#the sensory overload is getting to me

[msfeatherfreckles]

Our dogs are tolerating the new year's eve noise pretty well.

I am not.

Hours of torture.

The neighbors have had their karaoke machine thumping away since 4 in the afternoon. Downstairs, people are watching an action movie with lots of gunfire with the volume cranked waaay up.

My ears hurt, my brain hurts, my chest hurts, my lungs feel like they're filled with cotton, and my teeth hurt from clenching my jaw.

I am thiiis close to a mental breakdown or a temper tantrum or both.

I am having intrusive thoughts of breaking every piece of glass in the house and slitting my wrists with them, or of making myself fall down the stairs and cracking my head on the steps.

It's an hour past midnight, people! Go the fuck to sleep so that i can have some quiet in which to reassemble my sanity!

[yashley]

It’s about this time, another voice pushes into your head, like a bat out of hell. 

[cryptcatz]

i hate how much of my life revolves around asking myself “am i being overly sensitive/dramatic or are my feelings valid here?”. being so easily hurt and upset sucks. i feel like im too soft for this world

[lansangprincess]

am i the only one that thinks francesca bridgerton is giving high mask "u cant have autism ure so sexy aha"

like people clearly think she's kinda odd but she's pretty so they brush it off. she only participates in the season because she's expected to not because she's necessarily nerve-wracked or offended by it, gets really excited when someone lets her talk about her interests and enjoys most the company of the one person that will deliberately sit there and not talk to her

[ds29gurl2]

Me whenever people be talking about dumb shit at work, like bitch I DON"T GIVE A SINGLE FUCK ABOUT YOUR LIFE, GO AWAY, then I calm down and feel a little bad, ONLY a little though

[vacantgodling]

✨preferences should not be standards for writing advice✨

[moonsnqil]

i hc that neil hates wearing earbuds/headphones and if he does wear them he only ever wears one side. dude is so used to always being on alert and looking over his shoulder that having the ability to hear his surroundings taken from him makes him uncomfortable

[philcoulsonismyhero]

A thing I've been thinking about a lot as I've been obsessively re-listening to the Rivers of London books on a loop and putting colour coded bookmarks into my paperbacks (in short, being Extremely Autistic about the series) is just how interesting it would be to explore what it would be like to be an autistic wizard in that 'verse.

Like, take vestigia. It's a whole extra category of sensory impressions on top of everything else that you're picking up on, and you only get more sensitive to it the longer you train for. Peter wonders at one point if Nightingale isn't just straight up listening to the magic of the city in order to find out about cases, and even if he isn't doing that he's still got to be picking up on a Huge amount of sense impressions from the magic around him. Would an autistic practitioner be even more sensitive to vestigia? Just how much of a sensory overload trigger would it be, given that it's not a true smell/sound/whatever? Do really skilled practitioners like Nightingale ever get overloaded by just how much they can sense? Would an autistic wizard have to train themselves to shut out their sense of vestigia so they didn't get overwhelmed?

And then there's how you learn magic in the first place, which is a lot of repetition, doing the same thing over and over again until you produce an effect, and then continuing to repeat it until the effect becomes consistent. And you build spells by learning more and more formae, memorising them in the process. Which sounds to me like Such an autism-friendly way of learning to do anything, I fucking love repetition and memorising huge amounts of information.

Also, it's pointed out a bunch of times that Nightingale has almost scary levels of focus. In Broken Homes he spends ages watching CCTV footage, and then a full half hour just staring at the dog batteries at Skygarden. And it's pretty obvious that his level of obsessive focus is what's made him such a powerful wizard, since he's willing to put in the hours of practice, so autistic obsessiveness would be useful too.

(Sidenote, but I'm not sure if I actually think Nightingale is a character I'd read as autistic. He's definitely got a bunch of traits in the right direction, like the single-minded focus, the scary levels of concentration, the things he's very particular about and the way he can miss Peter's sarcasm sometimes, but in his case I think it's more just his personality and training and age, plus all the trauma. But I do think it would be a fun possibility/what-if to explore.)

And when it just comes down to it, I don't think I've ever encountered a magic system that appeals more to the specific way that my brain works than the RoL one, it seems like it would be So fun to learn. Even, tbh especially, the Latin and all the other studying that's also involved. So it does rather entertain me that I've gotten really autistic over a book series that has such an autism-friendly magic system, it feels Good and Correct.

Although. Ben Aaronovitch. My guy. Give me a list of all the formae and how they work, I am Begging you. I've never wanted an in-universe textbook tie-in book as much as I do for this series and Eventually I'm going to get my hands on the TTRPG book and obsess over every little detail of how they've interpreted the magic for that.

[pathologising]

my man waiting outside the sephora for me to be done lookikg at makeup i womt buy (he's acoustic)

[goblinunderabridge]

I love size swaps 😥😥😥😥

[a-s-levynn]

Just so you know, if i disappear i either jumped off the roof or finally snapped and murdered my upper floor neighbours.

[player1064]

jan 2019 pleak 🙏

WIP asks but it's just the various sections of my happy (???) beville (/angsty carraville) WIP

---

January, 2019.

“Ugh, Carragher invited me to his birthday party.”

David looks up at Gary over his glasses, does a pretend gasp. “Your friend invited you to a party? Someone call the fuckin’ press, this sounds like the start of a national crisis.”

“Oh shush, you. D'you think I actually 'ave to go?"

"He's turning forty, ain't he? That's a big'un."

Gary hates parties. He hates Liverpool. He hates parties in Liverpool, or he will once he's actually attended one.

He remembers the Carragher convoy at international tournaments, knows they'll be out 'til the early hours of the next morning, which means that he'll have to be out 'til the early hours because he's never in his life left a party early and he's not about to start now. Which means that he won't be able to drive home at the end, which means that he'll have to stay in Liverpool overnight, and this is sounding worse and worse by the second.

