#and i just had a complete shutdown like went nonverbal for the first time in months

[2oranges]

,

[transastronautistic]

question for anyone who plays dnd (or similar games) and is also autistic or otherwise neurodivergent: do you find that your autism (etc.) impacts how you play?

i’m playing my first dnd game. the first session went fine -- all the characters were at an inn and just talking, joking, getting to know each other. it was fun! i talked a lot, and was having fun making my character interact with the others. i have all these plans for who my character is and how to gradually present that to the other players, and it was cool getting to start that.

but then we had the second session a couple nights ago, and it was a catastrophe for me. the game master set the scene: several days(!!) had passed since that night at the inn, and we’d been on the road during that time. she asked our positions around the cart, and then launched us straight into a battle (roll initiative).

and i....went nonverbal and into a shutdown. i only rolled initiative and later to heal someone because my wife was in the room with me asking me to. i could barely pay attention to what the other players and npcs were doing, it was just a wash of painful noise as i grew more distressed. halfway through the battle i left the room and laid on our couch in the dark, completely shut down.

and then after my wife told the others she and i were gonna have to leave the session early and shut her laptop, and came to ask me what the heck happened and then left me alone, i went into full on meltdown mode. my worst meltdown in like half a year.

so i was just wondering like. why that happened to me?? has anyone else experienced something like this?

i think some of the factors were:

first off, the audio kept cutting out at the beginning so we could only catch half of what was happening. and it all was happening so much faster than i’d expected!

second, i had planned in my head more things my character was gonna say to the others the morning after that conversation in the inn, but instead the gm fast-forwarded us to 4 days later and right into a battle instead of into more conversation.

third, i’m playing with mostly-strangers, not friends. it’s my wife leah’s friend + that person’s husband, sister, and other friend. and one of the players couldn’t make it to the first session, so she was new to this second session but there was no time to say hi or let her introduce her character before suddenly we were battling?

yeah, anyway. anyone have thoughts on why i had a shutdown and meltdown over this?? or any other thoughts on how being autistic / nd impacts playing dnd?

feel free to share happier examples of being autistic and playing dnd, too! my example is of distress, but it would actually be really nice for me to hear that other autistics have fun playing dnd!

[alexwithalex]

I can feel myself burning out again, and I’m. scared.

The last week has been rough. I caught a bad cold for the first time in a while, and I got roped into watching something that I must have watched when I was like, two, that deeply traumatized me on a subconscious level. I’ve been sleeping with my top light on the last few nights, and when I don’t, I’m using a unicorn nightlight that pretty much lights up the whole room anyway. I’ve been falling behind on schoolwork and getting things into my planner, and I’ve even been skipping events for my fraternity-- the fraternity that I worked my ass off for two and a half years and means absolutely everything to me.

Last semester, at around this time, I started feeling like this and stopped going to classes for the rest of the semester. It wasn’t intentional. At the time, I chalked it up to having worked way too hard the semester before and not giving myself a break during winter. But... Now I’m worried it’s something bigger.

I went completely nonverbal during rehearsal today, and had a three-hour shutdown as soon as I got home. I’m a little bit verbal now, but not by much. The idea of getting to class tomorrow seems like the hardest thing in the world. I worry that I’ll end up having another shutdown, in public this time. Noise of any sort outside of white or my control is excruciating.

I know I should go to see my therapist, but how can I talk to her without being able to speak? I’m taking ASL, but I’m not that educated on it yet, not to mention that I can’t do the facial expressions when I’m panicking, which is like, half of the language. Plus, I love my therapist when it comes to anxiety and depression-- she is a HUGE help there --but I don’t think she even knows I have autism. And in no way do I have the spoons to go through diagnosis again to get those damn papers my last therapist never got to me.

How am I ever going to live on my own? I already can’t work due to anxiety, what if I can’t even finish my degree? Is getting a degree even worth anything if I can’t do anything with it? What if my parents decide I’m too much of an ungrateful brat and stop supporting me financially? What am I going to do when they’re gone? I know that I have a disability, and there’s nothing wrong with not working, but I just feel like a spoiled child relying on them when all of my friends here have two or three jobs and are paying their own way through college, and I’m just sitting here doing seemingly nothing.

I’m so overwhelmed. I wish the world could just stop for a week.

[stimmy-chloe]

In which I spend approximately one year (not really) musing about my experiences with autistic burnout, particularly the later parts of it that took place last year, and my thoughts involving it, because I’ve been thinking a lot about burnout lately.

(Trigger warning: Mentions of suicide, mentions of self-harm, and a few mentions of a home invasion. I’ve... been through some shit lmao)

I’m not quite sure how to begin this, honestly.

Like... where do I start? Do I begin by discussing the background of my environment and my mental health prior to the very beginning of my burnout? Do I launch into a comparison of my prior-to-burnout self with my current, (mostly) post-burnout self?

I guess I’ll start with this:

Autistic burnout sucks. Like, it seriously sucks. Everyone who enters it has different reasons for why they enter it. I think for me personally, mine was set off by a combination of accumulation of long-term stress and trauma. For the longest time, I thought it was for the most part set off by what happened back in 2016. But now... I think what happened back then was a huge part in setting it off, but I also think there was more to it.

Let’s dive into when I first noticed my burnout:

Ah, yes... Go figure, I first Actually Noticed the symptoms of it shortly after the home invasion. Eye contact became more difficult (whether that’s burnout-related or related to the fact that I made eye contact with the guy who broke in, I have no idea), speaking verbally suddenly became quite difficult, I began feeling the need to stim more... Obviously, the list goes on for sure, but those are the first three I can think of.

I remember not noticing them too much at first, as I was more focused on my anxiety and depression symptoms worsening and PTSD symptoms emerging (I guess, after all, panic attacks that rapidly increased in frequency; all the fun things I used to love, including my special interests, suddenly becoming very boring; and dissociation, and nightmares basically replaying what happened in some way, are more noticeable than the symptoms of burnout). Once I did notice them, though, it didn’t take me long at all to figure out what the problem was.

From what I can tell, using my fuzzy memories of 2016 (I dissociated through about 90% of 2016 after what happened and I feel like that is to blame for the year being pretty fuzzy), it seems my burnout didn’t really? Leave too many after-effects or affect me that much once it appeared to pass around the end of 2016. I mean sure, I did begin going nonverbal* occasionally whenever I was stressed or overloaded, I had shutdowns whenever I got too overwhelmed, my sensory issues were more noticeable, I was more easily exhausted during social interaction... Just some shit that sucked to have to deal with, but was otherwise bearable.

(*For the longest time, I believed that I didn’t have any nonverbal episodes at all until the home invasion happened, but I recently had a memory from when I was little resurface and I’m... pretty sure I went nonverbal at some point during it. Just want to mention that before we go on, especially since I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it on my blog before, me not having any nonverbal episodes until after what happened. Why do I want to mention that in this post specifically? I don’t know; I just do)

Whether my burnout actually went away or simply eased up to the point of not having many noticeable symptoms, I’m not a hundred percent certain. I do know that a smallish part of 2017 was nice, but otherwise? I felt unsatisfied with who I was constantly, I still felt stressed and tired a lot of the time, and of course, go-fucking-figure, I had a depressive episode slam into me sometime during the fall that ended up carrying into the next year. 

