Ass I often do, I surfed Facebook for a few minutes. I was looking for a prompt to give me a jumping off point, because today’s prompt was “are there any quotes you live by?” Last year, the title was “many, most of them mine.” I was not saying that I’m the expert, only that I’m the author I read the most because I go back over what I’ve written to see what’s next. Therefore, my own words are more likely to stick with me because these essays are ABOUT ME, which is the topic I know the most about (on most days).
The thing I saw on Facebook is that “worrying is worshipping the problem.” It is every bit as meaningful as something I heard in “I’m a Christian now. That worked.” It’s a group for atheists and I lurk to see what they’re saying, because I am often jogged theologically by the things they say, like “Jesus wasn’t the only person claiming to be The Messiah at the time. His was just the story that stuck.”
Like today, I had to sit down.
His was the story that stuck, which is to my mind one of the greatest theological phrases ever uttered in the history of ANYTHING….. BY AN ATHEIST and I am FURIOUS I didn’t think of that line before they did. 😉
Except for perhaps a line tied with it (being the best and furious I didn’t think of it) “a/theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash.” I am not talking about the overwhelming guilt and shame the church is quite capable of handing you….. Wrapped in bread and wine, no less. I am talking about Christopher Hitchens debating Rowan Williams on YouTube and learning they were good friends. Zac and I were actually talking about this the other day because he’s an atheist. I told him that I loved Hitch, but I didn’t love Richard Dawkins because he may be smart but he’s also an asshole.
He seems to me to be a not religious evangelical, and his schtick is making Christians look like they’re stupid even when they’re only out for self improvement and not world domination. Social justice Christianity is left out of the conversation because it’s not as easy to make fun of us. We question everything, including the idea that all Christians are stupid.
In effect, Dawkins is worshipping the problem. He’s so fanatical in his beliefs that he’s trying to change people through force and anger, not ever present loving kindness, which all atheists I’ve met have. Luckily, I have never run across an atheist who espoused Dawkins-like views, and I have to say that it’s partly due to my interaction with them- because I don’t try to change them, I don’t tell them they’re wrong because they’re not (religion is a spectrum and belief in God is ontological…. Essentially, God exists as much as you believe God does. Evangelicals get in the weeds with The Great Commission and think that Jesus thought you were personally responsible for recruiting people. They take it a little too seriously and often become right judgmental bastards because of it. You won’t convert, so they’re angry and fearful ALL THE TIME because their getting into heaven is DEPENDENT on your yes. Otherwise, in their churches, they just aren’t working hard enough.
Meanwhile, I am out there saying that atheists I’ve met, for the most part, left church because they were hurt, angry, afraid, and exhausted. You fucking Evangelicals are cancer, especially walking into a church where it explicitly says they won’t marry you if you are A) not a member of the church II) marrying a Jew. I will not tell you where I saw it because it’s not worth it to have you show up and protest. It wasn’t Joel Osteen, but definitely Joel-adjacent.
Now, non-denominational Christianity looks like rock concerts with homophobia that looks beautiful because it’s Biblical.
Meanwhile, your houses are built on sand.
Peter, the rock of the Catholic church, has probably met way more gay people than you. We just didn’t have words for it until Victorian England. A lot of the preachers after Jesus died would have traveled to ancient Greece and Rome. When you think about history lining up that way, homophobia is INSANE.
Homophobia. I do not think it means what you think it means. The Old Testament was not calling homosexuality an abomination. They were railing against the ancient Canaanite practice of young boys becoming prostitutes at the high temple. They were protesting pedophilia and disrespect for a holy place, not the sexual acts inherent to being queer in the first place.
Jesus did not say a word about homosexuality, “therefore, it [justification for treating queer people as lesser than] cannot be essential to his teaching” (Jim Rigby, Presbyterian Church USA). JESUS DOES NOT CARE IF YOU HAVE MATCHING TOWELS, GLASSES, AND SMALL DOGS.
Evangelicals are cracked when everything I know about Jesus can be summed up in one Disney show tune…… “God Bless the Outcasts.” You are JOKING if you believe Jesus sat with sinners all day long and wouldn’t have been on the side of the queer community, because now we’re the ones being persecuted instead of him, his land occupied by Rome. The “Holy Roman Empire” has a lot of fucking nerve, I’ll tell you that much. Crucifixion was your practice and you killed Jews for sport. Then, a Jew’s story becomes well-known and you somehow take it as “permission” to take over the whole world.
