emotional consorts

click to Get Peanutized

I've been thinking for a long time about how social media has created new ways to connect that no longer fall into traditional roles. I've been on the internet since 1994 and have seen it all in so many varieties of ways that I'm convinced traditional roles in societal norms in developing civilizations over tens of thousands of years catered to the purpose of crowd control, when all else is brushed away from the archaeological bones of our anthropological history as a human race.

I remember my mom being on the phone quite a bit on some days when I was a kid. We shared a party line with several neighboring houses, about ten miles out of town along a rural highway. Back then we didn't know anything about depression and how connecting helps people get through rough days. Telephones were probably a godsend to her on some days, but none of us really understood the need. Our world was pretty black and white back then.

I was in the 9th grade when we moved to another state. My best friend and I snail mailed each other faithfully 3 times a week for a little over 4 years. I'm not exaggerating that at all. I had a huge box full of letters that documented her half of our unending conversation, and when that conversation ended, I was so lost that I completely shut down emotionally. It took me years to understand why that particular friendship was so deep.

In the mid 90s I jumped into the email trend, which was basically a lot like twitter in slo-mo, and wound up in fan groups and forums quickly after that. I had never had so much connection in my whole life. I cannonballed with so much gusto into connecting all over the place that I irritated a few people with my splashing, but I loved every minute of it. I didn't learn how to emotionally connect, though, until real faces started showing up with all that connecting. I had no idea what to even do with that, but I learned very quickly that's when it starts to hurt. It took more years to figure that part out. I had to learn to be more careful and play nice, and I'm the first to admit that my idea of careful and nice back then were not careful and nice.

I ran into a wall one year that disconnected my whole world, and everything felt like the rubble in the wake of the Nothing in Neverending Story. Several horrible years of rubble went by before I decided to give up and walk away. I was on the verge of deleting the very last of the rubble when Something Happened and shook me awake in seconds. From that moment I have intensely interrogated myself and studied how to get what I want.

I made a Plan and got back into the internet, learning to swim all over again, trying new ways of connecting. People are real, and I need people. I've spent most of my life so alone inside of myself. I have felt several times like if I didn't find a way to connect to my own humanity I would wilt and die inside. I cannot connect if I'm alone.

Part of my motivation was unclear at first. I had to keep reaching deeper and deeper inside myself, pulling out ripped up shreds of cast off emotions I never dealt with. My survival skills were a lot like the Walking Dead, shoot first and walk away, or just go another direction and disappear so no one can find me. I've done that both in real life and on internet. I am really good at knowing how to just go away. Part of my intense self questioning vomited up a very ugly self righteous gloater that didn't have a clue how to care about other people (my narcissism diagnosis, guys), an emotionally distant loner buried deep in obsessions (my autism diagnosis), a sad cynic who refused to believe happiness was nothing more than a lie invented by social structure controlling people (severe depression), a tiny child terrified of monsters and shadows and water and death (anxiety and dissociative disorders), and an overlord squeezing all of that together into a tightly controlled survival unit that blew apart after a string of viral illnesses affected my brain.

I watched everything about me fall apart as I raced time to keep dissecting, keep laying it all out in autopsy, keep looking for all the pieces I need to make all of this functional again, because without a coherent goal, 'I' simply have no meaning. My soul is a tattered shred on a crusty plain in a very long night. There is nothing else laying around inside myself that I am able to see that gives any part of me a tic mark in a box that doesn't say 'FAIL'.

Except to tell the stories.

There is redemption in honesty. I think that is inside all of us. Humanity is a story. We are all stories.

HEAR and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild--as wild as wild could be--and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.

That paragraph clicks back to source.

I need each of my people in each of their individual places. I can no longer slot people into categories like a tackle or embroidery box. Each person I connect to is unique to me and in their very own slot in my mind. Each slot has its own kind of personal reason we are connected, and I will never be able to go back to the traditional slotting of genders and roles and whatever else people get labeled with. Each and every person I've ever met seems to have grown into their own thing inside of me while I have taken myself apart, and as I put myself back together I can see now that the only way any of me goes all back together is by intersecting the connecting lines of other people with myself. I still feel all the same feelings about each person now that I did years (or days) ago when we last connected, and those feelings never change, even though I keep changing. Each person I have encountered has helped create who I am now, and I could never go forward as a soul being severed from that.

One of the things I've learned over time is that no one person can hold all my feelings. I am a wildly oscillating passion of obsessions with very little natural social intuition, so when my emotions, whatever they may be, blow up into roller coaster rides, the only way to survive them is to spread myself across as many friends as possible as quickly as I can before one unlucky person gets yanked into the roller coaster with me. I'm afraid I'm only just lately over the last few months becoming cognizant of this, so apologies to a few people who've been dragged in front of the bus with me, and especially one nobody really knows about who has actually been surviving that in real time.

I am part of what I now privately think of as a small tribe of emotional consorts. I can see now that the one person I needed and pulled into that crazy upside down fling needs to reach out and balance with others who need to know what's going on for the support system to work. I can be very selfish when I'm stuck in my tunnel vision, but to get what I need the most, I need that entire support system in place. I'm still getting used to this idea.

This is all new to me, but I think it's what I've been missing and needing all my life. I just never knew how to be part of a little group of close knit friends. It's exhilarating. And I think that's how it's supposed to be. It's not about rigid roles in labeled slots, and I don't think it ever has been. Psychological health in homo sapiens sapiens is about the connect/disconnect. Before there were societal norms, there were little groups interacting without labels, without rules about roles. Maybe aspienado kicking at the cart all these years was simply about persisting in my quest to find other brains that mine can fit with, without all the junk in the way. Like the first friend I faithfully wrote letters with 3 times a week for 4 years. She was popular and had lots of friends, and she was my only. She incorporated me, the others moved over, and I dismissed them a bit (I accepted and talked to each of them in school, just never thought of them as *my* friends), but maybe it's time to finish growing up. I run with a pack now, and we take turns stepping aside for each other. I got that a bit wrong on the medias, but I think I'm kind of getting it right now in the background. I sure hope so.

turkey fam

Things going on this week.

On twitter-

My twitter family tree- Part 1 via Twitter Family game
Love my mama and papa! @DxDerailed @kurtzellner
Mama Deb is my go-to fandom nerd for #DirkGently and Dieter Laser
Papa Kurt gets after me all the time in #latenightmove @LNMgang movie chat at SyfyDesigns.com
You and me, babe @dawnsnarks 😆

My twitter family tree- Part 2 via Twitter Family game
So proud of my kids! @SesameSquirrel and @TScottBrave
My kid Seseme is my fave squirrel source linker and so much more
My kid Scott is my bug and spider expert and hopefully future reference checker on a side project

Also this thread about autism is awesome. Next snip clicks directly to that part of the convo.

