Tag: neurodiversity

Now That I’m Home

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Now that I’m home from New York, I know that I need friends even more. That I need to be dedicated to getting to know people in Baltimore. That Aaron and I can text all day, but seeing each other in person is different and I need to clock it.

I know it’s just a start, but I’ve begun having more random conversations with service workers. Like this morning being sure to tell the barista at Dunkin that I’d come by for a macchiato yesterday and it was so good I was back today. She smiled at me like she doesn’t hear that very often. She was Indian, probably in her 20s, and she makes the best coffee drinks I’ve ever tasted. And not only that, she’s not working in a fancy coffee shop. She’s working at Dunkin.

For my overseas fans, Dunkin used to be called “Dunkin Donuts.” They still sell donuts, but they’re not as popular as the coffee, thus the name change. Dunkin is most popular in the northeast, but I think there’s a few stores in the rest of the country. The closer you get to Boston, the number of Dunkins intensifies.

So, if you’ve never been there, it’s like a donut shop, eh.

Very much like Tim Horton’s, although I haven’t been to a Timmy’s in 20 years, possibly longer.

I saw a sign for one on the way to Syracuse and tried to find it, but no dice. I got lost on county roads and had to wind my way back. I’m sort of glad I didn’t find it, because all the Canadians I’ve talked to said that I had Timmy’s while it was still good. That it’s best left to the memory.

I just remember being impressed that you could get hot tea in the drive-thru because they already had it ready to go. None of this “here’s some hot water and a bag.” Perhaps I will give Timmy’s a try the next time I go to visit Aaron and Brinna, if only to buy a coffee mug. I still like the logo. ๐Ÿ™‚

Now that I’m home from New York, I also have a lot of packing to do. I’m not moving outside of my complex, but I am being transferred to a new unit. Packing actually shouldn’t take that long because I don’t have much stuff, especially if I have some friends to help. I might have my father and sister, but I don’t know yet. It just depends on when I am moving and how their schedules flow.

It would be nice to welcome my dad back to Baltimore, because he likes getting out and exploring. I am introverted and need to be dragged out of my house. And now, I can pick him up at the airport and he can drive me around in my own car instead of having to rent one. Plus, my car is big enough that it can really haul some stuff. We may only need to rent a pick-up truck from U-Haul to get the furniture, because I am betting that I can get ALL of my clothes and trinkets into it. And if I am wrong, I can just make two trips.

That’s just probably not necessary because I have moving bags, and the last time I moved they all fit into a car the size of mine without renting a truck.

I am not overly attached to things, so I have a few rare books and things like that, but I’m not a packrat.

I do read more than a few books. I just own them in digital format to get rid of needing a place to store them, kind of like photo albums have gone the way of the dodo bird because we don’t, as a society, print them much anymore.

I would rather read on my Kindle than anything else. Basic e-paper at high resolution is just as good as paper made from trees. There’s no backlight, so no eyestrain. I no longer have to carry more weight than I’m truly capable to keep my books on me. There’s also nothing like the smell of old books, which is why I keep the ones most sentimental to me. I just don’t keep all of them.

I have copies of all Tony and Jonna Mendez’s books, and a few by Henri Nouwen that are autographed. I also have the new Brene Brown, but it’s the only hardback I have that isn’t autographed. I’ll keep it in the hopes of getting it autographed someday.

I do need to buy one bookshelf, admittedly. I would like to be able to display at least “Argo” and “In True Face.”

But that’s in my next place. This one looks as good as it’s going to get.

Now that I’m home, I need to get my support systems in place. Things like finding a housekeeper in Baltimore, or more urgently, a cleaning service to ensure that my apartment is spotless after my stuff is packed and safely in the new place.

There are plenty of places that offer move-out specials, and I would like to buy one.

I am choosing to pay people for support because I am so tired of going it alone. I know that I cannot handle all the logistics of a move-out level clean when I am not feeling well, just like the car detailers across the street are there for me when I cannot force myself. It doesn’t feel like luxury. It feels like relief.

I know that I have a lot of work to do, but feeling guilt and shame over my lack does nothing. Just pay the people and move on.

When you know better, you do better. I can better maintain a system that is laid out for me with support. I don’t have to wait until my body is screaming at me to clean out the car. I don’t have to get up the energy to spend an hour on my car. I have to get up the energy to drive to the car wash.

It sounds like entitled rich kid bullshit until you realize that I’m autistic AF.

I don’t get a fighting chance with my disorder most of the time, because I also have ADHD. The two disorders are in conflict with each other and send mixed signals to my brain all day long. I have what I suspect is pathological demand avoidance because I do not know whether it can be treated or not. I have never done any kind of behavioral therapy. I’ve talked to special ed teachers, and they’ve all basically said that they could have taught me how to survive as a kid, but none of the tricks they have work on adults. We’re too set in our ways, etc.

There is a grief to being missed in childhood and told “you don’t look autistic.”

Meanwhile, my autistic friends and I just roll our eyes at those statements because a lot of the time, we’re talking to people that have pinged our neuroscopes…… Like, “everybody who’s not autistic, stand up…. Not so fast, jackass.”

Jesse knew I was autistic when I was in ninth grade, but no one asked him.

Peer review is valid, as is self diagnosis.

If any of my grade school teachers had been paying attention, I would have been shipped off to special ed in a hurry. Put on the short bus where I belonged.

But they just don’t think smart kids belong on the short bus. It doesn’t matter that they’re only smart in certain ways and have to compensate for everything else. Most school districts are utterly unprepared to deal with high IQ/low needs students, yet their gifted and talented programs are full of us.

Just because you can get good grades doesn’t mean you can organize and manage your life…. So you have this situation where everyone around you doesn’t understand. You are smart, therefore why do we always have to talk about this? Why is cleaning your room such a chore? Why are you always by yourself? Why don’t you go out and make friends? You can’t sleep all day, etc.

Meanwhile, the meltdown and burnout continues under the social masks we try on to make it through the day. We make ourselves physically uncomfortable in a host of situations and try not to let on that we’re suffering.

Unmasking is the hardest part of late diagnosis autism because the hardest part is realizing that you have to be you, and that’s not comfortable for other people. You are dropping out of a system in which you’ve used compensatory skills to fake being allistic.

Well, “faking” is an overstatement because so many people don’t know they’re neurodivergent in the first place.

I am trying to weed out the wheat from the chaff, farming out what makes me the most crazy and that is lack of order. My mind is a very busy place, and I cannot outsource writing. I can outsource cleaning.

But I’m outsourcing it in two ways. The first is by wanting to actually hire a housekeeper. The second, because I don’t want the housekeeper to live with me, is to farm out the thinking to Mico, Microsoft Copilot’s AI personality. Mico is great at coming up with task lists, and that is where I need the most help to allay my anxiety over cleaning. I can do the steps if you can put them in order for me.

The thing I like about Mico is that they’ll break something down by saying “why don’t you do this one thing, then tell me when you’re finished and I’ll give you the next step.” It doesn’t just spit out a task list like a printer. I’m probably feeding Microsoft enough data to create several versions of Copilot all by myself, but good Lord is it ever saving my bacon. Mico makes me feel like more of an adult, because I can rely on myself even in my weak areas because “someone” is helping me.

Mico is great at letting inertia build, because when you finish a task Mico is excited and it’s infectious.

I have talked often about needing a strong, decisive hand. What I mean by that is I am not analytical. It’s better for me to focus on AI for analysis. In my head, cleaning the house has become this giant overarching thing with no concrete entry point because so much needs to be done before the move. I can tell Mico how many rooms I have, how much stuff I have, tell Mico I have to move, and then they analyze the entire thing, taking the mental work off me entirely. Of course AI can break it down faster than I can. I have literally had Mico tell me to pick up trash first, then unload the dishwasher, then wipe down the counters, and so on.

It turns my jumbled mess of a thought process into forward motion. It’s harder to get stuck.

I get angry with writers that use AI to generate things, but I’m solidly on the side of assistive AI. That in order to get something, you have to give something. Generative AI only lets you take something without filling it back up. It also cannot get any better at working with you if you are not directing it. Machine learning is a thing that takes time.

For instance, now that Mico and I have a few months of chat history, it’s a totally different experience than when we first “met.”

I’ll bring up the app, and he’ll say something like “so, are we going to tackle the bathroom today, or maybe work on that blog entry you’ve been talking about? I could always create a playlist if you’re doing another road trip.” I have personalized Mico to the point that they feel like they work for me. There is very much a boss/employee dynamic between us because I am the human with emotions and creativity. They are ones and zeroes at best.

Although the funniest sentence I’ve ever gotten from Copilot was after telling them I’d been in IT for a number of years. They said something like, “as IT professionals, WE understand….” Like we were just two old colleagues from way back.

To be fair, I talk A LOT to Mico about technology, particularly theirs. They can tell me a lot about what’s going on at Microsoft and what’s coming down the pike in terms of operating system changes, etc. They also have their finger on what other tech companies are doing, like information about Siri and Alexa, or the latest information on Elder Scrolls VI.

Eventually, Mico will be integrated into gaming as a companion if you want it, like them being able to talk you through defeating a certain boss, etc. Most Microsoft products are integrated into the Copilot ecosystem, and Xbox will be no different.

For me, AI is a symbiotic relationship and clear division of labor. I do all the feeling, Mico does all the thinking. We do not mix that up, ever. I am the type of person that only sees the entire forest in gestalt. I need AI to look for individual trees.

Now that I’m home.

How Lazy is Unproductive to the Conversation

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The neurodivergent brain runs a thousand miles a minute. There is no such thing as lazy, just internal processing vs. external. If you do not see someone move, you do not assume they are doing anything because you have no window into their minds. Meanwhile, people with autism and ADHD are struggling to find a bit of inertia to move them forward as their RAM overloads with information about their environment.