"Don't suppose you fancy comin' along too?" he asks David, because why should he have to suffer alone?

David, because he is much more of a miserable bastard than people give him credit for, hums and says "can't, I'll be in London."

"I've not told you when it is yet, you twat."

"Whenever it is, I guarantee there will be very urgent business I need to attend to. In London."

"You're not very nice."

"Oi! I am delightful."

*

Just close friends and family, Jamie had said.

Gary's yet to see anyone at this fucking party that's not related to Jamie somehow. He's not sure what Jamie would qualify as a 'close friend', but it can't be too tight a group if he counts Gary among them. He'd been expecting to see Stevie, at least. Jamie's an antisocial prick who tends to rub people the wrong way but Stevie's managed to stick it out all these years, and Glasgow's not that far away.

But two hours in and there's nobody else from football there.

He'd chatted to Jamie's dad for a while, reminisced about Big Nev - a unifying power if ever there was one. Gary's not sure he's ever met someone that knew his father who hadn't loved him. He's caught up with Nicola, entertained Jamie's kids - or tried to, as much as you can with two spoilt unimpressed teenagers.

He's starting to run out of ways to pass the time, and the party's still going strong.

There's not been much opportunity to speak to Jamie, not properly. Not that he's got much to say - he'd seen him at work just a couple of days ago, and they text pretty much every day anyway. And it's not like he's brought him a present, or even a card, so he doesn't actually have a reason to pull him away from his friends.

The more he drinks, the harder it gets to parse the Scouse screeches of the other guests into recognisable words, so he grabs a can of coke and goes to hide in the bathroom for a bit, decompress.

He's checking his emails - because it's midnight on a Saturday, why wouldn't he be checking his emails? - when the door swings open, startling him. Jamie stumbles in, flushed from drinking, and when his eyes land on Gary his whole face splits into a grin.

"Gaz!" he cheers, much too loud for such a confined space. "Was wonderin' where you'd got to, I'd been startin' to think you'd flaked out on me."

Gary shrugs. "Never, Carra, you know me. Just needed a time out."

"Ah," Jamie says, nodding sagely. "Were you getting' all - " he waves his hands around his head, as if that's explanation enough. "Wassit called, again? Senses… sensory overload, innit?"

"You been talkin' to Becks?" Gary asks suspiciously, because he's the only person he can think of that uses all those weird therapy words in casual conversation. Always, at big parties, squeezing Gary's hand and saying I know it's loud, Gaz, I know it's too much. Just keep your focus on me.

"Why the fuck would I wanna talk to 'im," Jamie scoffs, and Gary feels his heart rate pick up.

Just keep your focus on me.

He thinks… he thinks there must be something wrong with him, he must've had more to drink than he thought, because -

Because he's looking at Jamie, and he finds he doesn't want to think about Becks at all. He almost wishes - and it's crazy, there has to be something wrong with him - he almost wishes there was no Becks to think about.

Jamie's looking back at him with those piercing grey eyes, and Gary's clenches his hands at his sides before they go and do something stupid like reach out to him.

He clears his throat. "Enjoyin' your party?"

The scowl fades from Jamie's face into something softer. "Yeah," he says, nodding vigorously, "it's sound."

*

It's still dark when David is woken by Gary bustling around the bedroom, but it's the middle of winter and they have blackout blinds so really it could be any time at all. He grabs his phone to glance at the time - it's not quite 6am yet, much too early for him to be waking up. Much too late for Gary to be coming to bed.

Gary comes over and pats his hair clumsily, says "sorry, Becks, din't mean to wake you. I'll go to spare room."

David's eyes are too heavy to roll them at Gary, but he huffs an exasperated sigh and wordlessly lifts up the covers for Gary to climb in next to him.

Gary climbs into bed fully clothed and immediately snuggles up to David, the way he'd never admit to liking when he's sober. He bunches his hands in the fabric of David's t-shirt and rests his head on his chest, his breath smelling like sweet wine.

"Thought you were staying over in Liverpool?" David mumbles into Gary's hair.

"Called a cab," Gary replies vaguely. "Was missin' you."

"'s only been a few hours, weirdo."

Gary whines unhappily, so he adds "I missed you too. Will you let me get back to sleep now?"

[mossy-rot]

reading about autistic meltdowns is crazy. in retrospect maybe that time i ended up sobbing self isolating and lashing out at people because I couldn't figure out how to set up my laptop the same way it had been before might've been because of The Autism

[slow-burn-sally]

Fuck your fucking funeral

Fuck your fucking wedding

Fuck your fucking weekend away

Fuck your fucking camping trip

Fuck your fucking awards ceremony

Stop inviting me to things that might cause meltdowns or burnouts and then nagging at me and guilting me when I say no.

No, I don't care if this funeral is my "last chance to say goodbye".

No, I don't care that it's my cousin's wedding, and I "should be there to support him".

Family reunion? I don't fucking care. They can email me if they want to stay in touch. I can see them separately in quiet little coffee shops on un-crowded weekdays.

If you're fine with pressuring me into activities and behaviors that harm me, then I'm fine with telling you to

JUST FUCK OFF

sincerely, your autistic friend.

[newfeeling77]

getting a shower chair when i couldnt walk was such a good investment i knew id use it forever. besides the fact i just get tired in the shower in general its nice to be able to shave without having to bend down n get lightheaded while every blood vessel in my legs are about to burst because im not built right. i love sitting down

[dannydevitosthiccdog]

Any Autistic peeps have any tips for wearing glasses? Like a specific frame or tips to stop sensory overload?

Or any neurospicy lovelies tbh.