#Averygaypost

[transastronautistic]

why is it always crucify korok. roast korok on a spit. why is it never have a tea party with korok. treat korok to a night on the town

[transastronautistic]

More context:

my therapist and I have been talking about meltdowns, and she helped me realize I’ve internalized this idea that I must Always Avoid Meldowns, that they’re to be repressed at all costs —

And she was like “By all means do what you can to regulate yourself so that you don’t get to the point of a meltdown, but if you get to that point you just gotta let it out man”

And I was like. Oh. Oh damn. 🤯

“But I don’t wanna scream so loud my neighbors get worried!”

So my therapy homework was to create a space where I’d feel safe to have meltdowns when I need to. And my wife has been so sweet — the moment I told her about it she was online looking for stuff to put in it, and putting together a design plan 🥹

I know she’s really glad to have a, like, actionable way to help me with my mental health stuff. She needs a Project and this has been just the thing.

…anyone else have a meltdown / sensory safe space?

[transastronautistic]

Bean update — she just woke me up at 3am because she Needed to eat Right Now and also proceeded to drink water for a solid two minutes

The phenobarbital has been keeping her sooooo tired; she spent almost all day yesterday sleeping on the backyard couch except when I made her come in for a the hottest hour of the afternoon. She was ravenous and ate whenever I put food in front of her, but too tired to actually Get Up for it a lot of the time.

I called places that do MRIs around the state and the cheapest one is $2,800??? 😭 Given that if it were to discover a tumor it would probably be inoperable we are probably not going to get one, but I’m going to talk to the vet more about it tomorrow. The other most likely option is it was a stroke. For both scenarios the main treatment option is phenobarbital to keep seizures at bay which we are doing anyway now, soooo an MRI would mainly be just to know for sure. We don’t have $2,800 to drop on that lol.

Flapjack has been afraid of her since she got home Monday; she must reek of vet + sickness and she hasn’t been bathing. But every now and then she approaches him and settles down a few feet away and they just Vibe a while.

Last night I slept on the couch downstairs with her with the stairs barricaded so she’d stay in the area with me where I’ll hear if another seizure happens. Tonight she’s been closed up in our bedroom with us which she was Not Happy about, but too tired to really fight about it.

I was actually kind of happy when I woke to her scratching at the door because that simple act was more energetic than she’d been all day yesterday!

My goals for tomorrow are to talk to the vet some more, and hopefully get her to bathe herself a little. It would make me So happy to see that.

[transastronautistic]

i want to make a sewing piece with flowers from different liberation movements — e.g. lavender for queers, poppy for Palestine...

anyone have information on flowers linked to other movements / cultures? For instance, Black liberation or Latin American / Indigenous liberation?

[transastronautistic]

My therapist recommended the Divergent Conversations podcast to me, where two neurodivergent therapists discuss, well, neurodivergence. She specifically recommended this episode on alexithymia.

I'd already known about alexithymia — which broadly is difficulty identifying & describing emotions — but there's a lot more to it than I'd realized! So I thought I'd jot down the most interesting bits of this episode's conversation:

First off, I learned I've been pronouncing alexithymia wrong lol; it's uh-lex-ih-THIGH-me-uh.

1 in 10 people have alexithymia! It's not just an autism thing! But at least 50% of autistics have it; and somewhere between 20-45% of ADHDers do

Some of the traits people associate with autism are actually alexithymia things, including difficulty with recognizing emotions on faces or voices and difficulties with empathy. — In studies, autistics who don't have alexithymia do as well at those things as allistics in the study do.

Alexithymia makes emotional regulation hard because you don't notice the subtle shifts / increases in your emotions until suddenly you're exploding. E.g. on an "emotions scale" you don't notice you're not at a 1 anymore till you're "suddenly" at a 10

This is why a lot of us will, in the moment, not process that something's upset us, and only later realize "oh hey, that wasn't okay" — which NTs/people without alexithymia may interpret as us having "lied" / hidden our true feelings in the moment, when that isn't the case!