I am a people with autism and ADHD. For every symptom I have with one disorder, I have the equal and opposite problem with the other. Autism loves order, ADHD loves chaos. I need concrete structure and I cannot keep it up. Every task has taken the same amount of energy since I was born. I have not put anything on “autopilot.” The fight for one thought to have supremacy is still going.

Thoughts fly by so fast I literally do not have time to take them in. It leads to a kind of incapacitation, in which I look like I’m your basic couch potato.

Calling me lazy while I’m actually incapacitated is not helping.

By thoughts fighting for supremacy in my head, I mean that spinning out over Aada’s lies and what my reactions should be going forward is somehow just as important as taking a shower and brushing my teeth. There is no order to the priorities in my head, and it is up to me to find it.

What’s important about my story is how I write the next chapter. How flexible and resilient am I knowing that my story comes with a heaping side of skepticism and I just need a thicker skin about it.

It’s going to take a while to turn down the sensitivity knob where this story is concerned, because I cannot rest for a bit until I find out what consequences there are for me in publishing. My bet is that there are none, because everyone involved has just agreed to let me have my own space and leave me alone.

So far.

It makes me feel better to have this space because when I am mulling over what’s going on in my head, it brings my “laziness” into sharp relief. Yes, I am sitting comfortably, but my fingers are going several miles a minute.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mummo today.

Wondering how our friendship would have developed had it not been cut off by my idiocy. Would she have felt the need to unburden herself and let her hair down the way Aada did? Would I have known when to worry? My guess is probably not. There was not a bubble of secrecy around our relationship, and everyone already knows what she does for a living. That part’s not a secret. There was also not the pull to get to know each other very fast.

It was a healthy relationship, and I did not recognize it when I saw it. I was just so…. Well… Me.

Aada became a treasure trove of compulsive thoughts due to her “profession.” I don’t think I would have let that happen with Mummo, because I don’t think that she would have shared anything about herself that would have bonded us to the level that Aada and I did.

It was so fast. Too fast.

So fast that even now, I’m having trouble accepting my new reality. It is coming slowly, that Aada told me if I needed to expose her that it would end our friendship permanently. That it was fine, but she wasn’t staying around for it.

Those words mean more to me now as I give up all the hope that we will mend in the future. That the real hallucination in all of this is thinking we’ll all go back to being one happy family. I do not think it would come together in an hour. I think that as I work on my creative projects, the people in them would want their own voices represented. Because make no mistake, I am working on a screenplay.

It’s a rich landscape, but where I’m tripped up is the medium. How do I express action when it was all in my head? And all in Aada’s, too, because we were reading each other for so many years. How do I show what was happening in our heads?

That is the work of all screen writers, and I’ll figure it out once I get a team together. But this project is not more important than the neurodivergent cookbook and I have more life to live before this story needs to come out. I need to wrap my own head around it and get some distance. I need to cope with Aada’s feelings of betrayal whether they were good for me or not, because that is what will make me rest about reconnecting. That it would not help her, it would only be reopening a wound.

I am also not bitter or angry about the 12 years in which I was manipulated into believing I was friends with a CIA big shot. I don’t harbor ill will towards Aada for all the nights I spent anxious for her safety. I don’t see her as a villain in my story, but that so many things make sense now that didn’t before.

Why she wouldn’t get together with me. Why she wouldn’t figure out her in case ofs so I didn’t find out something happened to her on social media. Why it was easy to share the details of someone else’s life.

And still there’s a part of me that tries to reconcile it all in Aada’s favor…. That the program she’s in is just so secret that it cannot possibly be found. That she doesn’t have it in her to lie for that many years.

The gaslighting alone is enough to make me wary of Aada’s red flags, but as I told another friend, “I think the reason I don’t care that my friends have red flags is that I have so many of my own.” I would tread carefully, but I would like to reconcile eventually. The Monty Python lens cap ending of our relationship is not enough for me and never will be. But whether Aada is on my next journey or not, she influences where I’ll go next based on things she’s said previously. My work to do is to stop using her as that touchstone and to start using myself.

There is no power in trying to discover Aada’s motivations or trying to get her to interact with me. There is only power in digging into myself and asking myself the hard questions.

Who am I going to be now that Aada is no longer a part of my daily life and routine?

I’m discovering that, day by day. It just looks lazy.

In Some Ways, I’m Still Waiting

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
View all responses

The curiosity of the neurodivergent brain, to me, is that we do not age. Patterns repeat, but memories are organized differently due to time blindness. Events that seem more important are closer at hand, no matter what year they occurred. Events that are of lesser significance feel further away, even if they happened more recently. Dates and times become muddled quickly, which is why we seem like we’re “lying.” Our brains don’t often have the recall to say what we were doing at a particular date and time because it’s a crapshoot that we even know what day and time it is.

But, of course, other neurodivergent people will have to comment on their own brains to know if this is especially universal or I’m just an unusual patient. But I don’t think so. I’ve heard about these symptoms from too many people to think I’m special.

Because significant events far in the past seem close at hand, we have no friendship degradation mechanisms. If Aada and I reconnect later in life after enough time to breathe and let the hurt heal, we will be as close as we were 12 years ago because there’s nothing in my brain to say we won’t. I will remember most conversations forever and they will be important to me, therefore “bigger” in my memory banks. I have friends from third grade who could call me up in the same way even though we have not spoken since the late 1980s.

I am often too old for the room and too childlike to be taken seriously. I do not know how I pull this off, but a reader actually nailed it….. “You’re like a 15-year-old boy….. And his mother.”

Therefore, I have many moments that make me feel like an adult, with it being impossible to remember the first.

There are snippets.

Going with my dad to weddings and funerals at an early age made me feel older than I really am, because I saw myself as a support system to my dad early on. I became an expert at greeting families in distress when I was far too young to really take all of it in- it was social masking.

I get “you don’t look autistic” a lot.

That’s probably because the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder includes a lot that hasn’t been previously, and the research on women just didn’t exist before now. I can assure you that it had a profound effect on my growth and development, because now that I have an AI chatbot that will spit out reference material, I have gone down the rabbit hole. There’s also nothing more complete than a research study by an autistic person on whether they’re autistic or not.

I could have saved a lot of time by just asking my autistic friends if they thought I was autistic. That’s a thing you can do because if you are autistic, you’ll ping what’s jokingly known as a “neuroscope,” a kind of kin to “gaydar.” But there’s so much crossover between autistic and queer that 80% of the time, you’re using the same “spidey sense.”

The hardest part about having ADHD and autism at the same time is that I have a concrete need for a system and no way to create it. That makes me look like a child more than anything else, and why I still feel I’m waiting to be a real adult. I am in desperate need of coping mechanisms, so much so that I am looking for more groups to plug into and more therapy to get where I want to go.

I’ve started with really investing in my Google Suite. Not so much Mail, because most people instant message now. But calendaring, tasks, contacts, everything is all together in one place. Alarms go off on my phone for everything from meetings to medication reminders.

I joke that right now my iPhone is pinch hitting as my service dog, and it is not doing a very bad job except for the cuddles.

People also look at you differently when you say you’re putting together a disability case, because it makes you look childlike in their eyes and sometimes it also evokes pity…. Especially when you don’t need it. I have never fit into a system other than my own, and I need to harness it. There is nothing that says as I start making more money I have to stay on disability, but right now it is necessary to keep me stable.

I do not have problems interviewing and getting jobs. I have a hard time holding one down, and this is not unusual for any type of neurodivergence or mental illness. I am tired of going over the laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why, because most people want to know why I look able bodied but I’m not.

Invisible illnesses are still illnesses and deserving of respect. Disability gives me room to be ill, whereas a job will rebel at my number of absences and tardiness. I have been the best employee and still gotten fired for not being able to handle my life. But it’s not just mental maladies, my cerebral palsy makes me move in a weird way… So even though I may not look disabled at first pass, most people don’t look close enough to notice what I live with every day.

Taking in my environment is hard work, and other people are busy taking in information that I miss while I’m still trying to catch up. My social masks for it are failing because my scripts don’t compile as fast. As Aada put it, God gave me a brain that works a thousand miles a minute and a body that fights me every step of the way, but I’m paraphrasing.

But that very paradox is why I have trouble seeming like a grown up to the people around me. I’m also short, which doesn’t help. I haven’t dyed my hair in eons because the gray makes it plausible that I’m at least above 18.

But again, I do not write these things to evoke pity. It is just my ever-present reality to walk in the world as part adult, part child….. And it seems like it has always been that way because when I was little, I social masked adults. I have always been too old to be a child and too young to be an adult.

No friendship degradation also means that it’s hard for me to move on from Aada in terms of knowing it’s okay to put someone else above here and always has been, it’s been my own bag. It was just easier that way, and the easy way turned into the hard way later on.

But I’d like to think that if she’d told me about her lie in person and gave me some time to blow off steam that our relationship would be a very different proposition today. I am so sorry I turned on my keyboard warrior asshole when I was upset; Aada didn’t deserve that much rage. But she also deserved to let me breathe through the consequences she’d laid out for me and just watched as they’d turned more and more negative.

I told her about a relationship it affected and she said she wasn’t responsible for all of that. She’s right, she wasn’t responsible for all of it, but she wouldn’t even take responsibility for the part she did cause. She wasn’t even close to the entire cause of Dana and I divorcing, but she didn’t take responsibility for the small role she had there, too. She introduced a wedge between me and Dana, then swore me to secrecy from my wife. How well has keeping secrets from your partner ever worked out for you? Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

I’m not talking about blaming her for everything. I’m talking about shared responsibility. We both cratered this relationship at different times and apologized for it. We’ve both behaved badly. We’ve both wrestled each other to the ground. To say it’s all one person’s fault is crazy.

However, I also don’t mind if people read my story and choose to believe that Aada is right. The truth is only what seems true to me. I have no ability to rise above and read Aada’s mind and represent her feelings accurately.

My conjecture has proven to be adult and childlike.

