#you ARE the neurodivergent child crying hysterically

[inhaledpie4]

Lol why do all the trad hoes on here always have borderline personality disorder or autism? This how you cope with being an overly dependant child who does nothing but cry hysterically all day?

I think you'll find that this is predominantly a neurodivergent social media platform. It should not be surprising to you that not only are all the "trad hoes" neurodivergent, but literally everyone else on this hellsite is, too.

[lifeisbooksandcats]

Just lil autistic things from when I was a child.

As an autistic adult (29 years old) (not professionally diagnosed, but something I’ve thought about myself for the past 12 years and just recently something I’ve spent far too much of my free time researching and I honestly do think that I am), I look back at my childhood with the thought of “WHY didn’t ANY adult in my life see any of this as ‘not normal’ and try to HELP me??”

- I was very advanced in some areas, mostly reading and writing; I was reading independently by the age of about 2 and a half/3. From the time I started kindergarten, I was always reading “far above grade level”. The first Harry Potter book came out when I was in second grade and I was just one of 3 kids between the two second grade classes at my school who had a high enough reading level for that to be independent reading. For writing, I have always always always, my entire life, been able to express my thoughts better on paper than verbally. I’ve always enjoyed writing. I would write essays upon essays about things I liked for no other reason than I just wanted to. Being alone with a book or something to write with was my happy place.

- My first real total and complete meltdown (that I can remember at least) (which my mom says was the start of my ‘very real anxiety problem’ (which she apparently noticed but literally never did anything to help me??? But that’s for another post another time.)) was when I was about 5(ish). We lived with my grandparents at the time, and my grandparents and I went to Florida to visit my aunt and uncle. My sister and mom stayed home. While we were gone, there was a fire that destroyed my grandparents’ house. My mom and sister and our dogs got out, but our cats died in the fire. So we get home from vacation, our house is gone, our cats are gone, we have to stay with a neighbor (who smoked and her house always smelled like cigarettes and I just remember the smell making me so sick to my stomach constantly) while the house is being fixed/rebuilt, our dogs are boarded at the vets office because we can’t have them in the neighbor’s apartment...we left for vacation and everything was normal, we get back and EVERYTHING is different, so obviously I’m already on edge.. we went to go visit our dogs and take them on a walk, and I kept turning around to make sure our car was still there..we went around a corner, so the next time I turned around I couldn’t see our car anymore and I had a full on MELTDOWN. I threw myself to the ground, I cried hysterically, and my family just chuckled and said I was dramatic and overreacting and the car was just around the corner. Did I overreact? I mean absolutely. Looking back, I can see how my reaction to not being able to see the car anymore was...a lot. Given the exact same circumstances, would a neurotypical child have reacted the exact same way? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

- I HATED the feel of paper. Oh my god I hated it. Even now as an adult, if I’ve had an incredibly long day or if I’m tired, I still sometimes can’t bring myself to touch it. I used to wear long sleeves constantly (or keep a sweatshirt nearby if I had short sleeves on) so I could pull my sleeves over my hand when I had to write so I wouldn’t feel the paper. I don’t know how to explain it, but the feel of paper would make my skin crawl. Even the tiniest bit of my skin touching it would send a chill down my back and I felt like I could “hear” the way it felt and the “sound” hurt my ears. In high school, I HATED going to history or science class not because I didn’t like the subject (I didn’t enjoy history, but I loved my science classes), but because the thought of having to touch the pages in the textbook made me nauseous.

- While *most* of the time I could handle listening to the car radio, there were times especially if I had had a long day, or was stressed or overwhelmed that I literally could NOT listen to the radio because I didn’t know what order the songs were going to play in. We spent a lot of time in the car listening to the same 3 cassette tapes again and again. I had a blue SanDisk MP3 player that idk if it was defective or what, but the songs ALWAYS played in the same order. If you hit shuffle, the first song to play would be a random one, but it would always play the same song after that one. I found comfort in knowing if X is playing, I know Y is next and Z is after that.

- My sister and I shared a bedroom (we had bunk beds) and she had a fan the clipped onto the rungs of the ladder of the bunk bed and the sound of the fan...the vibration of it against the wooden ladder... it HURT my ears. There would be nights I would cry and cry because I couldn’t sleep because my ears were hurting so bad because of the fan. Any time I would turn it off, my mom would get so mad at me. I remember her telling me “your sister needs the fan in order to sleep!” I would respond that I couldn’t sleep because of the sound, and she would tell me to grow up and get over it because I was the older one. And my sister would snore just a little bit, not super loudly, but loud enough that it distracted me from falling asleep. I would be so tired and frustrated, all I wanted was for her to “stop breathing so loudly”..

- I was annoying/bossy about playing games. I needed to know the rules and needed everyone to follow the rules. And if someone broke the rules, I remember sternly telling my friends “that’s NOT how you play”, if they broke the rules again, I didn’t want to play that game with them anymore. Way too often, I would tell my friends they were playing wrong. Even games we would make up, I had to know the rules and everyone HAD TO play CORRECTLY.

