@talons-mcbeak / talons-mcbeak.tumblr.com
yeah, people do lie on the internet, however i am so passionate about things that if i lie it will feel like i committed an autistic sin
if i just accidentally say something wrong i panic tbh catch me putting "to my knowledge" and "from what i remember" disclaimers on everything to account for human error
From what I remember, 1 + 1 = 2. I think. Not an expert though, feel free to fact check me! This is just an educated guess.
Just read Camp Damascus last night and it is SO GOOD for so many reasons but I especially loved that I could tell almost immediately that Rose was autistic. Something about the phrasing of her narration, obviously her extensive trivia knowledge and stimming and the way it calmed her down to learn more about the upsetting things around her… everything about it felt so perfectly familiar and relatable to me and the way it resonated in my brain was just so good. I also appreciated that she was indeed canonically autistic, but it was stated explicitly like… once. Rose being autistic was very important to the story and very important to who she was as a person and it was very visible and obvious and (for me at least) impossible to miss, but not in a way that was ever presented as something she had to overcome. It was just an interesting and sometimes relevant fact about who she was.
Even though I went in knowing this particular thing, it was immediately clear to me just from the text that Camp Damascus was written by an autistic author, and that made a huge and delightful difference.
Neurodivergent people are never undiagnosed. We are misdiagnosed. Our symptoms don't go unnoticed, and people will always attribute them to some sort of cause. They'll just attribute them to personality and blame the individual for their symptoms.
For example. My autism is not undiagnosed, it's been misdiagnosed as "too sensitive," "awkward," "rude," "obsessive," and "too intense." My brother's adhd wasn't undiagnosed, it was misdiagnosed as "lazy," "impulsive," "annoying," and "can't seem to get any work done."
Growing up without a diagnosis is growing up believing that you are to blame for your differentness. Your symptoms are a personality flaw. You are diagnosed by everyone around you as "weird."
“I can’t sleep without my stimulants” and other batshit realities of having a spicy brain
Enough of the trope where memory loss undoes the damage or the corruption or whatever. More content where removing memories just removes the context.
The tragedy of needing to grieve and not knowing what or who you lost or why. The angst of having trauma and being denied the awareness that it's trauma. The suspense of being different somehow and left to wonder how and when. The tension of knowing that something is off and you can't find where it hurts. The Adventure Zone gets it. Kingdom Hearts gets it.
There is an aching inside you and you don't know how it got there.
Fuck yes, this was a huge thing in TAZ:Balance. Also I kinda feel like, in a way, I relate a bit to this as someone who was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as an adult? As in, like… I grew up feeling Different and Disconnected and Weirdly Sad But Why?? and Somehow Broken. Like I knew something wasn’t adding up, I knew I was struggling but could never pinpoint or describe it well enough to feel like it was valid. Lots of “this feels like trauma but isn’t being recognized as trauma” situations that left me constantly trying to dig for an explanation for why I felt so deeply sad and hopeless.
It’s why I think of diagnosis as something to be celebrated. When I figured out that I’m neurodivergent and started hearing about other people’s experiences that resonated with my own, things started fitting together and feeling less Wrong. It was like I’d been trying to operate my brain without a user manual and then one day someone told me “yes you have ADHD” “yes this also sounds like autism to me” and they might as well have said “oh hey, I found this slightly tattered user manual in a drawer. looks helpful.”
The tension continues to resolve, but every time another knot gets untied I feel this kind of relief.
My parents really looked at me - the 4-year-old who once ate a slightly undercooked noodle and swore off mac n cheese for ten years, the 8-year-old whose favorite pastimes included repeatedly arranging their art supplies in very specific patterns and finding new ways to spin in circles, and then the 12-year-old who became extremely proficient with a protractor by creating a whole portfolio of unsettlingly precise drawings of the Titanic - and never once said “I wonder if this kid might have the autism”
So what kind of story / explanation did your child self come up with for why you feel different from everyone else but you as a child can't figure out why you feel that way because you can't put it into words
What was your theory as to why you were different?