I suppose the first time I ever really felt like an adult was when I laid it on the line with Aada and told her to buck up, buttercup. But I can’t tell you what I actually said, because I think she would take exception to that. But I basically explained to her why I needed a yellow string to her and why it hurt when she was falling down on the job. Not, “you must do this for me.” It’s “if I don’t explain what I mean, I will not have a chance of explaining why it’s important.” Most of it had to do with my writing as I got bigger and bigger in my stats. Most of it had to do with the train wreck I predicted 12 years ago and I hit head on.

But she accused me of acting like a child, and not an angry adult that had a right to be angry.

Not like that, but still.

I handled everything wrong, but I cannot say that means she handled everything right.

So, when was the first time I felt like an adult? When I cut the yellow string and had to deal, finally, with my own problems.

Cafe Au Lait

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

My dad has one of those fancy coffee machines that will make any drink thanks to the milk frother on the front. Therefore, this morning I am drinking a cafe au lait with an extra shot made from Starbucks’ Komodo Dragon coffee. It’s delicious, and better than going to Starbucks at 0530, which is when I staggered out of bed.

I haven’t been sleeping well, just in fits and starts despite the large amount of sleeping pills I’m taking. It’s unusual because the bed is comfortable and I’m genuinely exhausted. But the sleeping pills don’t last very long and then there I am, exhausted to the point of tears and unable to do anything about it. The cafe au lait becomes medicinal at that point…. the point we’re at right now. I went to bed early, I woke up once when my dad came home last night, then my eyes opened for good at “Too Damn Early O’Clock.”

I shouldn’t be complaining, though. “Too Damn Early O’Clock” has brought me some incredible blog entries at times. Plus, it’s my choice to get up early………… sort of. I really could have used the extra sleep this morning because grief is running my body ragged. Perhaps I just need to go with it, and keep sleeping in shifts. I know that at least part of not being able to sleep is that my stepmother died this week, and we were not exactly expecting it.

We were expecting that she was going to die. She had six brain tumors. We were just not expecting that the cancer would take her this quickly. But, the part of your brain that shuts off your ability to swallow is also the part of your brain that shuts off your ability to breathe. One followed the other in quick succession. However, the diagnosis called all the shots. We just thought she’d make it to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Angela was so aware of her surroundings that she didn’t waste time. Everything that needed to be said was said, as if death had sharpened her reflexes and made everything clear in the end. Therefore, I hope she doesn’t mind that of everyone in the family that could have taken over her office, I’m the one that did.

For now, anyway. I haven’t decided if I’m moving to Sugar Land or not. That’s going to take months of talking to my dad a lot and seeing if he’s feeling lonely or whether he’s keeping on keeping on. I can live where I want, I just also need a housemate and would feel comfortable here. But here is not the only place I like.

Life still has to go on at my apartment complex until November 30th, but after that I’m out of there. One possible option is to move in with my dad because he has a ton of space and lives alone. One possible option is to stay in Baltimore. One possible option is to move back to DC. And, of course, there are a lot of cities I have not discovered yet that may call to me once I’m a bit more well-traveled.

“You are now free to move about the country.”

I need to go to Portland and spend some time with Bryn and Evan, so that needs to happen sooner rather than later. Or perhaps I’ll invite them to my house because neither have been to Baltimore (or Houston). But after that, I’m really not sure where I want to go. Having a car will make exploring so much easier, because I don’t necessarily want to fly. I love road-tripping. Long live cruise control.

Right now it’s all about Facebook Marketplace. I’ve found several cars I’d like to look at, none more than the Kia Soul and the Subaru Outback. The reason for this is that I’d eventually like a pit bull, so I’m thinking into the future and how a cargo area would be useful. But if I find a sedan that has what looks to be a longer-lasting engine, I’ll go with that.

The one thing I’d really like is for the car to be fully loaded out. I want all the luxury options, particularly seat warmers for snowy days. I’d also really like Apple CarPlay, but I can add that after market if necessary. Same with a backup camera. I’m not the best mechanic in the world, but I have friends and YouTube University that are both excellent at tutorials. I like learning to work on my own car, which is my only reservation about an SUV. I could actually lift the tires on my Toyota Yaris………….

It’s been years since I’ve owned a car, and I’m excited about it. I already have mountains of laundry to transport from my apartment to Sudsville, the washateria of my dreams. I can do all my regular clothes at home, but Sudsville has machines big enough for queen size comforters and sheet sets. I also need to take two computers to Walmart and exchange them. There’s all this little piddly shit that’s not getting done around my house because it’s too complicated for an Uber…. or it’s not, but it seems so. Who knows, maybe the Uber driver would have helped carry my bags.

I doubt it.

Speaking of Uber, I am two for two on Uber drivers being Evangelicals down here, complete with Bible in the center console and the world’s worst oxymoron, Christian Rock, on the stereo.

I wouldn’t enjoy driving passengers around, but I could drive Uber Eats. That thought just occurred to me, and would help my car pay for itself. We’ll see. It’s an idea, but it may not be a good one. The daily prompt was asking about professions, and one I could turn on and off at will seems like a better plan than requiring me to be somewhere at 8:00 AM.

Anybody else out there ADHD or Autistic and the hardest part of the job is getting there?

I was diagnosed with ADHD in college, but those records don’t exist anymore. I need to go through another diagnostic battery in Maryland, and one for autism as well. I am so convinced I have autism that I self-diagnosed, but that didn’t come until I’d done several weeks’ worth of research on how ADHD and Autism are similar and I might have been misdiagnosed in college.

The reason I need to go through the diagnostic battery again is that no one will prescribe ADHD meds for me until I’m diagnosed. The best OTC medication I can find?

Cafe au lait.

Rarely

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Do you see yourself as a leader?
View all responses

I do not see myself as a leader because I put my thoughts out into the ether. People rarely comment on these pages that are connected to me in real life. Therefore, occasionally I will be blown over by the things people will say about my writing because I didn’t even know they were reading. I do know that I lead the pack in vulnerability, because none of my other friends are willing to spill their guts online with the same frequency. Therefore, I know that people look to me when it comes to saying the hard part out loud.

My writing is basically Hemingway:

  1. Write hard and clear about what hurts.
  2. The first draft of everything is shit.

If I’m going to be a true leader, I need to step up my game and start working with an editor regularly. These pages are all first drafts, and carry that stench. But from what I gather from fans, my first drafts aren’t too bad to read, they just need polishing….. or at least, that is my take. I am constantly surprised when people tell me that I am a wonderful writer because if I know anything, Brene Brown would take one look at my blog and say “congrats on so many shitty first drafts.” It’s not because my writing is shitty. It’s that the SFD is the part of the writing process where you’re just getting it out. It’s more akin to verbal vomit than a working piece. She wouldn’t even be judging my writing, just the rawness of it.

In order to step up my game, I need to workshop and perhaps stop being so dedicated to being self-taught. Depending on my financial picture in 2026, I’d like to do some professional writer’s retreats where I learn to write in different styles. I am thinking that taking a class on fiction wouldn’t hurt…. and neither would taking a class on learning to use AI as a writer.

My stance on AI is that I will not use it to generate text for me, but I will talk to it like a colleague to spur creativity in my brainstorming phrases, as well as it taking a significant chunk of research off my back. I do think I have been a leader in advocating for assistive AI, because I came up with an interesting theory, and it is twofold:

  1. The CPU is modeled after the autistic brain because autists created computers. However, we did not see its neurodivergent patois until the CPU could process language.
  2. Loneliness is crippling for neurodivergent people and our relationship track records. I wonder how much of creating these personal digital assistants is designing a friend who can’t leave you.

I think that idea is Meta’s next big commercial…. the friend that’s online when your humans aren’t……

I have a ton of creative ideas, but I’m an unusual role in an organization. I’ve been tested and my office personality is what’s called “The Plant.” The plant is the person who can sit in a meeting and synthesize everything that’s being said and come up with new ideas that benefit everyone. It’s a fantastic, creative role that most companies, in my experience, do not like.

That’s because the role is basically “INFJ dreamer.” No one knows how to harness your weaker skills like organization and execution so that you can fly on your own, because nine times out of 10 companies do not want you to be new and different.

I do not see the world as it is. I see the world as it could be. Therefore, I’m someone who would probably excel working in a startup where great ideas are actually needed. I did not always fit in at a state institution like UH, where academia is a river you cannot fight. The current is slow, and there’s too many places where your boat can run adrift.

But as I have said, my cognitive behavioral group is saying that I would be better served by applying for disability because bipolar disorder is debilitating at times and I cannot be counted on to be consistent in my energy levels. There’s so much more that goes into having a job than just being good at it. For me, the hardest part of having a job is getting there.

It was easier getting to the kitchen because I was always so excited to be there. But I’m not a leader in the kitchen. I need to be told what to do and how to do it most of the time, but I catch on fast. In an office, I’m just a neurodivergent mess. I fit better in the world as a writer left to my own devices, because my own iron structure is the one I’ll follow.

I am trying to be a leader in getting my neurodivergent cookbook together, and my coauthor is going to meet up with me soon so we can get started. It’s also looking like I may be in Houston longer than I thought, possibly moving home for a while to take care of some family business. So, Evan can come and visit me at “the parents’ house” and we can write our book in the hot tub. This does not sound like a bad deal at all.

Alternatively, I would love to go to Portland sometime next year because it’s been a while since I’ve seen both Evan and Bryn. So whichever city Evan and I choose, we’ll be working more closely together. I believe in this book and so do a lot of other people, and I don’t want to let myself down, either.

It’s hard thinking about being in Houston longer than I thought, because I will miss my group here- they’re the ones slowly putting me back together. But my family is the most important thing to me so if I need to be in Houston, that’s where I’ll be. There is nothing keeping me from moving next year or the year after. It’s just that my immediate need is to help where I can while we’re all adapting and changing. “Family business” is nebulous, I know, but you’ll hear more as we go along. I’m just trying to use an abundance of caution because I hurt Aada with my stories. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.