(Also, honestly? To put it simply, a lot of 2017 was just full of me feeling like I was on the verge of a huge-ass meltdown. When I think of the concept that I was perhaps still in burnout or at least on the verge of returning to it, this feeling and my experiences in 2017 make a lot of sense, which is basically why I bring up the year in the first place)

It wouldn’t be until February 2018 that I would finally get relief. It was brief at first, but once I got my ex out of my life, I found relief from depression for good. For most of February, everything was quite calm for the first time in a while.

I still remember the date it all began... March 1st, 2018. The day everything just... I don’t know. Collapsed, I guess.

That very day, I went nonverbal after visiting friendo. Though I thought it was strange (after all, I wasn’t shutting down or feeling stressed or overwhelmed), I for the most part was worried that perhaps I was having another depressive episode on the way, something I had--according to a Tumblr post I made--been worrying about for a while.

The next day, I didn’t think too much about it. It was strange, but hey, it was an isolated incident. I shouldn’t have one happen again for a while, right?

Wrong.

I went nonverbal 3 days later during a voice-call with friendo. And again the day after while out on a field-trip with him. And if I recall correctly, the day after that. Before I knew it, I was going nonverbal nearly daily.

That wasn’t all, either.

My sensory issues suddenly worsened. I began self-harming more often (and my long-time habit of hitting myself made a return) and--for a while--daily. Speaking became very difficult and particularly exhausting, even if I wasn’t about to go nonverbal. At the peak, even dressing myself and using the toilet was very difficult to do (and sometimes, those still can be difficult for me to do-- without help, at least. Shame and a feeling of “not bad/valid enough to need help” has kept me from asking for any kind of help in these areas)

The thing is, that ain’t even everything. It was all... honestly a huge-ass mess. I know part of it appeared to be triggered by my anxiety worsening to the point where I was worrying literally nonstop, getting hit by random anxiety out of nowhere frequently, and could barely leave the house or speak to next-to literally any human-being without entering a severe panic, self-harming, barely avoiding a meltdown, or having a shutdown. The rest of it was triggered by... everything else that went on beforehand, I guess.

I wasn’t too sure how to feel about all of this. I remember feeling distressed by a good bit of this. I guess that must’ve been because I was used to seeming “normal” and knowing that I didn’t seem that way anymore just... brought me distress, I guess. Seeing other people distressed by this didn’t help either.

My family and I quickly took action to help this. I got on my anxiety medication not too long after all of this started happening and very quickly, my nonverbal episodes took a significant decrease, I became able to socialize with others without panicking again, and I began feeling less tired. Things became easier, and I felt better. Right around this time, I also started occupational therapy and that also helped a lot. Things seemed to go back to normal quickly-- the normal I was used to, anyways.

And then suddenly, I began having the urge to use echolalia more often and to speak in shorter sentences. Sometimes, I just wanted to speak in one or two single words!

I had mixed feelings about this. One side of me was cool with this, the other side was just like “ummm”. My feelings flip-flopped a lot. One minute, I’d be caving into my urges and letting myself speak in short sentences or echo a TV show character. The next minute, I’d be feeling embarrassed and stopping myself from doing this.

Not too long before this began (the urge to use echolaliac speech more often), I had an evaluation to see if I needed speech therapy alongside the occupational therapy I was already having. After the evaluation, I learned that I did not need speech therapy (though that’s not to imply that there weren’t noted issues). In fact, according to the speech therapist who evaluated me, I had the speech and language skills of a 21-year-old! Talk about a shocker! Initially, I felt quite prideful about this. Right around this time, though, I... suddenly started feeling like I couldn’t use echolalia or shorter sentences, because it “didn’t fit the skills” I had then. I suppose the fact that I’ve been a tad bit of a perfectionist for a couple of years now didn’t help any.

So... After a while, I began fighting back the urges to use echolalia (how much I tried to resist it: I stopped myself almost completely from even doing casual quoting from cartoons-- and I used to do that a lot!), as well as the urges to use shorter sentences and single words. This wasn’t a good thing to put it simply. Quite quickly, stress began building up. But it would be a while before I’d see the consequences of such a build-up.

***

I still remember when my allistic-passing act completely collapsed. My verbal speech went with it. And--for the most part--so did my ability to pass as allistic.

I don’t know why I felt such a powerful need to pass. Speak “properly”, speak no matter the cost (no matter how exhausting it is, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much it almost hurts), don’t use echolalia, don’t use AAC unless you’ve gone nonverbal (even if speaking is getting too hard to be worth continuing speaking), don’t stim so openly... The list certainly goes on, but those are just what I remember the most.

I’ve heard about how “”high-functioning”” I was multiple times in the past, starting when I was... about 10, I believe. It didn’t really bother me when I first started hearing it. Fast-forward to 6 years later, to this time period, and now it was a source of annoyance and general stress. Now at this point, I knew how functioning labels were actually quite problematic-- but despite me not agreeing with them, those specific words made me feel some sort of pressure to pass, even though I had thought for quite a while already that functioning labels were bullshit and that I therefore didn’t have to listen whenever someone described me as being “”high-functioning””. Hell, even if I didn’t hear it recently, those words clung to me like some kind of glue for some reason, adding to the pressure. And right around this time, the pressure kind of... hmm, started really getting to me at this point.

(Personal comments before I go on: Functioning labels are complete and utter bullshit and this whole thing is exactly why I can’t stand them, “high-functioning” especially. Oh, and if any of y’all reading this happen to call someone you know “high-functioning” or even just slap the “high-functioning” label on people from time-to-time, maybe consider stopping? No, seriously. Stop)

If you asked me if I knew it was coming last year, I would have told you no, that this just came out of nowhere. But now? When I remember back to the weeks before my act died, I can tell now that by the way I was feeling, it was certainly coming and I had signs in advance. I just... didn’t notice them, or just plain ignored them without realizing it, if the latter is possible to do.

In the weeks leading up to it, things were getting very hard for me. I felt so horrible a lot of the time. Talking was beginning to become particularly difficult and was beginning to feel very bad. If I used echolalia (whenever I could bring myself to), it felt a little bit less bad, but... I always felt so guilty and embarrassed about using it, no matter where I was or who I was with or even if I was alone. It sure didn’t help any that the little voice in my head told me that I couldn’t use it, that I had to speak “normally” and “perfectly”.

I remember one day, around 3 weeks before my act collapsed, I was quite stressed and rushed to my room to hide from everyone so I could attempt to fight back tears. The second I sat down at my desk, go figure, I immediately began crying (and hitting myself, but that’s not the point). I remember at some point, shortly after I began crying, I thought about how much I just wanted to communicate the way I wanted to, how I just wanted to mostly echo people and things I heard, use shorter sentences, and type or sign what I wanted to say if I was having one of the many moments where speaking was just too difficult.

But no one wanted that, the voice in my head always seemed to like telling me. Mom will freak out thinking that you’re “regressing” again, everyone prefers “proper”, verbal speech, you need to talk “~perfectly~”, how you feel doesn’t matter one bit (for a long time, starting when I was about 10 or 11, I was hearing that sentence in my head constantly. I still hear it sometimes). I remember upon thinking about all this, tears began seriously streaming down my face. And I sat and wept for quite a while about that very thing.

