This entry is so long that it’s dedicated to all the people who have told me I should write a book.
One of the reasons that I love Carol so much is that she has two archetypes at the same time. She is a fictional character, but close to my heart because she has Lindsay’s personality and my special interest, which I’m learning about from Zac. He cannot reveal sources, methods, and locations, but that’s not helpful in fiction, anyway.
I want to know how intelligence officers and analysts work at the office, because even though Zac is not a spy (he works for a data collection agency) that world attracts a “type,” and that type just happens to be the one some of the characters in my biggest work in progress need. He is also neurodivergent, which adds to the mystery of how he personally deals with issues when he can’t talk about what’s actually going on and handles information differently- and companies/the government view disability differently across sectors. There are federal standards and unique cultures to every office. They can’t make autistic people look autistic because that’s illegal. So they make up bullshit language around autism that describes our behavior accurately, but not the reasoning behind it. We have to act neurotypical when we’re not or we’re severely punished.
That doesn’t look like disability in a performance improvement plan. That looks like rude, overemotional (meltdown), lazy (burnout/demand avoidance), inattentive to detail (ADHD), underperforming given intelligence (not in any way true at all) and potential (I’m smart as FUCK if you’re arsed enough to see itโฆโฆ. and everyone does until I exhibit a disability. This is also why I don’t do any better while married than I do while having a job. Talk to 50 autistic people. We agree.).
Not being strong enough to lift 60 pounds of flour when I just can’t, yet cerebral palsy, autism, and ADHD are a real thing and we should definitely accommodate youโฆโฆโฆ in the beginning, when I am social masking because either I’m trying to get a job or, more accurately, the process of sitting in a room with a couple of people and discussing the job with humor is a skill I have because the sensory load is at a minimum. This is tragic because I don’t want the personality of Elon Musk. I want his power, and not because I need it to lord it over people. I need it because I can make a job that revolves around neurodivergence instead of having to fit into a system.
There’s a reason I want to be like Oprah, Brenรฉ Brown, Martha Beck, Glennon Doyle, etc. It’s because they all created their careers and made their audience come to them so that they didn’t have to compromise who they were to be successful. I also know that some of them are neurodivergent, even if they aren’t ADHD or autistic. Depression gives you demand avoidance so deeply you can’t take care of yourself because you can’t make yourself respond to your own demands, either.
It’s what creates the need to sleep too much, eat too much, drink too muchโฆ. or go the other route and do none of these things, my route to making it through the dark. I drink with Zac when I feel the worst about myself because that’s when I perceive I can be hung over without incidentโฆ.. then fuck around and find out. It’s why I like non-alcoholic beer so much. It’s the equivalent of having several “water rounds” without actually taking one. However, I’m not bothered at a party where there’s only hard liquor and soda, because I have no problem enjoying the mixers separately.
My favorites are Schweppes Bitter Lemon and Tom Collins mix, but I don’t drink them often because they have lots of sugar. Since I avoid sugar, I drink diet tonic water if it’s available, because you really, really can’t tell the difference when the forward note is quinine. You can’t even tell most of the time when there’s gin in it if you add lime. (Incidentally, my friend Mel says that when we meet up, she’s going to share a bottle of the finest Norwich gin they have to offer with me. Until then, my favorite gins are Hendricks (plain, I’m a purist) and Tanqueray Rangpur Lime. If I have to choose, Rangpur Lime and I’d rather have one martini with it than five with Tanqueray O.O, and not because I wouldn’t like it (haven’t tried it yet). It’s because Rangpur Lime doesn’t come in a zero.
My favorite mocktail so far was made for me at a vegan restaurant that no longer exists in Portland, Oregon (no vodka gimlet with blueberries as garnish). It was called “Portobello,” and it was started because my across the walkway neighbor had the same thought process I did. He was a butcher for a very, very long time and got bored. Same, dude. Same. He gravitated toward vegan because it was the latest trend, and at the time none of us knew anything about it; getting away from meat was exciting. He was doing it before anyone else.
The best meal I ever had was comped, as were all our drinks. Dana and I had every mocktail on the menu, plus a couple of cocktails on the house. We also had things like creamy cashew Alfredo, mushroom patรฉ, very cold and crisp salad with oranges and julienned fennel (actually, chefs, I think it was a batonet but I’ve slept since then), and desserts at the end where pastry had taken recipes for things like cheesecakes and tarts and made them out of soft tofu or Daiya cheese, the root of all excellent vegan pizza- believe it. Melts better than mozzarella, but make sure it’s double cheese (crumbled Beyond Italian sausage is insane). They also made puff pastry as good as I’ve ever eaten using only olive oil and not butter. It was revelatory, and started a lifelong affair. I don’t cook vegan entreรฉs because it’s comforting. I cook vegan because I’m bored with everything else.
It has become another autism-level special interest, as evidenced by the fact that it feeds my blog. In essence, it has become one of the three special interests I’ve never given up. Intelligence comes from my great uncle Foster, where every time he’s ever come up in conversation I’ve strained my ears- better when no one thought I was listening. I know more than they think I do because I remember shit. Cooking comes from Dana. Writing comes from me. It was handed down to me by my grandfather (PR) and my dad (pastor) and my mom (music teacher). This is because my mom and dad’s careers weren’t focused on the written word, but their creativity always showed through whatever they were doing.
The only reason I say that my dad’s creativity didn’t come through writing is that public speaking is a different gig, even if you have my social skills. Just because you know to isolate when you don’t have to be in public to save energy doesn’t mean being in front of people every week doesn’t come with challenges whether you’re autistic or not. All people have a social battery, mine just doesn’t last as long as most people I know. This is true of most autistic people. This is because they think they’re healthier than they are when they’re high functioning and have a few good days. Then, they beat themselves up for having a disability. It’s a vicious cycle because as with a mental illness (which I view as separate from having two processing disorders), the undiagnosed don’t realize that the cycle will never end, they will never “get it together,” they might be suddenly employed and unemployed a lot due to meltdowns and burnout but not be able to pinpoint why, etc.
That’s because until you have a diagnosis, you think all office and relationship criticisms are the truth. That autistic means narcissistic, that autistic means rude and unpleasant, that we are worth accommodating for six months at best because it becomes too much, too fast.
I know this because Supergrover was just as flabbergasted by my reactions as every boss I’ve ever had, because they didn’t pick up ADHD or autism, and that’s not because they wouldn’t have accommodated it. They couldn’t see it because I couldn’t tell them I had it. Therefore, I believed I was a lazy, manipulative asshole a hundred percent of the time when in reality my autism makes me two things. Seemingly two-faced- being able to see a problem from multiple angles when agreeing with both parties is a straight up problem. It makes me seem like I have lied instead of evolved. This was particularly true about six or seven years ago.