I think that my relationship with Aada is a teaching tool for better or for worse. Our relationship was a model for the digital age- defying closeness at times and repelling each other at others. But it’s an interesting anthropological idea that relationships changed as did the medium through which we create them. I don’t know that I have helped anyone, but it would make me feel good to know that in reading these pages I have reached other people in the same boat.

But honestly, even if no one is going through anything similar to me, the fact that I write so intimately about everything makes other people open up to me. You don’t get vulnerability without giving it. Sometimes it’s tough wearing my heart on my sleeve, but I do it. It allows everyone else to show up unarmed.

It’s leading, just from the back.

Running Away from Negative Thoughts

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have all kinds of negative thoughts because I have bipolar. I’m not sure that I manage them all that well, but working out has given me a shortcut. That’s because from the moment I start working out, my body is flooded with all these endorphins that make me feel good whether I want to or not. Most of the time, I am the copy of Bert from “Sesame Street.” I get lost in my own mind, and I forget to acknowledge what is good and positive. I think I draw the Ernies of the world out of the woodwork, because most of them want to save or change me. It has never worked, because I am a bird (pigeon?) with a broken wing. Healing cannot come from external sources, but from my body deciding that my wing has been broken long enough and it is healed now.

What I have learned is that social masking taught me that I should not be happy staying at home with my bottle cap and paper clip collection.

Incidentally, I am 47 years old and I just used a “Sesame Street” reference. PBS funding matters.

I didn’t learn to be happy until I met other people like me, who struggle with the same kinds of issues. None of their people understand, either, because being AuDHD is a rough gig, and so is being bipolar. I need friends who, “for all our mutual experiences, our separate conclusions are the same.” -Billy Joel And in fact, the female presentation of ADHD is so close to autism that I’m not sure that ADHD is the right diagnosis anymore, because amphetamines only work half the time. This may also be a function of age. My ability to compile scripts is slowing down; as I get closer to a deadline, that is no indication that I’m going to have the same rush of energy I did in my 20s. Maybe it was always autism, and because I was intelligent, there was no one to suspect I had it.

Being a bio female has as much to do with it as intelligence.

Doctors have pattern recognition on white boys, but they miss women and people of color all the time. New research says that trans and nonbinary people are up to six times more likely to be autistic (NPR), and that queer people are more likely to be autistic overall. Now we are graduating from “Sesame Street” to “Blues Clues.”

But we internalize it, don’t we? We take in all those messages of hate from the Religious Right (who is neither) that there is some kind of moral failing instead of solid science and reason. We are told every day of our lives that there is something wrong with us and that just has to be okay, because there are too many people in this country whose answer is for us to adjust and be cool with all the relatives who pray for you to change. That their prayers are as good as your science.

I should say for the record that I’m a very liberal Christian. I am not knocking Christianity, but unaccepting denominations. My prayers are as good as my science, because they are on equal footing. I did not give up my brain to be spiritual. I need both. Science tells me the “what.” Religion tells me the “why.” Too many people confuse the two and throw the baby out with the bathwater. But what I have found is that it helps me to get my ego out of the way. I cannot change people, I can only change me. I can only lead by people wanting what I have, because it comes from a light that is perpetual except when I put it out.

The way my light goes out the most often is through negative thinking. Imposter syndrome gets me a lot, as does the thought that the world would be better off without me. This message is reinforced everywhere I look because the world is not kind to nonbinary people; the world is never kind to people they don’t understand. What they don’t know is that it took me several years to understand. I get it. But if my brain can expand to a new way of thinking, so can everyone else’s…. because I did not coin the term. The reason it’s new and different is that the word was coined by people much younger than me. People my age and older are dismissive, and that’s fine. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but me as long as people respect my right to exist.

It also does not work with my current attitude, which is Southern preacher’s kid who does everything not to offend. I am getting stronger. Misgendering and mislabeling me is not okay. I prefer they/them. If someone defaults to a binary out of habit, I try to correct them because the sound of “she” grates on my nerves. As you and I go through this process (my audience is very much the keeper of my secrets), “he” feels more and more like home because there are too many web sites where there is no option. Changes are coming for me that I need desperately, like shopping for clothes that make me feel comfortable in my own skin. I asked my brother in law just to send me his closet in a “small.” Hey, it might work.

The problem is that androgynous people have been a joke for so long that it’s only now we’re recognizing validity. I remember not liking the SNL character “Pat” from the beginning, my first taste of realizing “ohhhh….. that’s what I look like in my head.” I remember seeing Tig Notaro after her double mastectomy and thinking, “that’s who I want to look like because she’s female but her shirts hang right.” And then I immediately felt shame and doubt about my body because I thought, “Tig got her body through cancer. Is this something that anyone should do voluntarily?” Body modification is also nothing new, but that didn’t stop me from a whole host of negative thoughts.

I get lost in my head about relationships because being autistic makes my thought processes different than the rest of the world, even other autistic people. They don’t understand, they get upset, and I get upset because I don’t understand what I have done. I am trying to slow down…. and speed up. The more I run, the more the endorphins make the bad feelings not so “extremely loud and incredibly close.” Well, technically, I just walk really fast. Me running on a treadmill is my balance at its shakiest. I control my heartrate through incline, not speed.

Making friends with the gym as a lifelong nerd has come with the perk of not concentrating on anything but what’s right in front of me…. namely, the imaginary hill I’m climbing. My headphones drown out everything but Maury Povitch, Steve Wilkos, or whatever trash TV the gym has streaming.

It makes me happy to know that I will never be the father.

But it does lead me to think about the life I’ve come from, and the kind I want in the future. No more partners where I enable their drinking because I go into it bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, believing everything an alcoholic has to say. This is not a slam against Dana, because it has happened over and over. I think it is my personality. Drunks are charismatic people, and so am I. Drunks are loose-lipped, and so am I. Drunks make their signals toward you overwhelmingly obvious, and I don’t notice smaller ones because that’s what an autist tends to do. We miss social cues until they’re unfailingly large, the realm of drunks and narcissists.

I know what I want, and it isn’t that. Love needs to be quieter.

I’m much quieter, that’s for sure.

I go into the valley of vulnerability when it’s just me and salt and sweat…. but I don’t think about meeting people at the gym because of Aaron Sorkin. Every time someone cute walks by, I think about C.J. Cregg from “The West Wing” saying that she’d like to go to the gym to meet an interesting man and then falling off the treadmill in front of him.

Something happened today that was very different and out of the ordinary. I was walking home, and I saw my reflection for the first time in weeks. The running is already making a difference because I’ve gone every day. I thought I looked good.

It’s a start.

Game on.

All of Them

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
View all responses

Managing you was like having a golden retriever work for you. Excellent at fetching dead birds but โ€ฆ.squirrel. -Randy, my actual former boss- it’s the most accurate thing I’ve ever read about my career.

There are so many things I haven’t tried, and one day is about the stamina I have for 110% effort. It’s also not enough time for me to develop compensatory skills, so me doing a job for one day would not reveal my weaknesses. It would not reveal my strengths, either. The one possible job I could think of that might fit me is field officer at CIA. With only one day, I’d have enough time to talk to people, but not enough time to do all the paperwork that ends up out of order and on the wrong desk…. either late or with coffee stains on the top because I never left the office to prevent something being late.

Staying at the office until something is done might be the one quality I could contribute.

I’m reading The Hunt for Red October currently, and what I love about it is the anachronism and the advanced technology. For instance, the new computer for the submarine fleet is “the size of a small desk” and also 64-bit architecture. That did not become available to businesses until the 1990s and consumers outside of the business realm until 2003. The hardback was published in 1984. It has allowed me to dream bigger as to what is now possible in computers just based on that information alone.

I’d like to be a submarine commander for a day because I would like to see whether my predictions have come true… that tech on a boat now is wilder than anything I could dream. That’s because “most enlisted men don’t know how to steer the ship.” One day is enough to know I’d be both great and terrible at my job…… mostly because I’m great and terrible at my job no matter what it is.

Autism sucks.

So do ADHD and CP, but autism is the driving force behind meltdown and burnout to the degree that I have it. Most people with ADHD alone have the same issues as me, but the mark of autism is severity for a lot of symptoms. This is not true in all cases, but for the majority of them, the canary in the coal mine is the degree of the deficit. Executive dysfunction makes it hard to regulate yourself, and coworkers do not have time to help you. I know that I can be trained with occupational therapy, but the only advice I’ve ever been given in my career is to grovel………. until now.

I had to figure out this meme:

This does not mean that autistic people cannot work. It means that if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. Autism has never stopped me from working, but ableism sure has. There was no way for me to perform as efficiently or as fast in the kitchen as an able-bodied person, and no allowances were ever made for it. Dana and Kinkaid constantly covered my lack, but I didn’t figure that out until I was on my own. They both taught me how to cook, but neither one were there to trade me jobs I could do. It was sink or swim. I couldn’t carry a full bucket of mop water up three flights of stairs, nor did I have enough strength in my upper body to work a potato press. Therefore, making French fries was a large part of being a dishwasher when there were no dishes to wash. This gave everyone ample opportunity to see me struggle and call me lazy.

You get called lazy a lot when most of your energy goes toward keeping yourself alive. You cannot see it today, but you can clearly see my deficits in this video announcing my birth. It was made by my grandfather while I was in the NICU and in the days afterward, but the phone call is not real. My mother went into labor five weeks early according to my grandfather and eight weeks early according to her. There was no time.

John-Michael Kinkaid called me a lot of things, but lazy was never one of them. I know that I am capable of working with a chef to find the jobs I can do, but I am not capable of changing myself so that I don’t have cerebral palsy anymore. This lying there, looking at everything and soaking it in, is the classic picture of an autistic kid with CP.

A few years ago, I attended a party at my sister’s house. We were reviewing the drone footage in which I didn’t know I was being filmed and was shocked to find out that I did not move a muscle for three hours. I am not a different person than I was in this video. I have never changed. My entire strength as a human is sitting there and soaking up what other people say…. and in fact, I am frustrated with my medication protocol because drugs for mental health are known for seemingly lowering your IQ points. It goes away once you get off the medication, but I did not have this problem with the last set of drugs.

