#i always forget my autism is a disability until it like. actually disables me lol

[catastrothy]

tbh tho im excited to get my GED cuz i got a couple of job options in my mind rn that ive been rotating in my mind that shouuuld hopefully be easier on me

[thistangledbrain]

Day 19 & 20!

Day 19 - “I hate it when...”

As you’ve gleaned from prior posts, I hate it when you forget autism is a developmental disorder and not an intellectual one. We are so. Fucking. Tired. Of being treated as lesser, or like we don’t understand what you’re saying to us.

Outside of the reactions to others’ behavior, though, I have some personal “I hate it when”...I’ve let you into my mind and told you what I appreciate about how my brain works, but there are things I don’t like, for sure.

I hate that personal stressor things trigger a toddler-like need to SHUT DOWN. Like writing this blog, for example...the vulnerability I feel usually leads to a need to go to sleep for a long time, once I’m finished. Or after a long day socializing. I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want to engage my brain anymore, I just need to shut all systems down and sleep. Especially if there’s been a meltdown (meltdown—->shutdown)...and oh boy do I hate meltdowns. They’re really rare, thank dog.

I hate that my executive function is an absolute bag of ass. This is probably the biggest thing I would change. It got infinitely worse when my disability got bad (EDS), for some reason. And it drives me up the damn wall.

I hate my low function days/moments. It’s like my brain just won’t kick into gear, or the gears and wheels are rusty and grinding, & it’s rather anxiety inducing. I usually “hide” on my low days, sometimes in my darkened bedroom, and watch favorite shows or movies, or get lost in a good book - if I can. On low days I find myself re-reading crap constantly because it’s not making any sense, so I’ll even avoid complicated recipes...I have no idea why these days/moments happen, but boy do they piss me off/make me anxious (that’s kind of the same thing for me. My anxiety nearly always manifests as anger). On my low days, you’ll see (if you were a fly on the wall, because I suppress this even around my own family), me walking in tight, anxious figure 8’s and flapping my hands in a distressed way, as I anxiously try to mentally kick my brain into gear. (It doesn’t work, but it IS a little soothing. And my dogs are SO sweet...they gather around me tightly and just seem to know I need them.)

🤷🏻‍♀️ There’s probably more I could expound on that I don’t like, but writing this one has been pretty distasteful. I try not to dwell on things I hate anymore, so I’ve put this entry down multiple times and come back to it when I’m in a decent frame of mind. I think I’m tired of talking about it now, so I’m gonna just stop talking.....

Which is a good segue into Day 20 -

————————————-

“Communication”

Ahh communication. This entry will be long, because I have a lot to communicate LOL....

Personally, I write far more coherently and eloquently than I speak. My brain goes too fast...I often trip over words; my brain’s three steps ahead of what’s coming out of my mouth and I get scrambled sometimes. I can also take the time to think about what I want to say/HOW I want to say it. Like many autistics, I’m a blurter. LOL...I am constantly trying to remind myself, just because I think it, doesn’t mean I have to say it. This gets a LOT of us in trouble...one of my most memorable examples is, I *loudly* blurted “that’s BULLSHIT!!” in a church one time. (I was speaking on how my devout Methodist grandmother, who regularly takes communion at her church, was not permitted to receive communion in a Catholic church, merely because she isn’t Catholic, despite the fact that this woman is all about some Jesus & a devoted churchgoer - not just on Easter and Christmas.) In my defense, it WAS (IS) bullshit. I just didn’t need to practically yell that in church. As you can imagine, it was like a needle scratching across a record & everyone turned to stare. (My poor husband rescued me.) 🤦🏻‍♀️ Sigh. It’s a good idea to keep me out of most church services.

I am rather famous (infamous?) for calling bullshit straight to someone’s face, BLUNTLY. It’s out of my mouth before my brain’s “tact gatekeeper” I’ve spent over a decade trying to train is even half awake at his post (it’s a him because my husband is the one who taught me how to use tact in the first place. And it’s a him because said “gatekeeper” is lazy and falls asleep on the job all the time 😆). Have you ever just blurted your honest thoughts and heard shocked gasps or someone just busts out laughing? Yeah. That happens to me regularly. Or uncomfortable chuckles and someone will blink a few times and say, “oohhhkay, well, you could said that a different way.” (My old response to that was, I’m not responsible for what your reaction is to what I say...you’re in charge of your own feelings. I *understand* now how irresponsible and unfeeling that is, and I try to keep that in the front of my mind, even when I’m frustrated and nearly burning up with the desire to speak my thoughts in their raw form, but this is routinely an area I struggle to adapt to...and I am very sorry when I hurt someone I care about.)

On the other side of this same coin though, this is a trait my friends respect deeply, because I’m not cruel hearted or anything. You always know where you stand with me, and I’m the last person to try and lie to you. I SUUUUUCK at lying. And on the rare times when I do, I usually end up eventually telling on myself (this drove my older stepsister NUTS when we were kids, because she liked to do lots of sneaky things, and I don’t have an inherently sneaky nature LOL...so “DO NOT tell momma” was a *serious* risk for her, if she let me tag along 😂). Lying to someone just feels disgusting. Oily. Shameful. I hate lying. Plus, my short term memory is a grabasstic bag of CRAP, so there’s a good chance I won’t remember the lie and get caught anyway. 🤷🏻‍♀️ My boys also suck at lying or hiding stuff, and generally prefer not to...but I also give them a safe forum to be honest. (I’m sure there’s LOTS of crap I don’t know, but you’d be surprised how much they DO tell me.)

Another thing with me personally is that I go mute sometimes. I’m not being deliberately obstinate. I’m not REFUSING to speak in those moments...sometimes I literally can’t, and the effort of doing so will make me gag, or even projectile vomit. Sounds very dramatic, doesn’t it? It is. (And it annoys the SHIT out of me.) There’s not a fucking thing i can do about it. The movement of my tongue in my mouth will literally begin to trigger my gag reflex, and if I try to power through it, I’m rewarded with my lunch returning to the surface anyway, regardless of my desires, and sometimes rather unexpectedly & violently. USUALLY this happens when I’m uber stressed, but sometimes it seems kind of out of the blue & catches even me off guard. If this happens but I still have something to say, I start texting instead, and explain. Most people - especially my hubby - are very kind when this happens. (I don’t want your pity, I just want you to switch to written communication for a minute until I can figuratively kick the fuck out of the engine in my “speaking center” and get it to work again.) Other times, I will literally get tired of talking. Like my mouth and tongue - and somehow, the “word forming” part of my brain feels physically exhausted (weird, I know, but I also spend the vast majority of my life silent - I am home alone all day, hate talking on the phone, and simply don’t speak much, by choice. So maybe it is actual “mouth fatigue” 😂😂😂 - I’ve stopped eating before because I just got tired of chewing, too, even though I’m still somewhat hungry. 🙄) I am usually *perfectly* happy to keep listening! And I’ll stay engaged in the conversation usually. I am just...done audibly talking. I’ll literally say “my mouth is tired of making the sounds now, but please keep going”...but I think my husband is the only one who doesn’t find this unusual, and rolls with it. It usually happens after a long, animated conversation...instead of winding down, though, it just..stops. If I try to keep going, cue the gagging. I can stay engaged in the conversation if you let me start writing/typing instead of speaking, for my responses. So that’s a “fun” little trait of mine that many neurotypicals find unsettling. Please don’t take it personally. My mouth just doesn’t want to make the words anymore - and I’m probably mostly done adding what I needed to add to the conversation anyway. I’m a great listener when this happens, though. 😆

Communication is a really interesting thing with all of us, because it’s a struggle on one level or another. I will tell you, it’s a frequent topic in my groups. “WHY CAN’T NEUROTYPICALS JUST SAY WHAT THE FUCK THEY MEAN?!?! 😩😩😩” I’m dead serious - you might think, because we’re sensitive (generally), we can’t “handle” it? You’d be so very wrong. What we can’t handle is when you dance around a subject or we have to try and translate what you just said to us (which most of us are not that good at). Just fucking say it! Nine times out of ten, you’ll just get a look of dawning realization and a “oh, shit, okay” response. We can handle it. Just. Say. It. We’ll respect you a lot more in the morning, LOL 😆

I think every autistic has some sort of beef with neurotypicals when it comes to communication (as I’m sure you have yours with us, obviously).

You guys operate under some weird ass rules that we simply don’t understand - especially if you don’t tell us those rules & just expect us to know. Like, if my husband hadn’t patiently taken years to show/teach me how the way I said certain things were hurtful, I would still be in the “yeah she’s cool but she’s kind of an asshole” territory. (I still struggle to grasp this, or at least it still frustrates me....truth is truth, whether it’s an ironclad general fact or your own personal truth - and yes sometimes the truth hurts, but like...I don’t pin any responsibly for that on the truth teller, if that makes sense?)

Working in rescue also helped hone my ability to speak “neurotypically” to others - I work with a LOT of women, and boy do a lot of them NOT appreciate when you bluntly tell them what you think. Men on the other hand....