I now use my blog as a “separating the men from the boys” test because I can’t not. That’s because it clearly shows people two things right off the bat, before they even meet me. The first is that if they’re going to be in my life, they have to make the commitment to appear here. It is non-negotiable because my blog is already popular and I’m not tanking it for anyone unless it’s absolutely necessary. And absolutely necessary is not relative.
Only for Lindsay and Supergrover have I ever changed anything, giving them editorial control after the fact and been sorry I didn’t give it to them before I published. It’s not because I view their careers as more important than mine. It’s that I’m a flexible enough writer to switch to something that doesn’t revolve around my life because I’d have time to let both them and an independent party review my work before it went out. It’s the bargain I made by being Lindsay’s sister and Supergrover’s Gonzo (because our relationship is a “whatever.”). I genuinely feel about Supergrover the same way I felt about Sam. That my intensity was all over the place and even if she didn’t want to be partners, my feelings for her were strong enough to say “pining after her is stupid when she’ll actually give you time with her if you don’t (in Supergrover’s case). In Sam’s, I would have been her bestie even if she’d broken up with me.
The reason I would have and don’t is that I felt like she was the friend who would always make me anticipate her needs if she wouldn’t talk about the biggest one and dumped me in a hot second. We talked about me dating/not dating Zac for three whole weeks and she waited until I was with him for our first date ever and crushed me at his house.
So.
Even if what I did had been considered cheating (and I feel it wasn’t because I communicated my boundaries loudly and so did she), I didn’t. She took the time and effort to punch me in the stomach while also trying to make a good first impression. I wasn’t even used to my environment with either of them and had to cope with both of them being threatening at the same time. I knew that if she was the kind of person who waited and exploded like Supergrover, I was not going to spend another moment worrying about her, because that’s problematic whether we’re friends or in love with each other, and that experience was hard fucking won.
I don’t give my friendship away to just anyone anymore. That’s because I know it will get deep fast because I don’t have the capability to not. I agreed to marry Daniel in a hurry not because I was in love with him, but because we made the agreement to be partners whether we fell in love with each other or not. He wanted me to be a military dependent so I could get my shit together, being extraordinarily kind as we worked out the details of being able to travel all over. It was a secure environment, not a romance.
It also allowed me the room to make him secondary in my mind because he didn’t care one way or the other. One of the reasons I like dating men so much is that they activate a different part of my brainโฆ. but it’s never in the context of not being queer. In fact, it’s the opposite. I will date a bisexual man or make my straight husband culturally queer and that’s non-negotiable. I will not ever project heterosexual privilege and I will do it without having to wear rainbow shit.
I don’t care if other women think I dress like a lesbian and therefore must be unaware that I’m really queerโฆ. taking me aside and telling me that I’ll never be happy in my marriage, etc. As I’ve said before, it’s the most common story. People assume the most common ending.
The answer is obviously not “The War Daniel” is my fianceรฉ and he doesn’t have a lock on whether I’m bi or not.” Cutting my hair this way and wearing men’s (or size 16 big boys, pants are highwater, thoโฆ.) clothes is just being loud about the fact that I’m queer no matter who I’m with. It is not a coincidence that I am more comfortable with bisexual men than straight because being queer and showing it is important to them, too. For instance, the queer employee group at Zac’s intelligence agency is organized and Zac is the president. No one in even 3,000 miles in any direction would peg either of us as straight.
Again, straight women should give bi men a second chance if they’ve been afraid in the past. Bisexual doesn’t always equate polyamorous, that stereotype has been reinforced because society made queer behavior unnatural and the only way to get by was having a wife and kids. Therefore, there were both gay and bi men married to women that were happy to varying degrees. The ones who weren’t bi just lied. Bisexual people are often incredibly monogamous and can be married to either gender with intensity. Gay people can’t.
Gay people taught me early on that I couldn’t be both, so I’ve apologized to Ryan for it many times. I didn’t have to break up with him to explore my sexuality, other people gave me the impression that now I had to because I’d thought about women in that wayโฆ. that it changes you so you can’t switch back and forth. You are a Jedi or a Sith. Being a Sith means hiding with heterosexual privilege and keeping your sexuality on the downlow because you CAN come out, you just don’t. Being secretive about your sexuality hurts our community more than it helps you, because you’re biting the hand that would feed you if you helped change it.
Heterosexual privilege helps change legislation, but first it helps cultural attitudes to be visible. It means the world to me that Supergrover wears a rainbow Apple Watch band, because it’s not for me and yet it is. Someone once told me that the rainbow flag was a privilege I had. That straight people shouldn’t buy them on their own, that it should be a gift a queer person gives you. Not only am I glad that Supergrover wears “me on her wrist,” she’s the one I’d let wear my rainbows, too. (Incidentally, Lindsay has also worn rainbow shit since forever and works more closely with the queer population than I ever will.)
The one thing I have that would mean a lot to me to give her would fit in with her whole vibe because she’s a beach bum. It’s a white puka shell necklace that has rainbow shells in a few intervals. It was $10, but priceless to me because I got it the day I went to the Supreme Court to wave flags for Obergefell, certainly the most important SCOTUS adventure into queer rights since Lawrence v. Texas. But she doesn’t have to wear it, and I only say that because the colors would last longer if she didn’t. But like I said, the gift nor the love underneath depend on the recipient; whether she takes it to said beach isn’t my jurisdiction. ๐
The reason she’s a yellow string for me is that these are the things that would be important to me to share with her. Meeting up at Capital Pride would be on brand. She and her first/current families are all the kind of people that would show up together and not make it a thing- which I would not have understood in the 90s and not because my family wasn’t like that. They weren’t like that until I told them. When you know better, you do better, and if you never say anything, you’re part of the problem.
My work to do is to learn anger management, because I am programmed to think others assume I am broken, because that’s how they treat me a good bit of the time. It is not an unearned reputation. Right this moment, I do not have the tools to deal with autistic rage, and I did not learn about this until I read “Spare,” by Harry Wales. I don’t care if it was a ghostwriter, I learned so much about myself that I was glued to it. I read the whole thing in seven hours.
This is because Wales is also neurodivergent, and even if he’s not autistic, people with PTSD (anxiety, depression- possibly ADHD because Wales struggled in school and he’s also very bright- emotionally intelligent while the rest of his family is not, etc.) also deal with demand avoidance, burnout, and fits of extreme rage.