On facebook-

In my G+ Lexx community hangout-

I prioritized my work schedule, AJ found out "May" is a college professor now, and Sanguinessa is starting on part 4 of a continuing Tales from a Parallel Universe fanfic series that I've promised to read and review.

I passed the 48 hour mark after surgery today with flying colors, incisions look great, no fever, was even able to skip the pain pill for 15 hours which was awesome because high dose opioids put your digestive system to sleep and I needed mine to wake up. 😋

click for article on wild turkeys

I have come up with a Thanksgiving plan. Our holiday is kinda blown apart with way too much happening around here, but I think this will work ok. I'm going to cook my personal Turkey food a day ahead and then have the kitchen cleaned up and I'm out of the way for Twink to help Granny get a bunch of cooking done with my stove. I'll get up early, as usual, and make hot chocolate on the stove like I do every year, and then I'm going to camp out on my bed with Jawn and hang out on Mo Creatures while I watch Macy's parade on the TV in my bedroom, and Bunny can hang out with me if mama needs her out of her hair. I'm sure I'll be popping on and off the internet randomly as the chaos rolls out, but I do want to hang out online through the day. Hopefully that will work out well.

a sprinkling of brain things

I came out a little over a year ago in this post with my diagnoses on my disability papers. I didn't link them to anything, but I'm doing that now. Each one will click to an explanation or article.

• 2007- Axis I clinical disorders of adjustment disorder with anxiety, axis II deferred but with narcissistic feature, axis V GAF of 60.
• 2008- depressed mood with congruent affect, Asperger's, GAF of 50.

My psychiatrist would like a harder diagnosis since I've progressed into dissociation issues with my psychologist, which I've basically lived with my entire life but never talked about. He asked for it last winter, and my psychologist said not yet because I was up and down dealing with pain med adjustment problems, and he said that could affect the testing and the diagnosis would be permanent. My psychiatrist reminded me again lately that he'd like that done, and now that I'm more evened out with the pain med situation and another successful set of physical therapy visits, I guess I'll see what my psychologist says.

There are a number of brain things sprinkled throughout my family. On my mom's side are Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, depression, Munchausen by proxy, OCD, and personality disorder. On my dad's side is a strong inclination to autism spectrum.

I am of the opinion that anyone on the planet could be diagnosed with some level of mental illness under the right (or wrong) circumstances. I knew I was having problems as far back as high school, and I walked into MMPI testing of my own volition in college and apparently passed just fine. Years later I asked my primary care doctor to refer me to a psychologist after I learned about Asperger's. Anything mentioned in between to family or friends was mentioned back as me being a hypochondriac just wanting attention, to which I replied I actually dislike attention anyway, so to purposely seek out negative attention seems a bit stretchy, especially since I'd been corporeally punished and lectured at length throughout my childhood and never got enough positive benefit from that to want to seek out more. Well, I didn't say it like that, but you know what I mean.

I have never been hauled in for evaluation. I have never caused disturbances that required interventions. I have never self harmed (typically, visibly) or harmed others (in ways that would get me caught). I was rigidly raised to obey, behave, and don't be embarrassing. I took longer than most kids to catch on, but because of that, I learned to self monitor and avoid unwitting consequences.

I have developed the opinion that beating, humiliating, and scaring children into submission is a very big mistake, but I can see how mentally ill people living in dysfunctional families manage to survive in society that way. Being raised to have too much pride to wind up in jail was a powerful motivator for me, although that was never said in so many words. I actually turned down a lucrative offer based on the fact that I'd eventually wind up in jail, because I personally detest being confined and told what to do. I didn't choose correctly on moral principle or because I might lose custody of my child over it, no, I chose correctly because I had a deterrent I didn't want to tolerate. I was smart enough to at least avoid that by walking away from the offer (which was actually a dangerous thing to do, and I knew it, but I had such a flippant attitude back then that I didn't care).

I'm old and wise now, like Gandalf. I see people all around me who are like me but toe the lines so their lives don't get stupid. They stick to rules and reasons for why they have those rules. I personally think most of the rules are rubbish because the reasons are even more rubbish, but whatever works, right? The goal is to function successfully enough to survive, not win a logic debate. It's easy to see how not toeing the line can go all bad real fast, and that implies stupidity, and many of us would rather not be caught being that stupid.

I've noticed that very few people have actual moral principles, and even when they do they betray them without an eye blink if it serves their momentary purposes. Human mental health is relatively new on the long term scale of human development, and survival traits often include the more cunning virtues, like being able to lie and cheat well, learning when to fake or steal without being caught, jumping into opportunities without sharing them, and more. Part of human intelligence is cunning, and cunning isn't necessarily emotionally healthy.

I think neurodiversity is in it's infancy, and I really hope it doesn't go through a sweeping genocide because of 'mental illness'. It's possible that some level of mental illness might actually be a positive survival trait for some people. For instance, my narcissistic attitude as a child about other people being stupid kept me from self destructing into self deprecation and the nasty consequences of self harm, corroding addictions, and suicide, as per discussion with my psychologist. It's true that some people benefit from help with tweaking brain chemicals, but it's also true that some of our greatest art, literature, and science leaps were borne in mentally ill brains.

I am not ashamed of a single one of my diagnoses. I didn't even know I was this much of a mess until I sought out help for a very real personal problem that bothered me very badly. I wanted a friend. A real friend, a friend who would accept me and respect me and care that I walk this earth and not just toy with me or use me. Real life isn't like television for most of us. Most of us feel lonely a lot more than TV says we should. Most of us don't have laugh tracks following us around like we're so cute even when we're dumb. Most of us live like facepalm cliffhangers that never get resolved because the show got cancelled.

Most of us remain undiagnosed.

Side story to make a point. @bonenado has shingles. He is dealing with a level of pain I've been living with for years. He has suddenly taken an interest in a little research, so I sent him a link with a list of shingles symptoms. I have been living with every one of those symptoms for years, minus the rash. I am not afraid of shingles. That doesn't mean I ever want them or that I would blow them off if I got them, but it means I'm a seasoned veteran with experiencing nerve pain and therefore don't feel that tingle of fear around the word shingles.

The idea of being mentally ill doesn't frighten or upset me. I have apparently been living with all of this for a very long time without knowing there were names for it. My life has gotten better and even easier since I found out about them. I was struggling so hard for years with why is it so hard for me to be nice. I really did try, and everywhere I went, one hour into whatever and I was in defcon migraine level hate and badly needing escape. Why? Once I found out it's because my senses are so easily overwhelmed and that my natural coping mechanisms are faulty, I stopped being so hard on myself. All I have to do is simply remove myself from a situation before it gets overwhelmingly ugly for me, and people all around think that I'm nice.

Learning to live with mental illnesses is like learning to live with chronic illnesses. You develop rhythms and lifestyles that help you stay balanced and learn to navigate the disruptions that upset that balance. I happen to need a lot of quiet time in order to cope well, and when that becomes impossible, I have fallback modes I can go into to focus my way through until I can reach a place of quiet. A lot of it is about preplanning for sensory overload, which triggers all kinds of personality issues when I don't stay smart about how I want my day to go.

