Anyone else working off 4 different lists in an effort to work as little as possible on Turkey Day? Elaborate preparedness is the goal. I've got 1-menu, 2- shopping list, 3- chores, and 4- a timeline of all that to keep me on track.
In a little jaunt off into randomness, I think my perfect aroma candle or wax scent combo would be white cedar and clove. Both are hard to find, and as far as I know, no one's ever put the two together. Someone create that for me forthwith.
THAT'S RIGHT
Celebrate with me!
I keep running into debates on whether Sherlock misdiagnosed himself because sociopathy and autism spectrum (John mentions aspergers in Hound) are kinda sorta supposed to be mutually exclusive. Basically, sociopaths are really good at social manipulation, aspies suck at it.
Mary can tell right away that Sherlock doesn't 'get' human nature, and Sherlock readily admits to it. However, that doesn't mean Sherlock can't study it and use it. He misjudges John, but he doesn't misjudge criminals. He devotes his human studies to criminals and psychopaths.
I grew up not caring about other people's feelings, and my psychologist has interrogated me a few times on narcissistic attitudes and exhibitionist behaviors I've had all my life (and he barely knows the half, even after nearly 8 years). I don't believe that both being on the autism spectrum and being a sociopath are mutually exclusive at all, and I'd go further and suggest that aspergers can enhance sociopathic tendencies. Sociopathy, for all intents and purposes, seems to be a personality adaptation to something, autism spectrum is basically just there to begin with.
The real question is How to Tell a Sociopath from a Psychopath, both of which fall under personality disorders. Autism is not a personality disorder, even though it's clearly a social deficit. A personality disorder is considered a mental illness (a mental illness develops over time), aspergers and autism spectrum are not (they are like a hard drive anomaly). I am aspie and I share some things in common with sociopathy, such as "A failure to feel remorse or guilt", but not every aspie is like that. Some aspies have very deep feelings. Mine were trained out of me, and I became hard. This is something that comes up with my psychologist quite a lot. I feel that if my path in life had been different, I could have kept going right into sociopathy, and that is what I struggle with now, that I didn't. A person doesn't just choose not to be a sociopath, but a person can recognize it in themselves and work around it. I see Sherlock doing that.
Sociopaths tend to be nervous and easily agitated. They are volatile and prone to emotional outbursts, including fits of rage. They are likely to be uneducated and live on the fringes of society, unable to hold down a steady job or stay in one place for very long. It is difficult but not impossible for sociopaths to form attachments with others. Many sociopaths are able to form an attachment to a particular individual or group, although they have no regard for society in general or its rules. In the eyes of others, sociopaths will appear to be very disturbed. Any crimes committed by a sociopath, including murder, will tend to be haphazard, disorganized and spontaneous rather than planned.
Psychopaths, on the other hand, are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.
The only thing I see at first glance keeping me out of the psychopath diagnosis is that I fail in the charming personality department, I suck at manipulating people because I fail to notice them most of the time, and I can feel emotions, although for a long time I cut them off and have had to learn how to process through them in a sort of time lag. I rarely react immediately to something with how I really feel because I don't realize I'm feeling it until sometimes several days later. It took me years to learn empathy. I do have an agenda, though, and I am almost frighteningly patient, but since I run several tracks at once, I think very few people even suspect it.
I see a bit of debate over whether Sherlock is a true sociopath, and I say sure, why not. I'm on the spectrum, and I know that one diagnosis is not necessarily mutually exclusive of another. A person can show signs of several disorders. Autism used to be diagnosed as schizophrenia quite a bit in the past, and they are two very different things, although, again, not mutually exclusive if an autistic develops schizophrenia. That would be like glitchy hardware trying to use glitchy software. A teacher I had during one of my masters programs spent 30 years assessing children, and he told me if he hadn't met me in person and had only seen the practice assessments we were doing on each other, he'd have pegged me for schizophrenic, but I'm not at all. Even professionals can't tell at a glance sometimes what is really going on with a person.
I can debate the whole nature vs nurture thing till we're all blue. I have a sociology degree and I'm quite fond of pointing out flaws in standard constructs trying to pin down exactly what's wrong with everybody, because anyone can be tagged as mental if you change the angle you're seeing them from. Freud had an unusual obsession with sexuality, does anyone ever question that? I am asexual and I am considered the aberrant one in society. I'm surrounded by people obsessed with all kinds of sex, and I'm the one who's weird. I love seeing things through social psychological lenses. If a sane person grows up in a crazy family, the sane person is the one seen as crazy by the group, and might even feel crazy for not being able to fit in.
Sherlock chooses to stop heinous crimes because it's challenging. He's on the edge all the time, even elaborately planned Magnussen's murder (and called it 'Christmas'), and yet he's on the side of the angels, isn't he? And still someone pops up on the webs and says Oh, he's not a sociopath because typical behaviors are thisthisthis because a textbook says so.
