uwu

and when you’re autistic things often hurt you more. or things hurt you that don’t hurt others. and you’re basically brainwashed into thinking nothing is “really” as painful or as frightening as it feels to you because Normal people can recover easily from it, and the problem is you, why can’t you get over it.

And if you know you’re autistic, you know that others don’t feel what you’re feeling, but you can’t prove that.

And it just fucks you up so badly. Because it’s not about if “what happened was bad enough.” Your distress and pain are completely private experiences that you will never be able to prove to anyone, and that’s the end of it.

Like the subjectivity of experience is just such a cruel joke. People have to take your word for it that the lights hurt you

To take the example further. Everything in the world is built around the assumption that the lights don’t hurt. And asking you to be in the room for long periods with the lights that hurt you is always going to be a reasonable request, even though something that causes most people equal amounts of distress and pain would not be.

And if you are visiting a place that you’ve never been and you ask “are the lights the ones that hurt” they’ll always say no because to them, to almost everyone, that’s true

And you don’t know what people will say when you say “this hurts me.” If they’re kind maybe they will believe you. But probably they will say “no it doesn’t.”

“Back in my day we didn’t have any of these childhood protective things, we were smart enough not to do stupid shit on our own!” Except your little neighbour, who got the funniest idea at the age of seven, and got his skull pierced when he slipped?

“Back in my day nobody got divorced, we stuck together and fixed our problems!” What about your cousin, who was slowly killed by her husband because she had nowhere to escape him?

“Back in my day nobody had ‘mental problems’, we didn’t whine, we just toughed it out and endured life!” Hey remember that guy you used to work with, who seemed really friendly and normal, and then suddenly hanged himself ‘for no reason’?

“Back in my day we didn’t have any of this ‘gay’ or ‘transgender’ thing.” You did, but your family cut all ties with her before you were born.