It's not a piece of cake. I live with both mental and chronic illnesses. Sometimes it's really hard to get through life sucks, but sometimes everything goes all wrong and I'm fine with it. The most important thing about each moment is keep moving. Keep breathing, keep minecrafting, keep doing my laundry, keep checking on people I love, keep keeping. Enjoy the little things, treasure the moments, love all the nouns (people, places, and things).

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I believe honesty and transparency are becoming even more rare and precious in this super socially saturated world, and the more we just say our stuff, the more we'll not feel alone.

💟

Pinkyween commences

Trigger caution, graphic violence.

Random search surfing around youtube and this caught my eye. "Somebody once challenged me to make a Heroes music video to a song by Britney Spears and still make it seem badass." I had to watch it immediately.


And from there it was me and the headphones while Bunny tortured Papa after he got home from work.


I have missed so much live tweeting this year. I'm so torn.


I'm even regretting saying I was tired of so much TV last year.


Sorrynotsorry.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now it's later. Still wired on the pred, everyone else is in bed. It's so weird being pred-jacked during a crash off a long euphoric ep, even though it was semi-controlled.


Tomorrow is the big day.


I've had 8 years to think that all through. I've spent 8 years working on becoming more emotionally healthy and regaining back some of what I lost sinking into physical disability. I have worked very, very hard on not being selfish and being present in the moment for the people I love around me. I can honestly say I'm no longer hateful, but I have to honestly admit I'm still very angry, and I don't foresee ever not crashing through so many painful memories every time the first week of October rolls around.

I am quite jealous of people my age who still have both their parents. I feel very sad for people I know who lost both parents already at a younger age than I did. I can't imagine either scenario. All I can feel is jealousy, sadness, pain, and all kinds of anger.

Two years ago I wrote interpretations. My mom had absolutely no moral support raising an autism spectrum child in the middle of so much other stuff that she was dealing with. I am finally old and wise enough to see all that from the eyes of a peer instead of a child. I feel so bad for her sometimes looking back that I can't stand it, and I hide that I cry, like she used to hide that she cried. I can't go back and fix all the misunderstandings, and even if I could try, I would probably make it all worse somehow.

I spent most of my life in hard shutdown because I was very strictly not allowed to have meltdowns without what some people would now consider fairly severe consequences. I've spent the last ten years talking to a psychologist untangling so much mess, and that is very seriously only the tip of a very big iceberg.

If there is anything I can say to parents of autism spectrum kids, of any neuroatypical kids, it's please just love them. I've seen people treat dogs better than they treat their own children, and it breaks my heart. I've seen people treat strangers more kindly than they treat their children, and it shreds me. To judge anyone for something they cannot help, never asked for, and don't yet have the capacity to deal with is really harsh, especially when it turns into corporal punishment and very mean faces and words. Children on autism spectrum, especially, can be notorious for retaining hardcore highly detailed memory recordings for decades, and the behavior you exhibit might be either replayed or spelled out years later.

I'll be spelling mine out. I won't be doing it to be mean, but to be kind. Sometimes it's important to see how ugly something gets in order to veer away from it in future. And, honestly, I'm older now than a lot of the autism parents out there freaking out, and they really do need to know that giving birth to 'broken' children isn't the end of the world. We're all broken. Anyone who can punish a small child without any rescue or defense for simply being broken is broken themselves.

My mom was very broken, and I want to go back in time and scoop her up as a tiny child and rescue her. I'm very sad she never got to see me arrive to this point. One day I'll share a picture of her looking so sad as a small child that everyone will wonder what happened, and then the smiles in all the rest of the pictures after that will look different.

I drown in empathy. Don't let anyone ever tell you auties have no empathy. I had to turn mine off and get mean and cold to survive, but all the soft sad stuff is very intact and the recordings are all still there. I wasn't even five years old when I asked my mom why she was sad, and she never allowed me to ask her that again and never talked about it. Imagine what must have gone on inside of her to stuff that back in so hard and never let anyone see it. We saw her anger, yes. I've come to realize it was a privilege to see her sad. Not depressed, not fearful, not anxious, but sad. Why was it so important to hide the sad?

Dear autism parents- You have my full support. I was a difficult child, and once I realized I had power, I sometimes made it more difficult for my emotionally weak mother to function. We were quite a pair. I sabotaged her in very subtle ways, and she crumbled and did some very mean things back to me. By the time I was in high school our relationship was so broken that we never recovered from living without that parent/child bond. I felt unforgiven and she felt hated, because she didn't forgive me and I hated her.

Stuff like that is really simple to fix once you realize that's what's going on.

clicks to source
I'm borrowing it
a few people will get it

the sparkly thug life

Executive decisions are in order. My new BP med definitely boosts glucose levels, and my morning fasting is now up to 106 instead of the 90s. I get a thumpy heartbeat now after coffee and I know it's the creamer, not the caffeine. Glucose strip testing confirmed I'm getting higher readings now after just coffee, and when my glucose hits 130-140 I get thumpy heartbeats on the way back down to 120, always, anything I eat, no caffeine. I've reconfirmed this many times. Once I'm back below 120, no more thumpy heartbeats. SO. Instead of my 2 large cups of coffee (I've needed rocket fuel for Bunny preschool mornings), it's time to go back to 2 small cups or 1 large cup. That will cut down on some of the lactose bumping my glucose up. (I don't use sweeteners at all in any form, it's just canned milk.)

My menu planning needs to tighten up some more, too. I've been allowing a few starches and sweets here and there, and it's evidently affecting my A1C if my fasting glucose is defaulting higher. If I want to feel well for the holidays, I need to stick to healthy fats and proteins. If I'm going to live well with this new BP med, I need to be smart with my nutrition choices.

Walked through the livingroom last night while @bonenado was flipping channels and caught about a minute of Young Sheldon. Secret from an #actuallyautistic- learning the rules behind breaking the rules was a biggie for me. While the show might've concentrated on the NT viewpoint all around him, what you might not have seen was anyone have a logical discussion with that kid on the rules behind allowing rule breaking (I didn't watch long enough to find out). I have a very sophisticated mental flow chart with many loop counters that I've constructed over many years dealing with this from autistic POV, and I've learned that the rules behind breaking rules is much more important than the structure set up for keeping rules in place. Honestly, I couldn't sit through the show. It was immediately very painful for me. I won't say any more about it, except that I grew up in an era of continual corporal punishment and belittlement. If Young Sheldon helps to change that, great. I just can't rally behind it personally without triggering.

Still not back on server yet, which I'm ok with for the time being. I'm needing to handle a few things around my house and stop putting a couple of other things off. I'm in the pre-holiday-still-funtioning part of fall and need to keep this focus I have before it's gone. Once I get back on server with the new concrete, I may be going some pink places.

