We are all dogs in god's hot car

people have asked me if i'm manic when i've:

cut my own bangs

gone on a spontaneous camping trip (camping is my known lifelong hobby)

slept with someone on a first date

planned a last-minute weekend trip

gone to see a late-night movie alone

like if you're afraid to do stuff alone that's fine but it's not a fucking symptom that i know how to cut my own hair.

once i was excitedly infodumping about my special interest (autistic) and someone said 'you're talking really fast, are you manic right now?'

"work" has done many terrible things such as

make my friend go there

make my wife go there

One fantastic thing about the Death Note is (I don't recall this explanation in the anime, but it was explicitly explained in the manga) you can't use it to peripherally kill people. Only the person you name and picture dies. Otherwise Light could try to kill targets whose names he doesn't know by finding the names of those close to them and writing in murder-suicides or whatever. So if you kill five billionaires in a yacht fire that otherwise wouldn't have happened, the serving staff etc. will survive their fated lifespan. (The remaining lifespan thing has always been pretty awkward re: causality; we know that using the Death Note to kill people does change the lifespan of others via its influence on the world so one would imagine that it should shorten other lifespans and not being able to shorten them to a near-immediate death seems arbitrary, but let's not poke at that fabric lest we start wearing pot holes into it.)

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

People often ask me about my unmasking journey and express surprise to hear that such a big part of it has been 1) accepting I must avoid light/the sun and 2) wearing clothes I can stand.

I’ll play it jokey and say it like “well it took me far too long to realize that my former wardrobe made me want to jump off a bridge.” Or “turns out my old underwear was anti-autistic.” Or “for whatever reason when it’s too bright, I can’t think.”

cast & crew wages: $1,200 + uber eats

fake blood (assuming generous discount on bulk purchase): $2,000,000 i am so not kidding i did the math this is nuts