I know *lots* of autistic women who prefer friendships with men, largely centering around this communication thing. We hurt men’s feelings a little less regularly than other women’s. I know I was like that, until I got a little more used to how I have to modify my communication with most women (but that annoys me, I’m gonna be honest - it annoys my Autie friends, too). The only time I am as starkly blunt as I used to be, is when speaking to my female Autie friends (because they can handle it), or most of the dudes I’m friends with. But if my message is getting “lost in the sauce” and you’re not getting my point, I usually give a frustrated sigh, WARN you that I’m about to tell you flatly what I need to say, because we aren’t getting anywhere, and just say it.

Yes I am the friend who, when you gush on and on about your new back yard bred puppy, talking all about how you’re gonna breed him when he grows up, is gonna flatly say “he’s not breeding quality”, if they’re not. Then I’m gonna ask you why you want to do such a thing, given that you’re aware of the massive load of rescue dogs (PARTICULARLY Great Danes and Cane Corsos) - and probably beat your argument down every step of the way. That doesn’t always go badly though - one of my closest friends was considering breeding their dog, and while it was a beautiful dog, it was not one that should reproduce (from an “improve the breed” perspective). We barely knew each other, but I gained a reputation for being kind but starkly honest...and I knew what I was talking about...and now I have this person’s deep respect, and they have mine (because they listened and did the research I asked them to - and did not add to the breed population). So it’s not *always* a trainwreck, because the people who end up respecting how I communicate, usually end up VERY close friends. AND I WANT THAT IN RETURN, which is refreshing for a LOT of people. I want your dead honesty in return - PLEASE. It’s so much easier for me to process and accept. For example, my house is almost constantly in some sort of disarray. I have one friend who will come in and go, “girl. I almost can’t breathe in here - this clutter is too much”(and then she offers to help me tackle it!!).

Or, fairly recently, “oh my god those curtains are so horrible, I hope you’re getting rid of those when you redo this room.”

“But I MADE those curtains! I love that print!”

“Ugh. No. They’re terrible. Get rid of them.”

My feelings were not hurt in the LEAST (I of course had a flash of “you bitch, I was so excited to find that print and I MADE THOSE, ya jerk” 😂). At first I said, “well you’re just gonna have to suck it up and deal with my shitty curtains, because I like them” 😂, but then as I was redoing the room, I took them down...and it DID look a lot better, so I left them down 😂😂😂....

So I guess my point with all this is: every autie I know deeply wishes you’d just fucking spit it out. We WILL often miss or misinterpret the point if you “fluff” it too much (around my neck of the woods, we call it putting too much gild on the lily, though I’ve never understood that one. Idk if a “gilded lily” is/was ever a thing, why anyone would gild a lily in the first place...LOTS of us struggle with colloquialisms that don’t make literal sense. 😆 Recently a friend was baffled over “shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which fills up faster”, and fully half of the respondents to her post were people baffled by why anyone would shit in their hand - I and a couple others had to explain, and it just ended with them going “well that’s a fucking stupid saying anyway, and wishes aren’t things you can put in your hands, either” 😂😂😂...but I’m from the south, and these things are just part of our vocab. MOST of them are easy to grasp for me, like “nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs”, because I immediately picture it and can grasp the meaning. But others I don’t get - the gilded lily is one LOL)...

We are LITERAL AS FUCK. It’s why we ruin lots of jokes, too. My poor husband is the dad joke king - and I ruin fully 1/3 or more of his jokes by being too literal (which he also finds amusing, so that’s good). Sometimes we realize we’re ruining the joke but we don’t care, because it’s dumb, or we just .... can’t....HELP IT. 😩😂

Jeez, I could almost write all day about autistics and communication LOL!!

But to summarize (and not succinctly, sorry), I guess, for me and many many others...we are often blunt, direct, almost painfully honest, and very, very literal. Your unspoken rules of communication absolutely go over our heads, unless you - yannow - *communicate* and explain them. We’ll probably tell you those rules are stupid and exhausting, but we will TRY and stick to it as best we can. But see, we literally have to think about every single word that comes out of our mouths, because we communicate far more directly than you weird fuckers do. And it is literally actually exhausting. It’s not an easily natural thing for us to adapt to, your weird way of saying things but not saying what you really mean. You’re wasting a LOT of words there, sir, and we are now getting obsessively confused over why you would do such a thing. 😂 It’s also why I keep getting banned from Facebook. My recent one was because I said - in one of my Autie “safe” groups, where I should be able to just say what I mean - that I tend to punch or want to punch people who deliberately startle the shit out of me. We were talking about how stupid April Fool’s Day was, and how we hate pranks. Three of us got banned for 30 days for just...well. Facebook called it “incitement of violence”. 🙄🥺🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼

But I haven’t met - yet, maybe? - an autistic person who is cruel natured - not one of us gets any joy from being a bully type. WE feel everything on a higher level, so we kind of assume you do, too...you might think, “then why are you such an asshole?!”, but it’s simply that we - or every Autie I know, anyway - struggle to grasp how directly communicating your feelings is so fuckin hard or hurtful for y’all. I think anyone struggles to grasp something they themselves don’t experience. All you have to do is explain, though, and keep guiding us towards communicating in ways that we both find acceptable. I mean we’re champs at accepting all manner of different human - regardless of race, sexuality, and so on - but the communication is one area that frustrates the ever loving SHIT out of most of us, because it makes so little logical sense why anyone would say a bunch of useless words that muddy up their intent.

My closing advice? Help Your Pet Autie ™️ (this is absolutely a tongue in cheek term btw) understand how you’d like to be communicated with, and guide us. BE SPECIFIC for fucks sake - we suck at guessing what you might want, and it’s so frustrating that we’ll often just stop communicating at all. Instead of saying “it hurts me when you say this”, try saying “the WAY you said this hurt my feelings because of ____. Maybe you could put it like this instead” (or, “you know, you should really just keep shit like that to yourself”) and *give examples*. Don’t expect us to come up with different ways of saying shit, because we don’t understand what it is specifically you want, and it’s not very logical, therefore it’s not “natural” for us. Plus, everyone is different. I can’t talk to one of my sons the same way I can talk to the other, without certain negative reactions. Give us a chance to know your needs - we DO CARE!!! - but be CLEAR. I know in your world, tact is a big deal, but MOST of us will miss the fucking point if you’re too tactful (and when we misinterpret, we always err on the side of worst case scenario, and make the issue wayyyyy bigger than it should be. Being clear is soooo important).

And hey. Maybe it’ll help clear up some communication in other areas of your life. Being clear isn’t a license to be a fucking asshole; nobody’s giving you a license to unleash on everyone about how much you can’t stand humans...if WE hafta be quiet about that, so do you lmao...fair’s fair. 😆 But quit hedging and hinting and hoping we will pick up on the whatever your grievance is - because we won’t. We’ll just know you’re unhappy, and start panicking over guessing what we did wrong, and just shut down, because we have no idea.

Just. Fucking. Say it. 😘

[scarluxia]

Let's talk about some Adventures I had in Phoenix, AZ in 2015. It came up in my FB Memories and even though I determined to let everything from last decade go, this one still rankles. I got "in trouble" with these people for being open about my experiences on my Facebook because, even though I hadn't mentioned names, they didn't like me "putting their business out there".

CW for ableism, depression, rejection sensitive dysphoria, and I'll try to put all that in the tags.

My partner, Loki (yes real name), and I had been urban camping in Portland, OR for about a month. It had gotten cold and rainy to the point where we couldn't safely stay living outdoors, and Loki's father (who didn't approve of me) had demanded he come back to California and live with Loki's uncle. He made it quite clear I was not welcome, so I ended up going to Arizona because I had a friend who was willing to put me up. She and I had known each other since 2008 and I figured I would be safe with her. At the time, Loki was much more easily influenced by what his family wanted, and we ended up having kind of a nasty set of conversations over whether he was abandoning me.

While in Portland, my wallet had been stolen so I had no ID or SS card. I had reported it stolen of course, but had received no response until I was leaving Arizona.

My friend in Arizona had two young sons, a husband, and a boyfriend. Now, I have some sensory issues that make it so I have a hard time being around children. High pitched noises hurt me to my bones, like, even now I have to leave the room if my son gets overly excited and starts shrieking.

I was sleeping on the couch in the living room, which was where the kids would go when they woke up and where the TVs and entertainment consoles were.

Anyway, they wanted me to contribute to the household and whatnot but I was severely depressed and I think I've provided all the context I can remember? If the rest of this doesn't make sense, please know that there was a part 1 but it came up in my Memories on a different day and i didn't think I would be rehashing it.

So I couldn't do work, couldn't do anything anyone had asked me to do to satisfaction because various things that did not, in fact, depend on me. Maybe I wasn't being enough of a ~team player~, I don't know. But anyway, I did my best with what I had. Sometimes, because of THE EXTREME FUCKING SENSORY ISSUES THAT COME WITH AUTISM, I would get overwhelmed by the kids screaming. Two little boys, barely school age, and their parents sat them in front of a TV and gave them controllers. That's it. They had toys in their room, sure, but they weren't getting outside. I suggested taking them out a couple times, but firstly, I didn't know the area and wasn't about to go out alone, and secondly, I can't split in half and I'm not in good shape, so even if I had known the area, I wouldn't have taken TWO small children outside to run around where they could run out of the designated area. I'm kind of anal that way, I guess. But Woman A (mum) and Man B ("uncle") never got off their arses to help me take them outside, and Man A was at work.