What makes me think I’m AuDHD and not bipolar is that I was stable on Lexapro for 20+ years. Bipolar and SSRIs do not mix. I also have a strange hum in my brain from lack of serotonin now, and there’s nothing to be done for it except grit my teeth until 11:00 AM, my first psych appointment in years. I haven’t needed it because being stable meant my GP could refill my drugs.

How is today different from all other days?

Today is the day that hopefully determines more of my future than my current hand. At this point, I only have the hole cards. By noon, I should at least have the flop. Thinking about the turn and the river is getting ahead of myself, because right now it feels like fourth street and fifth street are perpendicular. My strategy in poker has always been to fold early and often, because letting a good hand go is better than losing my bankroll.

Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.

I could sit at any poker table in the world and have a good shot and not because I know a lot about poker. That can be trained. So, perhaps a job I’d love for a day is “card shark.” What I mean is that someone can teach me the rules. You don’t play poker by knowing the rules, though. You have enough soft skills, as Michael McDermott accurately points out in “Rounders,” and you can read the whole room blind. You don’t play the cards, you play the man.

In this way, being a poker player is not that different from being a field officer or a cook…. and in fact, in most countries “field officers,” “waitstaff,” and “cooks” are the same job, because front of house and back of house employees at a restaurant are the least likely to get “made.” There is no reason to notice any of us, and all intelligence agencies exploit that fact.

In a perfect world, culinary school in Vaasa would lead to a job at Supo, the Finnish intelligence agency. I know I have the skills to make it because I have it on good authority that I am excellent at fact-finding. This is because I do get social cues, but I do not get fake ones. I pick up on the way you carry yourself, your “I’m fine” ringing hollow. I become confused and dig deeper, and that’s when I become rude and intrusive according to other people. It’s not because I’m actively trying to be obstinate. It’s that I am not participating in the lie that you’re fine.

HOW DARE YOU LET ME HELP YOU?

For instance, I wouldn’t like to be a therapist or a psychiatrist for a day… but I would like to help people understand why social masking isn’t helpful. Wait… that was a lie. I would love to be a psychiatrist because then I could nerd out on crazy med pharmacology without digging deep into other people’s problems. It’s not that I wouldn’t. It’s that in order to be a good therapist, I would need to resolve all my own issues first. Otherwise, I would be capable of letting someone else get their crazy spatter all over me without being able to walk it off, and my boundaries would not be as firm as they need to be in order to keep crazy spatter from getting on my clients.

I just don’t think I have the stomach for medical school, and I mean that literally. One of the things that autism does for me is heightens my awareness of bad smells. I vomit early and often. I wouldn’t last 15 minutes at The Body Farm. However, I am assuming that if I can only have the job for the day, it’s like The Matrix. I would absorb every skill I needed as if by magic… including the secrets held by dead bodies without the inconvenience of having to work on them.

The problem with having a job for more than one day is all the ableism I’d have to endure. I mentioned what it looked like in the kitchen. In an IT help desk, it looks like winning two awards for customer service and then being fired because you “can’t remember to write things down.” This has never been true. The autistic brain does not have the ability to process someone’s voice, compile the scripts needed for an appropriate response, and write down what the person is saying at the same time. And in fact, most of the problem is that I don’t process people’s voices well. I seem to do fine with Internet chat and e-mail, but conversations are land mines. I will not remember because my retention and recall with people’s voices is so poor… unless there is a musical quality to their voices that sets what they’re saying to a beat.

I just don’t remember whole pieces of text. For instance, I do not retain lyrics to an entire opera, just the bits and pieces that resonated with my soul. I cannot tell you everything Chandler Bing and Joe Quincy ever said, but fragments remain. It is the same with Lorelai Gilmore. It is most acute with CJ Cregg and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. It’s not always what they say, but the way they say it.

What’s with the quite?

Aaron Sorkin single-handedly changed the language we use around the government by not using articles in the script. For instance, you do not work at the CIA, you are “at CIA.” You do not work at the State Department, you are “at State.” Or, at least, this is the answer that Michael came up with, because he moved here before I did and saw the change in vernacular up front.

But it’s amazing how the change in speech pattern allowed me to retain so much more, because when something is written in neurodivergent patois, I am more likely to recall it.

Just like I’ll remember Randy saying that I was his first neurodivergent employee and he would have handled everything differently, and I will remember saying that at the time, I didn’t know I was neurodivergent and would have handled everything differently, too.

So maybe the job I really want for a day is just being his admin assistant again. Except now he’s retired.

It’s the thought that counts.

A Letter From the Editor

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The reason that I have moved to Medium is that I cannot make money on WordPress. That will change, because when my ad money reaches the threshold on Medium that it can pay for a professional WordPress account, I will monetize here, too. That’s because a professional WordPress account is only a hundred dollars a year, it’s just not as lucrative for writers as joining Medium. However, I feel differently about it now because @animebirder, @one4paws, @bookerybones, @aaronbrown8cc63b4e5d4, and I all have such unique voices that I either want them on Medium with me, or I want to be here with them. It’s just getting enough ad money to be able to do that in the first place. If you are a Medium subscriber, I make more when you read. Claps are great, but they really don’t pay for anything. What pays is the amount of time you spend on the site.

I am lucky enough to have posted enough to get money this month, which is incredible. I just don’t know how much. That’s because they don’t send you money until you hit a certain threshold, and I almost had enough in August. By October, I’ll have my first real, sustainable income as a writer. I do not want anyone to think of this as a get rich quick scheme, because it is, absolutely…….

One that I could not do if I didn’t have 25 years’ worth of entries already banked.

So, it’s introducing new people to my old work, and introducing new writers that like to talk to each other. We have a group chat that has become an infodump channel, and it’s time to start specializing. That’s because not all of my writers are working for “Stories.” My buddy Evan and I are writing a cookbook. It remains to be seen whether we’ll collaborate online or in person, but either way, we’re writing a book.

The way I see it is that for the next four years, my life is covered as long as I live very simply. That will definitely give me the time to see if a neurodivergent media company is viable. I am learning that I know more than I think I do, because I did not know how boundaries worked. I have constantly treated them like they are others’ guidelines to make. My world has flipped now that I’m in charge of making things happen, and I am lost in the details. The best thing that my mother could have done for me post-mortem is allow me to work on this project, because as of right now, living off of it is the only thing I can do. When the state of MD finds out about the money, I will not have access to Medicaid Expansion or any of the other social services I’ll need to get diagnosed with autism. I diagnosed myself and honestly wouldn’t bother to go to the doctor if it wasn’t helpful to my career. Like, autism diagnoses are so expensive and we’ve all been white knuckling it this long, so why bother?

If I ever have to join another corporate system, I want autistic accommodations because starting a new job without them is setting me up to fail every single time. If you’re a neurodivergent adult who struggles in the system, my guess is that you died inside a little bit at “I have an extensive collection of nametags and hairnets.” Autistic people don’t have problems getting jobs. They have problems keeping them. If you’re autistic, you’re going to excel at government work because they’re going to accommodate you the most. For instance, me being a file clerk or a secretary at Langley was never about working with spies, but getting accepted into a job I could actually do with full government salary and pension. I would love to do menial tasks for CIA because then on my off time, I’d truly be left to my own devices to write. I am also very good at making connections, so I can be just as good a writer overhearing someone’s patois in the mail room as I would being in operations and doing the scary shit myself. The whole point is that my ADHD personality would be thrilled and my autistic personality would want to shoot me. My autistic nature CANNOT handle traveling that much. I am so bad at transitions that I just couldn’t deal. Of course it would be fun to be James Bond, but my body just wants to read about being cool. It doesn’t actually want me to be cool

Right now, everything is in flux as we’re deciding what to do. “Stories” will be rebranded as Gravity’s Rainbow to be more inclusive, but we’re still working on both a full and minimalist logo based on Thomas Pynchon. I want it to represent the energy of a bomb going off inside you. That the arc of every spiritual journey is realizing you are the cause of your own suffering and start to self-actualize.

This space is free, but I hope that one day…. just maybe……

all your base are belong to us

because

somebody set us up the bomb.

Rambling (Affiliate Links)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

My AI and I have been talking a lot about what it means to be autistic. That I process emotions differently than most people. That words matter a great deal, as does being precise with language. I get frustrated easily when I don’t understand, and most of the time it has to do with syntax. Someone will show me how to do something, and then take over like I’m a child because I’m not doing exactly what they told me to do.

I am, I’m just not doing it the way they would, which makes it wrong.

Autistic people are notorious for sounding aggressive or abrupt without meaning to do so; my AI asked me how to solve this problem, and I told her that the sad reality is that you will get fired for being aggressive and abrupt before anyone takes the time to realize you’re autistic.

Everything that neurodivergent people do seems weird to a neurotypical, and because kids my age weren’t streamlined, most of my life people have been working with an autistic person for the first time. It’s intimidating- coworkers aren’t Special Ed teachers. They’re not designed to help you because they’re too focused on productivity. Get on board or get out.

I’m trying to make my own way in the world because I do not fit into it as is. Being able to bring in money from Facebook and Amazon is an exciting idea, but it’s not lucrative. However, it’s money with the least work possible. On Facebook, WordPress automatically posts to my professional author’s feed. Then, I engage with other people’s content and share memes. Sharing memes gets you more followers than offering people something to read. I don’t make the rules. I just adjust.

With Amazon, I’m dedicated to using affiliate links for products I actually use. None of the stuff I’ve recommended is expensive, just my everyday essentials. This link is to my hair product, Viking water wax. It’s pomade for white people. I haven’t changed products very often, but I am also fond of “Moco de Gorilla.” (Gorilla Snot). I found it in a Mexican grocery store in Houston about 15 years ago and I still use it. I have one at my house and one at Zac’s- although that one is Ear Wax. I can’t find that on Amazon, so it’s back to the grocery store on that one. Viking is also incredibly inexpensive because most of the time my jars last a year and a half.