Mostly that I was too stupid to figure out how to be a real person like everyone else had figured out how to. Except I was secretly stupid, because people kept telling me I was smart, and it wasn’t until I was Way Too Old that I figured out that I was allowed to disagree with people, so I kind of had this frustrating duality of “well they said I’m smart so I guess I must be” and “I am clearly the most wrong and most stupid organism on this planet”
Which morphed slightly toward “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here because I definitely don’t fit” and veered in the direction of “I don’t know what I am but I sure don’t think I’m a person” except also I still had to be what everyone said I was (that is: human, and also smart) so honestly I just kind of floated aimlessly and dissociated my way through a few decades or so. Didn’t really make a whole lot of life choices or big moves, because I assumed I’d fuck it up and then everyone would know that I’d been a Wrong Person all along. I mean, if you have enough people telling you that you’re “too smart to [insert neurodivergent struggle here],” you don’t ever really learn to trust your own abilities or intelligence.
For a big chunk of my life, I had paralyzing anxiety about just like… existing in front of other people. Especially friends, you know, the people I wanted to keep around and therefore could not afford to upset or make uncomfortable. I’d go entire days without eating because I was embarrassed to do it in front of people in case I did it wrong. I eliminated a lot of colloquial language from my vocabulary just in case I was using a phrase wrong. One time in art class I failed a project because the paint was on the other side of the room and I was terrified to walk over there in case I did it wrong, so I used colored pencils on a painting assignment and pretended that I was just asserting individuality. I had a ton of experience with being mocked and bullied for things I didn’t even realize someone could be bullied for, so I never knew when any small thing I did would turn out to be another reason for people to bully me. So I tried to just kind of stop doing things.
I felt like an alien anthropologist, trying to piece together the intricacies of human relationships and human actions when I didn’t really have a lot of innate context for how it was all supposed to work. My friends made fun of me for not eating like “haha, what are you, some kind of robot?” and I panicked because they’d come too close to seeing that I was honestly just bad at being a person.
Anyway, it turns out that I’m autistic and have ADHD, and knowing that has helped me feel more like a real person. I’m not a wrong person, just a neurodivergent one. And I also finally got some actual friends who have a better sense of humor than “lol let’s fuck with the weird kid and bully her if she gets upset about being bullied.” 😂
why are schoolchildren so much better at detecting autism in girls than legit doctors
after seeing a knowledgeable pediatrician ur whole life you’ll finally get evaluated as a teenager and they’ll be like “I am forced to concede...that you may have a slight case of the Ass Burgers”
when Melissa, Kelsey and Sophie from the third grade will look at you for .5 seconds, simultaneously be like “this other small girl has something wrong with her” and give you lifelong trauma without even referring you to a psychologist
growing up without a fidget toy moodboard
Excuse me I believe you forgot “whatever jewelry I happen to be wearing” and “whatever I happen to be holding” and “destroying the nearest piece of paper”
i hate it when people ask me to "explain my thought process" like hell if i know
"what's going on in that head of yours?" nothing i want to be a part of
“Where do you GO when you space out?” my dude I don’t have the slightest idea what the geographical location of The Void is 🤷🏻♀️
I keep forgetting that NT people don’t do math the same way people with ADHD do it until I try to explain my thought process and get weird looks from people who are like “how the FUCK did you do that?”
whoops
and for those of you who DON’T know what I’m talking about I’ll give you an example
42 + 29 = 71
for neurotypical people, they use the method we were all taught in grade school where you add 9 + 2 to get 11 and then move the extra one over to make 4 + 2 + 1 which equals 7 to give you 71
but the way I do it (as many other people with ADHD as I’ve come to find out) is this:
okay so you have 42 + 29. if you take 1 away from 42 and give it to 29 to make it an even 30, you now have 41 + 30 which is an easy 71
or, another problem: 53 + 88
round that 88 up to 90 and take the two from 53 so you have 51 + 90. but wait I can make this easier. take 10 more from 51 to make 90, 100 and now you have 41 + 100 which equals 141
it’s just…so much faster? and makes so much more sense to me
also? the math teachers that always took off points for kids not showing their work?
fucking HATED that. as someone who could get from point A to point D in my head in a split second, I felt like showing my work was often a waste of time when sometimes it felt like I just automatically knew the answer
or, if I did put down my work, I went through a process that wasn’t taught and would get points reduced anyway because it wasn’t the way we were taught just because my brain worked differently than the rest of the class. my answer was always right. they just didn’t like how I got it
never did like that much
also, this is another way of doing it that I just saw on facebook that I’ve also done before
because I do things to that extent too
so if you give me something like 37 + 45 I’ll go “well 30 + 40 is 70 and 7 + 5 is 12 so 70 + 12 is 82″
there’s just…so many ways to do math that make more sense than the way I was taught
this post got a lot more popular than I was expecting wow
I’ve seen some people reblogging this saying they don’t have adhd but have autism and yes! People with autism do this too! I’ve learned that a lot of people with adhd and/or autism do things that overlap and this is one of them!
