many soulslike games, and I have liked exactly one of them. That was Salt and Sanctuary (Ska Studios). And the reason I liked it was because it was almost exactly like a From game except in 2D. In fact the 2D aspect was my least-favorite part of the game beacuse it made rolling difficult. But they preserved the ability to beat the game with just magicks alone, which was why I enjoyed it so much.

Fast-forward to Life of Pi (Round8 Studio, now known as Nough, and NEOWIZ). Hahhahahah I just realized I called it Life of Pi. Lies of P, not Life of Pi. People not being me have declared it the best soulslike not done by From. Some have even said it could have been done by From themselves. I strongly disagree with that, by the way. The level design in severely lacking, and I don’t consider it good combat that only relies on one thing (fucking parrying. Goddamn it. I hope this trend goes awaya soon). It’s boring as fuck, and no, that’s not just my bitterness talking. Yes, that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole reason

Even within the FromSoft games, the ones I like better are the ones that allow you to play in a variety of ways. I have said time and time again that Sekiro is my least favorite of the From games, and it’s in a large part because you have to play the game the way the devs want you to play. Or rather, it’s no fun if you can’t/don’t.

People like to say this line, “When you click with the combat, it’s makes the game easy.” When I said the combat never clicked for me, I could see their brains screeching to a halt. I was talking to my nibling’s spouse about it, and they were talking about how a certain boss was a hard skill check. “That’s when the combat clicks–or you quit.” I told them that it never clicked for me, and I beat that particular boss the way I beat all the bosses–by whittling away at the health.” They said in all seriousness that they didn’t know you could beat the boss like that. I said, “You can, but it’s not fun.”

Which is true. I beat the game, but the second I beat the final boss and the very brief elation faded, all I felt was relief. I never, ever had to fight that boss again–and it was the best feeling in the world.

I watched a video from a guy who loved the From games, but who was very clear about there being a line between hard bosses that were fun and fair, and being difficult just for the sake of being difficult. He mentioned the last boss of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, who was a nightmare when the game first came out. It was not a fun fight at all, and I don’t know why I persisted*. But it was an awful boss. I was shocked at how bad it was. It felt like pure fan service, and not good fan service at that.

Now, to be fair, one of my biggest issues with the boss pre-nerf was that I could not actually see the boss with the light show going on in the second phase of the fight. See, every action was accompanied by a holy attack that had light trails errrrrrywhere (and I do mean everywhere). And there’s a specific attack that is nearly impossible to avoid if you don’t start sprinting in the opposite direction the second you see it’s going to happen. Even then, you can still get tag–and if you get hit by it fully, it can one-shot you.

I. Hate. Being. One. Shot. By. A. Boss.

It feels cheap and really discourages me from trying again. It idd not help that I got the boss down to about a tenth of their health bar on my second try–and then did not come closs again for hours. That’s how it goes, I know, with big From bosses, but it just cemented my hatred for the boss.

This boss was so bad, many people respecced just to beat this boss. Think about it. You’ve played the entire DLC with one build, and then you have to change it to a very specific build in order to beat the final boss of the DLC. I did not respec, but that’s becauuse I actually had (sort of) one of the builds best suited to beating this boss.

Here’s the connection. Kind of.

In real life, I often feel as if I’m playing on hard mode. I don’t choose it on purpose, but I don’t really have a choice. It’s not as if I said, “Hey, I want to make my life as hard as possible so I’m going to eschew not only binary genders, but nonbinary genders as well. I’m going to choose nightmare mode and go with agender.”

If I wanted to play on easy mode within the traits that were given to me from birth, I would be a cishet woman who got married and had two children. Working a nice job that didn’t take too much of my energy because I had to devote that to my man and my children. Pilates three times a week, maybe a little ladylike curling of 1-pound dumbbells (I use 15-pounders when I do my Taiji weight-bearing sets. Or 20-pounders for the easier of the movements.)