This is not the religion you’re looking for.
They’re worshipping the problem.
They’re creating ways to put obstacles in people’s way based on bullshit Jesus never said.
OCCUPIED BY ROME. RENDER UNTO CAESAR, PEOPLE.
Jesus has met a fuckin’ queer, all right?
Stop worshipping the problem, because it was never even there. You made it up. Stop wrecking people’s relationship with Christ because they don’t think they deserve it.
Jesus said to “walk in the light while you have it.” I hate that so many “church people” continue to live in darkness while the light is right above their heads. All they have to do is stand up, but the church keeps them on the kneeling rails.
It wrecks relationships with friends and partners as a result, because you’re not right……. But you’re certain.
I can’t tell you anything about this book, really, because I just started it last night. It’s not as fast a read as “House in the Cerulean Sea” or “Under the Whispering Door.” However, I am encountering my first ace character and we are not dissimilar. When I’m not thinking about it, it’s not important. Obviously. There were seven years between Dana and Zac because I was delusional. I wish I could put it better than that, but it was ridiculous to think I could make a mistake like that because it would be something she’d struggle to forgive. That being said, she also made a mistake I’m struggling to forgive, because it changed the course of my life in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen for myself knowing so much now that I didn’t then. What is important to me is that I have absolutely no problem with the entire world knowing I was straight up out of my fuckin’ mind, because that’s what made the mistake possible. I was in autistic meltdown and taking it out on her.
Then, I literally got burnout for seven years.
My executive function cratered because I felt so horrible. This is what I mean about her having a husband that can spoil her in a way I would’ve wanted, because I owe her a lot more than he does. She should have gotten all the best parts of me, and she didn’t. People can and do change, but not without a backbreaking amount of emotional work. I loved her so hard, I was willing to sit in the pain of rejection until it didn’t hurt anymore; I wanted us both to forgive each other and move on. I wrote her long letters into the night explaining my feelings to that end.
When they didn’t work, I had to stop the pattern of me needing her so much without her securing our attachment. It felt creepy because at the time I didn’t know I was autistic. I didn’t know I was a monotropic thinker and that every time I fall in love that woman becomes my entire special interest. Additionally, I didn’t love her because she was perfect, I loved us in our imperfections because I felt so powerful virtually “standing next to her.” I was a fool, but it was worth it and it always will be.
I don’t know why she wants me to carry the weight of her indecision, but I don’t have to love it. I just have to live it. It is perfectly ok to stop a toxic cycle and cry myself to sleep until it gets better. 10 years is not nothing, and everyone can tell I’ll never get over it because I won’t shut up about it. One of the friends I consider to be the most precious in my mind gave me that line…. “Leslie, you don’t have to love it. You just have to live it.” After that, I called her “the poet laureate of Skidmore Street.” What I do know is that “It Gets Better.” I don’t ruminate over the women in my past as much as I do Dana and Supergrover because they’re the most recent. The immediate reaction is that she’s my Achilles’ Heel. Over time, this will relax. I just have to let it happen because she seems bound and determined to let it.
This may not be the entire reason, but part of it is that my beautiful girl is so goddamn stubborn. She vows not to respond and does. We have done it to each other so much that it doesn’t mean anything anymore and I’ve stopped trying to make it. What I know for sure is that it could go either way based on past history and I’m prepared for every eventuality. That’s what I meant about being able to see living together (the spinster in the attic) to never speaking again. It’s a wide spectrum because we are as people. We are both so brilliant and so stupid about this. I thought yesterday about writing to her, “I wish you’d take it in that I love you like most people love babies…. that wild, crazy love no matter what their future holds.” I realized that’s how most autistic people I’ve met love others. I hope she sees that I’m trying to social mask the right way, but sometimes things are going to get lost in translation. Neurotypical and neurodivergent are two different languages. She’s speaking Hebrew, and it’s all Greek to me (little Biblical humor for you there). Autistic rage and burnout are tangible, they’re so loud. I don’t mean to be rude or avoidant. I am trying to cope with as much as I can handle, which as it turns out is a smaller amount than I’ve been led to believe.
I have covered my social masking until now. Writing is the only way I knew it existed. Being disconnected from Supergrover’s facial expressions while I talked cost me dearly, but writing letters to each other all the time drew me in, because you can’t social mask if you’re not adjusting at every eye twitch. I have said this before, but virtually it’s easy to go a long way down the wrong road very fast.
