morganmesa

[morganmesa]

disabled sisyphus (i fill my pill organiser and then it's empty again and then i fill it and then it's empty again and then-)

[morganmesa]

[morganmesa]

Being autistic is like screaming through a megaphone “please don’t overwork me, i WILL explode” and everyone responds like haha well. You’ll get used to it over time :)

[morganmesa]

I think some of you forgot that autistic people sometimes act strange and say things that are poorly worded and speak with incorrect tone and misunderstand or miss social cues because they are autistic

[morganmesa]

it helped me with my chronic illness, maybe it could help someone else too

[morganmesa]

maybe this time picking at Textures on my skin will lead to being silky smooth

[morganmesa]

[morganmesa]

Is it normal allergies? A cold? New allergies? First big crash of the year? Spin the wheel to find out!

Ah yes, my favorite chronic illness game: is this normal, is this new, or am I dying?

[morganmesa]

just bought myself 500 dollars worth of allergy tests

I think this may have been a panic buy. My boyfriend has (had?) COVID and just tested negative. Meanwhile I’ve had a sore throat for three days that gets better with Benadryl for some reason. And the past week I’ve been trying and failing to get a piece of paperwork from my doctor’s office that will allow me to get some testing done faster but it’s been hard and time consuming and frustrating for no good reason at all. Then if I zoom out - I’m absolutely anxious about my neuropsych consult on Monday.

So much of my health situation feels like it’s out of my hands. Ordering myself allergy testing feels like a way to take the reins for just a moment. My providers might take objection (examine more closely: why would they?): if this occurs, I will blame my nutritionist.

The truth? I crave the hit of a lab result. I want to know whatever there is to know - preferably, for certain. It isn’t enough for me to note the predictability with which mildewy-smelling weed makes me crash out. It isn’t enough to know that when I touch a piece of pineapple to my lips that a burning will follow. I want proof for myself - and for the part of me that says I’m playing damsel in distress, making mountains out of molehills, looking for certainty where there is none, have you thought about talking to someone

[morganmesa]

perfectly normal things that I can’t do*

*without experiencing The Consequences

wake up and take a nice, long refreshing shower

eat oatmeal for breakfast

go for a brisk morning walk

go to the gym before work

go to work

go for a swim after work

take the stairs

eat to feel satisfied

attend three meetings/appointments on the same day

eat 3 slices of pizza with a coke for lunch

skip lunch

eat a big bowl of pasta for dinner

eat a big bowl of anything for dinner

dance the night away

[morganmesa]

hobbies I have attempted to embrace while ill

Yoga

Hiking

Pilates

Community organizing

Coursera courses

Cross-stitch

Embriodery

Crocheting

Knitting

Community choirs

.

[morganmesa]

January 21, 2025

I want to be more intentional about the narratives I spin about myself.

I want to chronicle how it is that I’m managing to live in such inhospitable conditions.

I want to keep a firm grasp on my life’s thread.

I want to experience life. Right now, it feels like I’m being subjected to it.

I have always done what has been necessary for me to survive. As a child, I participated in music ensembles and dance classes. I didn’t have many friends, so music and dance were where I spent time with kids my own age. The fact that it wasn’t possible (or appropriate) to actually speak while playing flute in band practice or during a petit allegro worked to my advantage. The less I spoke, the fewer opportunities others would have to realize how much I struggled socially.

My charades fooled adults for the most part. But other kids knew something was up. As a teenager, I rationalized my struggles with a story about how I was too black (or brown) to be accepted by white kids and too bookish to be embraced by other black kids. I’m not so certain now that that was the case. I don’t know what other kids saw in me that made them keep their distance.

I used achievement to dull the pain of being unpopular. From childhood through college I chose activities that came easily to me, and I avoided or modified environments that highlighted my weaknesses.

As a child, I felt perpetually behind, as though I had missed the big meeting where everyone decided what was in and what was out. I didn’t know where to sit at lunch, I sucked at gym class, and I only ever found out about parties after they happened. I took refuge in academics. Ultimately, my academic escapism earned me a seat in the Ivy League.

In college, social life began to make more sense. During my first year at Yale, I spent weekends dancing at frats and thought — naively, I suppose — that my Yale degree would be a golden ticket to any life I wanted. But my adult life affords me only a fraction of the flexibility and freedom I enjoyed at Yale. My relationships have not flourished the way I hoped they would, and despite all my achievements, I remain unemployed. I suspect I am not completely free from whatever it was that kept me from connecting with my peers as a child. Once again, I am struggling to find my place.

And so I spend hours on the couch fighting with fuzzy yarn and knitting needles, dissociating in bed, scrolling my way into oblivion, working feverishly on a community organizing issue, obsessing over the contents of my Instacart cart, procrastinating eating because I’m afraid of my abdominal pain, separating strands of embroidery floss, completing my pre-appointment check-ins, joining (but never finishing) Coursera classes with reckless abandon — hoping that some day I’ll figure out the key to making it through.

But mostly I feel confused. I have trouble distinguishing the parts of my self that are truly me from the parts that I built up defensively, hoping just to make it to the next hurdle. It’s scary to think that what I consider my self may be nothing more than an agglutination of coping mechanisms with no intrinsic substance to speak of.

This can’t be a normal way to feel. It just can’t be.