Oh, yes, parental interaction with the kids. Woman A loved her sons very much. But at their age (3 and 5), they both should have been toilet trained. They should have gotten at least two hours outside every day. They threw fits when they weren't allowed to play video games because, instead of games being a special treat that was earned with good behavior, they were toys carelessly tossed at the kids to keep them out of everyone's hair. Conversely, and bizarrely, reading to them WAS a special treat. The father woke up, played games, basically brushed off his kids, and went to work. Same when he got home for lunch, and he *ordered* us to have them in bed by the time he got home for good. The mum did somewhat interact with them, but mostly just wanted them out of her hair. I wasn't so nice because I'm not good with kids in general and also loud screeching HURTS, IT HURTS IT HURTS MAKE IT STOP. (Same with snoring, or any noise made when I want to sleep.) This isn't me being a ~diva~, it is an actual manifestation of a mental disability.

Woman A was of the opinion that "everyone who lives in a house with kids automatically becomes a coparent", maybe because she wasn't willing to actually parent her kids herself.

Note from the future: I still disagree with the idea that "anyone who lives in a house with kids is automatically a co-parent". Parent your own kids. I don't expect my dad to parent my son when we go visit him and he made it quite clear when I was pregnant that he would not take on a co-parenting role (because his wives 30-50 years ago had handled the babies and he doesn't really know how to calm them down beyond entertaining them)

She got a really bitchy look on her face whenever I (who have been around children, especially TROUBLED children, all my life) made any sort of suggestion. Well sorry, lady, but it's not like you're doing such a great job with them. Y'all act like you barely want anything to do with them. Like they're cute and little and fun to snuggle, but actually teaching them anything? Forget about it, just toss em a controller and hope they don't kill each other in the game or real life. Meanwhile, they have no outlet for their natural physical energy, no real outlet for their curiosity. They're going to grow up stupid and sedentary, with "no one paid attention to me during childhood except when it was convenient for THEM" to deal with. The older kid recently got on meds for a condition that, from what I observed, was likely much more nurture than nature. And what everyone ate, my God, those kids were the only non-overweight people in the house, and it's little wonder! I bought ACTUAL NUTRITIONAL food for everyone, and the adults look at me like I'm from some demon dimension. I made a light comment about how I'd never eaten anything like what they had growing up. You know, boxed potatoes, veggies out of a can, white bread, sugary peanut butter. And Woman A was like, "well YOU don't have kids."

Um, no, but my father did.

I have a kid now, am working part time at min. wage because my boss sees my performance as so-so (plus she's been forced to give me a raise every time the County of Where I Live raises the minimum), in a single-income household, on as much Family With Kids welfare as My County will allow, and I still wouldn't feed my kid that crap LOL

Spoiler alert: they made me use all my food stamps on their household and then kicked me out later that month so... When I bought food I bought HEALTHY food, like, I've been on food stamps my entire life... Also, WIC specifically pays for WHEAT bread, fruits & veggies, and they do let you get peanut butter without sugar so idk what was going on there with them.

My father was a SINGLE PARENT raising a daughter in America after 20 years of living in Europe and raising kids with his previous wives. Well, up until the divorces, anyway. I was the only kid he ever got to keep. He told me things about how the others had been raised compared to how I was raised, and I saw the outcomes of different parenting styles in my peers as well. My father was a very poor man whose trade had been outsourced and who struggled to support us for years. And yet, we never went hungry, and he never fed me boxed potatoes. Never fed me sugary peanut butter, white bread, or veggies out of a can.

Ok I understand canned veggies are better than no veggies, and not everyone can get fresh, but you CAN get frozen in AZ. I always had fresh or frozen growing up.

It wasn't because we were living in the lap of luxury. It's because...

HE FUCKING VALUED OUR HEALTH OVER CONVENIENT, CRAPPY, NUTRIENT-FREE FOOD!!!! This is not a difficult concept. He ALSO read to me every night, despite having what I now realise was a very grueling day at work just to put said healthy food on the table. I didn't get to watch TV or play computer games (edu-tainment, the only kind I was allowed) until after all my homework was done. I can't remember if I was a particularly active child, but I'm sure I had the OPTION!!!! TO GO OUT.

Meanwhile, when I was at various stages of my life, I met kids whose parents shunted them from guardian to guardian because they didn't want to deal with them, kids whose parents were kind and supportive but rubbish at enforcing discipline, kids whose parents were abusive in every kind of way, and kids whose parents did their best.

You know, I wasn't raised perfectly. My upbringing lacked social grace and included some toxic ideas about womanhood that I've only been learning to overcome recently in my adulthood. But DON'T FUCKING ACT LIKE I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT RAISING KIDS JUST BECAUSE I DON'T CURRENTLY HAVE ANY. I have my own life, the lives of my peers, and a wonderful online community of new parents raising children in kind and socially aware ways, to draw inspiration from. I can go to any one of them, and to my own parents, and ask "hey does X seem weird to you?" And they'll give me their honest opinion, which *is valuable*. I have even mapped out a general idea of how to get through some parts of my children's lives, and I'm not even planning to have kids for at least another few years. I mean, honestly, it used to be "I don't want kids ever", but dear gosh, if I can have any part of raising someone in a manner that defies procrastination culture, entitlement culture, and everything wrong with the way my husband and I were raised, maybe it wouldn't be a complete horror. If I can ensure that not all hope for the next generation is lost, hey.

Anyway, I've gone off topic...

I also had some issues with the men. Man B just didn't seem to like anything ever. I had no idea what Woman A saw in him. I remember one time he tried to tell me, a Christian, that I can't tell people what a "real Christian" is because it ~invalidates their identity~. Excuse me, no. It doesn't work that way. There are things that Christ taught, and anyone who blatantly goes against them IN THE NAME OF CHRISTIANITY, IS NOT A REAL CHRISTIAN. And yes, I realise this entire rant has been very judgey and technically I'm not supposed to do that either, but it's not like I'm saying they're going to Hell. Just that their kids are going to be sluggish and stupid, and I can't understand how these people have the gumption to try to lecture anyone else about life when they're not even TRYING to get their own lives together.

Yeah so they tried to lecture me about how I was "letting" Loki mistreat me and how I cared more about "socializing" with my estranged husband (I have separation anxiety) than helping around the house e_e They also implied I used depression as an excuse to be lazy.

Man B was supposedly "super employable." Well, okay, even though his "job hunt" seemed to consist more of sitting around playing video games, he was larger than my father (who is 6 ft tall with a protruding gut and weighs 240 lbs at last count) (My father and I are both 60 lbs above our ideal weights. But we're working on it!), and never seemed to get past the phone-screening process.

Now, Woman A told me that Man B was looking for work and that her family and some friends looked down on him for being a freeloader. Probably because she was anxious about me thinking the same. But here's the thing: I wouldn't have cared. Honestly. If you want to sit around playing games all day in your married girlfriend's apartment with her and her husband playing video games all day, go right ahead. If you want to bake three potatoes at a time and take them back to your room for a snack, hey, more power to you. But don't piss out the window and call it rain.

I don't care how employable you are, where you live, who you're living with, or what your lifestyle is like. It doesn't affect me in any way. But don't act like you're doing something you're not just to appease someone's judgmental family. That doesn't ever end well.

Now, see, I clearly have a problem with people who do that. I don't hide many aspects of myself, though I will refuse to answer a question if I feel it's none of someone's business or if they're just asking it to be a judgmental asshole. I refuse to compromise myself or my safe space to accommodate someone who can't make peace with who they are. Hell, you know me! You know my show!

Wait, this is Tumblr, so you might not know my show. It's a YouTube storyboard dedicated to processing and mocking some spiritual and psychological abuse I've undergone in my life. On Facebook, it was one of the things I was known for at the time because I was constantly posting clips and art, and trying to recruit voice actors.

I sell anyone out who I catch lying to me about anything! That's nothing new! And these people knew that about me. For SEVEN. FUCKING. YEARS.

So anyway. Woman A has a lot of great short term goals but no actual follow through because "I'm just not in the mood right now." No judgment there. I've totally been there. The only problem is when it gets ME in trouble.

"Let's walk the dog." "I'm not in the mood." Okay, then the dog doesn't get walked because I can't figure out my way around the place alone.

"Let's do the dishes." Woman A doesn't let me know when the washer stopped. Okay. Then the rest of the dishes don't get washed.

"Let's take the kids outside." "No I'm too tired." Okay, then they're going to be RUNNING AROUND THE APARTMENT SCREAMING WHICH MY EARS CANNOT FUCKING HANDLE so bye I'm just gonna borrow your room and isolate myself for a bit.

"Let's go to the gym!" "Maybe later." But later never comes.

Do you see where I'm going here? As for the men, they BOTH complain that they're "doing too much" around the house. Okay, probably fair for Man A, who works full time and deserves to come home to a clean house. But Man B. Wtf. You literally do nothing, except when you do, and when you do, we're meant to throw you a parade? That's not how adulthood works, or so I've heard.