Because we struggle with in-the-moment fleeting emotions, a lot of us compensate by getting good at reflective emotions — which brings our emotions into our prefrontal cortex and requires time. We'll analyze every angle of a conversation after the fact, and only then conclude what we should feel / start to feel the emotions. — This can cause conflict in relationships because we'll be unable to access our emotions in the middle of an emotionally charged moment/conversation, and therefore not respond "appropriately" / seem cold :/

One of the therapists, Megan, notes how special interests are one place autistics often can access our emotions easily in the moment!

Stimming is also a way we help connect our minds, emotions, and bodies when it's a struggle

But basically, having alexithymia, feeling like you have to analyze every situation from every angle after the fact, takes a lot of cognitive energy; it's exhausting.

Finally, below the readmore, I'll paste an anecdote the guest shared that describes how neurotypicals seem to "feel" their way through conversations and thus come to a kind of shallow conclusion about it, versus how people with alexithymia analyze it from every angle, which takes way longer but leaves you open to considering others' perspectives (in my view at least).

THOMAS HENLEY: ...If you study neurotypicals...I think there's a lot of situations where we give ourselves a hard time for not understanding certain things. Like, neurotypicals tend to talk a lot about things like 'read the room,' and 'understand the hidden meaning,' and understand things just from the flow of the conversation. 

But from my experience, particularly in the workplace, or within friend groups, a lot of people that you talk to individually after those big sort of group conversations, they have completely different ideas of what's gone on. And I felt like, you know, we do have that drive to try and find that certainty out, specifically around emotions and social things, which are inherently so uncertain and emotional. It can be kind of hard for us. And it's kind of one of those things that I think a lot of neurotypicals, they go with what they feel from the situation. And then, that's 'the truth.' But compare and contrast each person in a certain group conversation, it's completely different.

It's just that we like to know exactly what happened, and exactly what people are wanting, and exactly what they're trying to say.

[transastronautistic]

Can we get a Sweet Bean update? 😿(I know it's Sunday but hoping you got some news)

Whoops only just seeing this but I appreciate you checking in! As of this morning, she’s home!!

(ID: pics of a calico cat snoozing on a blue cushion / walking around a fenced backyard / nuzzling her head into a human’s chest.)

CW: major pet illness — while under observation at the emergency vet on Saturday (previous post about that for anyone who didn't see), she had two more seizures. They sedated her and got her started on phenobarbital. Thankfully she had no more seizures through the night or on Sunday, but Sunday evening she was still heavily affected by the meds so they kept her overnight a second night 😭

But this morning she was able to stand on her own, so I was able to go get her!

For the first 30 minutes home she was stumbling around pacing back and forth downstairs and into the backyard, eating a little then walking around more. It took a while for her to finally settle down a little bit. And now, two hours after getting home, she’s finally sleeping.

This sweet bean almost definitely either had a stroke or has a tumor — so please send all the prayers / good vibes her way! She’ll be on phenobarbital for the foreseeable future and possibly for the rest of her life (and she hates pills so I could really use some prayers that she’ll take them easily through food…)

Send her little bro Flapjack good vibes too — he’s been really stressed about this whole situation, but he’s being good so far about giving her space, keeping an eye on her from afar.

(ID: a gray and white cat stooping like a gargoyle on top of a cat tree lol)

…Also I know it’s silly when I should just be relieved she’s home, but Leah and I also had to cancel our anniversary getaway we were going to go on next week and i’m really sad about that. But mostly grateful the bean is home and ready to do whatever it takes to keep her comfortable and safe 🌼

[transastronautistic]

So full of love for my boy who knows he’s not allowed on my puzzle but is intrigued by it, so he’s got his two front paws BARELY on it watching me put pieces in.

When I hold a piece close to him he sniffs it 🥺

[transastronautistic]

Finally. A gas station for me

[transastronautistic]

I’m a little birthday boyy so it’s time to dust off this ol’ tweet

[transastronautistic]

I’ve been hiding little rainbow flags around my parents’ house…here are some of my fave ones

[transastronautistic]

Anyone know why one blossom on a plant would turn out a different color like this?