- I’ve always kept some sort of music player with me at basically all times - from a cassette player, to a CD player, to an MP3 player, to an iPod, to an iPod video, to my phone... and when the world was too loud (ESPECIALLY on the school bus or in the cafeteria) I could just put headphones in and listen to music and escape from the world being too much.

- My parents got my ears pierced when I was a baby; even as a toddler I remember HATING them being pierced. I hated the way they felt, I hated how they felt too tight on my ears, I hated the weight of them, even just little studs, I could FEEL them, I was constantly aware of them and I didn’t like it.. and I couldn’t take them out. I remember being told “but you’re a GIRL and the earrings are PRETTY!” I remember the relief I felt when I learned that if you played a sport at school you weren’t allowed to have earrings in. I remember signing up for soccer in third grade JUST BECAUSE I would get to take my earrings out, and just the joy/relief I felt not having to wear them. And I haven’t worn them again since third grade.

- I used to organize my and my sister’s CDs and cassettes obsessively. Alphabetical order by artist or band name, and in order by the year they came out. At least once a week I would have to check to make sure everything was still in order. I did the same with my books on my bookshelf. They had to be organized. And they had to be organized CORRECTLY.

- I HATED the feeling of my toes touching each other. Oh my god I hated it so much. Any time I had shoes on, I HAD TO wear toe socks so they wouldn’t be directly touching. It made me feel physically ill, anxious, uncomfortable. I cannot even put into words how much I absolutely hate hate HATED the feeling of my toes touching each other. Which I know is the weirdest thing to have that kind of a reaction to, but..possibly a sign that something was up in my lil childhood neurodivergent af brain.

[thetumblingdyspraxic-blog]

Oh my god I got some healing done today

I've stolen that phrase from my friend's mum, she says it after a really nice day catching up with people you love. I had such a great day like that today.

I have a friend who is 22 years older than me and a couple of times during my childhood she lived with us. She is almost certainly the most bizarre person I know, almost definitely neurodivergent. Even though I'm an only child I feel this is what having a sister must be like. And honestly? She was the biggest and best influence I could have had.

At the age of two, we started making in-jokes with each other consisting of silly ways of saying certain words. Which we do to this day. A lot of this involves screeching and cackling like witches. Literally no one else understands what we mean when we do this, we can have whole conversations like it that make no sense to anyone else.

When I was three or four she used to take me on walks and I would never be told off for skipping or running in squiggles or climbing on *everything*. If there was a wall I'd walk on it and pretend I was on a tightrope. She'd look behind her and laugh and say "you and your flippin' walls"

When I was nine I got my period. My mum gave me a leaflet and a biology lesson. My friend screamed on the other end of the phone "WHAT A BLOODY NIGHTMAAAARE" in her best witch voice and every month I'd phone her and say "NIGHTMAAAAAARE" in the witch voice and we'd have a five minute moan about the fall of the uterine wall before getting on to less serious topics

One Christmas I remember us wrapping her dog in a blanket and squealing "IT'S THE BABY JESUS" and the joke didn't die for years.

When I was being bullied at school she took up martial arts and made me go with her. Probably saved my life because it gave me something to hold on to when she wasn't there.

She's half Indian and does not understand what the word "mild" means. Nowadays I can handle whatever she cooks but imagine being eleven and weaned on bland British nonsense and then trying to swallow pilchards marinated in hellfire

Me "I SAID MILD HOW MANY CHILLIES DID YOU PUT IN THIS"

Her "idk like 6, maybe 7? That's not a lot?"

Me *chugs milk from the carton*

I remember my mum getting sooooo pissy when I info dumped about my Special Interests because I made such little sense but my friend just listened and joined in with randomly quoting stuff out of nowhere. To this day we still just take it in turns to info dump at each other and scream quotes in the witch voice, quote poetry and laugh hysterically.

I didn't see her for a long time, but one day I turned up on her doorstep crying after having left my abusive parent and she opened the door and said "Oh my God. I'll put the kettle on". She just took me in without a second thought in her tiny flat and helped me get back on my feet and go back to university when I thought I'd have to drop out.

Even though she doesn't do hugs or physical contact or big displays of emotion (complete opposite of me) she tells me she loves me in strange little ways. I have trichotillomania and while I hadn't gone bald in years, I must have been doing it loads when I first moved in with her. One evening I remember her just sitting on the sofa behind me and taking my hands away from my head and holding them in my lap. And she didn't move, she just sat there for ages holding my hands so I didn't pull my hair.

Tonight we were drinking gin and tonics and feelin' groovy and she was all like "shame the weather's bad, I bought this to put in the fire when you weren't looking. You'd love it if you were sober so it'd be magical right now. Go on take it home with you and use it with your boyfriend on the beach." It was a little packet of powder that makes the fire go all different colours. She knows I am aaaaall about bright colours.

People with difficulties like mine, I'm not saying they don't need famous people as role models because clearly, they do. But you don't have to have made it in life to make a difference to a child. Some children need a slightly dysfunctional, largely misunderstood neurodivergent adult who knows what it's like to be on the outside of acceptable society looking in. And the beauty of it is, once you've got someone else like it, you don't look in and wish you were normal. You forget why normal was ever so great in the first place.