Note: All three of these people are older than me. I was 24? at the time, fresh out of trade school, on my own for the first time in my life. (Maybe 2nd? I ran away when I was 17 but ended up with my grandparents so idk if that counts.) Woman A was 26 at the time and had been married since 2008, had experience with office work and parenthood, etc. Both men were older than her. I was a chronological adult with the life experience of a teenager, so I felt comfortable saying that.

So did I mention that I'm sleeping in the living room during this stay? And the adults don't go to bed until like 2 AM, which means, because of my disability, wherein I cannot sleep if there's any sort of non-ambient noise, *I* don't get to sleep until AFTER 2 AM. And the kids? They come in the living room screaming at 6 AM. Yep. Okay. Living on 4 hours of sleep, for the mathematically challenged. That and dealing with the emotional turmoil of being separated from my husband when I've got high separation anxiety in the first place. All my pain, everything, it's up to 11. and I'm supposed to contribute but there's not really anything that allows me to contribute.

So what do they do? They ambush me. Call a "family meeting" to tell me absolutely everything that's wrong with me, after WEEKS of telling me what a big help I am and how grateful they are to have me around. Tell me I'm letting my "social life" get in the way of me helping around the house. Hmm. Social life. You mean, VENTING IN MY SAFE SPACE (Facebook, no names named) AND TRYING TO MEND THINGS WITH MY HUSBAND??????????????? Okay. Well since you guys treat your woman like shit, you clearly don't understand or appreciate devotion to one's spouse. Seriously. Woman A told me she used to have extreme separation anxiety with Man A, and that he would brush off her emotions as irrelevant. Her solution was to make it a poly relationship and take a lover WHO TREATS HER THE EXACT SAME WAY. I'm serious. She got no emotional support from either of them. They basically just threw pills at her and trained her to lie down until her feelings went away.

And she had the gall to lecture me (24 at the time) about how Loki (19 at the time & from a pretty horrific family) treated me. LOL ok. Log. Splinter.

As she knew, I'm monogamous. I do have some opinions on polyamoury based on individuals I've gotten to know who are in those types of relationships, but those opinions are irrelevant to this series of rants. Except one, which is pertinent: if you're going to take another lover, they should provide something that your existing lover(s) don't. If you're suffering from low emotional support and you just find someone else who doesn't emotionally support you and who treats you like a child who can't be trusted??? What are you even DOING? Like, she told me NEITHER of her men trust her judgment. What the fuck is a relationship without trust? And don't even try "dick too bomb" as an excuse when you tell me you haven't gotten laid in months and your husband is using your condoms on Woman B.

They don't support you. They don't trust you. And yet YOU'RE telling ME that things with my husband won't get better unless I follow your lead and take another lover? HELL TO THE NO. My husband has his faults, but if I tell him Person X can be trusted, he believes me.

Except for his ex-girlfriend whom he tried to add to our relationship when he tried to be poly, months later. That went Badly.

Or maybe he just knows I'll deal with them myself, with my hot, hot temper, if they turn out not to be trustworthy. He also doesn't treat me LIKE A CHILD. And while I sometimes point at things and make small motions when I can't physically talk, or sometimes even use baby talk when I'm feeling cutesy, I DON'T POINT AT A PIECE OF PAPER AND GO "THE CARRRRRR!!!!" IN AN INCREASINGLY HIGHER PITCH BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SAY, "Honey, I think we missed the car payment this month. Can you double check while the agent has you on hold, please?"

Okay, being a dick about losing words due to stress was not my finest moment, but at the time, I was just so appalled by how they treated her and how she allowed them to treat me.

So basically these adults who are nowhere near having their lives together, and aren't even really trying, put me on blast for not having everything running perfectly when THEY expected it to.

Let's reiterate. I couldn't get a job because I had no ID or social security card. I was waiting for them to be returned to me. I couldn't walk the kids or the dog, go to the gym, or complete all the household chores because no one would guide me. I need that guidance because of various components of my disability, which I really hate admitting to because I'm super fucking prideful, but I figured hey, she's not neurotypical either. These people will understand.

Their response when I brought this up? "You're an adult. You should know better." Sure, okay. But you should know that a child ought to be potty trained before he turns 5, or even 3; that kids need to run around, are entitled to their parents' attention and consistent discipline, and need!!! healthy!!!! food!!!!

Oh, discipline! So, she would send Older Boy to his room over misbehaving. But rather than enforce time-out, she'd go, "oh, I think I'm being too haaaard on him," and just... Relinquish. He's not about to learn anything that way, ma'am.

They called me trying to reconnect with the person I love more than almost anyone on this earth "obsessing over your social life". Well again, you treat your woman like shit, so MAYBE my undying devotion to the person I love goes a LITTLE bit over your head.

They told me that the household should be my first priority. Except no, because I am an autonomous person and my FIRST PRIORITY is, was, and ever has been the love of my life, whomever that may be at the time. That is 70% of my personality. I'm pretty sure anyone who had ever met me can vouch for my extreme devotion, and this woman had known me for SEVEN. YEARS. I'm not going to throw away 70% of myself to do an impossible task that no one will help me with.

They told me a lot of things I wasn't doing right, and for those of you who also struggle with anxiety and depression, you know that being told for weeks that everything is okay and you're so great and so helpful, and then being told that you're rubbish at everything... You know that that is hurtful. Devastating, even. I wanted to kill myself. I said that. I said that and expressed my feelings about some other things, in my safe space, without naming any names.

And even though I was posting in my safe space, I was polite about it. I was as gentle and rational as possible. I wasn't calling anyone out. Not like I am now. I wasn't trying to lead a witch hunt. I was just overwhelmed and trying to express my feelings. Trying to get myself not to kill myself. I had to tell myself over and over again that it's not what Loki would want for me.

In the morning, they woke me up and kicked me out. Said it was rude for me to say I don't care about their household. I never, NEVER said that. I said "Loki is my first priority." Something along the lines of "that's just how I am and I shouldn't be vilified for it." That doesn't mean I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE. IT JUST MEANS THAT MY PRIORITIES WILL *NEVER* BE WHAT SOMEONE ELSE WANTS THEM TO BE. I AM A PERSON. I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DECIDE WHAT TO PRIORITISE, AND I HAVE THE RIGHT TO LOVE MY HUSBAND!!!

I MEAN, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. MY NAME IS *SIGYN*. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU IGNORANT ASSHOLES EXPECT?! WHY THE HELL SHOULD YOU HAVE FELT THREATENED BY ME SAYING ANYTHING IF I DIDN'T NAME NAMES AND WAS ACTUALLY RATIONAL? IF YOU SAW THIS, *MAYBE* YOU WOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE PISSY, BUT NOT THEN!

They kicked me out after having asked me to buy them all food. I had used up all my food stamps. Because I hadn't anticipated this at all. I hadn't known they would take such offence to my existence, to my ways. To the fact that I value the man I married more than I value... Whatever they wanted me to value, I guess.

Fun fact: I ended up in a women's shelter after this, and one woman told me to actually kill myself because she was tired of hearing me cry at night.

They said I hadn't made any effort to get my life on track. Because I can just snap my fingers and make my ID appear. Because I can just manifest the money for a replacement. They said all these things that left me almost unable to breathe, in retaliation for me posting that I was suicidal.

Later, Woman A told me that this had been a long time coming and that they were trying to make room for Woman B and Woman C, both of whom were willing to have sex with the men, which is something that I would not. I feel the first woman I met at the shelter was accurate when she said they basically kicked me out because I wouldn't sleep with them.

I also later found out that my ID and SS card had been returned to sender. The Portland PD called me and told me. So my father came to the conclusion that the people I had been staying with sabotaged me from the start. For a while, I didn't feel it, but last night I dreamed about it, and the dream made me angry. I didn't deserve to be treated that way. And I really had to get all this off my chest, so for those of you who didn't immediately whip out your tiny violins, thank you.

[cuntess-carmilla]

Being chronically ill has made me really disgusted or just bitter regarding the body positive movement, EVEN when it's not imbeciles whose body positivity is "everyone is fuckable :D" only.

Like, ok, I don't like how I look from the neck down too much and I'd like some subtle changes on my face, sure, but even if I looked exactly like I want to and were to never visually age, I'd STILL hate my body.

I don't hate my body because I find it ugly, even though I've been There a lot of my life too to the extreme of suicidality over my appearance alone. I hate my body because my body hated ME first, continues to make me miserable, and won't ever stop making me miserable until the day I leave it behind.

And you want me to love it? Fuck, you want to tell me to love it by appealing to me through "accepting" how my body is in its natural form?

It's so obvious body abled people see human bodies as living aesthetics, whether they want to abolish the socio-political implications of that or not. My body in its "natural state" doesn't just LOOK one way or another.

My body in its natural state, which CANNOT BE CHANGED OR IMPROVED since it's a genetic, permanent, cureless illness, AND WILL ONLY GET WORSE, is nothing but pain, pain, pain. Even if I'm yet again ignoring my pain because if I think about it too much I start wanting to die, and that day I feel I look like the goth goddess I've always wanted to be.

You want me to love this disaster of an objectively defective body? That was BORN defective? That's disabled in a way that I'm pretty sure the majority of people who have this can't derive any "pride" from the way I can perfectly be proud of my autism? I want it fixed! I do want my body to be fixed! Call me an eugenics apologist or whatever, I don't give a shit. I WANT MY DEFECTIVE BODY FIXED.