I have said that we looked before we leapt, but it wasn’t a bad move. It just needs to be managed, and I’m the only one that wants to manage it. It is unfathomable to me that she doesn’t see my point, so I’m done worrying what she thinks if she’s ignoring all my warning signs. That I am trying to tell her something without telling her something. But I can’t hold it over her head that she’s obstinate. I just have to wait it out and wear the wound on my skin until it becomes healthy, stronger scar tissue.
It’s not hard not knowing how she feels. It’s hard not knowing her reactions to what I write. At the same time, she wasn’t here when she was here, only once telling me I was too close to the hard out and making me afraid I’d ever do it again. I’ve seen her warning rattle enough for a lifetime. She has never seen mine, but mine is not about biting her. It’s about trying not to bite her. I am sure that I have made mistakes that I would absolutely regret in publishing anything, much less about this. But I don’t get to feel regret if you don’t tell me you were hurt and why.
Only strangers respond to my writing because it’s not personal. I respect that and like it very, very much because it means that I can be off in my own little world with my own silly observations and no one cares. The only time my friends respond to my writing, really, is when they’re so angry that they can’t see straight. Every deep, intimate, positive portrayal goes out the window because no one can see their own bullshit or respect that I did and have an opinion about it. This has been true since 2003.
There are only two exceptions to this. Bryn tells me when I’ve written something beautiful, and I love when she loves how I’ve portrayed her. She is the 3D character that sees she’s a 3D character. If we got in a fight, she wouldn’t give two shits what I said here, because talking it out personally is more important. She actually would say “what can I do to ease your mind about that?” The same is true of Supergrover, or was until 2014. After that, I was rightfully “PNG’d back to Langley” (slang at CIA for being demoted to a desk jockey- persona non grata).
I just hate it because we used to be Jack and Greer.
“The Secret Lives of Puppets” touches on this because since the protagonist is ace, the story revolves around deep platonic relationships. Sometimes, the universe sends you the book you need to read at the time you need the words most. Finding this book was a godsend in terms of learning about myself. That I focus on deep relationships whether they’re romantic or not. In fact, in this book, the “puppets” are mostly androids and robots.
Using androids and puppets doesn’t mean that I didn’t already pick up the message that friendship is valuable… and being a writer may not make our friendship continue, but it does make it immortal. She will live in me for a lifetime, and after we pass, our words to each other will still be here.
If people know me at all, they know that I might be a mess sometimes, but I love my friends and want to make all of us live forever.
We all need more time to understand things than we think we do, and are trying our dead-level best to overschedule; we’re all going place to place and taking in none of them. When I travel again, I’d like to stay at least a week if possible. It takes a while for my body clock to accept a new rhythm, particularly going east. Jet lag was objectively worse coming back to DC from Oregon than it was in the moments I was taking the obligatory Portland airport photo (iykyk). I am using jet lag as an example of needing time because it’s the best way I know how to explain autism to a layperson. Imagine feeling like you have the pressure of your emotions changing to that degree all the time rather than just after a long-haul flight. Taking on change is easier when you feel normal, right? Would you enjoy living in jet lag fog permanently?
This is why transition time is essential to the autistic brain, and why I am yet again grateful that I do not drive. I caused my last wreck from rumination. I’d talked to a close friend earlier in the day, and we hadn’t spoken for years before that. She’d ghosted me without a trace and then reappeared. It was jarring, a new environment for me, so I did what any normal person would do. I thought about it so hard I ran into a guardrail trying to blow town for Frederick, the closest Waffle House. I was about 800 feet from a triple order of hash browns with chili, cheese, and onions (superior to Frito Pie, fight me) when I took a curve a little too hard. Girls with blonde hair will do that to you.
Editor’s Note:
You should absolutely add Fritos to bean burritos at Taco Bell. Also, every once in a while when I hit 7-Eleven, I buy a snack bag of Fritos for the back of the pantry because I’m a Texan and I don’t make the rules. Sometimes you have to have Frito Pie and in that instance, there is no substitute so you might as well be prepared. Not being prepared is such a rookie Texan mistake, because whoever heard of homemade Fritos? You’re going to the store. It’s not that you can’t make AMAZEBALLS tortilla chips at home. I can and they’re fabulous. But they sure as hell don’t taste like Fritos…….. just like pastry chefs are going to use Oreos/Oreo crusts. They’re not going to reinvent that particular wheel.We’ve learned it over time.