I used to argue with other parents in meetings that kids with ADHD are beneficial to society, since 10% or more of a genetic population is considered a survival trait in anthropology and other studies, and they'd get all upset because they wanted disability money to make up for their exasperations over having children that aren't easy to raise. They didn't like me for sticking up for their kids being normal human beings in general, all things considered. My first grade teacher begged my parents to get me to a psychiatrist (they never did), so I must have obviously stood out, and yet here I am, pretty normal by most standards. And I'm really glad my parents never took me, because back then aspie kids were getting misdiagnosed like crazy. That was before the spectrum thing became fashionable. I read a story of one autie boy being institutionalized and medically tortured after a misdiagnosis and felt horrified. Here are my thoughts on that one. the stupid vs. the catatonic Let's see how big of a mistake that one was. New Study Confirms Electroshock (ECT) Causes Brain Damage
We all fit somewhere on that bell curve, but we have our own subsets of bell curves inside the big one, our own variations on 'normal' within our atypical parameters. It's silly, I think, to debate the finer details over someone's diagnosis as presented if we don't know the whole person. I've seen two different self proclaimed psychiatrists argue online that Sherlock isn't a sociopath. Well, people have told me to my face I'm not autism spectrum, either, based on very tiny bits of observation that don't click into nice little categories. A sociopath can love a friend. Also, I'd love to see further analysis on hints of how the boys were raised, because Mama Holmes isn't exactly the typical housewife herself. I'm a big believer in genetic blueprints.
And, I daresay, everyone fails to diagnose John. They blow him off with PTSD and that's about it. He's more messed up than Sherlock and doing his best to cover it up with rules. He comes across as 'ok' but we all know he's not because he snaps so fast and is just as ready to rumble as anyone, even though he knows better. He's less attached to family than Sherlock is, can't keep a girlfriend until he meets Mary, and is just as brilliant and bossy as Sherlock. Would Sherlock have asked him along if he didn't see those qualities in John? I really doubt it.
The one I wanna know more about is Mike Stamford... He's good, and Sherlock totally trusted him with this huge change in his life.
Ok, back to Turkey Day countdown. Tomorrow I start the food pre-prep. I need to run in for one last grocery trip today because we ran out of milk.
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.
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
So auties freaking out about MIT, didn't hear you outcrying when China purposely created autistic monkeys to inflict experimentation on. I've been saying for years that we're on the brink of the nastiest form of human genocide we've ever seen. I've stopped freaking out. Also, all you Trump haters so obsessed with the guy that you're saturating everyone around you with pix of his face- ever thought that you're part of the indoctrination process? Really tired of miles of his face in my feeds.
Here's the thing. When you obsess about something, anything, your brain works overtime on something you fear or loathe, and that prevents you from truly enjoying something else. It's one thing to be "concerned", it's another to be so obsessed that your feeds are crammed with whatever, or that you even create artwork around it. *wow*
I used to worry that I was the messed up one. I'm fine. Some of the rest of you probably need to look into psychoneuroimmunology and mindfulness.
Moving on. Reaching a level of relief as I'm nearing the original dose goal. The nasty withdrawal headaches seem to be lessening, I'm kind of starting to sleep again, and I actually held it together going into town yesterday for an equipment update and a lengthy grocery list.
"To me, neurodiversity is the idea that neurological differences like autism and ADHD are the result of normal, natural variation in the human genome. This represents new and fundamentally different way of looking at conditions that were traditionally pathologized; it’s a viewpoint that is not universally accepted though it is increasingly supported by science. That science suggests conditions like autism have a stable prevalence in human society as far back as we can measure. We are realizing that autism, ADHD, and other conditions emerge through a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental interaction; they are not the result of disease or injury."
This proponency started long before the autism witch hunt. I was shocked at the ADHD witch hunt decades ago. I couldn't believe how many parents could get so selfishly vicious over something so innocuous as children not being posable dolls, boiled down. I learned a long time ago in anthropology that 10% of ANY population is considered a normal part of distribution, and even necessary to the health of the whole.
There are people out there who want you to hate. They want you to fear and loathe. Why? Because they get money for it. The more freaking out and opinionating you do, the more monetizing someone else gets.
Zoom out and look at bigger pictures. Look at what is really going on. Fear and loathing is the most lucrative machinistic process on this planet, and every time you pass on your auto-fear and auto-loathe, you are doing their dirty work for them.
George Orwell didn't foresee how the proletarians would be used by social media.
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.
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.
"My idea of the perfect hell is for the person you are now to meet the person you could have been."
This pic clicks to a user profile on a game site. I was looking for something else and ran into it.
Pink and blue together is a big deal. It seems to exquisitely depict emotional clash. Once you become aware of it, you see it used a lot in all kinds of artwork that way.
Pink and blue together is also very peaceful and mysterious, especially when you see it in photographs or artwork of the sky and space.
I guess it's statistically my turn for crap delivery, last 2 packages delivered (one UPS, one USPS) from two different national warehouses arrived not just damaged but one shattered like it fell off a high rise building and the other snapped in half like it had been run over in someone's driveway. Since a pair of fashion sunglasses made it here all the way from Shanghai in great shape without any extra special protection, I guess I'm getting my package abuse quota out of the way, which means holidays will be awesome this year. Last Christmas, a box I sent out got delivered to the wrong house and wasn't recovered until that family got back from holiday vacation. I'm actually ok with the damages, because the Soap DVDs inside the completely broken case are somehow just fine, and I had no idea that cool seashell toilet seat (scroll way down) would break that easily, and we've got a 3 year old showing up around here slamming the lids around. If that had happened instead of in transit, I wouldn't have been able to go after a refund.
