cartoon zone

accepting the whole autism thing has actually brought me so much calm, because when I was kid everyone seemed instinctively repulsed by me and I never understood why. ESPECIALLY the adults! which is a little fucked, because who are you supposed to go to about bullying if the teacher is participating? and even my family members seemed disgusted by me on some level, so I was like a cartoon parody of a human being where my closest friends were my pet rats. but reading studies on autism now, and learning about the double empathy problem, and about how neurotypical people ARE repulsed by autistic people in an uncanny valley sort of way and DO dislike them upon first encountering them (unless, ironically enough, they’re told that they’re autistic) - that’s actually been so cathartic. especially now that I’m older and have an okay-ish handle on masking, and so am no longer live in a nightmare world where literally everyone in my life seems icked the fuck out. I don’t have to discount my early memories. I can be like ohhhhh yeah that’s just something that happens. I didn’t do anything particularly bad and it’s not that I wasn’t trying, I was just born with the cursed sigil on my forehead. like ohhhhh they were reacting to the curse, ohhh okay, cool cool, that’s actually fine. I’m actually alright with that.

the unfortunate part is the wider art scene and industry as a whole is not very kind to inconsistency in identity. Oops!