When I was in the hospital (psych emergency/med check) nine years ago, some of the people around me started telling others I was borderline personality disorder. Not only was it not true, BPD carries a stigma, like psychiatrists saying they won’t have more than one borderline patient at a time because they’re so difficult. Bluntness and seeming malice are par for the course when none is meant, but one of these things is not like the other. I am not Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. I social mask until I can’t and the people around me have no idea what the hell to do when I stop. My problem is that social masking has been a part of my life since I learned to walk/talk. How am I supposed to know what’s neurotypical and what’s not? I have been made to believe that I’m a lot crazier than I am.
I was falling apart because my social masks all failed at once and it was a straight up crisis. How anyone could be surprised I ended up in a pych emergency after two therapists saying I was so fucked up it was going to take a very long time to heal is beyond me. You mean none of this is ever going to get any better? This is what my life looks like now? People don’t kill themselves because bipolar makes them sad. They kill themselves because managing bipolar disorder is fucking relentless.
“Borderline” was “over the line, Smokey. Mark it zero.” Here is why I am so fucking furious at the person(s) who said it. I’ve seen my chart. I was never diagnosed with BPD. Ever. I have had meltdowns, burnout, sensory issues, you name it. But I have never had an attachment disorder. I attach too much, if anything. I’ve been in emotionally abusive relationships for forever, because I assumed that people who thought I was a difficult monster were correct. I didn’t have any coping mechanisms for autism, so I just assumed I was the worst person who ever lived. I handle things wrong all the time, but because it’s not the same way a neurotypical person would handle things wrong, it’s a bigger mistake (to them). To them, they are justified in infantilizing me, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s at home or at work.
I got an incorrect label, and I was trapped in other people’s opinions with BPD; autism creates sympathy and treating me like I’m mentally delayed, and BPD means I am so unstable I cannot function. Both choices in how I’m treated blow. There’s no way not to report disabilities because social masking will fail at some point and I have no way to fit into society if I’m dead honest….. or at least, that is my belief right this very moment because I am not done with the process of acceptance. I do not even know how to function anymore because everything I’ve done in the past has been “getting by” and also incorrect for me, because I can’t just white knuckle my way through neurotypical society forever. I will die alone, and I am not kidding. I know myself. I’ll get tired of being misunderstood and just sit in my little autistic nest. It is so much easier not to engage than it is to be sure that you’re a burden on everyone. It’s also never unclear that you are. Social masking leads people to believe that I am an entitled, lazy asshole and that if I just worked harder, I’d be fine.
How long would you last at a job where people treat you like you’re five? Realistically, how long could you put up with being treated that way knowing that your life is a series of performance improvement plans no matter the field and always having meetings about your problematic behavior…… because my tone is always off or I can’t keep up or I need to go to the doctor too much. You name it. Meanwhile, I have never told an employer I was autistic for them to be able to help me because I didn’t know. Considering just how well jobs do with ADHD, I have to assume “not well.” Left to my own devices, I write the length of a novel/novella every month, not year. If I was a fiction writer, Nanowrimo would last two weeks. With a brilliant storyline I can write for six or seven hours at 90wpm. I barely look up. I am the model employee because I can tailor my environment to productivity and there’s no office “HOA.”
I do have a fiction work in progress, but I don’t know how to write fiction yet. I’m going to school for it on YouTube (no lie- plenty of college writing classes available- that kid at Harvard with the cell phone in his lap is my future….. I feel like I should be sending these kids money somehow but it’ll have to be the thought that counts. In order to learn all of this, I had to stop caring about everyone else. Also not for malice. Because they were programmed to all treat me a certain way, with certain perceptions, and none of them were correct.