For someone who spiked a 102 temp over the weekend and broke out into blisters (doctor verified hand-foot-mouth), Bunny was a nonstop pistol yesterday, so it was like being back on any kind of service job on a super busy day where you skip breaks and even lunch for 6 hours straight, and then Papa came home half a day and they went outside for an hour and came in worn out, and then sudden blissful silence when a nap finally took her hostage. Most of my day was like this.
No idea yet if daycare will be a thing today, so I can't help being up early just in case. My brain actually woke me up around 2 asking to be brined in coffee and I told it to shut up and tried to go back to sleep, but the *bing* was strong and now here we are at 3, letting coffee do magical things.
This is the first time something I've submitted has been officially scheduled.
Post #6257 "thank goodness there is an Autisable!" was scheduled ... It will be published on August 21, 2016 at 12:05 pm This action was taken on August 13, 2016 at 12:11 pm America/New_York
Originally published 5-22-09, linked back to it from twitter 12 days ago when Autisable finally went live again after server move and then host migration, and now to be officially vetted and republished on an (inter)nationally networked nonprofit community of thousands that has received 100K hits, if I'm remembering a tweet or FB status correctly. From their LinkedIn description-
Connecting the Autism Community, providing a place where people learn and discuss all issues surrounding the Autism Spectrum. Autism effects 1 in 54 people worldwide. Xanga.com launched Autisable.com in May of 2009. Autisable, LLC took over the site in July of 2016. If you are a writer and are syndicated on Autisable, feel free to add yourself as an Employee. However, please also include your syndicated blog on your account as a reference.
Don't think I'll be adding myself as an 'employee', but hopefully I'll get a couple more things submitted this year.
omg, sudden #coffeefail. I may hafta go lay back down for a few minutes. I need to be dressed and ready to head out around 5:30 if Bunny wakes up with a fever again, so I don't have much time to close my eyes. This song has been in my head the last 24 hours because Bunny. I've come to really appreciate the sparkle of high energy people since this is the second one now I'm helping get through tiny childhood.
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.
Only one of my friends ever gets this stuff.
This was fan made inspired by an interview answer.
All over it this morning, shower at 4:30 a.m., coffee now while I'm online getting my life in order- prescription refills, money syncing, stuffs. Flu shot today, then assess back into physical therapy after that.
~caution for triggers~
My head is way better now. I can't even blame those Halloween meltdowns on candy since I avoid carbs because diabetic. I love everyone again now. Seriously, probably another one of those repressed memories about Halloween. It's funny how my repressed memories are never about sexual abuse. Kinda makes you wonder what other horrors musta happened. I mean, besides seeing a dog nearly beaten to death, killing and eating my pets, watching puppies brains being smashed out, learning to properly kill cats, and pretty much handling 800-1200 pound animals regularly, including difficult births filled with all kinds of death and sometimes screaming animals. I was always the stoic one, now I'm the one falling apart. Like my mom did when I was a little girl. The survivalist lifestyle might look glam, but it's pretty tough on the soul. I actually jumped into an argument on FB about animal murder vs vegan and took it upon myself to explain that the exsanguination process actually isn't the torture nonexperienced people think it is, and then I caught myself because I've been experienced since I was 8 years old and I live with PTSD triggers now, and you really don't know who went vegan over something psychologically very disturbing to them. It's really not my job to get out there and educate people freaking out about death.
Pasting this over from facebook so it doesn't get lost.
I am both Irish and a dx'd narcissist. I stand for freckled soulless egocentric survivalists worldwide. Mock all you want, I can't hear you over all this me in my head.
(for some clarity, I'm also German and several other things from all over the world, so... standing up for all y'alls.)
My psychologist views my narcissism as being part of the cushion between my severe autism spectrum depression and mood swings and self harm, self medicating, and suicide, but I am one of the lucky ones. "When viewed from a certain perspective, narcissism can actually be seen as a positive thing."- fromWhy Narcissism Is a Profoundly Misunderstood Psychological Disorder
I scored a 17 on that narcissism test that was linked in that article. I was being a little conservative, but I don't have a hardcore top of the line dx, either. But celebrity level? Yep, hahahahaha.
I'm actually still dealing with a headache, so I really don't know how skewed my results are. I've had a very long headache day and I'm having trouble pulling my brain outa here. I do have this song on my mind though.
All you guys out there casting stones, both real and virtual- one of the most obvious signs of internal problems is displacing onto others, like a brain-trained puppet and a really more messed up person than those of us stepping out being targets. Whatever fear you have of things not running 'right' or being 'supposed to be', I went through that too. There is so much freedom letting go of hating people and being judgmental over others being different and having problems.
Join us. Loving is easier than hating. Hating takes way more energy and causes stuff like metaphorical fire damage and social viral entropic cascade. The entire human race is broken. We are all suffering. It's ok to admit you are flawed. I don't think God made a whole big thing just to throw most of it away. That's super inefficient and very anti-forgiveness protocol.