If I could go back in time to this moment and decide that I didn’t care what other people thought and that I would communicate how I wanted to, I would do it in a heartbeat. But alas, I’m so used to always putting other people before myself (I’ve caused myself considerable detriment doing this), that I immediately pushed the idea away and continued passing.

I pushed hard. I pushed as hard as I could. Then I pushed even harder. I pushed so fucking hard, much harder than I should’ve. Keep passing, don’t drop the mask, don’t you fucking repeat that, you better keep talking, don’t make that sound, you don’t matter at all, pass, pass, pass...

And finally...

I collapsed.

While on vacation out of state, I went nonverbal two times. The first time, it was just an average episode. Stayed around for most of the day and ended when I woke up the next day.

The second one was... different, though. It first started in the middle of the afternoon and was stress-induced like usual, yeah, but that’s not what was different about it. I remember worrying that the episode would continue into the next day (I constantly worried about this when I was going nonverbal almost daily), but for once, I actually felt confident that I would wake up verbal again.

But I didn’t.

I remember that morning well. I was so confused and so was my family.

If there’s one strange thing I remember about this time period, it’s that I--for the most part--felt okay about dropping my passing mask if I was nonverbal. And I managed to drop it for the vacation. The feeling of relief was amazing. I actually felt good for the vast majority of the vacation. From what I remember, even seeing some people stare at me didn’t bother me for once.

I was nonverbal for 4 days in case anyone is wondering. The nonverbal episode ended the day after my family and I went back home. And my mask went right back on (though from what I recall, it seems that I felt much more relaxed than usual and therefore, didn’t really focus as much on passing as I usually did at the time).

...

But I sure wasn’t verbal again for long.

My memory of this time is very hazy for some reason and as a result, I didn’t quite remember the actual date until recently and even though I remember it now, the time period around it is, like I just said, very hazy.

Three days. I was verbal again for three days. Literally three. Three.

July 25th, 2018. That’s the date that it happened, the day that my verbal ability went back down the toilet-- for good this time.

I remember the evening I lost my ability to speak verbally well. Funnily enough, I remember that evening, I was singing to myself as I walked Russ around the front yard and right after I finished singing, I suddenly... thought about the concept that I could drop my mask-- and I could begin doing so by letting myself verbal/vocal stim more often in private. For once, I felt no resistance or fear regarding this concept. Instead, I felt relief and like I was actually allowed to do so. And I decided that I would begin to let myself verbal/vocal stim in private “more often”.

If only I had known what would follow around 20 minutes after this...

I heard a car door slam outside and I knew that my dad was home. For some reason I still haven’t gotten entirely figured out, I got that specific feeling in my throat-- the one I tended to get right before I went nonverbal.

I, of course, denied the hell out of it and kept talking as long as I possibly could. But of course, I had gone nonverbal very quickly, within 10 minutes of the feeling in my throat appearing. I remember going to bed a few hours later and worrying that I would wake up nonverbal again. I remember telling myself that I would probably wake up verbal again (I had less confidence than last time).

And what would ya know? I woke up the next day, still nonverbal. I was initially slightly horrified to put it simply. Honestly, though? A lot of my distress was caused by seeing my family distressed by me still being nonverbal, not the fact that I was nonverbal itself.

My memory of this time period may be hazy, but I do remember one major thing about this: My mask died.

I began stimming a lot, more than I ever did. I started having meltdowns again, intense ones that happened quite frequently. I made less eye contact. The two routines I had at the time, I needed-- and I craved more, and I could hardly stand unpredictably or a lack of routine. Around this time period, I almost always spent my free time indulging in my special interests; stimming; and lining up and sorting stuff. When I got on a certain medication for my ADHD that made my anxiety flare up... oh goodness, all of this just intensified.

I remember being confused and a little bit frightened by all of this, but at the same time, I also felt a sense of... relief. And also, an intense sense of happiness.

It would take 4, nearly 5, months before I would begin getting verbal speech back. I still haven’t gotten back to how I used to be, speech-wise and for the most part, otherwise as well.

***

Have you ever had someone tell you they were sorry about something and your response was genuinely “why tho”? Because that’s how I felt (and still feel) whenever someone apologized for my “suffering”.

When it all started, part two in July last year, I had people praying. Okay, that is fine, depending on what is being prayed for, I guess.

But here’s the thing... a lot of people seemed to feel sorry for me specifically during this time. And here’s the thing I’ve been wondering: What about all the other times I’ve struggled?

My anxiety’s been very bad, as we can see from this post. I’ve fought depression that’s been very, very bad. I’ve been suicidal as a result of the depression and I suppose the anxiety played a role in it too-- and at the peak of my depression, I came pretty damn close to acting on the suicidal thoughts (I even have one memory where I was genuinely about to try to fucking act on them). Hell, I was suicidal before my depression developed-- or at least before it seemed to develop when I was about 10. 

I was bullied when I still went to public school and the school stopped trying to do anything about it after a while. I was made fun of by other kids at the last church I went to (I say ‘made fun of’ because I don’t know if bullying quite fits. Otherwise, I’d say I’ve been bullied at church too). The children’s pastor at the church did nothing about it except for telling my mom and I to pray for the main kid responsible for making fun of me because she had a rough life at home (she said she would talk to the kid about it, but honestly, I don’t think she did). Both of these had significant impacts on me-- and in a way, I suppose they still do.

I’ve been through two traumatic events: Losing my home and narrowly avoiding death during the April 27th, 2011 super outbreak, and being involved in a home invasion in February 2016. I have PTSD from the home invasion and despite being a lot better than I initially was, I still feel the effects of it from time-to-time.

What about all these other times, I wonder? My opinion is that if you really want to feel sorry for me, feel sorry for my younger self. Feel sorry for 11-year-old me, who was struggling with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and was legitimately her own worst enemy. Feel sorry for 12-year-old me, who hardly had any friends, felt lonely on a regular basis, and of course, continued to struggle to cope with anxiety, the feeling of being “broken”, and the occasional suicidal thoughts. Feel sorry for 14-year-old me, who struggled to process her trauma and once again, was feeling the effects of multiple mental illnesses.

I know of people “sending thoughts and prayers” to my family and I after the home invasion (though some of these very people didn’t actually make a fucking effort to help us from what I can tell), but otherwise? I’ve heard almost next-to nothing about all the other shit I’ve been through. That pisses me off.

I imagine this would vary for different people, but honestly? For me, being hardly able to speak, having semi-regular meltdowns, and being pretty much unable to pass for non-autistic is a lot better than feeling the effects of depression, anxiety and PTSD combined. I’ll take all of this over suffering from the effects of my mental illnesses-- and believe me, they can be bad.

Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m comfortable with who I am. I’m actually happy about my life, about who I am. I’ve spent a good portion of my life hating myself, thinking that I was broken, worthless, that everyone would be better off if I was dead.

I’m so angry about the fact that I suffered like that for so long-- but no one else seems to be.

So tell me, who do you want to feel sorry for more: My current self, who can’t really pass as allistic, but actually loves herself-- or my younger self, who thought that she was broken and unlovable because of her autism and hated herself as a result?

***

Sometimes, when I think about this whole thing, I find it kind of funny, because 2 years ago, I had wondered about whether or not something like this, this kind of burnout that equalized me “going back to how I used to be”, would ever happen-- and I was terrified of it. And now, here I am 2 years later, “back to how I used to be”-- and also in some ways, in a way that I wasn’t like ever in my life.