Harry has had PTSD and lived his life like a combat vet for 26 years. I can’t remember exactly, but that would have made him between 12 and 13 when his mother died. I know that because his worst trigger is the click and flash of a camera. He didn’t for one moment run from England because of his family and you can take that to the bank and cash it. Harry would have lived quietly ever after in any castle they wanted if they’d only put so much security on Meghan she couldn’t blink without someone noticing.
What his “family” did was stir up the same racist shit in the British press that groups like the KKK stir up here. You are the enemy when you stay silent. Their inaction told him everything he needed to know. If he didn’t take Meghan somewhere else, the British press would kill her, too. Despite outlawing slavery earlier and getting over it faster in some ways (many more POC/queer/disabled people on television in Britain), the first black princess was not going to get away unscathed. The entire UK fucked Meghan Markle by the whole country down to Prince William being obsessed with “Suits” on Netflix and not bothering to keep Meghan safe when it really counted.
The bitch of it is, they’re not even sorry. It’s okay because Harry has money, so fuck him. That’s the tape that plays in his head because that’s not an unearned reputation for the people around him, too. And that’s how he thinks his public think of him. When his family doesn’t listen to him when he says he’s struggling, he has to find other people who will.
I doubt we will ever meet, but I know I could step off a plane, hug him, and go for drinks like I met him in elementary because we speak the same language. My dad was a public figure. My first experience with PTSD was when I was 12 years old and my house burned down. I was diagnosed with bipolar when I was 21, ADHD and generalized anxiety disorder later. I have been afraid I was borderline for years, but I’m not. I’m autistic and ADHD. That’s why even close relationships alternate between obsession and complete disinterest. I do not nor have ever had an attachment disorder.
It’s the opposite. My people are my safe environment, and neurotypical people don’t often tolerate neurodivergent partners because they become their caretakers and resent it. This is because nine times out of ten they will not do the research to understand what they’re taking on beforehand, and there’s only now enough research on what female AuDHD looks like for the layperson to even understand it. People do this when they find out they’re about to raise an autistic child, and there’s a ton of research on what it’s like to parent one.
They do not do the research in the beginning phases of a relationship so that things don’t go wrong later. There are also now a ton of videos explaining to bosses the tips and tricks it takes to work with autistic people so that communication gaffes at work are kept to a minimumโฆ. and it’s not just bosses, it’s HR education as well.
YouTube has been invaluable at giving me self-esteem by explaining my disabilities so I could stop being embarrassed by them; those vloggers gave me tips and tricks for fooling my brain to work around them (except the CP, that’s a whole other thing). That mental health goes up and down, but processing disorders are permanent. My executive function cannot be corrected with medication.
Ritalin is just a tool in dealing with ADHD, and it often doesn’t work for two reasons. The first is that people think that if they can concentrate with coffee, then getting on Adderrall must be better. Then, the jump between caffeine and Adderrall is too much and the hyperactivity/impulse control/demand avoidance/anxiety about it gets worseโฆโฆ but not enough to stop.
That’s because it induces hyperfocus just enough of the time that you feel it’s worth it. A good example as to why people stay on it despite caffeine working is basically “a cup of coffee or two would do it, but I like the rush of energy drinks.” That’s why neurotypical kids get addicted fast. They only feel hyperfocused when it is inducedโฆโฆ.. and because they’re neurotypical, a cup of coffee or two won’t do it. Induction takes the equivalent of purified meth. This is a huge trap for teenage girls, because first it makes them stay up all the time. That means either they can party harder or they can study like maniacs, literally without blinking.
I have never been addicted to Ritalin, Adderrall, or Concerta because it’s not appealing to me. I hate it with a passion. The second reason it’s a bad choice is that you constantly feel the pull of mentally well and physically sick. This is a huge trap for neurotypical girls, and I know this because more than one has asked me to sell my prescriptions to them (I told them to fuck off because they didn’t know what it was like to need it. I learned that day I was capable of cursing at church.). This is because they’ve noticed that not only does it improve their grades, they lose weight quickly.
And then, whether you like purified meth or not, your body will fall apart because of it. If you see documentaries on crystal meth addicts, you know what is happening to us. It’s just that because it’s more purified, it takes longer for us to look like that on the outside. The worse your ADHD gets, the quicker it happens, because either you have to up your dose because of tachyphyllaxis (a drug getting less effective over time, then correcting for it), or having to go to extended release because you can’t handle the crash between medicated and not.
Meth is not like taking Lexapro or the other SSRIs/mood stabilizers/St. John’s wort. ADHD meds can be equated to anxiolytics (Xanax, Klonopin). You don’t take it for six weeks so that it builds over time and your serotonin is stable, that even if you miss a day (you’ll get physical withdrawal), you won’t have to step down the dose and restart.
The exception to my protocol is a mood stabilizer called Lamictal (lamotrigine), and not necessarily that it would cause depression or mania. One of the side effects is a skin disease I absolutely will not show you. Google lamotrigine for all your JAMA-level horror porn. Meth is the same delivery system as a benzo. You take it, you feel the ramp up, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. That’s why extended release benzos like Klonopin and extended release meth like Concerta are so important. If you’re at work, you can’t have a crash in the middle of the day, even for an hour.
Not being able to do that requires you to be able to take a pill about 20-30 minutes before the first one wears off, and that’s not always possible. Both my SSRI and ADHD meds (when I’m on them) have to be taken at the same time every single day, because even being 20 minutes off will induce a tinnitus-like effect in my ears and a monster headache. When that happens, I cannot help but go into autistic rage because I can’t focus on anything but the emergency broadcast system testing in my head. That’s because all my medications affect different brain chemicals.
The worst time this has ever gotten in my way was the unveiling of the Obama portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. I would have been able to see them in person and I missed it because I was away from home. I’d agreed to stay with Lindsay in her hotel that night, heard about the unveiling on the radio, and was just about to HA (haul ass) when I realized that none of my meds were in my bag. I can get by with a Xanax and a Lamictal, because the Xanax will control the serotonin loss for a few hours (at best). Nothing will stop the Lamictal from kicking my ass. It’s what causes all the auditory activity, making my autism and ADHD unmanageable because I cannot handle my environment when my sensory issues aren’t even external so I can fix them.