That would have been easier–along with being a Christian. Which I was born as. Let me clarify. It would have been easier in the sense of blending in with society and not making waves. And maybe I would have felt less like a freak/alien. Well, if I actually wanted those things, I mean. Because I don’t, it would have made me feel even lonelier if I tried to do all that just to fit in. When my mother went on a fifteen year campaign to get me pregnant, the only time I wavered was when she  wore me down to the point that I considered doing it just to shut her the fuck up. Which is not a good reason to have a child, honestly.

Fortunately, I came to my senses and did not give into my terrible impulse. It just goes to show, though, how much my mother bugged me to have children.

More tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

*I know why. I’m a glutton for punishment. And I’m stubborn AF. And I would feel like a failure if I didn’t beat the boss.

 

Wish I may, wish I might

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Alternate title: Playing life on hard mode.

I don’t like hard games. I know that sounds facetious because I play From games, but I play them despite the difficulty not because of it. I put up with the hard bosses because the level design is beyond compare.

I can’t get over how amazing the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC’s level design was. Elden Ring, the base game, was terrific as expected. It won game of the year and totally deserved it. Two years later, the DLC came out. I went through one of the most traumatic events of my life on the day it was announced (well, it started that day and the next day was actually the worst day of my life, but I was ready for it (mostly) when it came out four months later.

I gladly allowed my self to get lost in the moody, atmospheric DLC. I did what I always do, which is avoid the main story for as long as I possibly could.

Hey, wait. This post isn’t about that, so let’s move on. I have written about Shadow of the Erdtree endlessly, and I wasn’t going to do it again in this post. I just wanted to mention it because it’s simply amazing in the breadth and depth. The main game took me 240+ hours to complete whereas the DLC took me 70+ hours. I explored the hell out of everything in both the base game and the DLC.

I was just about to write more about it, but the point is that I don’t play the games for the difficulty. In fact, in the DLC, the last boss was just…ughhhhhh. They have nerfed the boss (or rather, the shitshow that surrounds the boss), but it’s still just an unpleasant fight.

In real life, I wish I did not unerringly pick the hardest hill to climb every time. I swear to god that I don’t do it on purpose, no matter what my mother thinks. (She doesn’t like that I’m so anti-tradition and so…weird and wrong (in her eyes).) It’s just what I feel in my heart of hearts.

In this case, it’s gender. I was reading a forum about changing your pronouns at work, and so many people were for it. Meaning they were for having them in  the sig box of their emails and introducing themselves with their pronouns. These were cis people, by the way. Most trans/nonbinary people were not as sanguine about it for a few reasons.

One, for people who aren’t out yet, being made to state their pronouns could be very fraught. Or the people who haven’t decided on their pronouns yet. Or, like me, someone who is agender and does not use gendered pronouns.

More than one person said how I felt–they did not mind so much other people calling them by a pronoun, but they did not want to actually call themselves by their at birth gender pronoun. I have given up mostly on correcting people because I really don’t have the energy. Plus, I get how weird it is not to use gendered pronouns, so I can’t really fault people for getting confused. I mean, I don’t always remember for myself, either.


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Triple AAA–Zzzzzzzzzzz, part two

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I’m not sure where to put this because I’m going to talk more about AAA v. indie games, but I want to jump of that into talking about how I think about things in general. And why I have felt so deeply while playing Schrödinger’s Call (Acrobatic Chirimenjako). Add to that why I feel like nothing playing most AAA games. Oh, and just to get even spicier, why I don’t like most soulslikes even though I adore most FromSoft games.

While I’m at it, I’ll make the connection between my preference for indie games over AAA games and my preference for indie movies (when I even watch them) over Hollywood movies. To be fair, the last–no, the second-to-last blockbuster movie I’ve seen is–well, no. Let me rephrase that. The last superhero movie I saw in the theater was The Last–er, Guardian sof the Galaxy, and much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it.

After that, I saw Knives Out, which was hyped to an unbelievable degree. And which I was quite looking forward to. Even after seeing the trailer, which I did not like. Look.  I went into the movie excited because I love Agatha Christie. I love huge ensemble whodunnits, and this was supposed to be the next big thing. When I saw the trailer, well, my enthusiasm dipped dramatically. All the cast members were excellent, but there was something amiss. I hated the way the trailer was cut, and I did not enjoy the dialogue at all.