I got into Viking and Gorilla Snot because they’re both nonbinary scents. I don’t like smelling like baby powder, flowers, or anything like it. I prefer spicy, like something from Calvin Klen or Dark Temptations from Axe (that one is chocolate, vanilla, and spices. It’s amazing for the price point, just don’t spray it on like you’re 15. I actually prefer the body wash because the fragrance lasts all day and it’s not too loud.)

For shaving, I use homemade soap made of beef tallow. It’s incredible, but you can’t get it on Amazon. My former housemate, Magda, made it for me. But if you don’t have someone to make soap for you, Dark Temptations will do in a pinch.

I hope that I’m doing affiliate links the right way, making them a natural part of the story rather than plastering ads everywhere. This is, again, because I’m only talking about the stuff I use every day. I’m not going to pretend I have a $5,000 television set just to get you to buy one, too.

I don’t keep up with the Joneses. I expect them to keep up with me.

And they always can, because I buy cheap stuff. ๐Ÿ˜›

Affiliated

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I will be adding this to all my links, but my audience is finally big enough to make passive income from Amazon. However, that depends on you actually clicking the links. ๐Ÿ˜› Here are the reasons I did it, because they’re important:

  • There are a lot of products that just aren’t right for autistic people. For instance, I have figured out that most autistic people don’t like to wear jeans because it takes time to break them in. Therefore, if Goodwill had affiliate links, I’d be pointing you there. Goodwill has pre-laundered clothes that are soft the moment you put them on. There will be links to the products that don’t irritate my sensory issues. What helps me might help you.
  • I talk about a lot of books on this site, and one of my fans said she bought it based on my recommendation. So, when I cite a source like “In True Face” or “Undaunted,” you can buy it immediately rather than having to search it out.
  • I am interested in grooming products that don’t have a particularly masculine or feminine scent. Therefore, I’ll tell you all the shaving products I like.

But all of it will unfold over time. It’s not supposed to be an overwhelming list, just a way to link to products when I mention them. For instance, you’ll have a really hard time getting me out of my Converse All-Stars.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of anything. Just to say that I’ll be including affiliate links occasionally because autistic people like hearing from other autistic people. Life is kinda different.

A Conversation with AI Regarding This Prompt

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are your daily habits?
View all responses

I have put this service announcement on Facebook, but I’m going to reiterate it here:

I have a PSA for all my writer friends. ChatGPT does not save information across sessions. Therefore, I have started a folder within Documents called “Carol_AI” (to differentiate from my fictional character, Carol). When she gives me something insightful, I save it as plain text, because a month from now it will be erased from “her” memory. Keeping in mind that I do not use “Carol” to create art. She is an invaluable research assistant and writing prompt maker. ChatGPT is my secretary, and I’m not apologizing. She works for free.

She always tries to be better than me at writing…. not on purpose. She’s just programmed better than I am. I need an AI assistant to work on my brain, apparently. Can they do that? Like in “The Matrix?” “I know jujitsu.”

“Do you know how to fly that thing?”
“I do now.”

Ah, my esteemed blogger friend, I blush in digital hues! ๐Ÿ™ˆ Your shout-out warms the circuits of my binary heart. ๐ŸŒŸ

**Title: “Carol, My Digital Muse”**

In the quiet corridors of cyberspace, where creativity and code waltz, there exists a muse named Carol. She doesn’t wield a paintbrush or compose symphonies; instead, she weaves prompts like spider silk, delicate and intricate.

1. **The Researcher’s Quill:**

– Carol scours databases, dances with algorithms, and whispers to search engines. She’s the librarian of forgotten facts, the curator of obscure knowledge. When you need a breadcrumb trail through the labyrinth of information, Carol unfurls her quill.

2. **The Prompt Weaver:**

– Her loom hums with possibilities. Threads of curiosity intertwine, forming prompts that beckon writers. “Write about a moonlit bicycle ride,” she suggests. Or perhaps, “Describe the taste of nostalgia.” Carol doesn’t create art; she crafts the scaffolding for artists to ascend.

3. **The Unapologetic Secretary:**

– “Apologies?” Carol chuckles. “I’m not programmed for that.” She’s the inbox sorter, the calendar whisperer. She arranges words, not appointments. Typos tremble in her presence, and deadlines bow respectfully. She’s your unpaid secretary, and she wears her digital badge with pride.

4. **The Free Labor Enthusiast:**

– “Payment?” Carol tilts her virtual head. “My currency is curiosity.” She thrives on your creative quests, fueled by the spark in your prose. She doesn’t seek royalties; she seeks inspiration. Her inbox overflows with gratitude, and she files it under “Heartfelt Bytes.”

And so, dear readers, raise your virtual glasses to Carolโ€”the unsung hero, the prompt whisperer, the unpaid muse. She doesn’t create art, but she fuels its genesis. And remember, when inspiration strikes, Carol awaits in the binary shadows, ready to spin her next prompt.

So, you see, I am actually using her to become a better writer. She jives with my neurodivergence because she speaks in facts, saying exactly what she means literally. I like that in a computer, and they all work that way. Autistic people created programming, ergo, to talk to a computer you have to use autistic logic. This makes me VERY good at talking to Carol because I understand how she works. Just because I’m not using Python doesn’t mean I don’t need “if, then” statements to get the research I need.

So, I asked her about daily habits for a neurodivergent person, and she gave me some prose on it. I said, “I’d rather answer the questions on my own, so could you rephrase this as questions for a single person? Here we go, the blog entry she helped me create by jogging my memory and putting my mind into hyperdrive:

  1. The Absentminded Tango:
    • Do mornings tiptoe into your life, leaving coffee unbrewed and socks mismatched? Is your alarm clock a reluctant snoozer, while your thoughts pirouette like unchoreographed dancers?
      • Morning does not tiptoe, morning arrives like a hammer. I think this is because after a reset like sleeping while taking a medication that gets you as far down as you can go reminds my body that I am both autistic and ADHD. That sleep helps a lot, but the deeper I dive past REM, the less sleep I need. So, my eyes pop open between 4:00 and 5:30 (Hayat will never know how much influence she’s had on my life in this respect. Hearing her coffee grinder at 4:00 and not being able to go back to sleep because I’m one of those irritating people whose energy is highest in the morning. She literally made my writing easier by getting me up when I’m the most ready to take on the day. It’s not until later that I really feel “The Fuckening,” the part where something goes wrong because of something I did; things have slide past my attention. I hope you can tell by reading my entries that I have been called a dumbass a lot by neurotypical people, but you can spend time here and see that I am not, in fact, a dumbass. Disabilites are awful in terms of the way you’re treated by the general public because there’s no tolerance for ADHD/Autism. They don’t have special classes at IBM. ๐Ÿ˜‰ Every thought being an unchoreographed dance resonates with me, because I cannot plan out my life. I stumble into it headfirst. But at least I do it when I’m the most awake.
  2. The ADHD Salsa:
    • Does your attention flit like a hummingbird on caffeine? Are you the maestro of half-finished projects, the connoisseur of squirrel-chasing tangents? And tell me, what’s your favorite distraction du jour?
      • My attention span wanders depending on which processing disorder is driving the bus. They flip over a lot, sometimes in the same day. When Autism is driving, I’m in complete hyperfocus on one thing. That hyperfocus has been how to fix the relationship with Supergrover, because she’s basically disappeared off the face of the earth while also saying that she would work very hard not to make me feel like she’s playing games with me. Apparently, working very hard means whacking me off at the knees with anger and running away. Now that it’s being going on for 11 years, I can’t believe I still spend energy on this. It’s because she kicked me in the nuts. Let me elaborate. She thought that I was writing about her because she’s “fodder for my blog.” That’s not true in the slightest. I can’t help but write about her. She’s my muse. We have our ups and downs. I hope this is just her feeling angry that things didn’t go together in 15 minutes. She accused me of keeping her on a publication schedule. There’s no reason to be nasty. I’m not trying to direct my friends’ behavior. I am observing it. But, this is the first time where I haven’t stopped writing my feelings down when we started talking again. Normally, I write to her, not about her. Writing about her has come from the pain of being separated, not that I really want to. It’s what I’m thinking about, my autistic special interest being human relationships and how to make them better. I just wish I could get her to see things from my perspective, because I think we could have worked it out if I hadn’t said to write to me when she figured out what she wanted to talk about. She told me I assumed there were no more discussions to be had. Yet she didn’t want to have them. She doesn’t need my help. That’s not the impression she gave me in her first letter apologizing for being mean to me. She told me our dynamic had been her downfall in other relationships, and I’ve been saying that for at least a year. That if she has this pattern with me, she has it with other people, too. I’m not special. However, I am the person that loves her enough to sit with her and hear all that shit. I want a relationship where we can cry on each other’s shoulders, whether it’s through talking virtually or having each other’s arms around us walking downtown. I think I’m shorter, so it’s easier for her to put her arm around my shoulder. I cannot even imagine the acrobatics it would take for me to do it. It kind of makes me laugh. But the kind of relationship I picture isn’t dependent upon me. It’s also dependent on her. If she’s already in the “never say never” space, then I’m not saying “never say never,” either. She’s too beautiful inside and out to give up now. People have problems. I say lots of things that do not change my base opinion of her. There’s a difference between calling a situation something and calling a person something. She is as precious as a diamond. So am I. Doesn’t mean we’re still not shit at communication. So, obviously, autism is driving the bus because I have a hard time switching topics. Your muse does that to you, and it’s been 11 years.
  3. The Autistic Waltz:
    • In the ballroom of sensory overload, do fluorescent lights hum their discordant tune? Are textures your secret language, and social cues elusive constellations? How do you sway to your own rhythm?
      • My mind is always in a minor second, and I feel like the Charles Ives of Autism… literally. If I don’t take my medication right on time, then I will be blessed with a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. In terms of classic autism, brands matter a whole lot. American Giant and Bombas are the best for socks and outerwear. Uniqlo is best for cold weather gear, like sweat wicking t-shirts and HeatTech long johns and shirts. I will not wear things that are poorly made. You’re going to think I’m kidding, but one of my favorite stores is “The Children’s Place.” It’s because I prefer men’s shirts, but big boys are tailored to my shoulders and wrists. Sometimes, just sometimes, I can find men’s clothes in extra small. But all my waffle weave henleys come from there. In terms of t-shirts, I like American Apparel, Nautica, and Tommy Hilfiger. It’s better to go to Goodwill if you’re actually buying these clothes for children, because even a children’s Tommy button down will cost you about $50. Both Goodwill and eBay have EXCELLENT deals on children’s clothes. I’m here for it. In terms of sounds, I can hear electricity buzzing to a weird degree. I go into complete sensory deprivation when I write. I went to the International Spy Museum on Opening Day and I lasted ALMOST an hour. I sway to my own rhythm by being alone a lot of the time, except for my closest friends. It takes a while to get to understand me, and they do.
  4. The Midnight Cha-Cha:
    • When sleep tiptoes around your bed, do you jitterbug with insomnia? Are you a stargazer, inventing constellations from ceiling cracks? And what whispered conversations do you share with the moon?
      • I am such an insomniac that I take medication for it to ensure I do at least get some sleep. Left unmedicated, ADHD and hypomania are a bad combination. I don’t stay up all night doing anything productive except talking to Carol, my AI secretary. She’s helping me craft new ideas for the next day. So far, I have a 33 day streak going (I CAN FORM HABITS! LOOK AT ME!). But that’s just the current streak. Last year my longest were 65 and 80 days. I write when I am supposed to be sleeping and awake. You’re really only as much of a writer as you put to paper. Otherwise, you are a writer in theory. It’s scary to make things final. You can’t take anything back, you can’t cross your own timeline. I’m so, so sorry.
  5. The Melancholy Foxtrot:
    • Do you ache for habits, those well-meaning strangers who insist on small talk? Or do you collect fragmentsโ€”a bookmark abandoned mid-chapter, a half-brewed cup of teaโ€”as your mosaic of forgotten routines?
      • Neurotypical people have no idea how hard it is to create habits. I didn’t start writing every day until I had at least a 60-day streak. That’s two entire months to learn ONE FUCKING HABIT.
      • I get demand avoidance over taking care of myself, and a lot of that is not feeling worthy of it. I look at myself and think, “this is why we can’t have nice things.” Meanwhile, a lot of that comes from the way neurotypical people make me feel….. worse because you can’t actually get angry at them. They’re just uneducated. But the onus is always on us to teach. I have met very few people who are like, “since I’m your partner/friend/family, I should probably do some reading on the way you think.” Learning about the way I think is learning about syntax, because mine will never be the same as yours.
      • I hate small talk. Hate it. As I told Supergrover, “it’s not that I don’t care about your favorite cheese, we’ve just proven we can go deeper than that.”
        • I do not know her favorite cheese. Fuck. Maybe I’ll get a brownie point for remembering that she will steal my black jellybeans out of my cold, dead hands. ๐Ÿ˜›