I….thought everyone did math like this
Ok yes, I’m autistic and have ADHD, but i was TAUGHT to do math like this, were yall not taught to do it this way??
I do a thing where I close my eyes and trace the numbers in the air with my fingers so I can see them like a math problem written out, then solve it as I would on paper except by tracing numbers in the air with my eyes closed like I’m some sort of wild mathematics necromancer, so idk what that means but it probably isn’t what you’d call “correct” or “typical” or “not unsettling in the least”
Ah there it is, the second version
I can’t even express in any kind of intelligible human words just how much I want this to be a real thing and immediately in my possession
- I have too many things I must p u r g e and o r g a n i z e
- why the fuck did I just say that???
- my arm feels Wrong I need to Get Rid of It
- I cracked my knuckles on one hand now I gotta do the other one so they’ll be Even
- not realizing how stressed you are until you stim for the first time in a while and it feels like you can finally breathe again
- I know you’re talking to me….. but fuck if I know what you’re sayin
- those Good Textures™
- I need to Do The Thing but I can’t get up until I finish the First Thing
- alternatively: bold of you to assume ive ever been able to finish anything in my life
- “why are you so s e n s i t i v e”
- feeling like it’s all Too Much and Not Enough at the same time so i guess I’ll die
- “It’s 95 degrees out why are you wearing a cardigan??” *because it’s Comforting and Good* oh I’m just always cold haha!
- this would be better if it were color coded
- maybe if I hit myself hard enough my brain will Stop Screaming
- attention span? I Don’t Know Her
I didn’t ask to be called out like this but here we are now 😂
What y’all think ‘gifted child’ discourse is saying: I used to be special and now I’m not and that makes me sad.
What ‘gifted child’ discourse is ACTUALLY saying: The way many educational systems treat children who’ve been identified as ‘gifted’ is actively harmful in that it a. obliges kids to give up socialising with their same-age peers in favour of constantly courting the approval of adult ‘mentors’ who mostly don’t give a shit about them, b. demands that they tie their entire identity to a set of standards that’s not merely unsustainable, but intentionally so, because its unstated purpose is to weed out the ‘unworthy’ rather than to provide useful goals for self-improvement, and c. denies them opportunities to learn useful life skills in favour of training them up in an excruciatingly narrow academic skill-set that’s basically useless outside of an institutional career path that the vast majority of them will never be allowed to pursue.
also: the way “gifted” children are taught largely just rewards them for already knowing things or having a specific skill come easily to them, and thus not only gives them severe anxiety about asking for help or not knowing something right away for fear of disappointing those adult mentors, but also actively discourages them from learning HOW to learn things and pick up new skills, thus sabotaging any life they might try to pursue outside of that institutional career.
Plus, not only is it possible to be “twice exceptional” - aka “gifted” and have a disability that can make learning more difficult - if you’re “gifted”, people usually don’t notice you have a disability.
So you spend your life split between being academically smart and then also unable to do basic, day-to-day functions and being told that you’re “too smart to struggle with this”.
Like, I do believe that neurotypical “gifted” kids are also fucked up by the system, but the majority of people who I personally know who complained about the system turned out to be neurodivergent in some way but didn’t know when they originally started in “gifted child” discourse.
And I’m going to take a stab and say that the people hit the hardest by this are probably women with ADHD, as their presentation usually looks like their life falling apart at/post-uni.
So you can spend your entire life being told you’re definitely going to succeed - and usually you’re pushed to specific career/life goals - and then overnight, your life falls apart and you can’t figure out why.