My last boss was great and dismissed me in the middle of the day to take an extra long lunch and get my medication as long as I came right back. Luckily, there was no traffic that day, so I did it in a little under two hours and just stayed late. That’s what I mean about ADA accommodations, and if we’d used our work from home policy at will, it would have worked flawlessly. My favorite days at Alert Logic and Decision software were work from home. I alternated between going into my office for overnights and forwarding my office phone to my cell because my boss recognized that staying up all night was easier in our own comfortable chairs and at our own desks. Plus, we could lie on our own couches for a nap at lunch. I went to bed. Once. If you take a nap on your couch, it’s much easier to move again because after an hour you’re uncomfortable and yet rested enough for another four hours of work.
However, screen time for me at night is like poker. Often I don’t need a nap because buy-in is at midnight and you don’t notice the time because your adrenaline is hyped up by the nature of the time. “Rounders” is my favorite B-movie because of it. There are few movie characters I love more than Mike McD and Teddy KGB. Shoutout to Joey Knish.
Martin Landau nailed the 99 theses to my wall. It was a revolution inside me and not in front of me when he told the story to Mike about wanting to be a rabbi, but for all the studying he did at the yeshiva, he never found God there. He said that in “Rounders” before I even started to connect that for me, God had left the buildingโฆโฆ.. but his monologue was the seed to realizing I was built the same way. It is left unclear whether studying at the yeshiva made him an atheist or spiritual yet non-practicing.
I have decided that I am the latter. I reject the Biblical literalist interpretation of grandfather in the sky and have traded it for secular humanismโฆโฆ but not entirely. This is because believing that there is a thread of energy between all of us is what created religion in the first place. We are not worshiping the divine, we are the divine.
Science gives us the what. Religion gives us the why. It is why both are needed in our society, because there needs to be exploration of ourselves in both directions. To focus on one is to not understand the world, because secular humanism, like any religion, focuses on how to “bring the kindom of heaven to earth.” It’s just Christian language for cleaning up the hell that’s already here when you’re on the social justice side of the equation. The prosperity gospel is ridiculous, as is the idea that Jesus would support anything that didn’t have to do with community organizing for the dispossessed. That’s what got him killed. Even Neil Gaiman knows that.
It was so much easier to work in my level of quiet in any situation, whether it’s writing, studying theology, or IT. That is absolute silence. Additionally, if I forgot my medication or just wanted another soda, I could get up and get it without the bother of office gossip in between. I’m so good at it and make people laugh so often that it causes hyperfocus interruptions and I can’t transition back to work very easily- and not in terms of laziness (or demand avoidance because I’m in the dark literally to again, tamp down ways for my ADHD to cause “the fuckening.” It’s the idea that up until that moment, your day was going so well.). In terms of building my hyperfocus back from the ground up every time I need something, it’s a tornado effect. I can experience my disabilities and then do three days of work in six hours.
This is because my disability requires me to prepare my environment before I can be comfortable in it. However, the tape of what I need to do is still running, so it’s not like I’m ignoring the work. I am preparing to write it down. This shows itself in everything from notes to official documentation, because it’s all written communication. Notes were scant when I was in a cubicle farm and perfect when I was aloneโฆ.. or as close to perfect as my ADHD would allow.
It bothered me that they recorded all our conversations and dinged me for the writing all the time. It’s that it would have been an accommodation that truly helped me because I did not have the executive function to explain a problem translating technical terms to English so that my customers understood what was happening (I was explaining things to a layperson like opening or forwarding ports on a router) AND write down the thought process of the experience the customer was having.
Then, I’d get overwhelmed, have an ADHD/Autism moment, and not remember the conversation verbatim so I could transcribe itโฆโฆ when they could have easily given me a few moments at the end of the day to summarize each case before I went home by giving me the recordings as well. But they were somehow sacred and it’s my voice? I’m not even putting the burden on the boss to listen to every case in this instance, because that would take hours if they listened to everyone’s every one. So, listening to every case is up to them. It would be an ADA accommodation whether the onus was on either of us.
This is how I won two Rock Star awards and lasted less than a year, basically getting fired for neurodivergence. The reason I won the Rock Star award once was that a coworker was listening in. The reason I got the award twice is that I got a call at three in the morning, forwarded by the vice president of the company. He didn’t want either of us to hear the click when he hung up, so he listened to the whole thing, unbeknownst to me.
I got a page of text from him, a personal note saying he couldn’t believe how charming and chatty I was at that time of night, and loved that when I learned he was in the UK, I said, “I have to ask a question of you that I ask all my British friends. Who is your Doctor?” He said he didn’t watch much anymore but that it was Tom Baker. The vice president of one of the best companies in the world knows my name.
By the end of the letter, I knew I’d won his heart just as much as he’d won mine. I just didn’t win anyone else’s over time because they loved meโฆโฆโฆโฆ at first. Then, they thought of all my quirks and limitations as dumbass attacks. I never had a genuine issue, but things did get better working from home.
Conversations were always in chat. Even better that at home I had access to my stereo Bluetooth headphones and all our apps were web-based, so it was cool to have a Mac or a Linux box at home. Back then, I had a 27-inch flatscreen iMac (running either OS because both are *nix); I wish I still had it, because it was certainly fast enough to run a word processor, a browser, and an e-mail client, even in the days of Adobe Flash (Flash will run on The Ten Commandments before it runs on an Apple tablet). It was the best of times, it was the worst of times and the winter of our discontent, riots the language of the unheard both because I wasn’t heard and I didn’t understand the problem.
At Alert Logic, I had more days at home in the middle of the night, and at Decision Software, our working from home was limited to network outages and snow days, only in daylight. It started my day more naturally when I started sleeping with the sun. I got up early because I wanted to write on the train, which I took unless I was meeting Lindsay somewhere and needed to get there fast. This led to me getting to the train between 0700-0730 because it tamped down my sensory issues to write when the train was less full.
I was often the earliest employee because of it, because I’d go in as soon as the door opened and fuck around until it was actually time to work. A in, I’d get there at 8:15, have some Maxwell house and a donut, talk to my office mate (a godsend because we were both quiet coders), take my meds, wander over to the web team or the IT guy and see what they’re doing.
I was mostly talking to the IT guy about linux because even though I was a marketing database development person (and bad at it), all IT people are unix geeks stuck in a Windows world because businesses only know how to lock down one OS, even when we’re capable o creating the same policies you have for Windows ourselves. As an aside, if you know unix, you know Linux and vice versa. They’re not exactly the same, but the learning curve is small.
Therefore, it’s a short leap between system administration on a Mac to a System 76 (the most famous Linux pre-built computer company). It’s like learning Microsoft Office first and then trying LibreOffice because it’s free. Not the same, but intuitive.