Throwback Thursday- Odd tidbits I'm running into through the way past while I look for some old @bonenado stuff. These bits come from random days through October 2007.
I always feel funky when I learn I've spelled a word wrong for years. Like lavender. I've spelled it lavendar for decades. I like it better with the 'a'. Now I feel out of synch and a tad put off.
I have this special cake recipe that is heavenly and highly adaptable to anything. Takes a cup of buttermilk, so I had Scott bring buttermilk home last night. Oops, forgot we are out of red food coloring from the last colored baking experiment, and three sets leaving me only green, yellow, and blue will never make orange. Oh, well, run into town myself, ten miles one way for a bottle of red food coloring. While I'm there, may as well pick up some pink and purple decorator frosting. Yes, I know... orange and chocolate swirl cake with white icing and pink and purple decorations. That's my Twinkles. And I will seriously make it look cool.
So, I got the batter divided, got the chocolate done, switched to the orange... Oops, a bigger bit of orange flavored splash than I intended, but what the heck. Always good with chocolate. And ~oh no~, the red food coloring bottle wasn't sealed properly at the factory, and laid in the bag soaking the inside of its box. Wow, what a mess. Both my hands are red, my light gray counter has big splotches of bright pink, and boy howdy, that is one dang orange cake. I made up for it with a bunch of yellow.
Smells good, though.
Scott set the catch 'em live trap out again a couple of days ago after we saw an armadillo in the yard late one night in a rain storm. They love the rain because it makes the grubs come up for air, and the armadillos dig up the yard looking for grubs. Welp, forgot all about it. Till just now. We assumed he wouldn't be back because Scott had shot at it in the rain and missed, the sound scared it half to death and it ran like mad. It's funny how fast those things can run. But I guess he came back. Our area is so infested with armadillos now that they lay dead all over the roads, and they aren't indigenous to this state at all. 30 years ago there weren't any. About 20 years ago they started mass migrating across the Ozarks. Now they are thicker than rabbits, skunks, and possums.
Twinkles and Jack. (I conned her into switching to MY team, heh heh. She was on Scott's team. Ah, the competition in this household...)
Jack gets a Mad Science lesson.
I could never be rich or famous. I just don't have the drive to get up out of bed. Well, back in my college days (years of college) I was up commuting by 6 or 7 every morning (an hour drive one way) for 18 hours of classes and 60 hours of work a week during my hardest semesters, but I was just as liable to pop the tab on a can of old skunky beer I found rolling under the seat, too. Yes, at 6 a.m. I do have drive and ambition, but it's this weird skewed sort of driven ambition, more like a Die Hard movie skidding into class or work in dark glasses. I have no idea why I was born a girl, because I'm actually pretty aggressive with this terrible lazy streak. I just mean, after studying people like Johnny Depp and Eddie Izzard and several others who have the grit to create themselves and wind up on top of the heap, I have absolutely no desire to cater to the masses like that, to go through the crap and angst of fame and having to keep a small entourage of people around me at all times to take care of things for me because there is just too much, or to listen to anyone bickering over my idiocy vs. my brilliance. That's all just a big bunch of people needing to get lives, or other people trying to make money off other people's existence via everything from movie critic to E! journalist to paparazzi. I just could care less about that stuff. I'm off watching Spongebob or something.
My hair is almost this short. I bet if I put makeup on I could look almost like this.
One of these days I might just try that.
Oh, yeah, before I forget. Scott has, indeed, confessed that I do scare him, as per an earlier post about my sexual aggression... We were watching My Super Ex-Girlfriend this weekend (free MAX) and I asked him if he was scared of me like that, and he got this look on his face, big eyes, said YES, and quickly turned back to his fantasy stats on the computer. I about fell over laughing at him. And I'm not wacko or anything, but I guess over the 14 years we've been married I've probably displayed just about every emotional outburst we saw in that movie, including throwing a shark through a window, so I imagine I'm pretty lucky he hasn't given up yet. And I've mellowed so much, that helps. I don't know if laughing at him helps, but in some weird way, I think he finds it comforting that someone knows him so well.
To me it's all really simple. Maybe it's the Asperger's, or maybe the idiots who get their thrills from arguing over moot points are emotionally unhealthy and have nothing better to do with their lives than to be mud slingers, but it seems to me that life really isn't that hard. Arguing over something improvable or speculative is pointless. Putting other people down and condemning them over an idea is shallow, although I risk doing the same thing here by compartmentalizing all of them into the 'idiot' category. But it just amazes me that they can't see themselves being as shallow as monkeys throwing their poop and screeching at each other. I really hate that the internet makes it so easy for the mouthy ones to step out and take over until no one else can say anything intelligent at all.
And then there's this...
Wrong Planet - Your Brain's 'Love Chemicals' may also make you Autistic
I keep *telling* Scott I need more sex... dang. Kind of explains my secret obsession with textured walls, I don't know. Whenever I am really stressed, all I have to do is just vividly imagine putting my face against a textured wall and feeling it with my fingers. If anyone saw me really doing that they'd think I was on drugs and getting off on the wall, but there is nothing sexual about it, it's just a stim. My friends and family don't know the half of how freaky weird I really am. I can see why my mom was so stressed out when I was little. I've learned to hide so much.