Not only is the “face” white instead of light purple, but the top two petals are a deeper purple than the ones on the other blossoms.

One thing I notice is that the leaves on the white blossom’s stem are mostly yellow or dead; is that a factor or a coincidence?

Second photo is just to show off these other pretty boys; gosh I love pansies! (I bought both plants a week ago; they came with the sickly looking leaves, hopefully in this new pot they’ll improve but anyway I love the yellow purple combo)

[transastronautistic]

'tis the season when getting out of bed requires intense negotiations between my mind and body.

the most absurd part is, they're both pro-getting-up! but each assumes the other one is responsible for my continued recumbent state.

mind: if you get up, you can finally pee! relieve that pain in your bladder! wouldn't that be nice?

body: well if you get up, how about you don't have to do chores right away — start with that project you're looking forward to. just so long as you get! up!

mind: great point. counteroffer: if you get up, we can start with breakfast. i hear your stomach rumbling!

body: sure, that would be good for you too! we both know how hangry you get.

mind and body both: sooooooooo...you gonna get up or what

[transastronautistic]

utterly inane pet peeve: when a show's opening credits depicts the various characters one at a time and the actors' names don't match up to the character being shown

[transastronautistic]

Just a little life update post💫

First up: date night / weekend:

When I started sitting by @hyperfix8edcryptid in bio 101 all the way back in fall 2012, the first real conversation we had was about Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition — so when Leah saw that the symphony was going to be performing it, we knew we had to go! 🎻

The next day we walked along the wooded trails just outside our new neighborhood (we moved to a new place in November, same city but now free of our crappy landlord) — it was chilly and drizzly all day so we had the place practically to ourselves (apart from the birds, who were plentiful). Child me would be thrilled to learn I now live walking distance from a woods that has a lake, creek, spring-fed pond, and community garden! Also, Leah found a fallen rose on the path and presented it to me with a flourish 💕🌹

So that was a lovely weekend. 2023 has already hurled some curveballs at us all in a row (scarily sick kitty, canceled surgery due to insurance probs, family crisis), so we’ve both had some Sad Times and a lot of Tired days — yet I’m feeling pretty darn content with life overall right now. I feel like our new home fits us really well, and it’s been fun decorating it. It’s still a little messy but check out my craft space (the trans flag hides two shelves with storage bins full of crap haha):

And then there’s our bedroom walls! Leah’s got hats and stuff hung up on cute hooks on her side, while I’ve decked out my side with my rock and thimble collections as well as a bunch of art I’ve gathered over the years:

So yeah, slowly but steadily *kronk voice* it’s all coming together.

As spring peeks its head around the corner along with the daffodils, I’ve been dreaming up ideas for the yard — moss and clover, beans and tomatoes, peppers and pollinators…

We are also planning to add some kitty-proofing to the top of our privacy fence because we let our cats out there, but Flapjack keeps jumping the fence and forcing me to chase after him before he can get far. Bastard boy. The culprit:

Aaaand his sister Nerys, who finds her own ways to be a bastard and would totally jump the fence too if her old arthritic hips allowed it — as it is she takes her joy from looking out the kitty window:

Anyway, this has gotten long enough. Excited about what the spring brings 🌸

[transastronautistic]

my brother has me in AGONY. he won't stop saying things are bussy. bro i get it you live in boston now you wanna use the slang buT IT'S BUSSIN. BUSSIN!!! not bussy. no this food is not bussy it's not boy pu— *i mercifully black out as i didn't take a breath that whole tirade*

[transastronautistic]

holding onto my sanity by thin little green threads 🌱

it might not be a lot but dammit i AM going to live to enjoy some homegrown chamomile tea & zucchini bread while i watch bees gathering pollen from the zinnias i planted for them!!! i’ll stick around for that!!!!!