When we suggest new operating systems because they’re more secure than Windows (in 99% of cases),you’re not handing a chef’s knife to a child. You’re giving your IT department the latitude to keep more people safe.
Plus, at work we generally have fast enough hardware to run a virtual machine and work in Linux so network administrators don’t have to mess with it. All of our IP information is bridged from our Windows settings. The point is, network administrators and “IT guys” are the creatives in business working under a chef who doesn’t want to let us experiment to make anything betterโฆ. and they’re pretty mean about it considering we’re the subject matter experts. It affects network security in terms of intrusions from the outside world, privileges and credentials on files inside the organization, and data recovery loss.
You know, the trivial stuff.
Keeping a network free of intrusions means you have to work like a spy or faster. Virus signatures come out faster than foreign intelligence cables.). The certification to be able to get authority in the field takes a tremendous amount of effort, something that managers rarely take into consideration because it’s not their reality. It’s also how companies get fucked because they don’t listen to the autistic programmers/people in the security operations center (SOC) or network security operations (NOC) because they’re lazy, rude, and in a bad mood all the time (that’s HR speak for autistic). Meanwhile, they’re incredible at their jobs because they’re stem autistic. Coding and system administration is their single interest and they’ll go at it with everything they’ve got.
A creative autistic fits nowhere into this equation because STEM autism leads directly to profit. In short, their behavior is excused because businesses and governments need them so badly. The NSA will even take in hackers who have previously been black hat if they’re good enough. Same with DoD. What’s more important? The hacker’s past or national security?
Black hat hackers can program rootkits that are small programs hidden in the RAM of a server so that they’re impossible to find. This leads to things like CIA and State getting their lists of assets/confidential informants leaked and things like that. I could smack Assange, Snowden, and Manning upside the head no regrets for what they did, because we won’t know what they’ve done to covert ops for 50 years, if not a hundred. It’s humiliating that the call was coming from inside the house. What if any of them are actually Rick Aames and don’t know it? When he turned on us, we lost 10 assets in one summer. But a group does know, and the group is pissed with lots of underlings, whether it’s the president or the Director of National Intelligence, and they all have the right to be pissed, too.
But this is a situation in which someone could say the complete opposite and I’d agree with them, because I don’t think that keeping things from the American people is always correct. I just think that they more than likely made us bite off more than we could chew and obviously didn’t care or didn’t think of that. Audacity is worse, because no one sees the whole picture of intelligence, not even the president of the United States, because we can only give them as much as we haveโฆ.. but we are the best set of intelligences agencies the world has ever known, so there is room for as much excellence as we can muster while also recognizing our mistakes. However, NSA has the most power in the room and I would argue the most power in the nation because they basically have a lock on HUMINT (human intelligence), especially because they can figure out ways to watch people when they don’t know they’re being watched. People freak out that NSA might be watching and give up their paranoia willingly when a terrorist is caught on camera making bombs that were planned for, say, the twin towers. But what you must remember, Americans who are terrified, is that Russia, China, and every other civilized nation is also watching you. But NSA is also the only one who can go to bat for you if you are located in the United States and get on the radar by mistake. No one can issue an apology except a United States court, provided there is also video of your innocence.
People generally think about what the NSA is doing to them, not what they’re doing for them. I know for certain that Russia and China have the most eyes on me because that’s where I’ve had the most bots since 2003. I have already learned that even when I mean something innocently, people think it’s not. What makes me think that the Chinese or Russian government would give me a break? If I said something that pissed off the right person at the right time, I’d want to know that I was innocent so someone would go to bat for me. In short, if you get international attention, don’t do anything wrong. Getting caught on the radar by accident is saying something that is legal here and illegal there. In Russia and China, it doesn’t take much and I’ve already had a blogger friend who escaped to Hong Kong then came back to the US. With stuff like that, you never want the US to have a reason to let anyone extradite you, especially when you’re queer. You also don’t want to get yourself in the position of being a prisoner exchange if there’s a chance in hell you did anything that would be considered illegal to the FBI.
If you are an American overseas, it’s better to let them extradite you because you won’t go to trial in a country that’s more harsh than ours. For instance, I’d rather be in an Australian jail than the US, but in a US jail over Mexico or Iran. Considering I’m more likely to be caught over the Internet saying things people don’t like, Russia and China are the countries most likely to careโฆ. even when your critic is an American who fell in love with the Cold War and criticizes it in order to make the future better, not to piss people off. It is how that vlogger views China, a bilingual American married to a Chinese woman. He was only trying to improve his community and country- escaping a future in prison for his trouble.
If you’ve made it to the end, I hope it was entertaining to see me ramble like an AuDHD contradiction in terms. But it’s because I can explain so many things that one tangent leads into another- sometimes more smoothly than others. It’s how I get jobs, literally. I got one of them because my resume appeared among the search results at Maryland Workforce Commission. The CEO of the company Googled me and thought I was a hell of a writer, even commenting to everyone that since I’m a hell of a writer, it was only fair that he let me take pot shots at his stuff.
But writing about all these topics doesn’t mean I can do all of them perfectly forever without accommodation because I’ve proved it in every job I’ve ever had. Bosses do not take the ups and downs of autism well, partially because they can’t see it and attribute performance/attitude to other things. It’s partially because companies say they want to accept you for who you are, but don’t actually help you get there because they say they are welcoming without policies to support it.
It reminds me of my first marriage in the business sense of the word. The reason Kathleen and I got married was because we were in Dupont Circle (then called “the froot loop”) and picked up a copy of the local queer rag, The Blade. In it was a statement from the head PR dude that if you got a civil union in Vermont or married in another country, ExxonMobil would have to honor it. The problem was, they couldn’t. We were the first couple that asked for those benefits and the lady at HR I talked to wasn’t even aware that the publicist had made the statement to the newspaper.
Therefore, the policy on queer issues at XOM revolves entirely around me. I deserve all the credit because Kathleen is a hosebeast and I’m just not going to give it to her. She sold my Yoda (I never could have afforded it. I won it in a contest, life-sized so it scared her and she sold it while I was out of the house when it was a collector’s item that would have appreciated- nearly one of a kind.). And I honestly could have forgiven her infidelities if she’d just decided to be Jack Kennedy about it. I mean, tell me, but I don’t care. The problem was the lying. Eleanor wasn’t threatened by Lucy because Franklin wasn’t threatened by Amelia. I’ll get over it. But that’s what I think now. Back then, I would have been threatened af and worried I wasn’t enough and all the things. Now, I write so much that I need more alone time than most girlfriends would want me to have in the first place.