Back to our regularly scheduled program.
What you learn with enough time is how to control your environment to the extent that you can and let go of the rest. I’m not going to be able to convince Supergrover that what she read as narcissism was actually an autistic meltdown. I am sure that she regularly thinks I am the most toxic person she’s ever met because I just keep throwing these truth bombs because I’m an asshole and not because I am genuinely curious and love her more than anything on earth. If I throw an emotional bomb, it means I care about the answer and want to hear it. I heard a line from “Friends” that expresses this so well…. when Chandler looks into Monica’s eyes and tells her that she’s high maintenance, but he likes maintaining her. I am not an asshole with a God complex, she has complex problems that cannot be solved with “yeah, I’m fine.” If you want to see a question as an attack, you will.
I honestly found out I was autistic because of this relationship. I had to find out two things. The first was why I was so empathetic on the inside and yet it came across as being self-absorbed. Everyone knows that autistic person, or we know each other. Bet.
I learned over time that the meltdowns happened in a cycle because I would unmask and start letting my brain run wild on these ADHD/Autistic tangents and she would take offense at me not acting like a woman, seriously, and I’m not being dismissive toward her. It’s that traditional women are programmed to fix/please and anticipate everyone else’s needs.
We used to be a little too much alike in that arena, but I felt safe enough to stop with her because she’s so goddamn strong. She lays down the truth bombs as easily and often as I do. It’s just that hers are in the context of what she knows, and mine are in the context of what I do. Her emotional bombs are surrounded by not understanding my neurodivergence, her stepping all over my ass while I’m trying to teach her why my reactions to her are so much more intense than her reactions to me and failing miserably. Why it feels like I’ll always go a little stupid in that dreamy-eyed kind of way when I think of her, and have to stuff that kind of emotion back because it’s part of a social mask I don’t have. Just so many sensory issues that I attach to her, like the smell of coffee or the feel of the t-shirt that I kidded her I ordered that “has her portrait on the front.”
I have already said that the building blocks of our relationship are adrenaline and dopamine. My ADHD/Autism created those memories of smell when my brain chemicals were the most flooded. It’s why I’m so attached to her with a love that won’t die, but not like I loved Dana. Like I love my parents and siblings. The thing is, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she loves me the same way, because when Sam dumped me I told her and then she said her Mama Wolverine claws were coming in. I have never been so grateful for anything in my entire life because my next line to her was that my biggest delight in life was thinking about just how pissed off she was about this. It was that night I formed my first company. It’s called Leslie Lanagan & Pet Monsters on a Fraying Leash, Inc. We’re waiting on our 501, though.
When I become the most upset, I have a meltdown and then burnout. In those moments, burnout looks like me losing function and going mute, only communicating through writing. I get sensory issues from eating because it’s an ADHD hyperfocus interruption and I switch to vegan protein shakes. If that’s not enough, I develop sensory issues with leaving my house, reinforced by depression, anxiety, and an overactive imagination. The overactive imagination is a straight up problem because everything I imagine is a hundred times worse due to rejection sensitivity dysphoria, a common trait among neurodivergent people because we’ve been programmed to think of ourselves as problematic.
I should mention that there is also fascinating research suggesting that the number of autistic people who are nonbinary, queer, and poly is off the charts. My behavior suggests I’m not poly unless we’re talking about writing and physiciality, because emotional intimacy with multiple people is easy. Physically? Not so much. I’m just not wired that way. That doesn’t mean I’m not poly. It just means I probably wouldn’t meet someone on the ground and behave the same way. It remains to be seen whether I could manage that or not, and doing the work to see whether I’m doing the right thing for me or lending myself to getting into a situation where I can’t help myself and put someone I’ve made a monogamous agreement with completely uncomfortable because I broke the rules. Just because it happened organically doesn’t mean I didn’t cheat. Just because it only happened to me doesn’t mean I didn’t cheat. The road to hell was paved with good intentions.