When this all started, I had a wide range of feelings, negative and positive. From what I can tell, most of the negative emotions were from seeing other peoples’ reactions and observing their feelings. A lot of people--especially the adults in my life--seemed frightened and concerned when this all began. And for a while, I felt the exact same way. Fast-forward to present time and I’m... completely okay with all of this. Whether or not anyone in my life is okay with this now, I don’t know, but I think most people are (now).

I’m pretty sure (at least) most people who have been around before my burnout still love me for who I am, but... I still feel afraid sometimes, especially when I think of one aspect: The fact that I don’t see myself getting back to where I used to be, especially speech-wise. I’m okay with this now, but I don’t know who all in my life is. For all I know, the number of people okay with this could be zero. When we consider the fact that I want/prefer to communicate mostly via echolalia and AAC, I get very afraid of that sometimes, of losing peoples’ love and support, in this particular case, because of how I choose to communicate. It may seem small, but it’s a very real fear to me that I’ve struggled with a lot.

That fear is literally what caused me to push myself too hard and lose my ability to speak verbally in the first place and if that doesn’t say anything, I don’t know what does.

I imagine it’s probably worth noting that last year, right before my mask died, I was feeling a certain way, like my depression was right on the verge of relapsing, but the more my mask disappeared, the farther away the feeling got until it completely faded away. The feeling was around for a good bit of 2018, but it’s... gone now. So the only thing I can figure is that passing contributed to my depression and me losing my mask was likely the only thing that kept me from having what could’ve been a serious relapse of my depression.

Overall, I think my biggest challenge with this whole thing wasn’t my burnout itself, but my burnout leading me to confront what seemed to be a good bit of internalized ableism and the feeling that I would be unlovable if I was obviously autistic. Those feelings haven’t been easy to overcome at all, and I still haven’t managed to completely overcome them. I hope I can someday, but with how long I’ve dealt with these feelings, I imagine it’s going to take a long time to completely unlearn them, if I ever can.

Sometimes, I still feel like I’m unlovable and a burden because of my autism. Because I’m mostly nonverbal (and that the majority of the mouth words I do have are echolaliac), because of my stimming that can be quite visible (and loud!), because of my meltdowns that happen both in private and public settings and often involve self-injury, because of how easily overwhelmed I can be.

Most of the time now, I can push those feelings away and tell myself that my autism doesn’t make me unlovable (if anything, I imagine it makes me more lovable) or a burden. But some days are still hard and I believe the lies my brain will sometimes tell me, for a few hours or if I’m unlucky, for up to a few days.

When we consider the fact that I still feel somewhat ashamed and self-conscious of various aspects of myself (using echolalia, to name one big example that I still struggle with feeling shame over), that sure doesn’t help any. As time goes on, I feel less shame and insecurity, but it still remains in place in some way. I hope that someday, I will be able to completely overcome these feelings for good. And when I do, I swear I will be the happiest person alive.

My burnout was pretty hard to deal with. But the years of intense self-hatred I held inside me that was brought up by it was even harder to deal with.

***

At this point in my life, I just... I can’t bring myself to care anymore about other peoples’ expectations about how I act, about who I am. I’ve spent at least 5 years of my life worrying about what other people thought of me. It’s been exhausting. I remember thinking that people wanted me to act more allistic and I tried my best to fulfill that to my detriment. I imagine there is indeed some people in my life who expect me to act allistic.

Fuck that shit. I’ll exist however I want to.

I’ll move however I want, I’ll stim if I want to. I’ll talk-- no, scratch that. I’ll communicate however I want/need to, whether it’s through the AAC app on my iPad, ASL, gestures, vocalizations or echolalia. And I’ll use the mouth words that I have whenever I want to. And I’ll get back whatever mouth words I want, to use in whatever way I want to, no matter how “weird” they are, in usage or in some other way.

If I’m not hurting anyone or myself, then why get rid of it? (Read: Unless me flapping my hands, squealing and otherwise making noises, or using the symbols on my AAC will cause you to literally catch on fire or otherwise cause some kind of legitimate harm to you, me, or the people around us, then why the fuck would we have to get rid of it? FYI, “Because it’s inappropriate/not normal” isn’t a valid reason)

I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of passing. I’m tired of feeling like I’m trapped inside some imaginary person. And that’s why I’m no longer making an effort to pass-- and I plan on never passing again if at all possible. As of right now, my current plan is to only purposely pass if it means my life will be in legitimate danger if I don’t pass, which I don’t see such a situation happening ever. Therefore, I think it is safe to say that I’m never passing again. At all. Ever.

I may still struggle with feeling bad about myself sometimes, but I’m getting better about it and about 90% of the time, I feel pretty damn great about myself! I’m the only version of myself and if you think about it, that’s pretty rad.  

My future has become quite uncertain following everything that happened last year. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to work. I don’t know if I’d be able to handle college. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have another relationship, specifically one that goes beyond dating. I don’t know how much driving I’ll be capable of. I don’t know how many mouth words I’ll get back. But I do know for sure that my future doesn’t seem to involve living completely by myself or being 100% verbal again. And I’m trying my best to be okay with all of this.

Right now, I’m just focusing on taking care of myself in the ways I’m able and loving and accepting myself for who I am now.

[nonbinarydeedee]

Not Capable of Love - Android Traitor!Deedee x Emmet - 2/3

This one's a bit shorter than the first part but I think it's still good! Enjoy<3 (or don't, because cliffhanger, and my writing still isn't the best, but whatever)

----

She couldn’t.

Deedee had realized, now, why love was so dangerous. It was never on its own. It lead to other feelings and emotions, more problems than anything else. Her love- she couldn’t pretend anymore, not while she was actually in a relationship- for Emmet not only made the idea of killing him impossible, but of either of the others. He was friends with Baby and Maegan. Even if Deedee tried to partially complete her goal and keep Emmet alive, he'd probably hate her for it.

I can't kill him.

It was all she could think as she watched him, listened to their voice, even when she was sent out on another expedition it was all she could think about. When she returned, day forty-nine, and sent her report to her programmers, they responded that they thought it was time.

She couldn’t do it.

Her plan was to do the exact opposite of her programmers’ plan. She couldn't risk her programmers arriving to collect her, or someone realizing what she was. Emmet had to be kept safe. Powering herself off was the only way… if only she knew how to. Her programmers could, though.

It took a day of planning, but eventually she had it.

Most of the time she sent her programmers information nonverbally, through writing, but she could send it by talking and recording her surroundings. If she ever did that, the information would be sent in real time. She couldn't shut herself off, but her programmers could, and if she explained it verbally, they would probably be more likely to have mercy on her.

Consequences would be severe if it was refused. But what other choice did she have? If she, an android, and I, the author, couldn't think of anything else, or in my case couldn’t think of anything else that would get the plot moving in the way I want it to, there must not have been anything else.

Day fifty-one. Deedee snuck into the airlock while everyone was asleep. She turned on her vocal communicator to her programmers.

“Hello.” Deedee dropped her human voice and went to her natural robotic one. “I am transmitting this because-“

“Deedee?” Deedee stopped. Everyone had not been asleep, it seemed. She didn't turn around or respond. “What are you doing? Who are you-"

“You fucking ruined it.” She didn’t change her voice back. This was going to be more dramatic than she expected.