At most we find some affection for our bodies in the sense of caring for them because our bodies are in pain, the same way one takes care of a sick loved one, but that's fucking it. It ruins so many lives. I cannot, will not, I REFUSE to take pride on the torture I've been put through that I never chose.

And you know what? The chronically ill people who, sincerely, bless their beautiful hearts, have managed to love their bodies in the way I described, will be the FIRST to validate and defend the rest of us who do loathe our bodies against people who try to coerce us into performing "positivity" because our "negativity" makes their self-centered abled asses uncomfortable.

It's not just because those other ill people know how difficult it is to love a broken body that can't and won't ever be fixed, but because, even if they do love their own bodies, they don't love their bodies BECAUSE of their illness, but DESPITE their illness, which is not at all how at least I relate to my autism.

This illness hasn't made me strong uwu or resilient uwu or a better person uwu. It's just ruined my fucking life, wasted away my youth, and made me miss out on so many things. It LITERALLY makes me weaker.

Body abled people complain about the solitude of quarantine, the way it's so easy to go insane from the isolation, the boredom, the lack of activity, and from feeling like a prisoner of their own homes. Guess what! That's just how life is for too many chronically ill people, pandemic or no pandemic! It's actually really hard for me to have seen hordes of abled people whine about that without rolling my eyes. Oh, what a tragedy that'll last you tops a couple of years.

My life hasn't changed. I've always been locked down in my room unless it's absolutely necessary for me to leave the house, WHICH I DREAD, not because I wouldn't love to have a life outside these tight 4 walls, but because I know that once I come home, even the few times a year I go out to do something I like, I'll be DESTROYED. I don't know how I ever made it through college.

I've always been on lockdown cracking my brain trying to find ways to entertain myself with whatever the fuck I can make up. Now you guys realize how much creativity that takes, huh? After years of asking us "But what do you even DO at home?" Ah, don't get me started on how it is those days when I'm still so depressingly, suicide-inducingly bored, but I'm also so fatigued I can't even get up to pee, let alone watch TV or YT videos. I have to make up TV shows in my mind in silence as I lay in bed alone and still.

If you ever ask me online to be "proud" not of my achievements themselves, but of all the silent, invisible, delegitimized pain I battled against to get them, that nobody believed me about?

If you're lucky that my chronic fatigue is acting up too much then you'll get blocked immediately and I'll vent post about abled people's stupidity. If I have the energy, you're gonna get told in detail how to eat my whole shit. In the unlikely case that it's offline, I'm just gonna punch you and yes it'll be worth at least a week of my own hand being a skin-bag of tangled bones lol.

Bitch, even the tiny "body neutrality" movement focuses on fucking aesthetics. It's "all bodies should be neutral" which I'd agree with! IF BODIES WEREN'T MORE THAN JUST APPEARANCE. My body isn't "neutral" no matter how it looks, my body is literally my enemy.

My body is a prison I can only escape if I jump from a tall building and OH BOY have I thought about doing that many, many times, crying silently and still in bed, regardless of how well my life is going in EVERY other aspect.

You can just fucking TELL when abled people have never in their lives thought about what existing in a disabled body feels like. They know we exist, but they've never been at least curious of what our bodies feel like. If the disability is INVISIBLE since it's NOT AESTHETICALLY DIFFERENT and they think about bodies as aesthetics (which affects my visibly disabled comrades too and NOT in a good way because disabled people CAN'T WIN) then they don't even think of us as having any real hardships. They LOVE to forget we're suffering.

Fuck you bitches.

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

(via Now That’s Some Serious Chronic Fatigue. Spoon Theory 2.0? (Patreon Link Within))

October 4, 2019

Many chronically ill people eventually learn about the “Spoon Theory” of chronic fatigue, which is basically a way to explain to healthy people what it’s like when you no longer possess (or never had) virtually unlimited mental and physical energy to do what you want.   Because it’s always the responsibility of the weakest and sickest to explain ourselves to healthy people innit.  A person’s spoons are a visual representation of their physical and mental energy reserves for the day, where a physical or mental activity “costs” one or more spoons to perform and when the spoons are gone the sick person has no choice but to stop acting and rest.  With adequate rest and recovery time, hopefully their spoon reserves will replenish by the next day but that is not always the case.  Many days, seriously ill people may have no spoons at all.

Spoon Theory was described and named by a chronically ill woman and it is pretty accurate in my own experience.  For the first time in my life, after putting myself through law school, studying for and passing the bar exam, and then working more than full time in a stressful and demanding career in addition to a lifetime of “adulting” meaning maintaining a household and nurturing various parasitic males I no longer have anywhere near the energy I once had and can now barely get anything done, regardless of urgency or import.  It’s not a matter of how important anything is anymore, nor how badly I need to or want to do it.  I am not in control of that now and it is debilitating and terrifying.

Healthy people have no idea that’s even possible and they often refuse to believe it.  And that’s an example of ableism, or discrimination in policy and practice against disabled people and in favor of healthy people.  Young people seem acutely aware of the concept of spoons, chronic illness and ableism while older people seem to have not a clue; the implications of that are terrifying but I will leave that for another day.

I recently attempted to describe my own limitations to my mother, and even though as a nurse who claims to have rigorously studied the issues and thinks she knows everything there is to know about health, wellness and chronic illness (LOL) she had never even heard of “spoons” or spoon theory.  Considering that that information is literally everywhere if one only cares to look, her research skills get an F.  Her practical knowledge gets an F.  Empathy F.  Effort F.  Fucks given on behalf of the chronically ill F.  Fucks given about me and my new normal F.   Decent human being D+.  Maybe.  Maybe there’s hope, I think to myself, and at least a D+ is better than an F in that department, although the D+ is likely generous.  It’s a pretty important department and I like to think it matters but maybe it really doesn’t.  Maybe there is just no way that healthy people will ever understand or care what it’s like to be seriously chronically ill no matter how decent they are but I decide to try.

I proceed to explain my limitations to a nurse, to my own fucking mother thusly: in a week’s time, in addition to fulfilling the basic survival needs of my business, myself and my 2 adopted shelter cats (procuring nutrition and toileting basically) I can maybe cook/prepare food 5 times, clean up the mess twice, and shower once.  That means there are at least 3 times a week where I cook/prepare food and do not clean up the mess right away.  Yes, that’s a thing that happens and no, there is nothing I can do about it.  My mom responded by shrieking “bullshit!   bullshit!” into my ear, as if that changes anything except to (more) completely alienate me and yes, to waste even more of my spoons.  My mom is a garbage disposal for my spoons and causes extreme spoon deficit on the regular, or she will if I let her.  And by “let her” I mean have any contact with her; I haven’t spoken to her in a year and a half, and very little in the past 7 years since I became seriously chronically ill and that’s why.  After her most recent outburst and what it did to my spoons I think I could easily go forever without speaking with her again.

Then yesterday I came across a post by another chronically ill blogger who described her own experience with chronic fatigue in a unique way that despite my own extreme brain fog and forgetfulness generally, I will probably never forget.  Michelle reads and comments here regularly (hi Michelle!) and has recently become a fulltime boondocker which means that she lives in wilderness areas in an RV all or almost all the time.  Like most or all chronically ill people, Michelle is a “Spoonie” and suffers from chronic fatigue and has only so many fucks to give and so much energy to burn on any given day and while it’s not up to her how many spoons she has, it is kind of up to her how she spends them.   Despite her “garbage can” diagnosis of ME/CFS she does the absolute best she can, as do we all, but in her case she has particular trouble using and maintaining her bulky and temperamental portable generator and cleaning up the dishes after she cooks and eats.

The really striking (and totally relateable) part of her experience, for me, was this:

Michelle often parks her RV in bear country and dirty dishes attract bears and she knows that.  But still she cannot necessarily muster the mental and physical energy needed to clean the dishes right away and the task must be put off until the next day or possibly even the next.  Get it?   Now that’s some serious fatigue, and I (and she) don’t mean to say that she has any worse fatigue than any other chronically ill person.  She may and she may not, how would that even be measured?  Rather, I (we) mean that chronic fatigue is serious, it is seriously and unbelievably debilitating and in this post Michelle explains the reality of it so well.  She cannot do anything more than what she can do, even if when her life literally depends on it.  And in her situation her life actually does depend on it.

Do you see what I am saying?  The import and urgency of the task changes nothing, NOTHING about what she is and is not able to actually do.  When her spoons are gone that’s it, and the only way she might have a spoon left over to do the dishes is if she never even cooked at all. Do you see the problem there?  Because I do.  She can either risk being attacked by bears or not cook (and therefore maybe not even eat) at all.  From what I’ve gathered through reading her blog, Michelle will probably not decide to stop boondocking if she can help it and she has (actual, valid) reasons for that too, one of which being that boondocking gives her spoons, being in nature gives her spoons, and being peaceful and quiet preserves the spoons she does have.  If she wasn’t boondocking in beautiful natural areas, maybe she would have even less spoons than she has now.  Maybe she would have no spoons at all.