(This next bit always makes me sad because I was so sick and so desperately trying to hang on, entertaining myself mocking the beauty industry. No one ever knew how really bad it got or when I cried.)
In the meantime, I'm barely hanging in there rationing the skelaxin I've got left. It does ~nothing~ for neuralgia. But yesterday I fixed up and looked really nice, and it felt really good to get out and do something, which does wonders for the soul.
BTW, I've lost two pounds since we brought that new bathroom scale home. >=D HAHAHAHA!!!! Scott is going to have a run for his money.
And I got pictures. This is the transformation of someone who feels crappy into someone who feels ready to go do something feeling crappy.
First, the idea. Touch of foundation...
Earrings always help my mood. Vaseline on the lips, I'm not into lipstick.
Voila! Ok, ready for a good workout and the library.
The teeth thing-- my mom got a tetracycline shot while I was still a fetus, and it permanently discolored all my teeth. They stopped giving pregnant women those shots a year after I was born. My dentist wants to do the new rage in teeth capping on me, with is the super thin plating they adhere to the tooth after the tooth is roughed up (kind of like tiling a floor, if you've ever seen that done), but it will cost a fortune and my dental insurance won't cover that, plus I'm not working. My teeth and gums are very healthy and I will most likely never have dentures. The question is-- is this procedure worth the cost and torture involved? I think I'd like to try it eventually, but I don't want to look like a nerd with fake teeth. They say they can make them look imperfect now, so that they don't look like bright white piano keys, which would look horrendous with my complexion, even with makeup, so I could get them in off-white. It's something I've kicked around for several years, and I'm glad I've waited this long because the technology has leapt light years over what it was just ten years ago. But still... I'm not the one who has to look at my teeth. And honestly, I don't give a crap, I have met so many people with gross and missing teeth and it never bothered me, even though I myself am obsessive when it comes to mouth hygiene. But I think if I ever sell something I write, maybe I'll look into it.
And I've always wondered-- are my bones the same color as my teeth because of that shot?
And I think my eyes will always look 'sleepy' now. Neither one has ever quite recovered from the Bell's Palsy, which started 3 years ago. Someone once asked me, after looking at a picture of me, if I were sick when it was taken. Nope, actually felt good that day, but my eyes just don't look perky any more.
Even just sitting in a chair at home doing NOTHING the fandom is still embroiled in a war raging around ~moi~. Amazing.
To everyone I know who is puny right now...
THIS is why I blog privately. I can't tell you how many people out there are just waiting for stuff like this to go public so they can start ripping and shredding the two of us again. I had to stop hanging on message boards because of this kind of crap. People love a good train wreck, and if there's not one out there to gape over, they'll make one up.
I don't usually have the morning news on, but this morning CBS is making a huge deal about early autism screening, with the shocking revelation that the numbers have rocketed up to a possible one in 150 people being affected with autism. I'm sitting here in mild amusement... and a bit of my own shock. The understanding is, as stated so succinctly in this very unhelpful online article at
"When it comes to understanding autism, more questions remain than answers. But the importance of early intervention is a certainty. Numerous studies have shown that appropriate behavioral interventions implemented early and aggressively in children diagnosed with autism or an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can improve the daily and long-term functioning and intellectual development of these children."
What that says to ME is-- We've got to get these kids standardized as quickly as possible because neuro-diversity is NOT acceptable in our society of franchising and corporations and government audited public schools.
Part of the very controversial behavioral 'treatment' for this obviously devastating brain dysfunction is forcing children to perform and interact at the behest of punishments. If you are not familiar with this form of treatment, schools used it for years and some still are, and they encouraged parents to cooperate by using it at home. And it's funny that 'treatment' is needed when they hardly know yet the outcomes of what they do to these kids.
Long-Term, Multimodal Treatment of a Child With Asperger’s Syndrome and Comorbid Disruptive Behavior Problems: A Case Illustration Brian T. Wymbs and Jessica A. Robb, State University of New York at Buffalo, Andrea M. Chronis, University of Maryland, College Park, Greta M. Massetti, Gregory A. Fabiano, Frances W. Arnold, Anne-Christina Brice, Elizabeth M. Gnagy, William E. Pelham Jr., Lisa Burrows-MacLean, and Martin T. Hoffman, State University of New York at Buffalo Despite Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) becoming a widely recognized disorder on the pervasive developmental spectrum, surprisingly few studies have assessed the utility of psychosocial and/or pharmacological treatments for children with AS. Further, studies have not examined the effects of treatment on disruptive behavior problems commonly exhibited by children with AS. This case study demonstrates the positive effects of an intensive, long-term, multimodal treatment targeting the symptoms and functional impairment of a school-age male with AS and comorbid disruptive behavior problems. Components of the comprehensive treatment included a behavioral summer treatment program, behavioral parent and teacher training, and medication. Results highlight the potential efficacy of treating the chronic functional impairments of AS and associated behavior problems with an intensive, long-term, multimodal treatment.