But what I didn’t do is have ADA accommodations there, either.
I cannot be blamed for keeping it tight because I didn’t know. I had to talk about it and couldn’t. My bosses and partners were every bit as responsible for communication gaffes, therefore we both had to be responsible with future interactions. An employer owes an employee ADA accommodations just as much as neurodivergent people have the right to ask for them.
However, I know plenty of people who say to their partners that they’re neurodivergent and what issues they have with thinking, giving them specific information that is very important and all close relationships blow off. For instance, moms are obsessed with baby books. How often do fathers read them? Mental health is just as important as the medical development of a baby and the health of the mother. When you have mental health, sometimes your executive function crumbles and demand avoidance becoming things like not being able to take a shower because the change in sensory environment is too great (I experience this more in winter unless I drag my space heater into the bathroom with meโฆ. a lifesaver when I make it about 80 when I’m in the cold water.). Things like this are why working from home is preferable, too. It ups my productivity when people don’t care if I stay comfortable and work in pajamas and a hoodie.
I am not making the case that autistic people have to limit themselves to pajamas. I’m saying that they need more leniency on the dress code than most people due to sensory issues that impede their performance. For instance, I’m sure it was a huge damn deal when offices started allowing women to wear pants because wearing skirts instead is hell on earth when your sensory issue is bare legs, and let’s stop pretending that’s not an issue for all women considering razor burn and having to shave whether they have road rash or not.
But the trend of making the skirt part of an official women’s uniform went out a long time ago. Now it’s accepting that autistic people need the flexibility to show up in pants without a tailored waist, a soft t-shirt, and a hoodie (which is not cheap to do when you want to look good enough for work and yet tamp down everything that will bother you once you leave the house. Pain before beauty is not an option for anyone, much less people with sensory issues. I am pointing this out because of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. They both wear (wore) the same thing every day so it became a decision they only had to made onceโฆโฆ.. and owned their own business so that they could do that because no one enforced a dress code on them. I would say it helped them be successful. But what do I know? In 20 years, people won’t even know their names (this is a joke, they’re immortal for evil or for awesome).
Mental illness affects everyone from princes to paupers, but if you know one mentally ill person, you know one mentally ill person. If you know one ADHD, autistic, or AuDHD person, you know one of us. People have preconceived notions about how alcoholics, addicts, and neurodivergent people should or could act, and they impose their standards on everyone else. No, every one is not “a little bit autistic.” I hear that a lot. Everyone has problems, but few are reinforced in processing disorders and depression/anxiety stemming from them. The pressure of internalized hatred of neurodivergent people makes our disabilities worse. The pressure of showing up to a job when you’re seen as problematic often induces meltdown and burnout, essentially being paralyzed with indecision in the moments you don’t already have a social mask for something. And that’s before anyone gives you a demand to which you can’t respond right away. That’s after you’ve conquered the demand avoidance over the things you need to function. Being unable to ask demands of yourself feels the same as being paralyzed over possibly hurting someone else.
But here’s the thing. Lack of accommodation only helps to keep what employers view as “problematic behavior” under wraps. We cannot be trained like a dog into neurotypical responses and wait until you get frustrated enough to fire us over it because we can’t mask at all times, forever. It’s exhausting, like having a job at work and a job that never ends when the world doesn’t adjust to include us. “Less productive” is relative when you’re talking about autism and ADHD, because performance depends on communication and neither party is good at it. Mainstreaming sucks, but neurodivergent people get irritated, too, because not every autistic person’s quirks will line up with mine and vice versa.
But I started this journey by thinking about Red Mist rage, because Harry Wales thought about it first.
If you were him, you would have been beside yourselves, too. When Princess Diana died, Charles told him, patted him on the knee, and left the room. They didn’t expect him to ignore the press once. He felt hung out to dry the first time, too.
Would you have let it happen again?
Being neurodivergent is knowing when to run, because people who love you will want to give you accommodations and the people who don’t might want to, but don’t educate themselves and think they’re the expert because Mary down the street doesn’t have the same symptoms as me, or masks differently so that her symptoms make her seem like a better person than me when we don’t have the same disorder. Perhaps she doesn’t have depression, anxiety, or ADHD. Everything in medicine is one diagnosisโฆ. “it depends.”
I hope that Supergrover eventually reads all of this, because she would have empathy for my plight like none of my other friends would on many, many levelsโฆ.. and I learned about all of this so recently that she doesn’t know about any of it if she stomped off when she said she did. However, I told her that she needed to keep reading, keep absorbing, so maybe she didn’t because I decided not to feel creepy about it.
I feel weird now, though, because emotions are coming up that I don’t want to dive into, so let’s get back to food and Zac and Oliver, who is a dog.
Said vegan chef needed something better for his computer to promote the restaurant, and his eyes lit up when I told him I’d sell him a tank of an HP printer that wouldn’t die if you took a baseball bat to it and would print 40 black & white pages a minute for forty bucks. Thus the reason why our whole meal was comped and we went back several times just to watch him be creative. It was devastating when they closed.
I keep up with the news to keep up with Zac, because even though he’s not forward deployed with an intelligence unit, I know more about what’s going on with him emotionally if I have some idea about the data he’s collecting. That shit causes real pain. Working for CIA (or DIA, or NSA, etc.) carries a certain cool exterior, but no one ever thinks about these people being the first to learn that terrorists have blown up an elementary school. It doesn’t matter that it’s thousands of miles away. If you learn best by reading, that intelligence will wreck you for a minute because all the info is heightened because of your ability to take it in completely, even sensory memories you’re only imagining and have never happened to you. It’s the same for friends at State and those who have other government jobs where they have to travel to dangerous places. It makes me wonder what might have happened had I made a bigger play for a diplomat I dated for too short a time. Her next posting was in Niger, and she ended up taking someone else because I was so hesitant. It was too fast. I couldn’t change my environment so quickly yet againโฆ. I mean, I can, this was just a couple, three years at most after I moved from Houston to DC. I feel that I dodged a bullet if she was dating me and also found someone to marry in like six weeks. I wasn’t threatened by going to Niger because she was. If I got caught being queer, it would be with her. I was threatened by change and I finally learned to recognize it.
Until I found out I was AuDHD, I didn’t know why I had so much of a propensity to change everything all at once and yet severe sensory issues afterward that were akin to the pain of childbirth. You stop remembering how bad it was after a while and it gives you the crazy idea that a new location is better when it’s not. It’s just destination addiction brought on by poor impulse control. That magnifies when your partner is also ADHD. So, give people a break when they do stuff impulsively. It’s not a defect, it’s a disorderโฆ. and in a lot of ways, the things that we do that seem impulsive to you are absolutely the right answer for us because we process emotional information differently and sometimes more quickly than a neurotypical brain.