I crashed while writing this, so I’m picking it up today. My sleep has been all over the damn place.

Back to Knives Out. I did not like the first movie by this direction. Rian Johnson. Brick. I found it pretentious, ponderous, and laborious. I did not enjoy one second of it, and I did not understand the hype at all.

I was willing to give him a chance with tihs movie because, well, I’m a slow learner in some ways. I so want a new Poirot (with less British colonialism, please or if it’s another Poirot, an actual Belgian actor), I was willing to overlook my initial doubts about the trailer. I enjoy an ensemble cast, and this one was star-studded. Yes, the trailer had highly-stylized dialogue and hyper-cuts that made me wince, but I tried to put that aside.

More doubts began to creep in when the director made this big deal about pleading with the reviewers not to give ‘the secret’ away. After watching the movie, I have no idea what he meant by that. If he meant the perp, well, I sussed that out the first time I laid eyes on them. I said, “This person did it”–whatever ‘it’ was, and I sincerely hoped it wasn’t the case.

But, alas, two painful hours later, it turned out to be exactly the case.

Look, the cast was fantastic. Jamie Lee Curtis chewing up the scenery gave me so much life. But that was the only thing I liked about the movie. I was so disappointed in the rest of the movie.


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Thinking about how I think, part five

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I’m still thinking about my thinking and what parts of it I want to/think I’m able to change. In yesterday’s post, I talked about my unending difficulty in getting to bed at a reasonable time. It’s something I’ve struggled with all my life, and any time I think I might have a handle on it, I don’t. It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life, quite frankly (trying to get a decent sleep schedule), and I don’t know if I can actually do it.

Huh. This is the first time I’ve actually admitted that.  Let me clarify. By “it”, I mean getting to  bed at 2 a.m. every night. I think even 3 a.m. is pushing it. I have said for many years that it’s possible while I continue to not do it. Most emphatically not to do it. Right now, I’m getting to bed around seven to eight, which is the latest I’ve ever done.

As for eating, I’m also in a pretty bad rut. I’ve been DoorDashing way too much as it’s way too convenient. I hate cooking. I see it as a huge waste of time, especially as I live alone. I don’t mind eating the same thing several days in a row, so I get the idea of cooking in batches. But it’s still so much work for such little return. I hate all the prep work so much. But, I can do simple things when I put my mind to it. Like pasta and sauce, scrambled eggs, and salads. The last isn’t cooking, obviously, but it’s still more effort than I actually want to make.

Here’s the thing. It’s really hard to separate to stop thinking of myself as lazy because it’s what I’ve been told all my life. Seriously. How the fuck hard is it to put a simple salad together? I can even buy the bagged lettuce for fuck’s sake. It is literally buy the bag of lettuce/spinach/whatever and a bottle of  dressing. Yes, I can add tomatoes to make it even better. If I’m very ambitious, I’ll buy an avocado and let it rot. This is the problem. I have all the good intentions in the world, but that means jackshit at the end of the day if I don’t actually eat them.

I have a dozen eggs sitting in the fridge right now. I bought them several days ago with the intent to make breakfast sandwiches. People in the Discord were going on and on about them, and it inspired me. I like eggs, and I can actually make a good omelet/scrambled eggs. I put in fake cheese, some kind of veggie, and sometimes chicken or ham. It truly is simple and doesn’t make time at all. Oh, sometimes I put lactose-free sour cream in it as well.

I have yet to make anything with the eggs. They are sitting guiltily in my fridge, and I am aware that time is running out. Will I make anything with them before I have to toss them? Who knows? If I don’t, then I’ll feel so bad when I throw them out. And yet.


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Poking more into my brain, part four

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Arrrgh. How am I here yet again?! I have a friend, A, who gently pokes me to go to bed early. It’s a positive thing on her part, and I call her my reverse-alarm. She poked me around 4 p.m., and I said I was aiming to go to bed by 4 a.m. I mean, that seemed reasonable twelve hours ago. Twelve hours was so much time! And yet, here I am ten minutes before said time, and I am nowhere near ready to go to bed. Four in the morning was a reasonable time for me to set as a goal for going to bed. Unfortunately, I fucked around too much and I found out that I am once again not quite ready to go to bed.