I grew up being abused and forced into a behavioral norm, without understanding one shred of it. It took most of my adult life and a sociology degree, heavily punctuated with psychology and anthropology, for me to understand the big picture of how I'm supposed to fit in and why I'm not forgiven for not fitting in. I had to learn to PRETEND to be someone else, and I was very miserable doing that. If you were to take a normal child and put them through this behavioral process and teach them to be someone they're not, that would be considered brain washing, abuse, and torture in our society. But it's *ok* to do that to neuro-diverse children. Put them on drugs and force them through a social system. Don't adapt anything to the child.
The problem with catching higher functioning Austism Spectrum Disorder is that some kids can snap in and out of eye contact, verbal interaction, smiling, being social. I was weird, but I actually made it through the public school system WITHOUT ASSISTANCE. Yes, teachers were begging my parents to get me some help, yes, it was very hard for me to make friends and fit into the curriculum and figure out what was going on, but you know what? I'm *o*k*. The hardest thing I faced every day was other kids being mean to me, which lasted for years. The hardest thing a neuro-diverse person faces is an intolerant society that doesn't allow for deviations from the 'norm'. It doesn't matter how smart a person might be, if they don't smile and look at you on cue, something is 'wrong' with them. They might have the insight to solve a major world problem one day, but if they don't chatter with other children and enjoy chaotic and noisy atmospheres during recess and parties and such, they need to be 'fixed'. It's BAD when an ASD child enjoys being alone or does weird things like rocking or hand twitching, even if that child actually understands the theory of the math or science they're being taught better than the teacher. But you never know that if you don't encourage the child to verbalize without adverse consequences. You can't ~mold~ ASD children into being socially acceptable without causing long term damage on that their psyches.
I was not a mean child, but I learned to be mean to survive. I was not a stupid child, but I learned to dumb down so I wouldn't intimidate others. I was not socially inept until I was judged. I can run intellectual circles around most of the people I went to school with, and can easily use logic to show that social diversity and cooperation is vital to societal health, but very few people I know care about stuff like that. I don't shop for clothes or decorations for my home. I don't yak on the phone and read popular magazines. I don't worry about how I look or what people think of me. I don't often visit at other people's houses, and I even less invite people to my house. As an adult, I find that other adults either instinctively dislike me or take to my quirkiness and think it's 'cute'.
I realize I have problems interacting with others, and I'm working with a psychologist on that. The more I learn about my Asperger's, the more comfortable I feel. The more comfortable I feel, the easier it is for me to interact. THAT IS THE KEY. I was made to feel uncomfortable about myself ever since I was a toddler. I never did anything 'right'. The spotlight was on me being the odd one out everywhere I went. I was told I was embarrassing.
Imagine putting a 'normal' child through that. You know how they come out, they wind up in counseling as adults, coming to grips with the verbal abuse, it scars them for life and ruins their self esteem.
So why in the world are we spotlighting autism and spectrum disorders now like it's some big panic attack? Oh, we must screen our children every 6 months to make sure they don't have it. They need 'early intervention' so they can be 'fixed'.
No. They need love and acceptance. They need to know that they're ok. Would you tell a Down Syndrome child they don't do anything right and they're embarrassing? No? Then why in the world would you tell a kid with autism there is something 'wrong' with them? That's quite a stigma to live with.
We KNOW there is something 'wrong' with us. It doesn't need to be said over and over. It doesn't need to become a national freak out. It doesn't need to be something terrible that is ruining your hopes and dreams for your child.
Actually, I think the 'normals' are terrified that we are taking over... heh heh...
Just make it easy for your child to connect to you when they're ready. Have YOUR behaviors in place. Be kind. Be thoughtful of your child's discomfort. Don't race the clock to reach a developmental goal. ENJOY your child for who they are. If you truly love your child unconditionally, your child will feel that. You don't have to be rewarded back with behaviors that make YOU feel good. If you need that so badly, get a dog. If you are taking it personally that your child won't look at you or hug you, you have your own self esteem problems, and those *will* get in the way of loving your child.
I learned to behave normally on my own. I've learned to reap natural rewards for doing that. I don't feel I have to respond on cue or perform for people who are so shallow that they can't get over someone not smiling at them. I nearly lost a job once because someone complained I wasn't smiling. In my eyes, that was cruel. It's cruel when someone can disrupt MY life so much over something so trivial. I could have just suffered a death in the family for all they knew. In my experience, the people who expect social responses on cue are the shallowest people on this earth, and when they have hard times, maybe they'll figure out what it all means.
In the meantime, the nation is panicking over toddlers not smiling or making eye contact... GOOD GRIEF.
I just also want to mention that expecting children with neuro-diverse challenges to perform like 'normals' is actually requiring them to be BETTER than normal kids. Not only do they have to deal with their challenge and the stigma of being 'broken', but they have to perform for the public with that handicap and pass for normal. If you don't have ASD, you have no idea how difficult it is to be forced to make eye contact when you're coping with everything in your head being over stimulated and channeled around extra processing. What you might take for granted as simple instinctive social interaction has to consciously be logically explained and theoretically supported in the ASD neural network, even if it's only a reduction to "I must do this so someone won't hate me or punish me."
But it's all about pleasing the normals, isn't it?