I need to make it so clear that I cheated on Dana, but Supergrover didn’t cheat on Michael because of course since I’m queer, my reaction to her was different than her reaction to me. That doesn’t make my emotions to her invalid, just different. She also doesn’t have autism or ADHD, so none of her sensory issues are going to run as deep as mine, and she gave me some pictures that caused sensory issues, but not sexual ones. They activated my alpha dog and my mama wolverine. When I feel that way about someone, it makes me attracted to them…. and in fact, when I don’t feel connected to someone in that way, being physical doesn’t come up. Romance, as with all things, has two modes for me. Obsession and absolute disinterest. It’s why autistic people have trouble with relationships. If they have neurotypical partners who take everything personally, they will not be happy, and probably jump too quickly to the conclusion that their partners are lazy, unmotivated, and angry at them because of their rejection at lights out.
It was a relief to come to that resolution in my mind with Supergrover, that even though the relationship was not nor would ever be physical, I had learned a lot about the way I work in a relationship because she took so much personally that I never intended.
I remember telling her that it was really hard hearing about the abuse she endured as a child, that my heart walked out of my body and I just had to breathe through it. She thought I was trying to make her feel bad, but I was trying to explain both why our trauma bond was immediate and deep. She became a monotropic thought process, what I mean when I say she lives in my ink. I was telling her why I loved her with such intensity and drive, and that in some ways I was sorry that process came across as negative, but not sorry for loving her as much as I do. She’s amazing, and part of the reason that I haven’t fallen in love again is that I hold every woman to her standard and find other women uninteresting. Why would I put myself out there when intellectual stimulation is more important and no one gives it to me more than she does? No one will ever be able to beat her in that area, even though Zac and I are wrapped up in my special interest. It’s not because he’s not brilliant, it’s that we’re talking about history and she’s making it.
If you never believe another word I say, believe that.
She jokes that other women are the smartest woman in the room except her, but you don’t know the room where she said it and I do. She knows an actor I would kill to meet, and a director, and neither of them do what she does. She knows them by dumb luck, the same dumb luck that put us together. Karma is magic and I will never believe anything more than that. I got a gift from the universe at the exact moment it needed to drop in my lap, and my nose got red at that, the first signal I’m about to cry, when I wrote that. And yet, even Zac doesn’t know who she is and respects my privacy like I know when to stop pushing about work. She’s my “classified information,” for all practical intents and purposes. I could tell you if it wouldn’t embarrass her across the world, but I wouldn’t. I keep it tight to love her, not to diss you. The “classified information” joke just fits in with my whole vibe. I will never stop being, in the immortal words of Zac Wood, a “drooling fangirl” over CIA, but that’s only because I’ve seen the disparity between the way people treat soldiers and the way they treat spies. Civilians matter.
And I’m a judgmental bastard, just not of people. Of institutions and situations. It’s how I can feel every emotion in the spectrum about Supergrover. How love and fear are inextricably interrelated, why I have no problem walking on eggshells for years and yet struggled so hard with my needs being met that I finally walked away. It was killing my self esteem and better for me when I stopped letting it.
Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her, and at first it was every moment of every day. You don’t learn to let go overnight, and my writing has proved it. She’ll never be far from my thoughts, though, because in the last 10 years of my life, my thought processes and emotions regarding her have been so deeply ingrained. It’s why I even thought we’d be good for each other as partners in the first place, but not that I insisted on it. It was just too good a question not to ask, because it made sense at that point, a united front. But then my monotropic thought process spiraled out about that, too, and it was just bad juju. It was a question better left unanswered, I’m just autistic and ADHD. My autism made me hammer away at it and my ADHD gave me no impulse control.
I didn’t know how those diagnoses affected my behavior until I knew I had them. I only knew about one. I didn’t know about the other, that when I am in autistic mode relationships take over my whole brain because I’m also an INFJ. I wanted the best for both my red and yellow strings and got them tangled. It was a struggle to stop dwelling, but I’m glad I did it and I know the root cause.
I have learned not to let relationships take hold of me in that way because it makes me give all my energy toward making them a better person. All INFJs are attracted to teaching and social work sorts of positions because we want all of our close relationships to be the best people that they can be. I wasn’t obsessed with who Supergrover could be, but helping her to be her best self. An INFJ will not watch anyone stagnate.
It was all reinforced by the fact that it’s easier for me to talk to other people about their problems than it is for me to talk about mine, because then I can stop social masking. I can stop remembering to make my thought processes masked and just listen.
I notice things that no one else does and people call me brilliant for pointing it out when it’s something they love and hurtful even when I don’t mean harm. It’s a lost place to be when your self-esteem is dependent on other people to that extreme, because when you take off your social masking and other people react poorly, you drift toward making masking the priority and it drains your energy before you even have the spoons to leave the house. The meltdown/burnout cycle is real and it’s deep.