I know being frustrated with myself won’t help. Indeed, it just makes things worse because of the shame spiral, but I can’t necessarily stop myself, either. I get others being frustrated with someone who can’t do something on time, but there’s no way they’re more frustrated with that person than that person is with themselves.

I hate that I let hours slip by while I do nothing worthwhile. It’s not like I’m curing cancer or anything important like that. I’m usually fucking around on the internet or playing games or watching videos. None of that is enrichment for the brain, and I could easily chop off three-fourths of it all.

I know that it’s the way my brain works (or doesn’t), but it’s so fucking frustrating. I want my brain to be normal for once. It’s not something I would usually say, but let me experience it for one day, please. Actually, no, don’t. If I only got to feel it for one day, then it was whisked away from me, I would be displeased, no matter what.

If I preferred how I felt when I was normal, then I would be forever sad that I had to give that up. Unless they erased my memory of it once I returned to my normal. Then, fine. whatever. But why would I bother doing it if I could not remember it? What’s the point in that? If I preferred how I was as a weirdo rather than being normal, then I would be doubly mad at all the people judging me after I lived as aa normie for the day.

Having said all that, I would probably do it if it was on offer because I am incorrigibly curious. It’s one of the best and worst things about me, as with many of my traits. I don’t half-ass anything. If I’m going to do it, I’m using my full ass. It’s not much, but it’s more than it has ever been–thanks to Taiji.

Back to eating. Here’s my post from yesterday in which I talk about how I eat (and don’t)–which is not “normal”. I have said in the past that I know most of my flaws. I know the ones that are worth trying to fix and the ones that aren’t. for exmple, I am a huge procrastinator. I work to the back end of a deadline, and I’ve made my peace with that.


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How my brain does what my brain does, part three

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I’m back to talk more about how my brain works (or doesn’t). I’m happy to know that it isn’t completely broken, but I still can’t help but think it’s somewhat broken.

For example. I have no hunger signals. I know that I broke my hunger meter at some point after many years of struggling with eating disorders. I thought that was the only reason, but I learned recertly that autistic people have many difficulties with eating. One, the sensory issue. Weirdly, I have very few textural issues with food. I do have a ton of sensitivities, though. I’m gluten-free and dairy-free, and I have to be careful with onion and garlic (much to my dismay. I’m Asian! Garlic is in almost every dish we have). I also think I have an issue with cauliflower, but I don’t want to test it.

Before I get into it, I just want to say that I talked about gender roles and how rigid they are in different countries, but in different ways in yesterday’s post. Now back to eating.

You know all those articles that tell you to listen to your body when it comes to eating? That intuitive eating is best? I say this with absolutely no snark–that’s a good idea if you can’t do it. I just can’t.

First of all, I am not hungry when I wake up. I’ve said this several times. I don’t eat breakfast or for several hours after (except for one bite of something approximately twenty minutes after I get up because I have a medication I need to take with food AND a medication I need to not take with food. So I take the latter with the other med I take daily in the ‘morning’ (I have one other I take at night) and then take the one I need to eat with food twenty minutes later. If I remember it all).

There’s a narrow window of time in which I have to eat something or I simply will not. And this is where I differ from the intuitive eating philosophy. Again, I want to emphasize that I think it’s better to be intuitive about eating–but it’s also better to actually eat.

Another thing that I can’t do is three square meals. I just quickly Googled, and it seems that after much debate three meals a day may be better for you than snacking throughout the day (as long as you don’t eat a huge meal late at night), but I just can’t do that.  I eat one big meal in the middle of my day (which can be anywhere from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., depending, and then I eat here and there.

There’s a saying for new parents–fed is best. This is because there’s a raging feud over breast-fed v. bottle-fed, with virtual blood being spilled on both sides.

I have to embrace fed is best, as messed up as that may sound. Otherwise, I won’t eat. Like, I did not eat an actual meal today until 2 in the morning. That’s not good, I know, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.


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