Happy Halloween!
Scott says I look stoned.
Ok, that's it for today. There's lots more I'll never share. A fandom publicly raging and mocking. A friend slipping away. Great swaths of engulfing sadness.
Putting stuff like this into words has been very challenging, but I think I am coming close to more easily talking about who I am now. I've been watching other people write lots of things about religion and politics and mental illnesses and awareness stuff. Have you ever wondered how we arrive at our conclusions? How we come to decide and define what is right and wrong? How we come to believe what we believe?
We (I and all the people who know me in real life) have been dealing with me having what's basically called an emotional switch that gets flipped when I get PTSD triggers. I'm still discovering exactly what these triggers are. I became aware during high school that I go in and out of personality modes that handle different kinds of situations, but mostly I stayed in what I call shut down mode, a flat personality that doesn't get emotionally involved.
As I've progressed through adulthood, I've learned to develop more personality modes so I can better control who I am and how I present, although I didn't realize at those times that's what I was doing. These were most easily seen on the internet as I went through my Yablo, Janika, and Bluejacky stages, which are the most visible.
Pinky is turning out to be an interface for all the modes, much like an office coordinator. As Pinky is going through all the files in the other modes, my psychologist and I are discovering that I have PTSD triggers and different ways of handling them, like adjustment disorders, delayed emotional response, PTSD Tourette's (sort of like an aspie super stim that I can't stop, especially when I'm driving so it gets a little scary and sometimes I have to pull off the road), pain disorder with psychological factors (and that on top of documented nerve damage), and yes, a little bit of narcissism, which actually isn't a joke since it has loads to do with how I survived years of emotional and physical abuse. For example, turning 'what's wrong with me' self harm and suicidal thoughts outward to 'everyone around me is so stupid' is what saved me from the kind of self destruction that a lot of people don't understand. Fortunately, I managed to veer away from what people think I'm joking about when I call it being an evil villain fully intent on revenge.
I started openly bringing all this up on Pinky blog last year, and then started specifically defining it in hybrid- how robots go on (more links there). Later I openly shared the diagnosis documented as part of my disability.
I'm NOT talking about dissociative identity disorder. Despite have some mixed up recall during the roughest PTSD triggering memories, I don't have a dominant personality that takes over and lose actual time, although I do go through time orientation loss jags from stress, which isn't the same thing because I'm able to reconstruct. When I talk about shut down, it's an autism spectrum emotional shut down that allows me to keep interacting on a very low level automatic function so that I can make it home with groceries kind of thing. Shut down helps control meltdown, which is emotions going out of control, another thing autism is famously associated with. Developing personality presentations has helped me step into a sort of acting role as needed so I would be able to handle jobs and stuff, although sometimes this has backfired in unforeseen and sometimes hilarious ways. Pretending to be a Vulcan at all times doesn't actually help a person work well with others on a job...
So I'm essentially a real life role player. I learned at a very young age to be a 'doll', to 'perform' or be punished, sometimes severely. It took a few years, but I learned to staunchly control my natural autism spectrum inclinations, not by understanding either them or anything else going on around me, but by strongly stuffing down any and all feelings I might be having and turning into a stone. I survived.
The reason this is important to understand is because a lot of people don't survive. There are too many people who are on the edge of self harm and suicide every day who aren't getting the help they need and who haven't figured out how to survive like I did. They don't feel safe with themselves. They are like ticking time bombs walking on eggshells and hiding all their stuff from people who don't understand and fail to comprehend. I call this the yawning chasm, the lack of real connectivity with others. We might be interacting with others all day long in one form or another but never find that connection that helps us feel stable, or validates our difficulty. We feel emotionally abandoned and ignored.
I had two modes I clicked into throughout childhood, and they both had names. I wasn't particularly aware I was doing it, but I knew the names. I never told anyone those names until I became Pinky and finally brought it up. If I was talking to anyone, it was usually in mode, because deep down I actually prefer not to talk at all, even though I love brain sharing in print. I know, that's funny, because I actually don't shut up once I start talking. It helps to understand that I never saw my mom as a mother figure and never dwelled on how that made me feel. Yes, very seriously shut down emotionally.
I had a secret friend name in high school, essentially creating another me that talked to me. I never really shared that beyond very briefly bringing it up a couple of times in my life. That split helped me keep my balance in a world that was crumbling all around me after we moved to another state and things got really stupid between my parents. When I talked about this part with my psychologist, he became very interested in how I could change reality in my mind and believe it, a sort of consciousness of reality toy I played with without realizing it (which later grew into a love of philosophies). That link goes to a list of links. Essentially, because I couldn't look at faces at all one year and was so disconnected from other people, I reworked reality to be more like an alien world and I was the visiting alien. The halls were sloped like a stream could run down the middle, so I had to stick to the sides by the walls so I wouldn't slide in, all the glass was pink and everything I saw through them was pink because of that, my line of sight was knee level and I got to know people by their knees, and talking sounded like gibberish. I carried this out for a couple of months until I realized I was kind of stuck in it and it had become tiresome, so I snapped back to 'real' and started looking at faces again. When I did that, I also snapped into a personality mode and got kind of mean and secretly destructive, pretending I was a spy and committing sabotage that backfired on other people. I never got caught, but looking back, some of the fallout wasn't cool. Very real consequences were inacted on wrongly accused innocents, although I thought it was funny back then because I intensely disliked them.