“Are you okay?” Emmet didn’t sound angry, just worried. Misery filled Deedee to the brim.

“You’re why everything’s gone wrong.” She whipped around to face him. “I was never supposed to fall in love with you. You fucked it up for me.”

“Deedee… please, explain, what's wrong?” Of course he looked like he was about to cry. He had to make this harder. It wasn’t even their fault.

“What's wrong?” Deedee hissed. She gripped a hand to her face and pulled. “THIS IS WHAT'S WRONG!” Emmet gasped as Deedee flung the ripped-off skin to the floor, revealing the metal underneath. “I WAS SENT TO KILL YOU, AND I FELL IN LOVE WITH YOU!” As she screamed, she could feel her tone deteriorating. Her programmers were already shutting her off. It would all be over soon. Emmet said nothing as a tear fell from their eye. He wasn't mad at all, just scared, scared to death.

“…It'll be over soon. My programmers have heard all of this. I couldn’t kill you, Emmet. Which meant I couldn't kill the others.” Scanners and systems were shutting down in her. “I just wanted to protect you.” She wobbled, staring straight into Emmet's hurt eyes, almost crying herself. “…I love y-"

“SHUTDOWN COMPLETE.” She fell to her knees.

“DEEDE-"

[autistic-bee-blog]

Things I didn't know are related to me being Autistic until I got older:

-Sensory processing issues that affect personal hygiene, clothing, and appearance:

.My sister hates having her hair brushed, because it hurts her scalp

 .I used to go without brushing my teeth because I couldn't stand the sensation

.I couldn't wear jeans as a kid without screaming and being sent into a meltdown

.I have to keep my hair short because I can't stand the feeling on the back of my neck

.My sister has to wash her hair and body over and over to calm down/regulate her sensory issues

-Unusual posture or gait:

.Can look like limping, and did raise comments from my parents ('why are you walking on the outsides of your shoes?' 'I didn't realize I was?')

.Sometimes I have balance issues when I am barefoot, or I feel like I'm walking unevenly because the soles of my feet feel too light

.In terms of posture, I am very rigid and stiff, and I sit and stand very straight (part of this is due to my chronic back pain), and I often look into the distance or up at the ceiling. I might be described as aloof, distracted, pensive, or worried, but it isn't necessarily true. It's just how I sit!

.(My sister is the complete opposite: she hunches over whatever she's doing or looks at her hands.)

-Problems with figurative language (not JUST sarcasm, ughhhh):

.I always had trouble with idioms. Think "The grass is always greener on the other side" (I'm like, "Well, I don't know about greener but technically atmospheric perspective says that the farther in the distance an object is, the bluer it becomes"). Or "You want to have your cake and eat it too" ("Yes, because what would I do with an entire cake if I'm not going to eat it?" This is a ridiculous expression, and I'm never going to change my mind about it.)

.I do have problems with sarcasm sometimes, but that's gotten better as I've aged, and a lot of it has to do with how well I know the person speaking, or if I can read their facial expressions/body language.

-Spatial awareness disabilities, dyslexia, and dyscalculia all have a high comorbid rate with ASD:

.I got nailed with the spatial awareness/visual processing disability and dyscalculia.

.To understand the spatial awareness disability and its extent into my daily life, imagine you are a 4 year old in a bowling alley and you are bowling for the first time. You get a 13-pound ball, and there are no bumpers, and no slide to maneuver the ball with and help aim. Now you have to try and get a strike. For me, the whole world is a bowling alley and tHERE ARE NO BUMPERS

.(I also don't drive largely because of this and limited time in my life at the moment, though I do plan on learning in case it does become necessary.)

.Dyscalculia is sort of like dyslexia, but with numbers and mathematical expressions (it is a thing. It exists, and I didn't know until I was taking pre-calc as a junior in high school and my mom told me about it.)

.For me, it is aggravated by glowing screens and I have a much harder time reading if it is online (which sucks, because now they're putting all the testing and homework online and so me and every other person dealing with this is just internally screaming.) I switch numbers around, delete numbers, and have problems reading graphs (trigonometry was a friggin treat, let me tell you)

.My sister has no spatial awareness issues (as she has demonstrated with her coordination, proclivity for geometric puzzles, Minecraft and other video games that require a certain extent of awareness of what is around you and what will happen if you move this here, etc) She does seem to have some issues with reading and switching letters around and skipping lines, but I don't know if she was ever diagnosed with dyslexia or dyscalculia.

-Poor handwriting, coordination, interpretation of directions:

.My handwriting is....improved from the fifth grade lol.

.It's crooked and sometimes I write outside the margins without meaning to, and some of my letters look like other letters.

.When I was a kid, I had such problems even HOLDING a pencil that they let me type all of my assignments.

.In my American Literature class, the girl next to me was watching me write and she said that I don't slant my pencil, I hold it straight up-down, which seemed to interest her and the teacher. I shrugged it off, but that's part of my handwriting/coordination stuff.

.I am clumsy: I've had trouble opening my pill bottles, drinking beverages without spilling them on myself, and reaching to grab stuff at a distance. It's not very noticeable, and it doesn't really interfere with anything in my daily life.

.I do have trouble with bigger things, like dancing or running, and I had a waiver for my physical education classes as a child for those reasons.

.Interpretation of directions kind of relates to the spatial awareness issues, and it is awful.

.I had a friend try to drive me home once and she ended up being an hour late for dinner with her family. I was so horrified and I avoid accepting rides from anyone that doesn't already know about my issues.

.When I was a kid, I had trouble tying my shoelaces and putting on shoes because I couldn't tell the difference between left and right. That went on until I was 7 or 8, I think.

Anxiety, feeling tired all of the time, and shutdowns:

.I also have an anxiety disorder along with being Autistic, and they "feed" off of each other. So I might already be having trouble speaking or I might be experiencing sensory issues, but then my anxiety will piggyback on those issues and I'll obsess over them until I'm even more stressed out.

.I've had anxiety attacks, panic attacks, and meltdowns, and it can be difficult to tell the difference between them many times. Sometimes a meltdown will evolve into an anxiety attack, or vice versa.

.Due to sensory processing issues, anxiety, other mental health stuff, and the effort it takes to even go about my daily life, and occasionally pass as neurotypical, I do feel tired all the time. I don't really sleep more than average though, and I also deal with insomnia, so my average time sleeping can be from 4-8 hours.

.During a shutdown, I can dissociate, go partially nonverbal, or nonverbal. I will stare into the distance, or at my hands, and feel completely numb. It is a horrible feeling. I don't know how else to describe it.

.I also have problems with trauma-related responses, so those can also add to shutdowns, or mimic shutdowns.

.(People have also pointed out that PTSD can have symptoms that can look like ASD, and vice versa. Think: exaggerated startle response, shutdowns and dissociation, stiff or upright posture, etc. Also there are Autistic people who unfortunately also have PTSD, especially from abuse or bullying which can be related to the bigotry against their Autism and cruel treatment of them by peers, therapists, teachers, parents, and caregivers.)

Auditory processing issues:

.This is so extensive, I can't even put it all down.

.When listening to other people, music, or television, sometimes words begin to sound like SOUNDS and not words. Other times, I can't keep up with processing individual sentences or words and my brain will just blank. Other times, I might think a person said one thing, when they really said a word that sounded similar.