Neurotypical people can only take so much before they decide you’re too much for them, and that has been true of neurodivergent people since we were born. “Autism Speaks” has an awful video where a mother says in front of her child that she thought about strapping her into the car and killing them both. I am sure that she thought she could get away with it because her daughter wasn’t “high functioning,” whatever the fuck that means, and she has no idea what her daughter is capable of processing emotionally without being verbal. What if the internal tape that plays in her head is “my mom wanted to kill me and didn’t.” Being “high functioning” is being able to speak for the mute and letting them speak for me when I am….. more specifically, I am non-verbal a lot of the time but I can reach out through text.
I need the world to adapt around me, and I am not being selfish or egocentric when the problem runs as deep as children feeling like their parents don’t want them. I am not alone when I say that I feel the pain of being too much for people, driving my depression and anxiety. Everyone wants to stop me from drowning, but few people are willing to help me from falling into the river in the first place.
Supergrover did the best she could, just not fast enough for my autism not to kick in. A trauma bond is a hell of a drug. It’s what made me rearrange my life around her and not Dana. It was the same deal with her- I never wanted to have a situation with another partner where I leaked information that wasn’t supposed to go to them because I felt so bad when I did it. She forgave me and moved on, but thought it was impulsive to solve the problem.
When you have situations where your sensory issues attach to a problem and it gets deep fast, you move quickly…. often what leads to getting married in a hurry and things like that. You are always trying to create a secure environment and you’ll grasp at straws because acceptance of your neurodivergence is transient. Because of this, Supergrover is the longest of any of my significant relationships by almost three years. It was more significant to me because it was in my wheelhouse, the writing.
Her greatest gift to me was that time, and I’ve loved it despite walking away in frustration. I needed a secure environment and couldn’t get one, so I grasped at the comfort of isolation whether I wanted it or not.
I want more because she’s wonderful. I also love her enough to let her go because the relationship didn’t serve us presently like it did in the past. I didn’t have room for other people like Zac, and in some ways my pathways are so changed there might not ever be. Sam got in under the wire, but even then my attention didn’t completely turn.
I need more time to spend with her, but only in reflection if need be. I learned so much from her, and it’s time to take all that away because I don’t want to pour love into her if she does not accept it. I would rather be alone with my thoughts in that case. The affect she has on me is tremendous and I cannot underestimate its effect. She doesn’t think of her (or me) in this way, so it clouds our judgment on whether we’re telling the truth. We both have trauma reflexes, and don’t treat each other like we’re worthy of being treated like goddesses. That’s because the root of our anger is how we feel about ourselves. We are both fixer/pleasers, and both easily jump to the conclusion that the other means the worst.
For instance, when Supergrover said “I can do nothing about the past. I can do something about the present,” and “this is all I can manage,” I took it to mean I would never get anything I wanted and to die mad about it. What I didn’t say is “what can you do about the present that you haven’t in the past?” I saw the writing on the wall and pushed her away.
I will never know if I was correct, but I do know that our relationship had that cycle for 10 years and I didn’t want to do it anymore. There was quite a difference between Mama Wolverine and ignoring me because you think I’m goading and provoking you instead of asking me questions in return. We both got defensive immediately.
I never wanted a war, but I started it. I am only suffering under the terms and conditions of the surrender. My bad behavior was supposedly forgiven and I haven’t been able to express a need without nuclear war for eight years. I didn’t think she was lying because she said she forgave me. I thought she was lying to herself about how much she wanted to be friends with me because she always seemed pissed off. I know enough to know that the world doesn’t revolve around me, but I can feel the energetic difference between “I’m busy” and “I’m ignoring you” even in text.
For instance, I have lots of friends that I hope aren’t mad at me because I’ve gone mute and can’t handle conversations right now. I have enough energy for an occasional Facebook comment, but mostly I am spending my energy on changing my own thought processes here. I will never be able to sustain myself if I don’t. It is how my life is coming together, not how it is falling apart.
I had huge sensory issues that Zac didn’t tell me he had a roommate before I arrived on Sunday, but I told him that and he apologized. He wasn’t trying to offend me, just spaced it, but that didn’t render my feelings invalid. He’s a solid dude and remembers so many things I don’t remember saying, so I know he does listen to me, deeply, I just have to roll with it because he’s neurodivergent like me.
Stories That Are All True 