I basically came to DC so I could meet an impartial set of doctors and friends. The ones in Houston weren’t it. This is because I started researching AuDHD because of several memes in ADHD groups on Facebook that mentioned it and I felt attacked. I don’t put much stock in memes, but I do in MDs/PhDs. I am tired of being thought of as this dark triad motherfucker when I talk all the time about the empathy I feel for my friends, how I bleed out trying to take care of others and come off as rude and demanding, anyway. I can certainly be clearer and better in my conversations, but there will be no conversation after “you’re not autistic.” This is because if you accuse me of not having autism, I won’t say you’re wrong. I will ask you for $3,000, the cheapest estimate I’ve found for an official diagnosis in Maryland. There is also a possibility that I would not be diagnosed as autistic, and yet that doesn’t mean it’s not true, either. For one, I’ve already mentioned that AuDHD is chronically misdiagnosed, and two…. what was two again? AuDHD. 😉 Two is that autism is missed in girls a lot. A lot a lot. I used to be an autistic girl, but I’ve had neurotypical behavior slammed in my face and social masked it for 46 years. Again, we do not have enough data on ASD to know how it presents in adults. What I can tell you is that AuDHD is more common than it’s not, a comorbidity like fibromyalgia and, well, anything.
If I was borderline, I would not notice or care that I was making an attachment worse or better. What does happen is that my brain works differently and some things just fall off my radar, including relationships. I finally decided to fix that by not looking for one overarching relationship, but a boyfriend and several emotional support girlfriends. If I meet another partner down the road, that’s a whole other conversation, but I’m happy as I am and so is Oliver, who is a dog (Zac is happy, too, but let’s remember who’s important here). I can disconnect ad be with other partners when I’m not with him, but I don’t have more than one red string (red strings and yellow strings are romance and emotional support, what a poly relationship “murder board” looks like).
I think of us as mono/poly or solo/poly because I don’t care what Zac does when he’s not with me. If he needs me, he’ll call. If I need him, I’ll call. I don’t want him up in my business with Bryn and Supergrover, he doesn’t want me up in his business with his partners, either. Believe me, it’s not that I wouldn’t respond emotionally if he was hurt. He’d just have to ask me to respond because I’m not constantly anticipating his needs. He does want to meet Lindsay, though, so make a note L Cubed (my grandfather, Alvie, always used to call me L Squared and Lindsay L cubed because her middle name starts with L as well). I asked her if she was going to be in town for Finnish Independence Day and she is, and you cannot even believe what a big fucking deal that is. I use that holiday to replace one I lost long, long ago. I needed to fill my time on that day (6 Dec) so I looked up other holidays I could get behind instead. Finnish Independence Day was absolutely it because it screamed “special interest.” Is it really your special interest if 99% of the world thinks it’s normal? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most people will not be lighting blue and white candles with me in the United States, but that doesn’t make any difference. I am using my strenths. I am replacing the dumpster fire of my teenage years with salmiakki, pulli, kahvi, and perhaps a bit of vodka for good measure.
Although I just remembered that the next time I see Zac will be Dec. 10, so I may celebrate it twice just to be sure to hate the Russians a little more. It’s the one war where I know I could have helped, because I’m a good skier. Do you guys know about this? Apparently, the Russians invaded Finland, so they put on their white camo and fuckin’ disappeared. The Russians never knew what hit them…… I know this because I watched several hour-long videos of the war because that’s AuDHD in a nutshell.
So, I went down the auDHD YouTube rabbit hole as well, and have listened to probably 40 hours of lectures by now. It’s all making sense….. like knowing that learning extensively about Finland is weird for an American, but if their independence had been won in June we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all. Luck of the draw. Next horrific date to block out might be independence for the Dutch….. and “if there’s anything I hate, it’s people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch” (From one of my favorite spy movies, “Goldmember”).
Speaking of “Goldmember,” learning about ADHD and/or autism gave me enough confidence to say, like Foxy Cleopatra, “I’m a whole lotta woman.” That’s because by doing the work, I learned there was nothing wrong with me. I am strong and beautiful because of my struggles, not in spite of them. So many people have told me that my writing is so good that I’m going to be a very big deal. One reason, not the whole story, is that I didn’t believe it myself. I do now, because I resonate with people in other countries, not just my own. I have appealed to an international audience for almost 24 years now….. I just haven’t been driving the bus. I hadn’t really looked at ways to monetize, or ways to attract readers.