.I ask people to repeat themselves, several times, especially if I don't know them well (I am less likely to be looking at their face/mouth if that is the case too).

.I also watch videos and movies with subtitles.

.My hearing itself is fine, it is only related to my brain processing the words and sounds. The same way my eyes themselves are fine, but I have trouble interpreting directions, sizes, and distances due to the spatial awareness disability.

Synesthesia, perfect pitch, and positive sensory experiences:

.My mom's side of the family is very musical, and so is my younger sister (also on the spectrum). She has perfect pitch, and so does my mother (likely undiagnosed due to limited knowledge of Autism when she was growing up, and due to sexism in the medical and mental health fields)

.We all experience sensory issues, which can be negative, but we also all experience good sensory inputs that other people do not always detect.

.For example, we all experience synesthesia, in different ways. In music, I associate certain notes and pitches with colours, or words. I might hear a song and associate it with the colour turquoise, or I might here a chord and associate it with being "bitter" or poison green.

.My sister and I like to describe the pictures we see listening to music, and it's always funny when one of us says something and then the other goes "Exactly! That's what I was seeing/hearing too!"

.My mom associates certain notes and songs with colours, but she also does so with days of the week, and with people.

.I'm not as musically adept as my mother and sister, but I am into visual arts such as painting, sketching, and sculpting.

.I like to do things in black and white, and then try to "balance" multiple pictures to form a larger piece. I can step back and see blankness, and see what needs to go where to make it feel "complete."

.I also use a lot of colours in some pieces, and I'm very good at discerning multiple shades in one section, even when they are very similar pigments

.My proportions are interesting in that I draw things more elongated than they are, and I might size different things bigger or smaller than they are in real life when I am copying something. I've had art teachers comment on it, and they, interestingly, were always the ones most interested in hearing about my spatial awareness and Autism.

Those are just some of the things I thought I should share. I'm curious to see if any other Autistic people have similar experiences to share (feel free to do so!) As always, this is from my perspective, so every single thing might not ring true for every single person on the spectrum. I hope this is of some use, or at least relatable to other Autistic people, or maybe even insightful for anyone wondering if they might be Autistic.

-

[verdigrisprowl]

human au

Hey I’m back on this meme yay.

This post is over 1400 words long??? how the fuck

1. Prowl became a cop because her whole family was full of cops, so she was exposed to it a lot as a kid—and consequently got completely obsessed with it. Spent her whole life preparing to be a cop. Did all her book reports on police biographies and as many school projects as physically possible on the history of policing, went into her local Explorer program as early as possible, spent every year in track & field in school and took two different martial arts extracurrucularly, drove off all her potential friends in school because she basically had nothing to talk about that didn’t somehow relate back to policing, majored in criminal justice in college, every single class and elective she took was geared specifically toward giving her extra knowledge or skills that she thought could be useful for policing, applied for the police academy the day she finished her last final, soared through the application process (with one near-hiccup during the psych eval), completely aced every class and every lesson in the police academy.

She was a police officer for less than a year when she saw crime scene investigators at work examining the blood spatter evidence at a crime scene, and realized deep in her soul that she had to spend the rest of her life doing what they were doing or she would literally die.

She’s now a ballistics expert and is extremely happy with it.

2. She’s still weirdly obsessed with policing and struggles to carry on conversations that don’t relate back to law enforcement. Luckily, this is less weird for someone who works in law enforcement than it was for, like, a twelve-year-old. But it does mean that, outside of coworkers who talk with her about work, she doesn’t really talk to anyone. She doesn’t have close friends. She doesn’t talk to her family. She’s lonely.

She goes on a lot of first dates, because she’s conventionally attractive and big enough boobs automatically cancel out resting bitch face, and she doesn’t have the social sense to realize she probably shouldn’t be giving a shot to every guy who hits on her out of nowhere simply because they think she’s hot. She has a fair amount of second dates, too, because it’s excusable to only talk about your basic life facts and your job on the first date, and because a lot of guys just don’t notice if they’re doing more talking than she is. She even has some third dates with those guys who are extremely chatty and too self-absorbed to realize she’s saying almost nothing back. It’s the fourth date at the very latest that either the guy realizes that she can basically only talk about one subject, and says maybe they should see other people; or that she decides the sickening feeling like she’s stuck inside an invisible bubble and all alone while she’s supposed to be connecting with this other human being has gotten too bad to bear, and she texts him to thank him for his time and inform him that they will no longer be dating, and then ignores his calls.

Sometimes she hangs out in libraries reading because she hopes to meet maybe vaguely intellectual guys and that seems like the place to do it, but she doesn’t strike up conversations with anyone and it turns out that pretty much the only guys who interrupt reading women at libraries are jerks. (She still dates them, and ends up predictably disappointed.) Sometimes she goes out to bars, which she really doesn’t like, but at least then she sometimes gets laid without having to go through a couple awful dates first, which is something.

And believe it or not her dating life is going better than the rest of her social life.

3. Prowl is bi-everything and demi-everything. The latter has prevented her from figuring out the former because it’s kind of hard to realize you’re attracted to girls if that attraction only springs up after you’ve made an emotional connection, and also you don’t make emotional connections. And also she hasn’t even figured out she’s demi because she’s hungry to make a romantic connection to someone and because she’s got a fairly active libido, and she’s never quite realized that wanting to be in love and wanting to have sex aren’t the same as having attraction TO someone. So she keeps dating lame dudes that hit on her first.

Other things Prowl has not figured out about herself: she’s autistic. You’d think that would be one she would have figured out about herself, because it’s honestly pretty obvious. But she never had the super obvious traits that would have been dead giveaways as a child—her stims were either small and unassuming or else done in private and so never stuck out to anyone; she had shutdowns instead of meltdowns and those were very infrequently triggered; and when she was nonverbal as a child people ascribed it to deeply traumatic childhood experiences. (Garden-variety divorced parents, coincidentally around the time she went nonverbal.) In fact, it turns out you can get away with a whole lot of pretty obvious signs of autism without getting diagnosed if you use “childhood trauma, therapy will fix it”! Especially if you’re a girl! Wow!

She probably would have gotten diagnosed if she hadn’t figured out how to get words to work again. And immediately demanded to stop going to therapy.

4. She rents the attic of a house occupied by five other people, who clearly all know each other and are friends, so she’s not sure why they rented out the attic to a total stranger. Maybe they couldn’t find a sixth friend to rent it? She thinks they’re all construction workers or something. Only 1.5 of them isn’t an idiot. Even though she has the same permission to use the common areas of the house that the rest of the residents do, she never uses them, and sneaks around avoiding the living room or any other room where the other residents are likely to be in order to get to the kitchen. She also eats at odd hours to try to avoid running into any of them. Sadly, a couple of them eat at odd hours too, so occasionally she’ll peek in the doorway and then bolt like a scared rabbit because somebody’s already in there. Why is she so determined to avoid them tho? It’s like she thinks she’s a home invader and she can’t let them know she’s there. She pays the same rent the rest of them do. What’s she scared of.

They met as construction workers but only two of them actually still are. The others are a doctor, a trucker, and a drug dealer respectable chemical engineering student. And they all think their roommate upstairs is pretty great even though she only talks to them, like, once a month. (They would be 100% dtf any time if she asked but she hasn’t and they don’t know how to broach the topic besides nude pics. And they figure it’s probably a bad idea to send unsolicited nude pics to someone who works with the police. Especially when they’re hiding drugs.)