Oh hey it’s 10000% me
So like... what do I DO about it ???
friend, jokingly: omg i hate you
my hellbrain, unable to tell if they’re actually joking or not: haha yeah
same hellbrain, lying in bed that night: hey i’m just going to casually replay the audio of that person you care about saying the words ‘i hate you’ over and over and are you sure they were joking? because it kinda sounds like they’re saying they hate you
trauma goblins joining the party: hey while we’re on the subject, wasn’t it cool when all those other people had you convinced that they didn’t secretly hate you and want you to go away forever and then you turned out to be the idiot for actually believing they loved you? that sure did fun things to your ability to trust people to legitimately like you, huh?
me, trying to fucking function: thisisfine.jpg
Yesterday I found out that someone I used to respect thinks, and has been telling other people, that I am incapable of taking on new responsibilities I’ve just been given, because of inaccurate and derogatory information about my mental health that was shared with her three years ago without my consent.
She has been telling people that I “won’t be able to handle” my new role and added “especially if she goes off her meds,” which is a) not something she should have any knowledge of and b) certainly not something I’m inclined to do in any case, and she has no real reason to think I would.
Fortunately, this person is not in any position to influence my ability to keep or perform my new role, and the people who are in those positions are supportive and have confidence in me. But it’s only in the past few months that I’ve had that kind of support, and before that, the people who did have that influence were of the same mindset and refused to give me any responsibility or recognition specifically because they believed (and put a lot of effort into telling anyone who would listen) that I was inherently an unstable person and therefore incapable of doing anything well. They believed those things because I had trusted them enough to share some information about my mental health and neurodivergence - they were my friends at the time, so it felt safe - and instead of being respectful with that information and listening to what I told them about my actual limitations and skills, they chose instead to use it against me, share it widely without my consent in a very derogatory light, and characterize me based on inaccurate stereotypes they held about mentally ill and neurodivergent people. They held positions of power in the organization and used that personal knowledge about me to take away responsibilities I had already been given (and was performing well) and restrict me from taking on any other roles, even if that meant overworking themselves to cover things that I could have been doing much more capably.
That’s the short version.
All of that is over now, the primary abuser was recently ousted from the organization, and the new leaders are aware of this history and have fought to put an end to the abuse and discrimination. We are working toward a culture of collaboration and inclusiveness, with an emphasis on building people up so that we can have a successful organization of successful people. I have recently been given the role I’ve been referencing here, which is large and daunting but exciting at the same time. I’ve also been given a role I have dearly wanted for several years, which is definitely one of the sweetest rewards of this whole process. Other people have also started to get the respect and recognition they deserve. We aren’t perfect, but we aren’t toxic anymore either.
I’m writing this for a few reasons. First of all, because I think ableist discrimination is often overlooked and the impact underestimated. I wanted to write (as clearly as I can without naming names or going into a ton of detail) about my experience of being held back and discriminated against in very specific ways because I am not neurotypical. The only reason I can talk in the past tense about this is because the people who chose to be closed-minded and abusive have been replaced by people who choose to be accepting and supportive. I’m also writing this because I was upset to hear that the person I wrote about in the first two paragraphs still not only believes what people told her in bad faith but is still sharing that information with other people, also in bad faith. Writing tends to help me process things that are upsetting, and I wanted to emphasize that while it’s hurtful, it isn’t going to get in the way of my ability to do things well. As my friend said last night when we talked about it: “Prove them wrong.” They can say and think whatever they want, but it’ll be awfully hard to compete with my actions and abilities that prove their ableism wrong. Having said that, it isn’t right that their ableism creates an extra level of pressure for me to excel without any missteps. It’s an additional barrier, or at least a hurdle, that I have to navigate as a person who wants to succeed and be respected while not being neurotypical. I don’t know how their ableism (coupled with their tendency to disparage people through gossip) will affect professional relationships I need to have in my new role. I’m hoping that our mutual contacts will be willing to get to know me and be open to working with me, and that their impressions of me won’t be poisoned by malicious gossip.
This whole experience has affected me in a lot of different ways, not all of which are great, but one of the better outcomes is knowing that I’m willing and able to persevere and fight for the things I genuinely care about, and that I’m a lot less willing than I thought I was to let most people’s negative opinions of me bring me down. It just makes me want to prove them wrong.