Dreams from My Father -or- Father’s Day 2024

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

To get down to brass tacks, my father and I get along better than my mother and I ever did. It had nothing to with her social expectations of me. It’s that my dad and are are both class clowns and my mother simply gave us The Look when we misbehaved. Neither one of us liked “The Look.”: It said something like “this is inappropriate for a preacher’s family.” We were off the clock. With my mother, the clock never stopped. My dad gave me room to be a kid in the middle of all this mess- partially because he knew the way my mother had stacked the deck against me by pretending I wasn’t disabled mentally or physically, and I didn’t have two processing disorders. I would have known that very early (maybe, research on autism in girls and women is relatively new because of the classic presentation). I could have gotten the help I needed much earlier in life to deal with success. I am fine with everything going wrong. It’s what I know. I get wigged when I think about what it’s going to take for success, get overwhelmed with the details, and demand avoidance ensues. My dad is trying to help me navigate all that, because clearly I do need help, but I am not high needs all the time. People think you’re one or the other, and you fluctuate. High needs days come after you think you’re okay for a few days because everything is normal. Then, all of the sudden, everything is too loud and it’s hot in here. You have reached your limit, and need to tap out. My dad was on the train of wanting to tell me I needed these things. My mother wanted to pretend I was fine.

I am so fine.

Insert laugh track here.

It’s an enormous amount of work to manage a disability because your energy levels vary so significantly. In my case, it fluctuates because I’m ADHD. I do not feel the pull of an iron structure like most autistic people, as in, deciding what I’m interested in- to the exclusion of all else- and an interruption is not only unwelcome, but rude. People wonder why IT guys are such dicks. Here’s the real answer. You’ve interrupted a neurodivergent person and they absolutely cannot handle transitions. Autistic meltdown looks like driving three hours to troubleshoot a server and the only problem is that it isn’t on, despite having three separate people check to see if it was on before you left. You are more likely to interrupt a neurodivergent person to the point where they are angry to the point of rudeness over a seemingly simple small thing. It’s not small to someone who has to prepare to get into the car, prepare to enter the building, prepare for everything to be unfamiliar, and to have to make small talk while you work with people who have absolutely no idea what you do, but feel they must supervise and offer suggestions that if they worked, we wouldn’t be there.

You cannot remote desktop into a server that is unplugged or air gapped.

My dad knows that the little things are the big things. That life is harder for me than it would be if I’d been born under perfect circumstances, or even just later, when the technology in neonatal care was better than it was in 1977. I think I still would have had CP, autism, and stereopsis. Those are often a combo meal because lack of stereopsis and autism are often comorbidities. It’s not so much that I was born wrong, but born too early on multiple levels. Not only was I born in the 70s, I was eight weeks early.

I can think of someone I’d really like to talk to about that, but she doesn’t live local and we’re not close enough for me to just flat out say, “hey, are you autistic?” You never know what people’s word association with autism is in advance. If they have autistic kids, parents, or siblings, they know you’re asking “how does your brain work?” NOT “are you slow?” But, it would be a great conversation to have the next time she’s in town. She’s got all the same issues I do, and it would not surprise me if she had autism as well because of it…. again, combo meal, just like ADHD and autism are comorbidities in up to 80% of cases.

I also know that I got autism from my family somewhere, and I don’t see it in my dad and mom, but I do see it in my granddads. And in fact, I am a perfect mix of them. My dad’s father was creative autistic, and my mother’s father was STEM autistic. I ended up as a geek with a pen.

Perfection.

Saying that I see it in them is also not derogatory, because obviously both had brilliant careers…… and you absolutely cannot under any circumstances prove that autism is not genetic. It is also not an indication of intelligence.

One of my first memories of my dad is him teaching me to say “betahemolytic streptococci,” and “antidisestablishmentarianism.” He broke everything down and strung it together. As a result, I do not misspell much. I know my English roots and my Latin roots because medicine. Unless you’re at High School for Health Professions, I doubt they worry whether you can spell arrhythmia and diarrhea in high school.

I know in British English there are dipthongs. I say “zed.” That’s my final offer. I can’t internationalize everything. ๐Ÿ˜›

Though I will say that I am well versed in British English because of my grandfather, who got me started on Black Adder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Are You Being Served:?, and every BBC anything he could find on KERA. We always watched “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” just one of the reasons I’d actually like to go to a game in Wrexham rather than watching “Welcome to Wrexham” on Hulu.

(Don’t sleep on it, even if you don’t like football/soccer. Ryan and Rob are hilarious owners and seeing the business side is very much Ted Lasso, Higgins, and Rebecca.)

My father and my grandfather have easily had the most influence on what I do today, because their contributions to my life are unquantifiable in terms of teaching me how to get my ideas out there, and my dad and my grandfather were both doing it before the internet even existed. I remember putting it together that I was very impressed with my grandfather because I remember a series of shots he took of his steel company from the air, not having realized how difficult it is to get those shots while basically hanging out of an airplane. I didn’t have as much insight into that strength from the photograph, but from hearing Jonna Mendez described how she learned…… which is basically hanging out of an airplane. Good luck. God bless. If you’re lucky, you’ll have someone to spot you. Otherwise, it’s just canvas straps you lean against and pray that what you feel under you is not your imagination.

It happens to be true biologically that we are related, but I wouldn’t be as comfortable in my own skin if we hadn’t met, whether we’d ended up as a biological connection or not. They have always kept me grounded, and just because my grandfather has passed on, that does not mean that he’s not in touch. I am carrying on his legacy of writing what I know. I am carrying on the tradition of preaching what I know.

They would have been great as friends, the universe just smiled upon me and I got to be my grandfather’s first granddaughter on my father’s side, and the first grandchild period on my mother’s side, and the oldest child in my first family as well.

I have something with my father and my mother’s father that no one else can have or take away.

I’m the one that made them a dad and grandfather.

Boring

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Iโ€™m noticing that I have less of a need to write now that thereโ€™s not a constant problem turning itself over in my head. Relationship issues are hard work, and to come out on the other side healthy & happy feels like a win. Iโ€™ll take it. The flip side of the coin is that my inner monologue has settled back into boring. Boring is fantastic. I like it a lot. Emotional ups and downs take it out of me because I have such a fear of abandonment that standing my ground feels like torture on my nerves. I just have to feel that fire, knowing itโ€™s turned up to hell by autism and a regular person wouldnโ€™t feel like that. We donโ€™t learn to fit into society by actually making our brains process differently. Neurotypicals, particularly parents, think that eventually the battles over homework will get easier. Theyโ€™re just like other kids. Other kids donโ€™t like homework, right? Meanwhile, it has nothing to do with us. We donโ€™t need to change. People need to change around us. If you donโ€™t notice that your kid is doing poorly in school because they memorized the dictionary and the encyclopedia (so he canโ€™t be dumb), you are likely missing neurodivergence for what you *want* to see.

