sapphire, has the cluster emerged yet

“Bitch do I look dead”

Awward glances from everyone present

Excuse me, what did y-

What is Autistic Burnout? a guide from Autism Women’s Network

Signs: • Lack of motivation (hard to care about goals when everyday life is overwhelming) • Loss of executive functioning abilities (decision-making, organization, etc.) • Difficulty with self-care • Easier to reach overload or meltdown • Loss of speech, selective mutism • Lethargy, exhaustion • Illness, digestive issues • Memory loss • Inability to maintain masks or use social skills • Overall seeming “more autistic” or stereotypical • May have period of high energy before collapse

Causes: • Passing as neurotypical / suppressing autistic traits • Doing ‘too much’, too much stress • Aging: needing more downtime, having less energy • Changes, good or bad (relationships, jobs, living arrangements, belongings, environment, routines…) • Sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, dehydration • Illness • Sensory or emotional overload

Strategies: • Time • Scheduling breaks, managing spoons • Leave of absence • Stimming, sensory diet • Exercise • Massage • Reminders and supports • Routines • Better environment/job/etc. • Boundaries, saying ‘no’ • Dropping the mask/façade • Solitude • Absolute quiet • Creative projects, passions, special interests • Paying attention to reactions and your body

I guess this is a post about being in love, but also… not?

So a quick primer for anyone who is completely out of the loop: autistic people often have very intense interests in things. Stereotypically, these would be things like trains or dinosaurs, but just as common are interests in TV shows, films, animals, scientific topics, history, architecture, anything you like!

Autistic people’s interests are usually more intense than the interests of neurotypicals. We tend to lose ourselves thinking about them. They also dominate our topics of conversation. We become real experts and want to share our passion.

My present special interests are the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially the amount of money than Black Panther is making (already at $900m without China!), and my friend Ellis, who I have written about a fair bit.

I’m not entirely comfortable with having a special interest in Ellis. I tried to look up what other autistic people had written on this subject and couldn’t find anything substantial, so I may as well write it myself. Continues after the jump.

One morning, she gets home from work and it has just been the shittiest day ever because it was laundry day so she had to wear the clothes she hated most, the shift leader was talking about layoffs, and her car had literally exploded on the Golden Gate Bridge on the way home. She is exhausted and thinks to herself “well, at least this day can’t get worse”.

My mother later told me that uttering this sentence is like standing in front of god with your arms flung out screaming “whatca FUCKING GOT???”

She collapses in bed still in her most hated outfit and passes the fuck out.

On the bottom floor are a pair of art students who I could never quite confirm mom was quietly banging in her spare time, who were building a giant Gene Simmons statue out of scrapped denim jeans for their final project. Something about meta-symbolism. They had left a can of open turpentine by the statue and also an electrical outlet.

While no one was paying attention, the outlet sparked, the turpentine caught, and the 20foot tall Jean Simmons lit up like a goddamn fireworks show.

Mom wakes up to screaming and the sound of someone banging with all their might on every wall and door they pass in the hallway to alert the apartment dwellers of their impending fiery death. She is very tired. She hasn’t eaten in like two days. She can barely think. So she just kinda stumbles to the door. As she’s reaching it, she notices smoke coming out of her electrical outlet. Mom originally went to school for physics and mathematics before she dropped out, so she stops for a second and thinks to herself “wow, the smoke is exiting the outlet at a complete horizontal for a solid 6 inches before it starts to rise, there must be a lot of pressure buildup for that to……HOLY FUCK I NEED TO RUN” and just fucking books it out of the building.

She stands there on the ground with other students watching everything they own go up in smoke while Jean Simmons’ terrifying two story face laughs at them from behind the building. Mom says that she never got the smell of smoke and burning tar out of her most hated work outfit and eventually embraced that fact and burned them.

And as she’s standing on a street corner that evening, waiting for a bus, smelling of smoke and wondering why the fuck she’s still holding her melted records, it starts raining cats and dogs. Mom takes one look at herself in a shop window and realizes she’s not going to make it like this. But luckily she’s just hooked up with the local queer circuit, and there’s a dungeon Mistress who’s going out of town and needs someone to watch her cat. She says mom can stay there until she gets back and then she’ll help mom figure out something more permanent.

So mom picks up a key and comes by the next day. She only has to spend a few minutes in a house that doesn’t smell like soot and tar to realize how bad she must smell and decides then and there to burn her clothes. She wasn’t exactly thinking through what to do after that, and suddenly she’s staring at ashes in the fireplace and realizes she has nothing to wear anymore. At this point, mom just stops thinking, turns around, and goes to bed naked because why the hell not.

Problem is, Dungeon Mistress didn’t tell the neighbors she had a house guest. So all they know is that an incredibly be-draggled young woman who smelled terrible wandered into the apartment after Dungeon Mistress left town and started a fire in the fireplace.

So they called the cops.

Now mom hasn’t slept since the fire, in part because hello trauma and in part because sleeping on the street in SF isn’t the best choice as a 19 year old homeless girl. So she’s fuckin dead to the world. Until next thing she knows, the bedroom door of the apartment flies open and there’s this baby faced cop standing in the doorway yelling orders at her. She’s panicking and falls out of bed and is still super naked and way too tired and hungry to think properly, so as soon as she registers “gun aimed at my face” she just starts fucking LAUGHING. Like, howling, cackling, rib-cracking laughter, tears just pouring down her face the whole time.

And this cop is just fucking terrified because ~what~ the heck?? He keeps trying to yell at her and she just keeps laughing, and at some point she just sits down on the floor, still laughing, and the cop just sort of nervously drops a sheet over her and is like “I still have to ask you to leave” and mom was like “I’m fucking cat sitting?” And of course the cat chooses then to just come over and headbutt her because it’s hungry.

So mom ends up giving him Dungeon Mistress’s phone number who confirms what she’s doing there and is frankly ~fucking pissed~ that mom’s being put through this. The cop is like “maybe try not being homeless and looking like a wreck next time?” And mom looks like she might deck him so he just fuckin scoots.

Mom spent a few months couch surfing with Dungeon Crews and shelters like that before she finally managed to gather some clothes of her own and get a new job. But that experience pretty well solidified mom’s opinion of “fuuuuuuuuck cops” and set her on the path of being a political agitator.