I'd have set this to different music, like Craig Chaquico's Dreamcatcher. Both vids are about the same length, so mute the first one and play the second while the first one runs.

gloriously idiotic

*holding breath* Has it stopped?

That regular 'heartbeat' you see at the beginning of the last 7 days, what I termed the Master's knocking, completely died out over the last 24 hours. This is the first time in MONTHS I have seen normal stats, i.e. real people coming and going. Several posts on the auto hitting scored well over 1500 hits apiece (one wound up over 2000, but I think part of that was actual traffic from a special interest group), and I am still so calloused from seeing fake traffic that I can barely believe real people actually hit them, but I see once in awhile that they really do. Also must've gotten picked up on someone's content curator on the 1st, that spike the other day was a surprise post from the past that had nothing to do with the auto hitting, and surges continued through the day to one particular post. Since actual posting had gone completely dead during that time, I can't take any personal credit for that at all, so thank you to whoever.

I'm doing my best not to fall into the "I'm missing Syfy's  Sharknado Week with the Snarkalecs live tweeting" abyss, but last night I dove into the #ToxicShark feed for a few minutes and absolutely loved it. I miss that so bad. Sharknado 5: Global Swarming airs this coming Sunday night, and I. WILL. BE. THERE. I still think the Sharknado franchise is the most brilliant all-inclusive contract collection ever conceived. Check out Sharknado: Know Your Meme.


Meanwhile, not quite keeping up live with GoT and several other shows, catching up when we can.

I've gotta mention that I finally caught a possible Stan Lee nod on Doc McStuffins. In one particular special hour-long episode titled Welcome to McStuffinsville, we learn that Grandma shares in Doc's secret and gives her a 'toysponder' disguised as a bandaid that transports them to a world of toys, and Doc is promoted to head of the toy world hospital. Along the way, there is a broken toy named Stanley who plots to break lots of toys in order to make new friends that will have to hang out with him. At one point a giant magnet is turned on, entrapping toys containing metal, and Stuffy turns to him saying, "Not cool at all! Stanley, you don't have to do this!", and Stanley replies, "I do, Stuffy. I do." I've seen that ep a few times because it's in Bunny's top ten, and today I happened to be looking away from the screen when that line came through, and I heard it- "Stan Lee, you don't have to do this!" and immediately flashed back on all the cool evil villain scenes, and everything about Stanley clicked perfectly into Stan Lee's superhero wisdom and how villains originate. The scene was absolutely perfect, and if you're a Marvel fan, just *wow*. I loved it. Oh, look, I found it on youtube. See if you think it sounds like Stuffy says "Stan Lee" at that spot, about a minute into this.


My brain is on Hyper Active right now, so I'm slinging thru some new uploads.


And some old ones.


Those of you who envisioned me sitting here buried in youtube, I've jumped up from this chair 8 times since I started this post, and paused each of the vids at least 5 times. Live blogging. I'm not sure how Sunday evening will go, but I've announced to my family that I'll be camped in the livingroom with my tech rolling thru live tweet feeds that will not stop for anything, and I imagine I provoked every Loki in the multiverse just saying that. That means any and all of the following list could happen during my attempt to focus on something I enjoy for 2 hours straight-

• death (srsly, how many times has someone in my vicinity DIED {or nearly died} right after I actually announced something, and y'all know I've got the blogs to prove it)
• dismemberment (hey, if a chainsaw accident can happen within an eighth mile of me on Father's Day, anything can happen)
• epic natural disaster (how many times has Missouri flooded this year?)
• epic tech fail (I will be risking a 4 year old {and other adults} walking by with liquids that hopefully have tightly sealed lids on them)
• epic facepalm (drama never stops, and if ANYONE jolts my family into sadness in the middle of my joy {looking at YOU, ex idiot}, I will def make you famous)
• various and sundry odds and ends just simply going wrong, because that's what the cosmos DOES

During that list I completely stopped for something else and then got up 2 more times. Start placing your bets on whether I actually get to live tweet Sharknado 5. 😁

I need to make Sunday a party day. I'll hafta think of some fun food.

I'm thinking chocolate pie with an ocean meringue. I may not get much more creative than that if I keep sidetracking into other stuff.

Most of all, I miss live tweeting my fave TV doctor who, by the way, actually has a medical degree. Wild veer down a youtube path there. See ya.

dragons are not shy

One of those bring a sandwich kind of posts.

There is a very big difference between shyness and reticence. I'm not at all shy. I am so obnoxiously forward that I embarrass people. I myself don't embarrass easily because I'm acutely unaware in the first place. (Everyone who knows me in real life is vigorously nodding.)

Reticence is "a lack of willingness or desire to do or accept something" according to Merriam-Webster. If I am reticent about something like joining in a convo or going somewhere with a group, it has a lot more to do with being able to see a long list of disastrous consequences from blown off misunderstandings and me becoming agitated, if not severely pissed (making whatever problems arise much worse since I'm not good at real time feels), and has absolutely nothing to do with anything shyness is automatically connected to. Shyness is about being too aware of peers and an inward difficulty with handling one's own feels about other people's possible feels, maybe even a sort of dread. The only thing I dread is coming to my senses with bloody skin in my mouth. I'll believe I'm simply explaining something and the recipient will feel shredded and never be friends with me again.

Over the last 5 years since I've come back out public, I've been invited to several introvert groups and lumped into the 'shy' thing multiple times, based solely on minimal observations, leaps to conclusions, and shortcut explanations. I know it's difficult for some to understand that jumping to a word like 'shy' as a shortcut for 'extremely reticent about commitment to interaction that I know could turn sour with me as the bad guy' makes me kinda crabby because it automatically denotes a whole slew of behaviorisms not like me at all, but there we go, for lack of better verbiage in a quick way, what the hell, I'm shy. 😠

The truth is that I am a stupid person. Really stupid. And I'm not shy at all about owning this. In fact, I think it's crucial to understanding why I'm NOT shy. My social intelligence quotient (the capability to effectively navigate and negotiate complex social relationships and environments), called an SQ, is so bad that I constantly misinterpret not just social signals, but everything being said in the actual words because typical humans don't use words logically but emotionally. Most people have an inbuilt translator that interprets all the incoming into how one should behave in response. Basically, a bunch of happy bubbly people on a road trip will have gone silent long before they've dropped me off, and I usually won't have a clue why.

As far as I can tell, it begins with me not behaving properly, and they receive the wrong signals from me. If I'm not bubbling along with a bubbly group, they automatically think something is wrong. If I'm being quiet, someone might think I don't like them or I'm not having a good time. If a brave soul tries to interpret FOR ME to the group without having any kind of real clue, I'll become hostile without even realizing it, and I've been told I even scare people, which confused me for years because I've heard this even when I didn't feel angry or raise my voice in any way. I think it's because I can twist blunt truth through emotional guts like a hot knife through butter and completely miss the empathy part while I'm doing it. It usually hits me a few days later and I quietly die in a corner all alone facepalming, because by then it's usually long beyond repair.