We’re not better than you. That’s not the point. The point is that you are beating a dead horse with saying you want diverse candidates and yet your attitudes are the same old shit. There are a lot of words that resonate with HR that make you look like a lazy narcissist who only performs half the time because every time you walk by their office, they are staring out the window. It’s not shutdown and having to psych yourself out of it. It’s avoiding work.
Hell is taking 50 support calls in a day because the policy on time spent with a customer is ridiculously short to make Service License Agreements; everything runs together in terms of writing and talking at the same time, then the next call coming immediately for eight whole hours, four of which are in a row. That fries neurotypical people and not just people fighting through loss of executive function, the meltdown/burnout cycle, or 57 channels that are all blaring and they have to have so much emotional strength to choose between them. That’s why the pace of life is so much better in Europe for neurodivergent/queer people. First of all, the UK and many other countries are more progressive than we are on things like gay marriage and trans medicine. Gay marriage might be old news, but revoking it isn’t. They also have a generous sick policy and wouldn’t argue with me over taking an hour for a therapy session or a med check, even if it was a couple minutes over my allotted 60 minutes.
My health care would be free, so that’s something. It would have been amazing to emigrate to Canada when I was dating Meag, but that was never really a viable option because first of all, we were only apart for a couple months at most before she found someone else, moved in with her, and then broke up with me. Second of all, completely forgivable because we were both 18 and that screams idiot, anyway.
I still think, though, in my heart of hearts that she was the one. But not in a way that makes me want her back. Just that I think we’d have settled into marriage very well once we stopped being idiots because we had a much more natural yin and yang than “my way or the highway” and “suppress everything that’s wrong in order to please her.” And I don’t know for sure, but at least long ago there was a part of Meag that felt the same way, because she told me on a very cold day in an Ottawa Starbucks that she thought we’d made the right choices in life, but regretted that we didn’t get to be partners as adults because she thought we would have been good at it. I choose to believe that she was right, and it fucked me up; I was still in the “she was my first love and I’m over it and all, but no one can say they’re ever really over their first love” headspace. It pulled me in the wrong direction and I cried myself to sleep. In retrospect, it’s the biggest compliment I’ve ever been given, it just took me a while to take it inโฆ.. but not years of pining away. I got better after I smuggled Cubans back into the US one trip.
It was one thing to recognize that we had a great past. Quite another to promise each other the future. I think, though, that if we’d put the mountain of work into it that the relationship actually needed in terms of communication, I’d be singing “O Canada” right now. And in fact, I’m glad Meagan dumped me because “I’m Irish. If anything is wrong I’ll just deal with it for the rest of my life.” Meagan had issues that I would not have wanted to take on given the red flags I already saw. It’s not that I saw red flags. I saw an unwillingness to work with me and no idea how to solve that problem. I didn’t have any standards and just lived in a low self-esteem that thought nothing of taking away sleep and replacing it with internal histrionics.
I’m not sure that Meag ever really took in how much she hurt me, because she can apologize all she wants and I accept every one. It’s just that her frame of references were different than mine, therefore she could not understand the problem like I could. I could handle Meag having a beard because she wasn’t out to her parents. I could not handle watching her kiss him or hearing that she did at a party because it started the meltdown/burnout cycle, followed by the depression/anxiety combo meal. I was all for ethical non-monogamy to keep up appearances for her safety, but I didn’t want to be an accessory and I completely was. I enabled absolutely everything that hurt me because I was used to every day emotional abuse and needed it to function. I let her hurt me over and over, forgiving her too fast every time because I didn’t want to be aloneโฆโฆ the drumbeat of a woman’s heart.
I accepted enormous change. My girlfriend couldn’t be my girlfriend in public. I could not mention that she was my girlfriend in conversations to people where it would get back to her friends, thus making an entirely different friend group than her, because most of them did not accept me. I was just the weird girl who acted like a puppy in front of Meagan and I assure you that was not what was happening there. She was on me like white on rice and I loved every minute of it. But I had to deal with my sensory environment being threatened every time a new piece of condoned infidelity came to light. It was more okay when it was a boy because she needed a beard. Sleeping with another woman was just cruel, and not because non-monogamy is bad. Lying and cheating is bad, like coming home and getting into bed with me until I fell asleep right after said dateโฆ.. when she smelled different and I said nothing. I didn’t find out until she was ready to tell me, because I knew it happened unofficially and didn’t need to pry. She didn’t “protect the path.”
However, I know more intimately than she does why she cheated and let it go. It was too painful to have a connection as large as ours, so she slept with someone else to distance herself from me to have the strength to go. Moving back to Canada was her only option, and I’ve seen that since the beginning- that I should have broken up with her on the last day of school and just didn’t.
I didn’t date anyone for three years after that, and her partner knew exactly why because I was only in town for a few days (or she was and had brought her girlfriend to Houston). Therefore, we flirted like 18-year-olds while never being a serious threatโฆ. except to Katharin. Katharin punched a hole in the wall when I told her that Meagan was spending the night at our apartment, and this was after I told her that her partner and daughter were coming with her and she was staying with me as well. There was enough room for all of us, and Katharin focused on Meagan and me, as if we were hell bent on sneaking out in the middle of the night (which was not actually a bad idea in retrospect given how we’ve come to feel about both women, frankly. We’d just moved past the time in our lives where it was appropriate to want it.).
I also got a taste of what being a parent meant. That it was getting up at 0500 and hauling ass to Waffle House because kid is on a schedule and we’re fucking late. It was then that I knew Meagan and I would have been wonderful parents had the stars aligned, but a passing thought to a falling star, a beautiful memory that could have happened had we been diligent about it.
She needed to open up more. I needed to deal with the disabilities I didn’t know I had. It is also true that pegging us as Glennon and Abby is more accurate than it isn’t, I assure you. We both turned each other out in the same behavior with equal and opposite reactions. My joy in her made me a better writer and fluent in the language of the pitch. I write about the same shit Glennon does and Abby’s voice is indistinguishable from Meag’s in their podcast. It’s not the same pitch, tone, or tambre. It is the same jargon and my mind makes up the rest. She is within me and without me, and sometimes she’s so heavy I just have to lose myself in the music.
Damn, I may never write a paragraph more true that that last one. Shiiiiiiiat. If I ever did get her back, this is it. However, she’s another person I won’t let back into my life without significant work, because she’s proven herself both not to lay her feelings on the table and disappear without a trace. You get one or the other, not both.