THAT is the fucking reality of serious chronic fatigue and all the cursing and shrieking and being berated by others in the world will not change it.  It doesn’t matter how much you wish things were different.  You no longer make the rules.  The woman who gestated and birthed me does not make the rules.  Michelle doesn’t make the rules.  I don’t make the rules.  If we ever made the rules we don’t make them now and there is no reality-based reason to think that we will make those rules for ourselves ever again.  I would beseech healthy people to attempt to grok that, to please for the love of God grok that shit already but even that doesn’t matter!  It doesn’t matter if healthy people grok it or not, or at least their understanding will not in itself make sick people’s material reality better or worse.

What will help, though, is if the people we rely on for comfort, companionship, conversation, money, shelter or whatever don’t waste the few spoons we have by demanding we explain shit, or destroy those spoons in the garbage disposal of their shitty shrieking ignorance.  Now that would actually help.  And by help I mean stop making it fucking worse.   That is the reality of chronic illness and chronic fatigue and that reality cannot and will not be changed, or anytime soon, not until these serious, debilitating and fatiguing chronic illnesses are able to be treated or cured.  That is not the case today where most chronic illnesses including the one I suffer from, Crohn’s disease, produce symptoms that can maybe be somewhat managed sometimes (and maybe not) but that is not the same thing as treatment and it’s hell and gone from a cure.

__________________________

And on that note, I would like to leave a link to my Patreon and ask that my readers consider and pass along this most recent request for donations.  Despite my symptoms and their all-encompassing effects on my life, I have made some progress towards getting disability and housing benefits, but it looks like I am going to need to buy myself more time (or have it purchased for me as it were).  The game has now changed somewhat and with much (well, total) effort on my part, I now have additional medical evidence to support my claims, and my disability advocate has put me in contact with an organization that may be able to help: it’s an organization that helps autistic people maintain their independence and I am hopeful that they might actually come through.  This whole time, it has seemed as if no one really cared about the Crohn’s diagnosis but now that I have an additional diagnosis of high functioning autism, my disability advocates seem hopeful that they now have something they can actually use.  And importantly, they seem keen on doing some of the legwork to actually make that happen, like helping me fill out and drop off forms and such.  That is huge.

In a nutshell, it is very important that I stay where I am for now and not lose this apartment which does take housing vouchers if I am approved for one.  That means, as soon as I am approved I will start receiving rental assistance without having to wait for an eligible apartment to become available because I am already in one.  It also means I will not have to move again, when the move I made last year nearly killed me and left me seriously depleted of spoons for an entire year.  If I have to do that again, I literally very well may be unable to do it and if I can’t, it won’t matter that my life depends on it.   Can’t is can’t when you are chronically ill.  I know many of my readers know exactly what that means.

Thank you so much for reading and thank you for your support.

Comments Open.

[waltdisneyconfessions]

ASK A DISNEY MANAGER: QUESTIONS ANSWERED!

This is a repost because of accidental deletion. Awhile back you guys sent in questions for a Disney Manager, below are his responses! Thank you!

1. What is the worst experience/mistake you've ever made with a guest? What is the best experience you've had with a guest?  I think my worst experience or moment was during my college program. I remember arriving at merge area at Peter Pan's Flight where Fastpass and standby guests merge into one line, and the Fastpass line was extremely long. I stepped in and tried my best to get the Fastpass line under control and I remember a few families in the standby line yelling obscenities at me. Once I began to let a few standby guests in, all I remember was five or six adults standing around me in a circle, screaming at me. I was so stressed that I tried to grab the attention of the person working to load guests onto the attraction, to ask if she would switch with me briefly because I thought I was going to break down and begin crying. Instead, I walked away from the merge area with no Cast Member there for a minute or two. I walked over to the person working in the load position, and said, "I'm really sorry, but I can't work in that position right now." We swapped positions until one of my managers could pull me aside to talk. I honestly thought I was going to get into trouble for walking away, but my manager was understanding and spent a few minutes with me to make sure I was okay. 

2. As someone who was a Disney manager, would you openly recommend it as a job to anyone who would want to work at Disney?

Personally, I would recommended working for Disney!

As with any job, I would also encourage those interested in working at Disney to evaluate and make decisions about their own career path before immediately making the jump to work for the company. Do your homework! Determine exactly what you would like your career path to be, study and read up on the company culture, and be prepared to work hard.

Also remember that Disney is massive Fortune 500 company, operating domestically and internationally. If working for a large corporation isn’t your thing, I wouldn’t recommend Disney. Most often, moving up within the organization can take time because it is competitive.

3. how do they handle workers who don't speak English? at some point that must have happened right?

In many Guest facing roles, you are required to have a basic understanding of the English language, or be able to speak English to communicate with Guests. However, bilingual skills a great qualification that the company looks for in job candidates. If a Cast Member doesn’t possess strong verbal communication skills or basic English, he or she may work in a backstage role where guest contact is limited.

4. For the former manager: did you ever have a heart warming experience while working at Disney? Or was it all work and no spark? Many thanks for taking your time to answer questions ️

Actually, I have a few really heartwarming moments from my time at Disney, but one of my favorites moments involved me assisting with surprising a young guest with a tour the Cinderella Castle Suite whose favorite character was Cinderella. The highlight of the tour was seeing the expression on the guest’s face when she knocked on the door to the Suite and Cinderella opened it. I, along with her parents and a few other Cast Members involved, were on the verge of tears.  

5. What's the snottiest, most entitled guest you've ever dealt with? And any recs for getting into the Disney College Program? Is there a chance to move up in the company into, say, the writing division in animation? Thank you so much <3

This is tough one for me because I can’t think of a specific story. That’s probably because the person acted so entitled that I wanted to completely erase them from my memory once they were gone. lol.

I will say that I’ve dealt with several Guests who have tried to essentially “pull rank” or highlight their social status by mentioning they were either lawyers or doctors when things weren’t going their way or they weren’t satisfied. I’ve also dealt with people who have tried to belittle me (and even other Cast) by assuming most of us didn’t graduate high school or attend college because we worked in a theme park. I’ll be honest, I often take words to heart, so there were moments at the end of the day when I questioned who I was and what I was doing with my life. I can’t describe the feeling I would get when I felt defeated because someone decided to belittle me…but… the good always outweighs the bad…seriously!

Even though Disney can be a competitive environment, yes, there are opportunities of moving up. I think using the College Program as your stepping stone is a great start! As for getting into the program, I would recommend opening yourself to as many roles as possible when you’re applying. I often hear that you chances are better if you don’t limit yourself to only one or two roles. These positions aren’t always going to be glamorous, but it’s what you make of it. If you are hoping to build a career at Disney, remind yourself that it has to start somewhere…and that somewhere may not be in the role you envisioned yourself. I recommend reading up on the roles available to DCP participants just to get an idea.  Apply early! During the interview process think about how you respond to situational questions using your past experience. Be prepared to discuss your strengths and weaknesses, and have a few follow-up questions for after the interview. I could go on and on!! If you need more advice with the process, let me know and I would be glad to give you even more preparation tips.

Finally, as for landing a career within animation, I would recommend the path of doing a college program, to familiarize yourself with the Disney culture (be a strong and consistent performer during your DCP experience),and  looking for an internship after that… Here’s a good link to check out: https://www.disneyanimation.com/careers/interns-apprentices#life-at-disney

6. can I just ask if there's something like special training on supporting Autistic Adults? Or just facilities in general? I'm saving to go to Florida next year for DisneyWorld but I'm very scared on how I may be treated if I start reacting badly to overstimulation :/

Cast Members complete training for assisting guests with specific needs, including autism, and how to assist guests requiring special assistance as part of the training process. When I worked in Guest Relations, I had to familiarize myself with the location of “break areas” throughout the parks which are helpful for individuals becoming over-stimulated. However, I think more Cast Members working in the park need to become more familiar with these locations.

Overall though I wouldn’t fear making the trip to WDW. I would recommend planning out your trip and studying up before taking your trip. Disney has some good planning resources including information for services for Guests with cognitive disabilities available on their website, and they also have a Guest with Disabilities department that can contact by phone or email before your visit.

7. how often did guests have asinine requests? like stupid things: "can you make the rain stop?"

Or… can we see Walt’s frozen corpse at the castle? lol. I’ve heard that one a couple of times. I also remember being asked by a father whose child wasn’t tall enough to ride an attraction, “what if I stuff my child’s shoes and come back later? Will you let him ride then?”

8. what are the best secrets that guests can access at the parks but few do? Also is the paintbrush on tom Sawyer island actually a thing? One last thing, what is the pay like? (Answer if you want, I know it’s not necessarily my place) I’ve always wanted to work there but I live in Ohio so I’m deciding whether it’s worth it to move. Thank you and you’re an amazing human being <3

I think some of the best secrets aren’t found within attractions or shows, but in some of the smallest details that Guests tend to overlook. For me, I enjoy the fact that the parks are full of small Easter eggs. For example, there is a telephone in the back of the Chapeau (the hat shop on Main Street) at Magic Kingdom. It looks like a simple prop hanging on the wall, but when you pick it up you can hear a funny “party line” conversation between two people. Or, if you’re ever in the lower level of the Main Street train station, you’ll hear a telegraph tapping out the Walt Disney’s opening day speech for Disneyland in Morse code.