This is my point of view on how humans see things. Apologies to the friend I'm using as an example, but it's spot on. A dog can be really cute tilting its head and looking at you funny. Personally, I don't see 'cute' when I look at animals. I grew up with animals and can read them very well. So a person sent me a pic one day of a dog and was all awww, and I was like are you sure the dog is feeling ok? And sure enough, within the hour the dog puked big time. Why I was able to get that from a picture, and a person living with the dog couldn't see it?

If humans can misinterpret a pet, they can certainly misinterpret me. A glance at a person doesn't mean anything unless you really know that person. You cannot tell by looking at someone or by how they're behaving whether they are suffering something inside that you can't see. I worked retail for years, and many people go shopping to relieve stress. You never know when a person is hiding fear of a dental appointment, or sadness and dread about an upcoming funeral, maybe even just lost a baby, and when they snap at you in a check out or return line, you can't assume they are always hateful and mean like that. Well, you can, you can assume all the shallow you want.

Deep down we are all hiding something. When I am surrounded by bubbly people, I don't for one second believe they are happy just because they are bubbly. I don't believe they aren't shy just because they're behaving like they're not. I believe the quickness to judge the outer cover is an automatic defense mechanism that most people don't even realize they are utilizing to justify their own points of view on how they think something in the world around them should be. Many people behave in response to perceived peer pressure, real or imagined, and go along with the bubbly bit because they're supposed to. I don't think most people are even cognizant of this process, stepping into rhythm with others like that. I'm very aware of it because I don't seem to have the wherewithal to get into step in the first place.

I don't pretend well. I don't play 'happy' to an audience very well. I can't keep up the tone, the rhythm, and the banter and still keep up with the convo. That doesn't mean I'm not enjoying the convo. That doesn't mean I'm shy about talking. That only means I have a cognitive disability to juggle all the eggs in a social situation without dropping any. I could care less what someone thinks of this, and it doesn't hurt my feelings at all to be the autie on the fringe, but I cringe when I hear "she's shy". I especially hate when it backfires and full attention turns on me to oh don't be shy we won't hurt you. That has really happened. The irony is how close they come to a tiger claw in the ol' jugular when that happens.

If I quietly sit on the side of a convo, believe me, I am enjoying the people doing the talking. If I weren't, like if I were bored or not interested, I'd be gone really fast. I don't hang in there for chatter I'm not interested in. I actually miss a lot of chatter I *am* interested in because I can't keep up with all that. My incoming pile for 'talking' lasts about an hour, tops. After that, nothing makes sense any more because my real time starts lagging and skipping. When that starts happening, I tend to drop off because it doesn't make sense trying to be polite going drrrdrrr in my brain. That's not a reflection on the people doing the talking at all. That's my brain.

Yes, I do feel like I miss a lot. Yes, sometimes I do wish I could jump in and keep up. Yes, once in awhile I feel a little sorry for myself. But you know what? I have a sweet advantage over a lot of chatty people. I remember what I've audio processed for a very long time. It's like how I can remember something I've seen on twitter years ago and find the timestamp. I said something to someone just this week about such and such, and they'd already forgotten that only 2 days before they'd said such and such, and suddenly it was almost a weird insult coming out of my mouth because they had no context and thought I was being snotty instead of adding to something funny after the fact.

I wouldn't trade that kind of memory for any amount of bubbly happy. I like that I remember the people I listen to, and I like that I can see discomfort behind staying in step with social pressure. The empathy I've learned has come from the outside like this, and sometimes I can tell when someone might need to puke and keeps smiling anyway and no one else ever picks up on it. I may not be able to pretend, and I may not be able to keep up, but I'm human too, and I know there's a lot more underneath words flying over my head and behind cute faces looking at me.

Wild subject change, but one I deal with daily and so I think about this a LOT. Time passes, people forget, I don't feel time passing right, I don't forget...

I'm blocking out a little background chaos at the moment, getting through this in snatches as I can. 2+M views can't be wrong.

ixnay on the elfsay imstay

Stuff happened this week.

click for the thread

Wonder if that would happen a lot more if I'd boost this post. I've never boosted a post on Facebook, but I probably will once the book comes out. One of these will click to the twitter link, which already has over 400 impressions in less than 12 hours, the other will click to its new Autisable home.

And I really don't know if that had anything to do with waking up to a Google Alert that Janika Banks has been added to a German white pages listing on Denmark internet.

This is translated.

And I wanted to see if that's a real thing, and sure enough, comes up on page 3 in a Google search for Janika Banks. Brand new out of the bag.

A couple of years ago someone told me they were going to write up my Wikipedia page, and I laughed and said sure, go ahead. No one really has yet, but for some reason I've either been auto-boosted into legitimate search or manually entered by someone on a job or weirdly obsessed. I'm going with auto boost for now. There are so many automated info pages out there I could claim (traity was dumb, I had it for awhile and let it go), but that's way too much work.

Like I told a friend privately a few days ago- "If I don't get my crap done by end of summer, I'm an idiot. My launch platform has never been more visible."

So I get a porn boost right on top of #netneutrality, crack me up, and then I get a major Google Alert on top of my self-stim post. Never in any parallel dimension did I wildly dream of sex selling anything about Janika Banks. Wow.

:edit: Space Cowboy suggests putting pretty girls in vids to sell merch. Pretty sure some of us are in it for the actual music, so here you go.

Also, this is a thing. I have lifetime potential earnings of $33, crack me up. Bet that would change real quick if I could get some of my friends talking with me about Lexx and stuff. Anyway, you can get into this and click around, kinda fun checking out other channels. Very handy.

see what I did there

Everything I'm doing in public online is normalizing mental health stigmas.

If you are an avid reader of Pinky blog and possibly even super lurkers continuing from previous blogs, you probably already get this.

If you are new to Pinky blog and it kinda looks all over the map and wtf, I am openly sharing what the inside of my head is like. This includes things that most people would never dream of sharing because they fear ridicule, haters mocking them, and judgment from loved ones and friends.

I'm not just writing words about it.

I'm not just posting memes and youtubes and resharing other people's words.

I'm not just compiling analysis and assessments and pov and judgments based on a personal agenda, i.e. asplaining to 'normals' what it's like being whatever dx they're curious about.

I am a complicated mashup of several dxs that include physical and mental disorders. Basically, I'm an autie spoonie depression blogger with some atypical quirks for autie spoonie depression bloggers. I grew up with questionably mentally stable parents (I'm putting this kindly, I hope), with religious culture clash, with social culture clash because of where I lived, with added traumas from my childhood lifestyle and a friend being murdered in college, with multiple injuries from a nasty car accident, with a first marriage to a very mentally ill pedophile, and with loads and loads of other things that are part of my life because family and friends have their own stuff, too.