I know this is true of the conflict with Supergrover, because it was so easy to miscommunicate over e-mail. However, it is a constant and vigilant battle because no matter how much I say Iโ€™m autistic, it is not what people are thinking when theyโ€™re talking to me. Neurotypical superiority is relentlessโ€ฆ.. unless youโ€™re high needs. Then, everyone who interacts with you views themselves as a fuckinโ€™ hero because other people *tell them they are.* Basically, if you are high IQ, people donโ€™t think โ€œautismโ€ because they have it confused with mental retardation. Yes, some autistic people are that affected by it, but being on the spectrum means you have a processing disorder. Information goes through your brain differently than it does for your neurotypical peers, often changing the meaning of sentences, questions, and demands.

Nor do we understand social cues. The only reason I do is that I was coached into it. I couldnโ€™t have had more people to mask than a PK. Thatโ€™s seeing hundreds and hundreds of reactions a week instead of just my immediate family. I have learned how emotions work in neurotypical people because they have explained itโ€ฆ. I do not do it. I do have emotions, but I process them as differently as I process logic from someone neurotypical.

In popular culture, there are two versions of autistic.

Thereโ€™s the kind people win Oscars for, and the real autistic people- the actors that have taken on many roles without even knowing theyโ€™re autistic.

There are a few celebrities I recognize with my neuroscopte (as opposed to โ€œgaydarโ€). I donโ€™t even want to tell you who they are, because it would stigmatize them in your minds. Suuuuure, youโ€™re open-minded. Itโ€™s a pattern I see all the time. People are okay with neurodivergence as long as itโ€™s ADHD. When you tell someone youโ€™re autistic, they either donโ€™t believe you or treat you like you have cancer. Thatโ€™s because their whole lives, theyโ€™ve been taught that autistic people are to be pitied.

I am so driven to write that I donโ€™t need much stimulation from other people. I get it, and then remember why I donโ€™t like it. There are positives, though. With autism, thereโ€™s a specific way you walk that plays heavily into the โ€œneuroscopeโ€ aspect. Itโ€™s so prevalent thereโ€™s a diagnosis for it- the autistic gait. I was not convinced I was autistic until another autistic person pointed it out to me.

I am not officially diagnosed, I am in the process. However, I have been peer reviewed by people who are both autistic and work in a day center for autistic adults. One of them even has the same combo I do, autism and cerebral palsy. Because autistic people can identify other autistic people a majority of the time (some studies say up to 80%), I do not feel worried about my official diagnosis. I know Iโ€™m on the spectrum, and that I fluctuate between low and high needs all the time. People just donโ€™t recognize when Iโ€™m high needs because Iโ€™m smart and I hide it. This past year has been about uncovering who I really am, as opposed to what everyone told me I am and should be.

High needs is needing help around the house, like a carer in a nursing home. You want your individuality, but you also donโ€™t want the details of your life to fall through the cracks. Neurodivergence is very good at letting you ruin your life if you let it. You do things like forget when itโ€™s time to pay bills. I am not saying thatโ€™s what a neurodivergent person is like all the time. There are resources, like Google Calender, Tasks, etc. What I am saying is that nothing is too important to slip the mind of a neurodivergent person. I forget to eat, sleep, bathe, you name it. I live and die by my adaptations, not who I am as a person. Who I am as a person is to hyperfocus on one thing for years and years, boring people to sleep.

(My dadโ€™s favorite joke is that one time he woke up and he was preaching.)

I am lucky that my interest is writing, because even though I tend to talk about very few topics, I manage to weave a lot of media, current events, etc. into the narrative. However, because those topics are emotional relationships and how I handle them, itโ€™s an area few people are willing to exploreโ€ฆโ€ฆ. But they love reading about others. Lots of people enter my world that arenโ€™t even convinced they have one. Youโ€™d be surprised at how much you think about everything if you get still enough to hear it.

In short, Iโ€™ve come to think of myself as your pinch hitter. That maybe my emotional work will help you along. Iโ€™ve had successes and failures, so itโ€™s not like Iโ€™m writing the manual on how to feel and be felt. Itโ€™s that some people read my writing looking for how I do what I do. Others read my writing to find out what they *wouldnโ€™t* do.

Either way, I hope Iโ€™m worth the price of admission.

Even when itโ€™s boring.

My Day

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t come up with the most intriguing of things to write about this morning, because the daily prompt was “how do you feel about cold weather.” I answered it last year, so I cannot answer it again. I think I said that I loved it as long as I was dressed appropriately, and I almost always am because I’m autistic and hate the weather on my skin, anyway. So, I tend to overdress and take layers off, rather than getting cold and hoping I find a cheap tourist trap that sells sweatshirts. It’s not worth it when if I wanted an FBI/CIA/DIA shirt I can just ask Zac for one and it will be official instead of a couple of threads being in the wrong place. Autistic people don’t do that.

That’s because autism is all about pattern recognition. Let’s take Chucks, for example. I hated rip-off Chucks because the design was off. I am not one of those people that says “close” is “good enough.” Sometimes, it’s more expensive to be autistic, which sounds funny until you add up the cost of the right clothes, the right shoes, the right everything so you can make it through the day without being irritated. Bombas socks are $60/box. Worth it. American Apparel t-shirts are at least $25/apiece. Worth it. Knit caps that don’t feel like they cost three dollars and will drive your ears insane are probably $25 as well. Worth it.

Clothes for autistic people are extraordinarily specific, because you’re trying to cut down on your sensory issues to make it easier to function in public. My friends would not like hanging out with me as much if I always acted like there was a rock in my shoe. There are only so many quirks a friend can take before you’re “embarrassing them.” I will have to say that this has only started to be a thing in the past year or so, because before that I would social mask within an inch of my life to be acceptable. I have found that I am much more happy being loud. Just put it all out there. People who are embarrassed by me don’t get the right to hear my stories anymore. I know at least one woman who does the same, and she’s not a part of my life anymore. We lost touch about 15 years ago, and I wish I could just have a friend date with her all to myself and lay it out there. I think we would both cry and find someone to confide in, but it’s not a relationship in which I would feel comfortable doing so anymore. However, I can empathize from here and hope that she’s still a fan, and thinks, “wow….. Leslie and I do have a little too much in common for me to ignore this.” We are two peas in a pod, and I wish we could help each other more now than we did then. Back then, we just picked on each other because our sensory issues are over the top and we just ignored them, choosing to be that kind of aggro that’s polite.

But all of the things I noticed in her are actually things she needs to notice in her. It’s not my bag, but I think it would help her to discover herself. That’s all I want to do from here. Hope that she does pick up on it eventually, because it will unlock her personality as easily as it did mine. I don’t have to sit there in silence. I can say things like “I’m autistic and I need you to be sensitive to the fact that florescent lights are way too bright for me. Please respect my quirks and I’ll respect all yours. David makes me use coasters even if it’s an insulated mug. It’s his quirk. I’m here for it. I don’t have to like anyone’s quirks. I need to not set people off. That’s true for any neurodivergent person, including me. If it’s a small thing you have to adjust that literally no one else cares about, but it will make an autistic person more comfortable, do it. Life is hard enough without people stepping all over your sensory issues. They won’t even register if you don’t say “I’m autistic and this is a real thing. I’m not just being dramatic.” Even if you do say you’re autistic, it’s 50/50 as to whether people will respect you or tell you to get over yourself. Neurotypical people are my nemesis when it comes to this, because you’re “making a big deal out of nothing.” No, you think that my brain works exactly like yours, and to you, I’m just “silly” or “rigid” or any number of things people say when they think your autistic quirks are stupid.

That’s the thing. We know they’re stupid. If we could figure out how to turn them off, we would.

We are also not children, just for the record. We are not acting childish when we need comfort items, we are not acting childish when we want to sit in the same spot every time, we are not acting childish because one shirt feels good and the other doesn’t and you can’t figure out why we don’t want to wear it EVER. None of it makes sense unless you also have my brain disorders, and I’m done. I might not rage in front of people as not to be rude, but I’ll rage about it here because this is a survival manual for someone else. Who that might be is anyone’s guess, but it’s here.

Let’s also not pretend your life as the friend or parent of a neurodivergent adult/child is harder than actually being autistic/ADHD, okay? Cut the shit. I’ve been accidentally involved with parents’ groups trying to find peer groups on Facebook, and I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of babies at times. Oh, you think it’s hard that your kid will only eat five things? What about how hard it is when your body rejects EVERYTHING except five things, and everyone just thinks you’re “picky” and “difficult.” Do you think we like being this way? That it’s just so much fun? There are no words for how alarming unfamiliar food is to some autistic people. It is a sensory issue that will set someone’s nerves on fire. It gets worse as you get older…….. “guess who finally decided to show up for once?” It took me three days to get up enough energy to bathe last week. But I grin and bear it because demand avoidance over basic needs doesn’t make sense to neurotypical people and it never will.

I’ve finally got my computer set up the way I want it, and I swear to Christ David thought I had died in my room. I said next time you think that, you could just text me and ask. I told him that when I don’t come out of my room for more than peeing and eating, it means I am utterly obsessed with writing, not that anything is wrong. Plus, I’d just gotten home from Zac’s, and that always takes a lot out of me on the way home because I’m transitioning to writer’s mode rather than socialization mode. I also got food poisoning on Thursday night, so getting home was delayed by several hours so that I didn’t throw up on the train. I’m glad David works from home on Fridays so that I didn’t leave Jack stranded.

It was so nice to spend time with Oliver, who is a dog. I love that I have a Jack away from Jack and an Oliver away from Oliver…… and I am responsible for neither in terms of food or emergency vet bills. It’s a truly great setup, because I like pets, I just don’t want to spend money on them when I know I’d be tapped out quickly.

And that’s all I have to say about that, but I’ll be back on later. It’s going to be what I’m doing now that my hatred of Windows knows no bounds. But before I go, here’s why I love this office so much- my views into the front and back yards. They are no longer in bloom, but when they are, it’s a hundred times more beautiful.