I can handle insecurity in dates and times at which we might see each other because that’s the nature of being an adult. I cannot handle an insecure environment, and I cannot count on it with her because of her past behavior. It doesn’t mean that I think she’s less wonderful that she was a few paragraphs ago. She’s just free to do that with someone else. An anxious attachment requires care and feeding because it’s one person’s responsibility to help the other person with anxiety by being clear in communication and not avoidant. It’s the other person’s responsibility to control their anxiety and communicate clearly in return. For instance, an anxious attachment says that if anyone says they’re busy, it’s because they don’t want to spend time with you. An avoidant attachment style and an anxious one is managed by being clear about what is happening. It’s on the anxious person not to spiral out about it and assume that your reasons are actually lies. It’s on the avoidant person not to avoid direct confrontation and hear people out without emotionally detaching and feeling guilty, making up for lack of emotional intimacy with genuinely thoughtful gifts that are supposed to say everything you want to hear and don’t.
Words have power, and I know that. I have known it my whole life. It just wasn’t until I started exploring all my flaws and failures that I could see why they exist. It helps prepare me for a future with neurodivergence, mental health issues, and being physically disabled because I have a space to see it and self-soothe. I am actually managing the best way I know how. I am not a constant burden or ignoring all my responsibilities, and I can see it because I can tell what’s a symptom and what’s not. I will never have truly long relationships without that give and take, and in no way did I get things for which I couldn’t ask. In many ways, I was ignored if I did.
The most embarrassing autistic meltdowns I’ve ever had were at home in the parsonage and in the first hour after my emotional abuser finished her last concert at my church. I knew she was leaving for real and I was crying crocodile tears because I was 14. We could stay close with letters and phone calls, but it was never the same, even when we were capable of visiting in real life again. It hadn’t been that long, maybe four and a half years at most. But in my opinion, she lost her 20s the moment she married her partner and that’s why she never looked at me the same. I went from “I’m older and often not wiser” to “you’re annoying” real, real fast. I’d aged five years, she’d aged 15. The most sinister thing she ever did to me that I struggled to forgive the longest was marrying a woman that if she, my dad, and me were all in the same room you couldn’t find the differences with a map and a flashlight. She, in a very real sense, passed me over for a facsimile. I’m sure she thought that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, but even though it was wrong I was fucking furious. She wanted to be a power couple, but didn’t want to wait for the inconvenience of letting me go to college and grad school when there was a minister already ordained right there.
I am not saying that I would have been good at being her partner if she had waited, or that it wouldn’t have been pedophilia in the beginning. What I’m saying is that we fit each other like a glove whether I was too young for her or not, leading me to absolutely ignore the downside of being abused and let her have all of me. The emotional vampire who found a very willing familiar because I was so young. I know enough to know she didn’t want that, but she did want a partner that was good for her image and I fit the bill because I knew how to be on her arm and speak in public, being as personable as people twice my age through nature and nurture. It’s the reason why neither she nor Supergrover’s age difference bother me. I’ve been conversing with people from kids younger than me to retirement age since I learned to talk. When I was a toddler, one of my best friends was an old coot who worked at an ExxonMobil service center. He always smelled of tobacco, oil, and gas. His name was Bill Killian, the proper addition to “Lanagan.” At that age, I knew how to read the newspaper AND laugh at dumb cartoons.
I still do that. Regular Show is life because I carry a picture of the cast in my head a lot. My favorite character is Mordecai, but he’s the nerdy side of me. It’s Muscle Man and Hi-Five Ghost that bring out my sense of adventure and laughter.
You know who else has a sense of adventure and laughter? MY MOM!
And on that note, I have prepared my environment to accept more demands. I think I will start by making some Alfredo. Demand avoidance touches everything, because I’ve been avoiding asking myself to cook since last night. That right there is a huge part of why some autistic people cannot live alone. There are programs to get me a home health nurse to stop by, and I need to see if I am eligible for it. Or maybe it’s a social worker. In either case, it makes sense to me while single because I don’t have a partner to share these kinds of things with. It also makes sense while in a relationship because it’s not putting the burden of caregiving on someone that you don’t pay. It’s why when I’m in a relationship, I would pay my housekeeper before I would pay my cell phone bill to keep resentment off my girl, or beautiful boy, as I’ve called him from the beginning. But Zac doesn’t want a romantic partner living with him, so it’s not an issue for us, anyway. But what I know is that if I did live with him, I would rather have someone to take care of the house rather than facing demand avoidance, loss of function, meltdown, and burnout cycles because then the fight seems between you and not around you. Resentment is toxic like nothing else.
The reason this entry is so long is that I’m trying to explain to myself why I do not have autism imposter syndrome. The poster child for an autistic person is not me because it is not my only diagnosisโฆ.. and again, if you don’t fit the picture of “autism” in other people’s heads, they will say things like “you don’t look autistic” or “I go through the same thing and I’ve never been depressed.” That “you don’t look autistic” is a kick in the groin. It means your disabilities will be minimized to an enormous degree because you’re not stimming all over the place. Even high functioning autistic and ADHD adults stim to calm their minds, but only a true autistic meltdown that involves ENORMOUS outbursts is valid. My meltdowns don’t look like the kid on “The Good Doctor” and I’m not as rigid as Sheldon Cooper. Two reasons for that. The first is that autism presents differently among all people. The second is that there is a marked difference in how ADHD and autism present in women.
Part of it is that women are so much better at social masking than men, because they’ve been taught a strict protocol for behavior that men just haven’t because they’re men. They own the rules. Part of it is that if low function is the picture of autism, hyperactivity is the picture of ADHD. So, either women are covering it or they’re ignored because they’re not jumping around like seven year old meth heads on a bender. Female ADHD is almost always internal because of both gaps in visibility by professionals, gay or straight pegged as only a “weird Barbie.”
When I can write beautiful things, I am beautiful to other people. When I exhibit signs of my processing disorders or mental heath issues, I am not. If I find my place in the world by measuring other people’s opinions of me, I will not be able to stay in one place very long. I have run out of everyone else’s frustration long enough.
This is my story. If you’re starting with this entry, it’s not the beginning. But we are just getting started. If you listen closely, your inner voice might talk to mine as you read. You’ll find the message you needed to hear, even if it’s not the one you wanted. That’s because I’m AuDHD, not a reject.
The pity is that we all have to work through it every moment of every day when there are so many simple accommodations.
This is how I do it.
Stories That Are All True 