The reason I'm sharing this way is because I realized a few years ago that simply writing out all the words that I think is explaining things actually epic fails to successfully reach the general public at large. Simply talking about autism barely even touches all that, and I'm pretty sure that is where we're all missing the boat conveying autism experience to the general public. I use my autism as a survival mechanism, and it seems to be working very well, although, yes, I have outstanding fails in my personal history.

I'm watching auties all over the world doing that now, writing millions and billions of words explaining.

I think we've said it. It's all out there now.

Now it's time to sift your personal stuff down to demonstrating. Show the world what is really in your heads. Don't just explain it. Don't stifle it all into "I'm autistic". Turn it into "I'm human."

I've said this many times. We all have something. Some of us live with multiple somethings. No one escapes this. Every single one of us on this planet is hiding a stigma of some kind, is living with something hard that goes against mainstream grain, is dealing with life and death and allthethings, and is going to die. Other people blaming conditions as being problematic things to solve is our mission- Change the world so that stops. Change that pov into loving acceptance. None of us actually asked to be here, none of us controls what we are born into, and I'm pretty sure the whole point of that is for us to make it to our final deathbed leveled up into wise wizard changing the world with miracles of attitude.

We are here to do something, be someone.

Don't dream it. Be it.

That came from a wise crazy person in a TV movie (I've never seen the play) and was originally ripped from a magazine. trivia

Now, go blog like someone's life depends on it. Lotta really sad and anxious people out there looking for ways to stay here and not opt out of life. We are the light shining in the dark for each other in a great big web world connecting all our brains now. We can do this.

When you're autie with multiple dxs

This is something I've been bringing up for a long time, just not in these words.
Depersonalization Disorder: An out of body experience

All the stuff in that article has consumed me much of my life. I've written at length on reality and perception, and have been openly being extra careful and letting people know when things aren't feeling 'real'. Friends on twitter may or may not be aware of this, depending on how often they might link over to Pinky blog, but that article kinda condenses things into a nutshell for me. This bit especially- I can tick every single one of these in this list.

What Causes Depersonalisation Disorder?

What causes depersonalisation disorder is not fully understood, but it is thought that it is linked to a chemical imbalance in the neurotransmitters of the brain. This imbalance may make the brain vulnerable to depersonalisation disorder when in states of extreme stress.

According to the Mayo Clinic, causes of depersonalisation disorder may include:

• Childhood trauma such as witnessing domestic violence or being abused
• Growing up with a significantly impaired parent, such as by mental illness
• Suicide or unexpected death of a loved one
• Severe stress such as relationship, financial or work-related pressures
• Severe trauma such as a car accident

I'm noticing it's much worse lately, so it's time for #transparency while I have a little time to share. I usually handle stuff on delay because of aspienado shutdowns, where I turn into Pinky Robot and don't have to feel all the stuff going on around me. Lately, though, I'm having to crunch some of that processing through a little faster as multiple deaths are rolling out and I feel oddly situated as a major player that's mostly not really inner circle, so I can't exactly be a wall flower and let it float over me, or float over it, or whatever floating usually takes place, but still vitally connected in sometimes crucial ways.

The best way I can describe the time jags are like when I'm playing on server and there is a bit of lag and my character gets jerked back a couple of steps and has to break a few blocks over again, or the lag might even spam a little, and the blocks blink in and out of existence no matter what I try to continue to do. If the lag gets bad enough, I time out and have to relog, which is what shutdown feels like. I don't often feel like I'm in 'real time' with other people, and have spent a frustrating lifetime figuring out this is what's really going on in my brain and that it's not normal. I'm so used to it that I take it for granted, and I've only really started talking about it the last few months. I mean, I shared the big reality break from 2012 that was a result of a supervised double hormone crash off meds that took about 3 months, but that went beyond my kind of normal lag/jag stuff. I'm not having a med or pain crisis to the point of causing this again, but emotionally *bam* I'm getting knocked off track a bit more than usual and it's really catching my attention lately.

I am still struggling to keep broken bits of timelines in some kind of order around certain parts of my life. I'm still attempting to reconstruct through old bits of papers, like my college class schedules, or a list of work experience I kept around for resumes that included to-from dates, or even like the time my oldest daughter suggested I look in the toilet for the year I got married because we built the house that year and toilets are dated- no wonder I thrive on social media timestamps. I can't blame the time jags on anything specific, because my brain is wonderfully adept at some things, but time itself slips out of my grasp. Y'all know I get my days, weeks, and even months mixed up. Well, it's kinda worse than usual this year.

So this weekend has been really tough, some of it was very public because we lost a friend but a lot of my personal stuff wasn't, and today should have been a typical epic fail mode where I forget stuff and stumble my way through, but it never happened. No, today was brilliant, I got all the things done, and I handled everything beautifully. But I wasn't 'me'. At least not the usual me. The me from the old days took over, the me that got me through high school and part of college, the me that showed back up in a new morph and got me through the 5 grueling dark years before I pulled myself back together with Pinky.

I knew as I was pulling out of the driveway this morning that she was back. I was cognizant the whole time and I (the 'me' who is typing this) pretty much sat back and let it all happen. I didn't fight for control, in fact, I was relieved and grateful. I hadn't seen that side of me, to use a phrase, take over like that in a long time. The me who survives no matter what.

She has a name. I very rarely ever share it. The morph part has a very public name. I don't often use it, either. Together they are very strong, and I say they because I didn't feel like I contributed to that strength. Normally we all fit together and we are 'I', but today, I definitely switched out for awhile.

I begged my mom to take me to a psychiatrist when I was in high school. In college I walked into campus counseling and asked to be tested, because I told them I felt like I was crazy. I have been assured a number of times by several professionals that I'm nowhere near crazy (I passed an MMPI just fine in college) and that I'm handling life rather well. Inside I feel like a messy wreck, and I don't feel like I'm handling anything well at all. My current psychiatrist mentioned I'm feeling dissonance between what is real and what I feel is real. It goes a little beyond the kind of self flagellation that people do when they're down on themselves, but the weird thing is I don't do that. I have never done that. That's where the narcissism has come in really handy. I don't think I'm all that and a bag of chips, but I do think I'm an important person in people's lives, and I believe my being here on this planet is important and supposed to change things, but that only works out if I get off my butt and actually do stuff that makes a difference, so it's really rare for me to fall into a self pity pit.

I believe we are ALL important and here to change things.

I believe it's ok to believe this, and I'm pretty sure that's what's kept me going. Reality is what I make it, and the reality I create around me is my 'real'. It may not always mesh with other people's 'real', but at least I can be part of other people's lives.

Pinky has been wrestling all the snakes back into the peanut can, but I don't think that's going to happen now. Claudia burst forth today, bringing Jacky with her, and dayam if stuff didn't GET DONE. I would wish I could be like that all the time, except when I'm in Claudia mode, I'm usually pissed and don't give a f* about whatever, and I'm kinda tough for people to take like that. Jacky brings an undercurrent of dark emo med addict withdrawal kind of personality, and together they kicked ass today and told me not to worry about it.