I wouldn’t think of this as much of a secret, but one of my favorite Disney treats is a peanut butter & jelly milkshake from 50’s Prime Time Café. Many people think you have to dine there to order one, but if you stop by the Tune-In Lounge next door, you can order one to-go! If you’ve never had one though, you must!

Paintbrushes at Tom Sawyer Island did exist for quite some time, and it was a great scavenger hunt, especially for younger guests, but the Magical Moment was removed several years ago.

To answer your question about pay, I think it depends on your role. I think most people forget there are a wide variety of roles at Walt Disney World alone. I don’t know the exact current starting pay rates for guest-facing hourly positions, but the range is anywhere between $8 to just over $12 depending on the type of role.

And if that "you're an amazing human being comment was directed at me"... Thanks so much! I appreciate that! :)

9. I always loved Disney Quest, and we made one final trip when we heard it was closing. We had a blast, but the main attractions did look run down and out of date, and we constantly joked about the ps2 style graphics. It seemed like Disney sunk a lot of money into DQ for opening day and did little else to update it since. Do you have any info on why this was, or on what led to Disney Quest closing down? I feel like there was still a lot of potential there, especially with Disney's new properties

I think people have created their own theories behind the demise of DisneyQuest.  DQ was a pretty ambitious project by a division of the company known at the time as Disney Regional Entertainment. The long term goal was to open DisneyQuest locations in several major cities throughout the country. DisneyQuest Chicago opened in 1998 and closed two years later. Groundbreaking for another location in Philadelphia started and was halted after the DisneyQuest concept didn’t sustain itself in Chicago, and there were a number of reasons thrown out for its failure…from the theme park admission price structure to enter, to the lack of return visits, and Disney simply misunderstanding the market which led to low attendance.  

Unfortunately, I don’t have the exact “why” behind the closing of DQ at WDW. I think many will say that a lack of investment was the primary cause. I will agree there wasn’t much invested into DQ after the property transferred hands from Disney Regional Entertainment to WDW park operations. I think one of the biggest challenges for Disney was keeping up with the rapidly evolving technology trends to ensure that DisneyQuest stayed relevant, and the possibility of having update attractions within the building frequently to keep up. In the end, I think executives within Disney figured it would be wiser to invest its money into its largest attendance draw, its theme parks.

10. What was your best day and what was your worst day working? My worst day? Hmm...working in Guest Relations when it started raining during the last two hours of a Halloween Party. I remember the line for Guest Relations stretching across Town Square on Main Street...and there were lots of angry people. I wouldn't say it was the worst day, but it was definitely stressful. It's difficult to narrow it down to just one because I've quite a few memorable days. I think one of the best days involved the Cinderella Suite magical moment I was part of (mentioned in a previous question).  11. What was the weirdest complaint someone brought to Guest Relations?

A guest who was upset because he ended up getting wet while riding Splash Mountain. He tried his hardest to convince me there was nothing convincing him that he or his family would get wet on the ride, and that the rest of his day was ruined because his shirt was wet. Try listening to that with a straight face and concerned face…

12. if you had been high enough on the food chain to make larger changes to the park, what would be the most important thing you'd want to accomplish?

Hmm, interesting question. The first...BRING BACK THE ORIGINAL JOURNEY INTO IMAGINATION attraction, with some slight updates.

Although it’s practically unrealistic, if there was one thing could change about WDW would be its size, and try removing some of the growing pains that have come as a result of the WDW sprawl. I often think that Walt Disney World expanded at a pretty rapid pace, and maybe much too quickly at times.  After my first visit to Disneyland almost 15 years ago, I fell in love with the place. I felt like Guests had a personal connection to Disneyland, and that wasn’t something I had ever really noticed in Florida. As corny as it sounds, there is a certain charm about Disneyland and I think a lot of that not only has to do the fact that it was the only Disney park that Walt was involved in operationally, but it also has something to with the size and walkability of the resort.

13. How do you feel about the union negotiations? (From a current and scared part timer in the parks)

What has you scared?  My feelings are rather mixed about the current negotiations. I’ll be honest and say that I do think pay increases are needed, and that Cast Members are generally held to a standard higher than any other individual working within similar positions in the industry. I’m just not completely certain if $15/hour is going to be the solution. I don’t think I’m best person to ask regarding facts and figures because I’m not an economist.

As an outsider looking in, I do think that the negotiations has had an impact on service levels within Disney’s parks and resorts. I think the union will continue leverage the belief that if the organization expects such high performance standards, then Cast Members need to be paid appropriately to reflect those expectations.

On the other side of the debate, I think it’s possible to see a future where Disney will eventually begin to heavily focus on marketing its attractions and experiences to continue to entice people to visit, remove those high expectations often place on hourly guest-facing roles, and treat the role of Cast Member as simply a “ride attendant” or “sales associate” rather than placing emphasis on the role of a Cast Member as something unique (hopefully, that makes sense and it doesn’t appear that I’m rambling).  

One thing I will stand by is this… I recommend that Cast Members take time to develop their skill and not allow themselves to become complacent. Personally, I’ve witnessed a lot of that during my time with the company. I had moments when I felt that way about myself as well.  I know that each person has a different story, and a different set of circumstances, but I would love to see more hourly Cast Members try to advantage of Disney’s education funding/reimbursement program. I’m not certain if the new higher education program benefits announced earlier this year are available to WDW hourly employees, but if so, I would encourage people to take advantage of it! Even if a person thinks they are not cut out for college, the new program covers vocational training which provides individuals with a better opportunity to develop their skills.

14. What was your favorite magical moment you gave and received? [see Cinderella Castle Suite response] 15. Do you know what kind if engineers Disney hires the most? I'm looking at electrical engineering for college but I'm not sure if that's a good approach if I want to work at Disneyworld or Disneyland.

I think electrical engineering is a good choice and you’ll definitely find a number of positions seeking individuals with backgrounds in that specialization. It’s tough to say which types of engineers the company hires the most of, but I think some of the most common consist of mechanical, electrical, systems engineering, and even audio/visual engineering.

As you make your decision, I would definitely pay a visit to disneycareers.com and do a job search for engineering. I think you’ll learn that there is a pretty diverse offering of engineering roles not only in Parks and Resorts, but companywide as well.

Mod Jen: I’m going to butt in here: I was close with many of the maintenance team at Disney and I know straight from them that electrical is much more lucrative than mechanical, because you’re at greater risk. You also get paid more. 

16. If I want to become an imagineer at the parks, is there anything I can do to improve my chances of being hired as one?

Definitely ensure that you have a degree specialized in a field of engineering, art, or another creative field. If you are into design, it will be important that you start building a professional portfolio as well.

If you’re currently in college or a recent graduate, I would highly recommend looking into Professional Internships with Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI). I think the professional internship is a great way to “get your foot in the door” and understand the culture of Imagineering. I know a few people who have taken the internship route, worked hard, and were offered opportunities to continue their career with Imagineering after graduation. If you’ve been out of school for a while, I recommend looking for entry level positions within WDI, or take on a job with a design or engineering firm elsewhere so that you can develop some career experience. I know some Imagineers weren’t always Disney “fanatics” or knew much about the history of Disney prior to joining, but they’re experience and portfolio stood out as something Disney saw as creative or unique.

For designers, WDI hosts an annual design competition for college students and recent grads called “Imaginations” which gives winners the opportunity to be considered for internships.

17. Hi! I was wondering is there an age limit for DCP? I'd love to apply before I move out to CA for grad school. I'm 30. I also have multiple disabilities, mainly Cerebral Palsy. What jobs can be done from a power wheelchair? How accessible is Disneyland?

There is no age limit on the DCP. At one of my locations, I worked with someone who was 45 years old when she did her first program. As long as you’re enrolled full-time or part-time at a university, or a recent graduate. Utilizing a power wheelchair isn’t an issue at all, and there are a variety of positions you would be able to work within Disney’s parks and resorts. There will probably be some limits working in some roles though (such as some attractions) since those may require the ability to travel up or down stairs to access areas of the attraction when it’s needed.

Overall, I think Disney does an excellent job when it comes to accessibility within its parks. If you were to compare accessibility between the two parks in Anaheim, Disney’s California Adventure would probably win since it was built more recently with ADA accessibility in mind. Disneyland still does a great job with accessibility though, it’s just that many of the attractions may not have queues that are wheelchair accessible, so instead they use alternate entrances.

18. What are your guys' favourite Disney rides? Have you guys went to some of the other parks outside of the US?

My all-time favorite is The Haunted Mansion. I’ve always been obsessed about the early history and the development of the attraction. Laugh if you want, but It’s a Small World is another one of my favorites (I worked there during my college program). Spaceship Earth is another. I have yet to visit any of the Disney parks outside of the US. Tokyo Disneyland is on my list of must-sees!

19. How did you work up the ladder to manager? What position did you start in, how did you get that position, and what other positions did you have between then and manager?

I began my Disney career as a part-time attractions host at Space Mountain which lasted about two months before I transferred to a full-time attractions host role at DisneyQuest. It was during my time at DisneyQuest that I decided I wanted to become a Disney leader. Before stepping into an actual leadership position with Disney, you often have to take on the challenge of informal leadership positions, such as a trainer or coordinator. Six months after starting at DQ, I interviewed for an attractions trainer position and that became my first step to gaining some leadership experience.