Ok, I haave to say up front thaat this keyboard is driving me nuts becaause you caan’t slow down the repeat raate aaand the aa key is out of control. Hold pleaase.
I think I’ve corrected most of it, but this is what it looks like before, so just prepare for this entry to look Dutch by the end if it doesn’t work. I’ll try switching to aanother keyboaard, but no promises. They’re aall problematic. Th other keyboard randomly makes keys stop working, and at 90 wpm, I get overwhelmed with trying to edit very fast. I could just buy another BT keyboard, but I’ve never had one that didn’t develop problems with connection if they didn’t have it already.
But let’s get back to autism and society. One of my biggest problems is that ADHD does not get the validity it deserves. I know this because there’s some argument that ADHD should be part of ASD, and yet just like autism, there are people who believe it’s not real and people who believe they can fix you.
If you ever want to see an autistic meltdown from me, mention ABA. I will not be elaborating further, but if you have plans to wipe “Autism Speaks” off the planet, please let me know where to show up with chocolate and lowers. If you even dip a toe in to videos by autistic people, you will realize that Autism Speaks is for parents, and parents are frustrated and burned out with a kid they feel is impossible. I use high functioning and low functioning for clarity’s sake, but lots and lots and lots of autistic people won’t. I think I’m not offended because I have a use case for that library of images. Trying to prove that I’m autistic in a world where disability porn shows people what I’m “supposed” to look like is cruel. You think autism means mental retardation. Incorrect. In some ways, my brain is 10x faster than yours. In some ways, your brain is 10x faster than mine. In my experience, neurotypicals want to make me solely responsible for minding the gap. It is true that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences or anything else that would derail being a functioning adult. It does mean that in relationships, neurotypical people see themselves as superior to me because they’ve been socialized to call my actions childish and this will not change in my lifetime- die mad about it.
Should it be okay that autism is naturally occurring, yet you are okay and I am fucked up? This is how every conflict comes across to us when you are irritated with our symptoms, as if we’re THRILLED to have them. Who I projected and who I really was were always at odds until now. When my mother died, I found out my actual diagnosis and that I am indeed physically disabled when she’d gaslit me into believing my father lied to me my whole fucking life while the papers were in her effects and Lindsay found them. I went nuclear for both me and my dad, because that was fucking abhorrent. My parents have always been at odds about me, since I was a kid. I’ve always been difficult, frighteningly intense, high needs (vs. low function) and trying to be invisible, social masking normalcy as not to cause even more problems. I can tell when people don’t like me, and I’ve struggled with it my whole life because I didn’t know what it was about me that was offputting.
Now I know that my emotions are just turned up to hell and other people’s aren’t. They’ve never had to learn to manage emotions this big because they don’t manage their emotions at all. Social masking teaches you to analyze human behavior so you’ll fit in. However, you cannot replicate it because your points of view are wildly different. We dream of worlds where we’ll be understood- obsessed with sci-fi to an enormous degree.
I am not Supergrover’s partner, I just call her that because that’s what yellow strings are called. In reality, she is my Doctor, and a part of me will always be Martha Jones. She does not watch the show, so will you hear my emotions when I say something that means everything to me and nothing to her? I hope she never forgets the time that The Doctor was her.
It led me here, to this place, where I know myself well enough to be able to communicate what is right for me and what’s not. I am not constantly afraid of everything, common among neurodivergents because how they’ll be perceived sits in their stomachs like a rock. I know I’m auDHD, and if I see a benefit to an official diagnosis, I’ll get one. I do not see a benefit in trying to prove that I’m autistic. In my experience, trying to convince someone that you are less crazy than they think but still diagnosed is futile. Just like trying to convince someone that you’re disabled when you “don’t look like it.”
I do not know what to do now, but I do know two things. The first is that I am not lazy. The second is that I am not malicious.
To conclude, here is a meme to express my feelings, one of my love languages.
Stories That Are All True 