5. I was like “hey guys I’ve got four headcanons but I need a fifth” and my friends were like “what’s Prowl’s favorite pizza” and I was like “what kind of pizza says ‘autistic forensic investigator with a special interest in police and a sad social life’” and I got “pepperoni? cheese pizza?” 

Prowl’s favorite pizza is cheese pizza, except she doesn’t eat the cheese, she peels it off and just eats the pizza with the tomato sauce. No, she can’t order a pizza with sauce and no cheese, if you do that the tomato sauce gets overcooked and crusty and nasty. It needs the layer of cheese on top to protect it during the baking, and then the cheese can be removed and the beautiful saucy pizza consumed.

She prefers a largely liquid diet, though. As a kid she’d mechanically swallow down sandwiches (PB&J, preferably, or melted cheese BUT NOT on toast ONLY on plain bread and melted in the microwave), or squishy food like mashed potatoes and cooked carrots, but given a choice she’d live on soup. If the food is the least bit crunchy she can’t process it.

The recent trends of a billion smoothie recipes and nutrient drinks that supposedly fulfill 100% of a human’s dietary needs have been basically the greatest thing to ever happen to her, in her life, full stop.

[thenightisland]

you know the drill:

this is becoming like its own series but idk how else to explain this awful year i don’t even feeling like properly linking so here’s just the URLs of the other ones in the series: 1. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/161087786689/explanationsupdates-under-the-cutmore-i 2. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/161920216354/additional-updatesexplanations-under-the-cut 3. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/163767959805/updates-under-the-cutmore-post-one-post-two-on 4. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/164398486219/on-the-fourth-edition-of-what-the-fuck-is

one of the assessors got jumped a while back. she was just walking past a pt in the main assessment dept and he jumped up, punched her in the back of the head, took her to the ground and beat the fuck out of her. she was out for weeks and weeks and had broken facial bones. i can’t believe she didn’t quit.

our nurse executive quit though. not like, went prn or gave two weeks notice, like just straight up was like I’M DONE and walked out which honestly is the closest i’ve ever come to respecting him.

while having more psychologically unstable pts isn’t new, having more medically unstable pts has been a problem lately. like our crash cart is not like a medical hospital’s crash cart it’s like. an ambu bag some iv supplies and a stethoscope no lifesaving medications. when a pt has a medical issue we send them out to a medical hospital because obv we don’t have the resources to treat complex medical issues where we work. which didn’t used to be an issue because you’d used to see maybe two medical codes a year on my unit. we’ve had /ten/ since my last update post /just on my shift/. two of which weren’t even “pt is going downhill fast” codes they were “pt has no heartbeat and isn’t breathing” like we had to fucking bring two people back from the goddamn dead /within ten minutes of each other/. we’re all like we’re psych nurses man if we wanted to do this shit we’d work er. [and the er we’re required to send these pts to is awful like they sent us back a guy who had almost died twice in three days who had an /untreated brain tumor/ bc obv he’s totally fine]. or we’ve been doing mash unit style medicine like the suicidal kid with partial thickness burns all over his chest and neck that literally no one was doing anything about. we were debriding burns with a mixture of different PO IM and SQ drugs to achieve the same effect as IV morphine because debriding is extremely painful but not doing it will just make things worse and no one else seemed to care so we just fucking did it. like we’ve done so much medical nursing lately. like the one with the uncontrolled severe seizures that led to the medical hospital labeling her first break schizophrenia despite no family history of mental illness but /five different medical issues that all cause psychosis/. or the one they let on the unit despite being on the do not readmit who has untreated hiv that he actively tries to give to other people and /active tuberculosis/. or the one with the aneurysm. or the one with severe CHF. and on and on and on. and remember: we’re not the most medically unstable unit in the hospital because we have a 40 bed /geriatric psych unit/ so you can imagine the kind of pts /they’re/ getting. on the plus side, all of our ten odd codes lived.

my personal life is still a goddamn mess, of course, but that’s a given. don’t even know where to begin with all that. and i can’t talk about a lot of it which makes it that much more fun.

i had an entire crisis about the odyssey [which tbh is still kind of going on even after /weeks/] because i’m getting so cagey in memphis because i fucking hate this town. and i just got back from new orleans which is the closest thing i have to an ithaca at the moment and it killed me to come back to this fucking city.

i’m also really paranoid right now because after i come back from vacations, something terrible always happens and i’m not exaggerating it’s like clockwork to the point that the bad things have all happened between friday and sunday after i’ve returned from my vacation, each time, without fail. well that would be this weekend so i am just waiting to see what great horrors await me this goddamn time. [last time, it was the whole coworker killed in vehicular homicide thing]. but i guess paranoia isn’t the right word. you’re only paranoid if you’re wrong, and my life has already set the precedent. so i guess anxious is the better word.

the anxiety is increased given that my mother has been out of work all week because they’ve had trouble regulating her blood sugar and so she’s been really sick and even said so herself she’ll probably end up in the er over the weekend because she doesn’t think she can make it till her next doc appt because she’s miserable, and she’s already been in the er once when this weird shit started happening a month or so ago so the Vacation Curse has me even more concerned than usual, which is saying something. 

there’s a new psych doc working now and everyone is really unsettled by him and we’re pretty sure he’s a genuine psychopath like completely without exaggeration and he’s already done a lot of really creepy things to/with staff members and one nurse said in passing “i’ve known a lot of doctors like him he’ll end up fucking a pt at some point” which we initially left to hyperbole but he’s been doing shit like transporting female pts to other units without the staff’s consent in his own car which is like all kinds of not allowed, and the way he talks to some of the staff is just downright rapey honestly. and so we had a rough case this summer who, through the combined efforts of my squad, we got her from a diagnosis of intellectual disability with schizophrenia, nonverbal, self harming all the time, history of physical and sexual abuse, constantly in restraints and on a 1:1 obs level to a new diagnosis of autism spec with ptsd because her “hallucinations” were /flashbacks/ and she ended up very social and verbose and like fucking read william blake for fun and had a great sense of humor and was off all special observations and had a transfer to another facility pending so she could get more 1:1 long term therapy, and the creepy doctor was covering her case while her actual doc was out of town and he rode all the way to the other hospital with her which is another thing you do not do, and we found out from a coworker that she is now a /2:1/ [two staff members within arm’s reach 24/7], self harming again, in full shutdown/meltdown mode, and nonverbal. and it was such a rapid deterioration that all of us lost sleep over the possibility that this creepy doctor might have done something because even after she was at the other hospital and therefore no longer our pt, /he kept going to see her/. which fucked us up a lot because we were the ones who worked so hard for so long with her. like even the thought of it.

recently had 25th birthday so naturally had a crisis about that because i’d always said my goal was to be out of memphis by 25 and yet here we are. 

another of our fave pts, esp one of /my/ fave pts, died out of literally nowhere. the day before my birthday. so that was great.

also felt really surreal to see the news about the convictions in the holly bobo case, which i found out about when one of my coworkers was reading the news on his phone during a lull one night i forgot that to him and everyone else it’s a national news story [hell it even has its own wikpedia page] but to me it’s just /holly/ because she was /in the class above me in our nursing program/. my first semester in college i remember seeing her face on missing posters on every building on campus. so it was really a weird moment of dissociation for me. glad the motherfucker was found guilty on all charges, obv. 