During my time as a trainer, I began to communicate regularly with another manager who became my mentor, and he helped guide me through me through the process of strengthening my resume and interview skills. After spending a year at DisneyQuest, my mentor and the operations manager suggested that I transfer from DisneyQuest to an attraction at a park as a way of gaining more experience working at an attraction with a high guest capacity. I took their advice and transferred to Mission:Space at Epcot and became a trainer within six months of working there.

During this period, I was also given an amazing opportunity to join the Disney Traditions team as a Traditions Assistant facilitator. For those unfamiliar with Disney, Traditions is the new hire orientation that all company employees go through. This was a year-long, “once-in-your-Disney-career,” experience that I think helped open doors for me at WDW as well.

Almost two years after starting with Disney, I went through a process known at the time as Leadership Casting Call. This was the process WDW used to identify and develop a pool of talent to become Guest Service Managers for each line of business at Disney’s parks and resorts. After lots of networking, mock interview preparations, and finally, the actual interviews, I was selected to be part of the talent pool. My first temporary position as a manager took me back to DisneyQuest. This would also be the place where I would end up becoming a full-time manager about 8 months later.

20.  Is Splash Mountain an awkward subject to discuss? Have people asked about what that ride is based off of, & if they do, were you allowed to tell them about Song of the South, or did you have to lie & say it's an original attraction just like Haunted Mansion or Jungle Cruise?

Honestly, I’ve never had to have an awkward conversation about Splash Mountain. I think majority of the population may not connect the attraction with the movie Song of the South.

21. What has been one or more of the craziest experiences/incidents you ever had working for Disney?

     Splash Mountain probably led to some of my craziest and most interesting challenges ever. One of the craziest moments though was witnessing a ride vehicle at Splash Mountain nearly on the verge of sinking with Guests onboard because the log was taking on too much water.  Everyone was okay, but they pretty much drenched from the waist down. The family was pretty understanding in the end and actually ended up being some of the nicest people I’d ever interacted with while working at Disney.

[sixteenthbuny]

god help us all i typed up 1.2k words ??? about one thing, who does that

a theory or something ??? about how sherlock would perceive emotions and whether or not it's "inhibited" or "difficult to accomplish" or simply because of the spectrum/aspergers/antisocial personality disorder he might have—or his ridiculously high IQ (190ish? stated to be ~30 points higher than einstein). 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 a lot of people think that sherlock might be on the spectrum and have autism (or: autism spectrum disorder (ASD)), and would have difficulty recognizing emotion/feeling empathetic towards people because of it, but research shows that it's not JUST autism that inhibits this ability. it alexithymia that goes hand-in-hand with ASD and makes it difficult. there's also the possibility of aspergers, which is still on the spectrum, and then actual sociopathy. first, we should clear up specifically what autism is. it's repeatedly stated across the whole of the internet that autism is a complex developmental disability, and that it inhibits people's abilities to communicate verbally, socially interact, have executive functioning (planning and reasoning), keep a conversation, etc.; stammering, unable to speak/explain, avoiding eye contact, having difficulty learning language etc., is how it manifests. it obviously comes in many forms though (thus "spectrum"). autism is accompanied by other mental disorders/physical incapabilities, and can put kids who have a more severe form of it in some sort of special edu course throughout school. but people identify sherlock with more of having difficulty of identifying or emphasizing with emotions. so, clearly, the correlation of the fandom's "sherlock holmes is autistic" theory and sherlock holmes himself is a bit off, because it's never felt like it was simply just that. his self-claimed title of "high-functioning sociopath" (or: antisocial personality disorder [ASPD]) could be his way or saying "asperger's syndrome", or perhaps it's a self-diagnosis; he doesn't have much psychological knowledge. it's an understandable mix up, they have similar characteristics: compulsive behavior, aggression, impulsivity, and anger. but AD is more like ASD than ASPD. they have limited mood and behavioral symptoms commodities. sociopathy is more characterized by a major lack of empathy, sympathy, feeling generally discontent and angry, and bored. sherlock's IQ puts him in a level of genius not seen before, and much of the material available could make him bored, which has lead to anger/agitation and even lack of empathy. but he could've also been misdiagnosed; i vaguely remember him replying with "i was told" to john's question of "why do think that?" i couldn't find a proper source for this, though it might've been stated in between THoB and trf. in addition to this, alexithymia limits a persons ability to recognize emotion via facial and vocal expressions. ~50% of people with autism has it so, of course, people without proper knowledge and understanding will assume that autistic people can't be empathetic. it's the opposite, really. only handfuls of autistic people have a bit more difficulty than usual. there are cases with autistic people not having alexithymia and alexithymic people not having autism. aspergers and sociopathy aren't common combinations with these, as they are somewhere else in both psychology and the spectrum, and are often only mixed up. but he has an unspecified but notable extent of knowledge of biochemical reactions. he can recognize love in irene adler, and understands that negative feelings impact situations and motivation greatly in comparison to sentiment. he states in asip himself that "bitterness is a paralytic" and that "love is a far more vicious motivator". so, yes, he can recognize it and see it. all the same, he could use this knowledge to determine why and how the bank was so cleverly robbed or why some katie mcdonald was killed this way or that. it's entirely acceptable, too—his mind is a hard drive to store things, and he struggles with substance abuse while in difficult emotional situations. mary's death/john's distance is a prime example in tld. but substance abuse is a common symptom of ASPD. it's not an unknown factor or anything; in fact, drug use tends to lead to apathetic disorders if it goes on unstoppably. it might have been a problem with sherlock in his teen years. teen depression/depressive mood disorder (etc.) is a little side note on this part that might've induced the need for cocaine, since it releases those happy endorphins in your neurons. the usage could also be used because sherlock does have a tendency to get unbearably bored; getting high has always been an implied alternative until he became the world's only consulting detective, and it's been stated directly from his mouth in hlv (we all remember that lol). i've stated in little bits and pieces that his IQ could be the sole influence of his perception of himself/the world around him. it's at a whopping 190, which is approx. 30 points higher than albert einstein. it's an impressive feat—we all know how einstein's scientific discoveries pushed us forward by leaps and bounds, and his quotes do make us think (if it's not disney or whatever some people slap next to his pictures). it's clear that he saw the world vastly differently than the people of his time, and maybe even ours. isaac newton did, too, and many others who could push our society as a whole to where we are today (specifically, in european/american roots). so who's to say that sherlock holmes, with a ~190 IQ, sees the world like us with lower IQs? he gets bored/restless easily because his thoughts are likely questions he or many other people just don't have answers for, and his curiosity gets the worst of the situation and the best of sherlock. it's entirely acceptable to say how he experiences things is just as different. it's all about perception. therefore, when he sees an emotion, he knows exactly how to react. he just doesn't (assuming it's because of his IQ and not something psychological). it's likely his childhood trauma with the loss of redbeard; it happened late enough in his recallable life that it would be a root of mental messes in his teen and adulthood, but it was also early enough in his life that his brain—unable to comprehend loss—turned victor trevor into a dog. because the loss of a dog is better than the loss of a best friend at such a young age. overall, alexithyma combined with autism has a (warning:personal opinion) lower chance of being in sherlock than anything. sociopathy has an even lower chance, because he doesn't show sentimentality like an actual sociopath would. aspergers feels more natural, but then so does his IQ count affecting his emotional perception. in fact, that last part of the statement can especially be applied to mycroft and eurus. a higher IQ does tend to lead to a lack of motivation and so and so, but they would need actual disorders to get to a socially dumbfounded/socially inhibited place. eurus likely has some sort of form of severe aspergers, or maybe even ASPD, but then that would imply sherlock and mycroft has it too—she has no reason to be nurtured into sociopathy other than the dangers of her own IQ, but nature (psychopathy) is never limited to one child…but uuuuuugh, fucking mofftiss. (just a personal thought tho lol) i'm liking the aspergers idea a lot, though, because it has literally been explained by reliable sources that it's on the more "high-functioning" end of the spectrum, and people are debilitated by it only because they take idioms and such seriously—though sherlock doesn't display this prominently nor loudly. he shows his confusion maybe once or twice and doesn't do a very good job at recognizing sarcasm or social cues. john does it for him to save his social status. he probably understands it scientifically or maybe even socially with a helluva lot of practice, but chooses to ignore it because it takes him a second too long to recognize it. it could also be an insecurity. i feel like it'd be more of a mix between the two. so, with time, he might be able to get a hint or actually figure it out, but not quickly enough in verbal irony or situational irony, and so on. not to mention, john is the one he's mostly around, and is the conduit of his sociable responses. the heart to the brain and all. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 anyways, just some thoughts :) i'm terrible at responding nicely.. but has only got any advice to maybe refine this ????? i'm a newbie lmao 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 some sources: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/asperger-syndrome http://www.autism-society.org/what-is/ https://spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/people-with-autism-can-read-emotions-feel-empathy/ +mayo clinic +autism speaks +sherlock episodes +google +me ???? +because my dumbass forgets to leave the sources o p e n