I didn't think very much about that stuff in my 20s, which got pretty chaotic from the poor choices I kept making, but by my 30s I was back into mode switching so I could handle being married and raising kids. From there on out people have known me as Janika and Yablo. Bluejacky came a little later, and Pinky is the last. There may be a couple more very minor nearly inconsequential modes tucked here and there.
Janika is like a baseline, an umbrella over the old modes, a central hub of sorts, and eventually an epic fail. Janika history is volatile and never had a direction goaled out. Janika was stuck with Yablo's mess and Bluejacky's anger and didn't see a way beyond any of it, so Janika disappeared.
Pinky is an Idea. Pinky thought long and hard about goals and plans and modus operandi. Pinky wrote out a mission statement. Pinky incorporated all the modes into one whole and is mapping how they all became part of a survival story. Pinky sees the bigger picture and brings all the things into focus. Pinky named Aspienado and created a direction for all the modes to go in together. Pinky is sharing real life stuff, what's really inside this kind of head, because it's important for other people to see that 1- kids like me can turn out ok, 2- honesty is what saves us, and 3- kindness is logical.
There are others out there arguing semantics about whether or not it's acceptable to say someone has autism (which sounds more disease-y) vs someone is autistic (which sounds more label-y), among many other things. I don't take sides because I don't care. I have it, I am it, I am living and breathing it, and I know that the bickering is borne of being who we are- super definers of all the reality around us. We are the brains that want specific answers to vague questions, that want words to be used correctly while we simultaneously don't understand how the way we use our own words mixes people up, the brains that thrill to find and point out flaws and figure out people puzzles and solve problems all around us by thinking of better ways to do things while we gunk up our own days getting too caught up in these things. We are glorious spatters of thought that either reclusively don't share or just never shut up.
Everything in this universe is a spectrum. We are all waking up to that, some more slowly than others, but eventually the entire world will learn to stop rigidly defining and start allowing variance. Where in the world humans got the idea that things have to be rigidly defined is probably a Hitler thing, or the Ancient Aliens telling us what to do and how to do it. Who we have to be laid over who we are born to be is the modern conundrum in philosophy. Who is to say what true freedom is if we keep fighting over every little thing we are supposed to do and think? We are free to fight, wheee...
Someone shared a thing on facebook last week about how if we had big old fashioned porches around our houses like in the olden days, our world would be a friendlier place, or something to that affect. Please allow me to point out the flaws in this thought-
Being stuck in low tech nearly nonmobile society in a hot environment with no air conditioning was why those big porches were a thing.
The cost of building houses with big wraparound porches nowadays generally precludes wasting materials on 'dead space' unless a person has the money to blow on it.
Bugs.
The views pretty much suck unless you're lucky enough to live near a nice vista, a water front, or a cool skyline.
The TV is inside and the neighbors are irksome.
Sweet memories of big porches might be a little skewed...
Those kinds of old houses are nowadays becoming synonymous with drug dealing and weapons caching, at least in popular entertainment.
Need I go on.
It's about perspective. What one person thinks cannot apply to all brains at any given time. It's only been in the last 10 years that brain variance is becoming recognized as 'ok'. I'd love to posit that 'neurotypical' is a widely overused and misconstrued word, and that we've got this weird neurotypical until proven otherwise thing turning mental hypochondria accusations into a circus. Yes, there is abuse of entitlement, but people actually do need help, and the ones needing it the most are having to fight through a barrage of hate trying to get it, which seems a bit odd since the hate is springing from standing up for - ok, that's dumb and I can't even go there saying it. I watched the same fight over ADHD, it was like a witch hunt, OCD people are rising up now (about time), and basically everyone with even a hint of probably need for diagnosis is finally standing up for themselves. YAY, *finally*. If we're going to complain about NTs defining atypicality, let's keep in mind that NTs are slang for haven't been dx'd with anything yet. Their turn is coming. Everyone on the planet has *something* wrong with them, be it physical, mental, emotional, whatever. Not one person on this planet is a perfect specimen of humanity. The idea that we've got to measure ourselves against each other is a bunch of hogwash with a sales pitch behind it, and I wish everyone would stop falling for the pausing to argue thing. Go enjoy something today.
When I was little, if I didn't 'behave' properly, I got punished. When behaving properly gets judged by someone who is having a succession of very bad days around very unsupportive people, things can trickle down onto a child like a break in a dam, and then justification sets in and then recriminations abound, and pretty soon it's not about the child needing help at all, but about other people desperately needing help themselves and not understanding why their worlds are screwed up.
So to sit around arguing over semantics seems a bit time-wastey to me. Sitting around defining religion and salvation and the world sliding into a big black hole seems a bit displacing coming from people whose lives are messes.
Aspienado was spawned out of a really big mess. Aspienado is tired of the words. Pinky says we must keep using words, so Aspienado wants to use words in a really big way. Pinky says WE'RE WORKING ON IT.