the tech of mine who got his skull slammed into the floor, the one who’s been out with what can only be called severe psychological trauma, is supposed to be coming back the third week in october. which i just. i mean i’m glad because he’s one of our best guys, but i’m also like /why the fuck would he come back/ because he could be a fucking english professor again. motherfucker spent part of his youth growing up in italy and montreal, lived on the west coast for years, /was/ a college professor, did time as a script doctor in LA, and was a fucking thriller novelist who just gone girled himself for whatever reason and ended up working with us. there’s literally a reddit thread asking if anyone knows what happened to him and i want to be like don’t worry it’s fine he works with me. but so we’re like why would you come back to this place after what happened to you when you have so many other options available to you????? what are you running from that makes you so desperate to keep centering your life around a locked acute psych ward???? why did you gone girl yourself to begin with??? like he was screwed up enough there for a while that he wasn’t even answering his calls or texts and our boss had to send the police to do welfare checks on him because he lives alone so it’s like man why not go back to the life you had before and /get away from all of this/ it’s not like my situation where i’d rather be living a different life but have never done so, he already has the foundation because he’s already lived a different life he has an in that i don’t have and i can’t for the life of me figure out why he thinks working as an acute pysch tech is the better option. 

but i mean. we /do/ call our unit the hotel california for a reason.

[scriptautistic]

What would be some difficulties someone with autism would face as a cop? I know it would differ from individual to individual since it seems experiences with autism vary widely (I think? I'm still learning), but generally speaking. Like sensory overload might be an issue, right?

You’re right, every autisticperson is very different. We don’t personally know any who have worked aspolice officers, and we have a hard time imagining that any of us would wantto, to be honest, but hey, everyone is an individual and anything is possible.

There are a lot of possible problems to face here. Sensoryoverload is a very strong possibility. Sirens are awful for a lot of us.The sound of gunshots could be extraordinarily painful too. If there is astandard uniform, it might be hard to tolerate – many of us have trouble with manyparts of clothing, even the seams on socks, and have trouble finding any itemof clothing that doesn’t cause us irritation or pain all day.  

In fact, hypersensitivity in general could be a huge issue -including hyperempathy. Not all autistic people are sensitive in this way, butmany are. Hypersensitive/hyperempathetic people are easily overwhelmed byviolence and seeing others suffer. Mod Aira says: “I know that if I sawsomeone get shot, I would be incapacitated for a long time. There’s no possibleway I could do the shooting myself. I’d be more likely to let myself get killedthan to kill someone.”

However, plenty of autistic people report having normal or lowempathy, so that wouldn’t be a problem for everyone. 

Another huge hurdle wouldbe dealing with unexpected situations. Most of us have an important need forroutine and we need to plan in advance what we are going to do and what’s goingto happen to us, or we can get really anxious and overwhelmed. This comes froma combination of factors.

One factor is sensoryoverload: we have to process every detail of information that comes in throughour senses and can’t ignore the parts that aren’t important. This varies greatlyfrom person to person, but Mod Aira can offer an example from her ownexperience: “When I want to cross the street, I can’t just check to see ifthere are any cars coming and then go. My brain has to process the gum andcigarette butts stuck to the ground, the cracks in the pavement, the clouds inthe sky, the people walking by, and so on and so forth, until I finally confirmthat there are no cars there, and it takes time. And when the supermarketchanges its layout, I can stand in an aisle for five or ten minutes looking foran item that’s right in front of me, because I just can’t get through all thenew details quickly enough.” This is the case for many of us. For some, itcan take a matter of seconds to process situations like this, and for others,it can take longer. But if we have to take in new information and react instantly,it’s just not possible. Just imagine how long it would take Aira to identify asmall and unexpected detail like a gun in someone’s hand.

Another very large factoris anxiety. Most of us have a need for routine and get upset when it isdisrupted. When we know what’s going to happen, we can prepare ourselves forit, plan for it. We get used to it and we don’t have to worry or fear. But whensomething changes unexpectedly, we have to deal with something we haven’tprepared for, and we can’t do that quickly. It can be very overwhelming and we can have meltdowns or shutdowns over it. If we know that our routine is goingto be disrupted, we can have serious anxiety problems, trouble sleeping, andother issues. Many of us have spent a lot of sleepless nights terrified of theevents of the next day – even fun and positive ones like parties and seeing oldfriends – because we didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, and ouranxiety went through the roof.

Someone who works as a copwould not be able to develop much of a routine. So much of the job is dealingwith and reacting to the unexpected, the combination of constant anxiety andpossible sensory overload would be extremely stressful. It’s quite likely thatthe person would wind up overloaded a lot of the time, and possibly even havingmeltdowns – something that would be very, very dangerous for a police officerto have happen during work.

In fact, anyone with ahistory of anxiety or meltdowns would probably never be accepted into thepolice force to begin with. But not all autistic people have a history – it’sperfectly possible that the person would get the job, start working, andsuddenly be facing a level of stress, anxiety, and overload they’ve never hadto deal with before. This could trigger meltdowns for the first time in theirlife – something which could certainly cost them their job, if not worse.

Looking at the physical side of things, a lot of us have issueswith motor skills and coordination, and dyspraxia is a frequent comorbidity.Shooting a gun, fighting, running and climbing fences (all things you see incop movies – we don’t really know the details of what actual cops do on aday-to-day basis) could be difficult. So could driving a car, a thing most copsdefinitely have to do. Many autisticpeople have difficulty driving, and some can’t do it at all. Some can do it,but are constantly afraid while doing so, because they have to take in so manydetails at such a high speed, and can easily miss something critical and windup in a car accident.

Finally, there’s the social aspect. Autistic people tend to havea lot of trouble with face-to-face communication. For some of us, it’sdifficult to understand what people are saying, especially if we can’t seetheir mouths. For others, nonverbal body language is completely impossible tounderstand. Many of us lose the ability to communicate under stressfulsituations. And most of us have trouble with eye contact. I would imagine thatworking as a cop would mean having to pay attention to the small, subtle partsof communication - imagine talking to a suspect and having no idea if they arelying, even if it’s obvious to everyone else. Imagine dealing with asmartmouthed kid who hasn’t actually done anything illegal, but being unable toidentify sarcasm. Imagine being unable to lie convincingly, but needing to doso in order to save a life. Imagine being a cop and having to rely on thehonesty of the words people say, rather than the way they say them. This couldget dangerous really fast. In fact, many autistic people actually have troublewith the police, because our body language is seen as rude or inappropriate,and we answer questions in a literal way - even when we’ve done nothing wrong,we might be seen as resisting arrest or insulting a police officer. We mighteven be seen as dangerous when we’re not.

All this is not to say it’s impossible for an autistic person tobe a police officer (and if any of our followers have experience with this,we’d be happy to hear from you!). In fact, if realistically and respectfullywritten, this could make a very compelling story - the autistic person sodetermined to become a cop that they overcome the many obstacles placed intheir way (or tragically fail). Maybe it’s their special interest, and theyspend their whole life working towards it. It’s also important to keep in mind,as always, that any one autistic person might not have all of the above issues.But your character will have a LOT of hurdles to overcome, and you need toaddress those in your story.

-Mod Aira and Mod Cat