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Special interests within autism can cause clinically significant impairments in one's life.

Special interests can borderline obsession and addiction and compulsion. They can even run inline with addiction, obsession, and compulsion.

Special interests aren't always knowing everything about it, researching it, and infodumping, or engaging in it in multiple ways.

Sometimes autistics don't know much about them, some will not research them, some autistics won't infodump about them. Some autistics only every engage in their interest in a very restricted and fixated way, a very limited way.

I honestly think some autistics get special interests and hobbies mixed up. You are allowed to have hobbies you are very passionate about, love to talk about, and have a vast knowledge on them. There are many allistics in this world who have hobbies just like that and with such an intensity.

Uhm.. Actually, you can be. There's a lot of people who are honest when answering that question. They just do it in ways that don't come across so upsetting or depressing.

Many people sugarcoat their answers to be more palatable for a greeting, or for a start of a conversation. It can also just be a polite way of giving others an out for a potential depressing conversation they may not want to be a part of.

These responses usually come in forms like, - "How are you?/How's it going?" - "Could be better." "It's definitely going." "I'm still alive." "I'm getting there." "New day, new problems." "Well, I'm still here." "Same old." "It's not all sunshine." "It's moving along". "It is what it is." "Not great but I'll survive." "Hoping tomorrow comes quickly." And many more responses like this. These are all ways of basically saying "Things are kinda/very shit at the moment for me". But they just don't go into detail about it. They are being honest, without the extra information.

If the other person doesn't want to go further into this then they may just responed with something like "I feel you", or "That's relatable", or "Yeh, that's life". Which are basically ways of saying "I acknowledge things aren't easy right now", without having to go into a conversation about it. Not everyone has the emotional energy to deal with conversations like that in that moment and that's okay.

CELESTIAL METALS!!

this painting by andrew wyeth has got SO many ghosts in it. most andrew wyeth paintings have ghosts in, but this is off the scale!

this painting by dragan bibin has only one ghost as far as i can tell, but it's a really scary ghost (the dog thinks so too)

this painting by meraud guevara looks very peaceful, but unfortunately it has a ghost in it. i can't tell you where, but it does

you might think you can see the ghosts in this dorothea tanning painting, but you're wrong. the little girls are just ordinary girls. the actual ghost is behind one of those doors.