Barista in Hell

I always wish I could have a more respectable and professional job, but the last few times I tried to do that it ended in me being taken advantage of and lied to, and I make more money now than I did for any of those times.

Both of my career options ended up being wrecked by ai too, so I would have to go back to school to do anything else. Could do ASU so it wouldn't cost anything, but just being back at college would be a nightmare.

I see a lot of allistics unable to process how meltdowns and the autistic experience as a whole feels. To them I say this: imagine your dog suddenly and horribly dies. Now imagine your dog dies if the lights are too bright. Your dog is killed when you are too stressed. Your dog dies if someone touches you repeatedly. That can be the emotional weight of autistic life in an uncaring world.

I just lost a dear pet so this is very prescient to my current experiences. The heaviness in my chest, the worry, the tears, the regrets, the lingering pain in my whole body out of grief. Feelings of that intensity are very similar to how the world sometimes makes me feel. Sometimes my reaction is to go numb, as I also did during that grief. Sometimes it comes out in anger.

After my breakdown, I'm still in full dissociation mode. Numbness. Unable to find joy in things. Every sound is overstimulating. I'm taking a day to recover, but I may have to function on fumes for a while to survive.

A lot of people see autistics through an allistic lens. In their eyes, an allistic would never act the way an autistic would unless they were trying to be manipulative, so they must be manipulative. Obviously this is untrue.

Making shallow angry points that are as weak as overcooked angelhair pasta. Their avatar blinks their seven eyes at me. It assures me it knows what makes a good [media] as they tell me what they would have done. They cherrypick and miss the point of what they're watching and refuse to accept something for what it is on its own terms, and their solutions are either a sludge of obvious biases or that everyone should hate this thing.

Even if I also don't like this thing they are ranting about, their process makes me want to throw my monitor out a window and chew a hole in the drywall.

Be humble in your criticisms. Remember that your criticism might be the first thing someone encounters on this [media], and though you can't be entirely responsible for the actions of your audience, you should absolutely word your public arguments carefully as if you have an audience full of reactionary maniacs willing to stab for clout.

When I signed up I never knew that customers could touch my heart in this way, and I'm glad to have met some truly wonderful people doing this job.

So often I feel like the language around female arousal is avoidant and passive. Bashful even. Male arousal in stories usually mentions their dick at least once or gets pretty direct with a character's wants or feelings.

He grabbed a window seat to do some work on a laptop earlier in the day, but eventually he came up to the counter and asked who picked the music station. The 80s playlist was on.

I said it was me, and he said, "I just wanted to say thank you. This brought me back to highschool prom."

And all this time, nobody cares. I've screamed into this hellscape void for ten years and nobody cares. I cry and I beg on my hands and knees and I'm made worthless by this deadening silence. I try but I can't wring anything else out of myself. Burnout. Nothing. I can't keep up. I can't keep up.

Another place left to rot away. Another journal torn to shreds. Cuts left to scab and heal. Times without food. Another name killed, another blog abandoned, another identity, useless.

Maybe they all are. Maybe I am.

Screaming in the dark. Not knowing which way is up or down. Spinning. Falling. Living. Dying.

Meanwhile I know a person who crumbles up pop tarts in broth like crackers and another who puts peanut butter on burgers. Conventional food combinations are literally just made up, like eat whatever you want. So many social conventions are just random bs we are socialized to believe is "normal," whatever that even means to begin with.

It's not hyperbole, it has happened and it will happen again. I just can't fit in.

Why am I always so close to wanting to end myself? Why am I always so tired and upset? Why can't I ever feel any peace?

The world is just covered in needles. Everything and everyone is too overstimulating. Noises, sensations, people. Everything costs too much. I just wanna stay in bed.

I may be autistic but like why do I see so many people out there that are doing so much more than me. Am I that incapable? I can't even work full time without wanting to kill myself. Little things take me from 0-100 and big things just make me go numb and it looks like I don't care.

I can't do anything right... Everyone was wrong about me. They saw potential in me but what it was was a fear of failure.