#cuz at this point they're just invalidating my own points just so they get more validation themselves

[emelinstriker]

bro i'm actually fuckin crying

i was having anxiety the entire night over more random people from the other blog pulling up in my inbox and harassing me over shit i've already explained, but i woke up to like 4 messages and all rather wholesome and aren't accusing me

the fact that i haven't cried a single fuckin time the past 1-2 weeks of me knowing about this bullshit and just bottled it all up- and it just all comes all crashing the fuck down after seeing the sudden overwhelming support of people that actually read and understand context

it's literally only 6am here and i'm bawling my eyes out

i love every single one of you who isn't blindly jumping in on the fuckin hate train i wasn't even supposed to know about :'D

will be responding to them once i'm back in my room after school! fghfndghdfg already read through them tho, but i gotta go in a bit and can't type it all out hgfdgnfdhgnhdfg

[cotton-candycurls]

The one that gets to me is how I've been told I "don't look like I'm on the spectrum", it erases my struggle and all the things others can do that I can't. Do I need to wear my noise cancellers everytime I go out and tap my legs all the time for me to be valid? Does me being picky with food and clothes' texture have to be omnipresent for it to actually be something you bother understand? Do I need to take my meds in front of you and show you my sh scars for you to grasp it?

1. I'm high masking, why do you think I'm anxious and tired all the time?? I have to dissect, decode, and translate people's tones; i have to make my facial expressions palatable for those who I'm talking to; i have to try to repress my anxiety if I don't grasp a conversation bc the theme is unknown to me or if I feel incapable of finding a way to get inside of it (it happens way too often, specially if I'm with a new group of ppl and it's horrible bc I feel like they're not going to want me in their group and I'll never actually be their friend); it's a horrible thing for all my internal struggles to be dismissed just cuz I'm not verbal about it all the time. I can't help but mask bc I know exactly how I'd be treated and viewed otherwise, it's a defense mechanism. But it's so goddamn exhausting, that more than a certain amount of time around ppl I'm not used to will drain me to the point of having a meltdown.

2. People who say that I don't look autistic don't know me enough to know how I normally am. Most things I do in a normal basis is to fit in the specific role or place I think my friends expect me to be. Bc then they haven't heard me say cringy jokes, only the carefully curated ones made to fit their humour; haven't seen me doing my weird dancing/jumping when I'm hyper excited about something; or cry bc I dissociate so bad and feel like I can't breathe mid anxiety attack; haven't seen me knit pick everything I say in the morning to make sure I don't sound disarticulated or say something wrong; haven't heard me speaking too fast for other's to grasp and told me to say it again slowly; haven't seen me drop my "constantly paying attention™" face bc if I don't have it ppl asume I'm upset at them or something. They haven't heard me say my weird lil thought processes outloud when someone doesn't understand the conclusion I reach; or get horribly disoriented in new places and have a meltdown bc of it.

3. There's no way to "look/seem autistic", there's a reason why it's called Autism Spectrum Disorder. I don't look autistic cuz there's not a specific way to look, the only reason you say that is cuz I'm not letting my autistic traits show and I'm not a white cisgendered boy. AFABs are less diagnosed cuz of our traits being different and not researched nearly as much.

It's frustrating for me to feel so much and to struggle in simple things only for it to be invalidated just because I don't look like how autism is "supposed" to appear and, in turn, it's outside of people's comfortable comprehension. There's a reason why it's called an invisible disability, and why afab people are less diagnosed: bc it's a neurological disorder that you generally won't notice unless you are literally inside my thought process, and even then it's incredibly frustrating to go through lack of accomodations bc it's difficult for me to express to others for them to grasp. It took 18 years for ppl to test me bc I'm smart and have more than one special interest, and even then it was by my own initiative to be tested. If not, i would've probably gone the rest of my life undiagnosed and thinking I'm shitty at being an individual and that I shouldn't feel the things I feel on a daily basis bc "normal ppl don't feel them".