That was my 'real'. I didn't fantasize, I didn't make up internal dialogues, I didn't think about it, I just sat back for awhile working on word stuff like I love doing. And now this is me practicing for getting thoughts organized before the book goes out. Lotta people out there analyzing autie stuff half to death, and I am soooo way past omg I'm autistic. Let's apply it to #allthethings now, shall we? And ppl who read my stuff, don't rip this off and run with it on your own stuff asplaining it all out for the noobs like you own it. Own your own stuff. This is my stuff. Everyone needs to get on personalizing their stuff. Really tired of this 'we' crap. (I changed that last word, Claudia was trying to take over.)

I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. -Kipling. My tagline since 2007. Bluejacky: Existential Aspie

gogogo

End of long week nearly achieved.

I wish my parents had had meme humor years ago. This clicks to an excellent post by a cool parent.

I'm currently barely functioning and about to slide into rocket fuel. Careful with this one, if you click you'll get sucked into pinterest and never come back.

Nearly to the end of my physical therapy extension, and I woke up in such a mid back left rib shoulder blade spasm that I had to arch over chairs and the sink and other crazy contortions before I could even lift the coffee to pour a cup. Knocked a painting off a wall, broke right out of the frame. Wish I could say my super klutz outfit is in the wash, but apparently I slept in it. I don't know what it is about physical therapy that gets everyone so excited in there (all my little cells), but this is my per usual, needing a break from PT. Wouldn't it be cool if we could actually see other people's pain like this? I bet we'd be real surprised what people all around us live with and never say a word. Click for a much more organized fibro blog than mine.

Ok, first cup down, second cup and then a shower and then gogogo out my door to a stack of stuff. I can do this.

Since @bonenado is off today and chauffeuring me around, I'll be free to space out and think about what else I want to do in Mo Creatures. The weekend is coming, and I've been piling up the enchanted armors getting ready for the big melees while my clan has been stuck at work irl.

Pinky doesn't like autism awareness

Bluejacky wants to say a few words- 

These are my thoughts on Autism Speaks thinking they stand up for autism, and all the parents who think they have disabled and ruined children on their hands. I'm going to skip straight to the heart of what the emotional hangup is about.

Crying isn't the bad part. It's when they get quiet that's bad. We think it's good because we finally get relief from noise, but kids are supposed to cry out when they're in danger or uncomfortable or frightened. Teaching them to shut up when they most need protection or solace or understanding and comfort isn't any different from brainwashing adults to keep silent when they should most be speaking up. Children who go quiet isn't the answer to socialization and civilization.

Autie kids, while disruptive, can be the easiest kids in the world to shut up and shut down. They can easily be sexually taken advantage of because they learn very quickly to shut down on cue. I was not abused in this way, but I took loads of other tortures and abuses from people all around me dealing with social pressures, mental illnesses, and abusive situations themselves. Adults who want children to 'behave' and act 'normal' on cue need to take a good hard look at themselves and ask why it's so important to mold aberrant brain patterns into a standardized mold.

My generation (I'm the last of the baby boomers) has been fighting quid pro quo and assembly line humans since the mid 1900s, and the babies of our babies are growing up and not remembering or understanding how long, hard, and difficult that was. The freedoms and human dignity we have gained so far (and we're still a long way from the goal) are taken for granted now by the people who don't like having children who think and behave differently than they do. If we aren't careful, we will wind up on the cusp of flipping back into a militant society hellbent on standardization. Guys, my generation went through lobotomies. Your generation wants to wipe autism *out*. Is that any different from wanting to wipe a race of people off the planet?

The cure is kindness. The solution is embracing differences and variety as part of a holistic body and mind of souls.

The last great hurrah on this planet is up against filthied oceans, worldwide nuclear threats, and terrorists. I don't know about you all, but I think it's time y'all stepped aside and let us autistics get all over the problem solving. Because that's what we do. That's what our brains seem to be made for. And maybe, just maybe the reason a wave of us is washing over the planet right now is because this is our last chance to get things right before it all goes down the drain.

So you have a tough day/night, month, year with your kid. So life is hard. You might just have the next world leader or physicist on your hands. You might just be raising that person who figures out the problem with the education system, or at the very least, winds up being very useful in medical administration. You. Do. Not. Know. That. Your. Child. Is. Ruined. Do not decide that your child is a problem for you, because YOU ARE CHOOSING TO CREATE THAT IDEA.

We all want superheroes in our lives. Well, isn't that what parents ultimately are supposed to be? We are the ones who fight the fight and save the day for the helpless and weak. Making your child's life tougher when he/she is tiny just because that kid isn't what you expected won't help at all.

I know this is vague and agitating and you think I don't understand your special circumstances. What if you could hear what your child is thinking 30 or 40 years from now? What if you could jump forward in time and see how your kid turned out? Because I am that kid. I was a difficult child, and that's putting it pretty mildly. I don't recall a day of my entire childhood where I felt content and happy. Not one day. Not a single day. Because there wasn't anything I could do, even when I tried, to live up to the expectations around me. Because I lived with, every single day, the idea that there was something horribly wrong with me. Because every day I believed my parents didn't love me at all, and since that fed into a cycle of misinterpretations and drastic misunderstandings, they had no idea I even cared.

I can't be standardized. I'm one of those kids that could never stay out of trouble until I learned to simply just shut up and don't move around other people. That took a long time. And then it took an even longer time to learn how to start really talking to people again, how to trust someone to care, how to believe they actually really cared. Why? Because my life was such an epic fail at being human. Every single day of my childhood I was reminded that I wasn't doing something right, I wasn't thinking right, I wasn't behaving right, and I didn't look right. I spent an entire childhood stuffing down how ugly I felt all the time, how much I believed everyone hated me, and how angry and hurt I felt for years and years and years.

The way you 'stand up for' your autistic kid makes a huge difference. You wanna fix all these kids? Go. to. hell. If you can't love your child simply just to love it, the way people love dogs and cats no matter how messed up or ugly they are or how awful they behave, then you suck and deserve a child that at the very least doesn't just cave into playing dress up and dolly for you, smiling on cue to make you feel good, saying I love you to make you feel worth something. If that is why you feel like your child is ruined, maybe you need to take a long look inside your heart.

I understand special needs kids do need special considerations, and that this can be very exhausting for parents. I am an autistic person who raised a full blown ADHD step child with severe insomnia, audio processing problems, compulsive behaviors, and turns out to be the very model of work ethic and model parent, so chew on that one. Total opposite of me as a child and you know what? It was hard, but I've never regretted her existence in my life. I saw a tiny lonely person who kept getting in trouble and I stepped up as her human shield. I couldn't help it after the way I grew up.

I loathe that we feel the need to have awareness months. I think we need to have a humans need love in general awareness month. How about a 'mindfully kind' day where we focus on all the ways we rush past each other all pissed off. You wanna cure autism? Cure yourselves first.

Autisable profile

This is my personal intro on my activity wall at Autisable.com. For newer autie bloggers coming out now, I go back to 2008 as Bluejacky and have been autie, spoonie, and depression blogging for nearly ten years. And scifi and other entertainment commentating. Lots of that, going back to 2004, actually. I go back to 1994 in internet fandoms. Anyway, if you are interested in autie blogging, whether on spectrum yourself or someone you know or whatevs, Autisable is pretty awesome and we'd love for you to join.

Hello =)

For ppl who don't yet follow me anywhere, I'm a huge scifi & Sherlock fan, and I keep up fairly well with the real time breaking news from the Sherlock/DoctorStrange/Benedict fandom in real time on twitter, plus live tweet Syfy, TWD, and other shows with the #Snarkalecs, and I've got Lexx groups and pages and a fan blog that's been translated into several languages by other fans. I lightly stay in touch with a lot of people who are really spread out, which is ideal for me since I don't do deeper friendship groups well. My friends on twitter who survived the Pond of Death era are really solid, even though I never got back on social media to make friends. Took awhile, but I think I've about found my balance on the webs.

I've made it pretty clear in several places that I don't respond to "hi" or "how's it going" prompts, nothing personal. Hard experience has taught me that vague chatter usually comes with some kind of agenda that diverts my focus, and that usually winds up in what I call exploding bridges. No more blowing up bridges, which means I don't respond to chain yanking. Aspienado is not a doll with a string for personal entertainment, although I still fall for it all the time because Pinky Robot has an automatic response and comply program. I'm far too congenial until I realize I'm a pet on a leash, and then I bite. Nine years with a psychologist is helping me understand why I repeat this pattern over and over. It's called being 'easily led'. I have a court appointed payee based on glitchy cognitive documentation. I'm high IQ and unreliable for time orientation and following directions. If I were Star Fleet mapping planets, I'd be the one who'd stay in the same uniform for 48 hours straight and show up in the wrong conference room, but my report would be immaculately detailed.

While others carefully walk the line of self discovery either with the #actuallyautistic tag or vicariously through their kids, I'm full blown diagnosed aspienado and don't apologize for who I am. I am the bull in the china shop in an eyeblink even when I'm trying my best to behave, and the most challenging thing I've learned on the webs from PR is 'don't respond'. I don't realize I accidentally shred people mowing them over, and I very obviously cannot shut up when I get started, even though I am very quiet in real life and read, research, and study prodigiously. I am driven like an addict toward information input and processing (I'm a compulsive reader, and yes, that is a real thing), and a friend of mine nailed it asking me if I'm a robot. Yes, I am Pinky Robot, learning to integrate all my split web personalities into a psychologically healthy whole.

I'm also YabloVH on the Mo Creatures minecraft multiplayer server, so if you love minecraft, I do, too. =)

I'm not into negativity or any kind of side taking. I used to eat people for sport or think it a challenge to asplain stuffs, now I think there are better things in life I can be doing. I'm very thankful for Joel and Autisable being there for my first step into public sharing the real stuff in my head, and I've been practicing being public on Pinky blog so I don't blow the internet up and then hide in my cave. I'm not into comments, commentary, praise, stick poking, or general "Happy whatever-day-of-the-week-this-is", but I've found my niche in fandoms and memes, and no one will ever be able to pry my brain tentacles out of that crazy abyss.

My goals are simple: Stay public no matter what, and keep sharing my journey integrating into a more socially functional and psychologically healthy person so that I can be good for other people, and especially help despairing parents from the other end- I am your child all grown up now, and I've even had my own kids. It took me a long time to connect all my dots so I could see the bigger picture, but I understand now my mom didn't get what she needed from me, and even though it's too late for her to see me now, I can still encourage other parents who are still getting through the hard stuff with their kids. I was a screamer who got motion sick every single time I was in a car and screwed up every holiday visit with relatives and argued about jots and tittles and shut down everyone trying their hardest to give me a hug. Hi, I am aspienado, and I know now that I love my mother very very VERY much. Please know your kids will get there, many of them probably a lot faster than I did.

And now I'm going to run off and forget to come back here for awhile, because that's what I do.

<3 <3 <3

generations of oddizm

In case some of you think I go straight to minecraft nowadays when I wake up, this morning my first laptop venture was looking up Dezi Arnaz, Jr, jumping over to Dean Paul Martin, and then on to Olivia Hussey. The whole Lucy thing happened before I was born, and for some reason, very first thing this morning I wondered whether Little Ricky (from the reruns I saw) was really their real life kid or a gimmick for the show. I knew he was Desi's kid. And I've been noticing 'old' music in Walmart this year, like The Four Seasons, which pretty much also goes back past my babyhood, so I grew up with their music. I'm near the tail end of the baby boomers. "Baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values." Some of my more recent discussions with my psychologist have been about being part of the sandwiched gen that bridges over from the older gens to the younger gens. Those of us caught in the middle pretty much flipped everything, and our society here in mainstream American has evolved from robotic patriotism (and all its accoutrements) to a big colorful mishmash of people and ideas and the hope that one day we'll all love and accept one another. I still don't see that happening without global enforcement of some kind, sadly.

So yeah, mind still blazing around, but I just don't take the time to write it out much any more.

Today is my kiddo's birthday. This is her at the same age her little boy is now.

I am diagnosed autism spectrum, pretty sure my dad is super autie, pretty sure my daughter is on spectrum, and her son definitely is. He qualifies for social integration and speech therapies (he goes to pre-pre-K) and is part of ongoing research with a doctor documenting nutritional impact on autism spectrum in babies, toddlers, and kids. I think the big idea is omega-3 boosting being a good synaptic catalyst in brain development. So far, so very good. I think she's a way better mommy than I was, although she insists I was a good mommy, too. I never bonded with my mom, and the epic fail she felt was very sad, especially without any moral support from society and family at large. My daughter super bonded with me, in spite of me seeming to lack emotional instinct (I know what is *right* and stick to it, but the feels just weren't that prevelent), and she is like super mom with her kiddo in my eyes. She has so many cool ideas and ways of doing things that didn't even dawn on me. I can see now my mom tried and even went extra lengths, so she was on the right track, just in the wrong time period for acceptance and support as a parent of autism spectrum. I see a lot of parents on medias bemoaning their bad fortune having autie kids, and I just wanna say at least you have a much more positive support system around you now. My kiddo loves her kiddo just the way he is, I loved her just the way she was, and I personally think that is the key to everything in the whole world. Look around you at all the things. When you see sadness, it all goes back to not being loved and accepted for who we are, in every country, every religion, every skin color, every body type, every brain. If we want the sadness in the world to change, it starts with us allowing and embracing differences around us, not compelling others to conform to ideas in our heads, and standing up for each others' dignity and right to be here on this planet.