It has been a while... Not that I regret this blog, I am genuinely proud of most of my previous writing, though, if I were to compile it all into some book I'd probably spend days, weeks, if not months, rephrasing sentence after sentence. I am, after all, an anxious fuck. Whenever I publish some piece of content for the world to consume I immediately start thinking of all the ways I could have done it better. Do it better, do it better, do it better. Perfectionism is a human flaw, and despite my autism telling me that I am entitled to identify as something of an alien, or an android, I am still very much human.
But, hey, here's the news. My father died earlier this year. Y'know that line by Camus? Obviously, you've all read The Stranger, so you are aware of how that novella starts. "Aujourd'hui, Maman est morte." And of course, as all of life is a long debate, the best translation is disagreed upon. But I like to keep it simple and straightforward. Mother died today. What's important is that the story's main character doesn't want to dwell on the past, he doesn't like to get all emotional. No melodrama needed or appreciated. To him, it's just the naked reality that he's found himself in. Maman is no more. A simple and true statement. He is a son whose maternal parentage is now relegated to the world that was, the past. She is deceased. Mommy has kicked the bucket. Really, no matter how we express ourselves, we belong to the present here and now, and words can only describe our reality, they cannot alter it. Why waste time with more flowery speech? She's dead. That's that.
In January, my father died. I could say that my father has gone off waltzing to the other side, or that he's with St. Peter now, but I prefer to say that he's just dead. What's important is that the individual who is half-responsible for my genetic heritage is gone. I will never once again get the chance to speak to him, I will never once again get to hear his voice, I will never once again get to think of him in the present tense. He is simply gone. He is, quoth the raven, "nevermore."
Am I sad? Of course I am. Tom was my dad. I am named after him. I am Fredrik Erik Tom. And Erik was the name of my maternal grandfather. I am straddled with two middle-names that will now forever remind me of two father figures that I have lost. Not that I really feel much animosity over that, after all, isn't that the purpose of middle-names? To remind you of some person you were named after, when they were an adult and you were just a newborn? If you end up dying before the person you were named after, well, I'd consider that to be a tragedy. I guess I have to view it as my purpose, now, to carry on the memory of these two men. And one day, I'll have children of my own, and I'll name them Erik and Tom. Though, it's gonna get awkward if I only end up only with daughters...
But this hypothetical child of mine, this daughter named Hecate Erika Tom, she won't have the same impression of these names as I do. To her, the names would lack substance, the real icky stuff that life is made from. These deceased men are kin of hers, and she might enjoy being told about them, but they are family members that died long before she entered this world. To me, they played an instrumental part in my viscous adolesence and, at least one of them, stuck around for long enough to watch me solidify into an adult. My grandfather died when I was fairly young, and it took me some time to become aware of just how much of my artistic sensibility I owe to him. Yes, I can appreciate him, and my likeness to him, even after he's gone, but my mental picture of him is still influenced by having once known him as a living and breathing organism.
I wonder if my child could ever know their grandfather Tom as anything more than just this theorical ghost of history...
I mourn. Of course I do. It is hard to know just how you're supposed to lament the passing of those you've lost. Are you supposed to be strong, stoic, and protestant about it? Or are you supposed to wear all black, weep openly, and convert to Catholicism? My world hasn't changed much since my father died, in fact, what has occurred is likely to be thought of as being for the better. My father left behind a dear inheritance. My sister will be able to take over his winsome house, and I will be able to take over her comfy apartment. From the perspective of living-standards, we both seem to be benefitting from our father's death. And he had a life-insurance! I thought only murder victims killed by their spouses had those.
And I know my father wanted us to inherit something big from him. In his final years he'd every so often talk about the things he were looking to leave behind to the next generation. He was very happy when he finally paid of his mortgage, seemingly just because he was now able to continue saving up more money. He never spent any money, it was blatantly obvious that he never intended to spend it on anything special. Yes, once he talked about maybe going on a long cruise somewhere, but that never happened. He intended for the money to go to us. He was never an expressive person, but I know that this was one way he could show me and my sister that he cared for us. And that is admirable, I suppose. But he was a cold and unemotional dad. Money doesn't really change that.
Yeah, my daddy was a difficult man. I never disliked him, but I often felt sorry that I didn’t have more of a connection with him. And, as his son, I was often thought to have the closest relationship with him. At times it made me feel so uncomfortable hearing others talk about my father with animosity, knowing that I was the one who spent the most time with him. Though, I can't blame anyone for struggling to cope with him. I struggled, too. But even just sitting together in resolute silence, like two proper muted norsemen, I think I got to know the sort of person that he was.
He wasn't a mean-spirited man, but he wasn't a considerate man. I think he could have done so much more to make others feel better, to make them feel more content and more happy, but I don’t think he ever meant any harm to anybody else. In many ways, I think he wasn’t equipped well-enough to deal with life. Mentally or emotionally. My father lacked that special “something” needed to make it easier to create deeper bonds with others. Possibly not aided by the fact that he had such an icy relationship with his mother, who once openly told him she never really wanted him, at all.
Was my father autistic? I don’t know. I want to say no. Because if my father was autistic, then the form of autism he had, it led to nothing good. I am autistic, and I like to think of myself as receiving just as many positive traits from my peculiar neurology as negative once. I think of autism as complex, and frankly wonderful, in its own way. It’s a smashing rainbow of diversity, with so many ways it can manifest itself, for better or for worse. My father just seemed so, monotonous. Especially late in life, when all he did was wake up and watch sports, then go to bed, rarely eating anything more than some bland porridge and a carrot. But I guess that sticking to one's routines is considered a hallmark of autism.
I don’t want that existence to be the one I have to look forward to. My father never really seemed to express any real enthusiasm for life in the end. I’ve heard that the seventies is when people are supposed to be at their happiest, but my dad died at the age of seventy-seven, and he seemed more depressed than ever. It's sad to think that your close family member died dissatisfied with life. A lot of it had to do with his busted knee. He could not walk, the way he used to. He used to go on these long walks, and he used to have friendly, if mostly shallow conversations with a wide range of people. Again, my father struggled with forming profound bonds with other people, but he wasn't a surly or misanthropic individual. He seem to have been positively well-liked by most of the people who casually knew him.
I grew up in one of those places that’s something of a bland mix between a suburb and a small town. It's the best of two worlds, and the worst of two worlds. I can't say I love the place I grew up, but I also can't say that I hate the place I grew up. Some of the folks that my father ended up casually connecting with were people that he had been roughly familiar with for a long time. They shared the same stomping grounds, they walked the same earth, they drank the same water. We’re never going to feel as interconnected as we once upon a time felt when our little village was all that we truly knew of the world. But, there is something to be said about being able to pass by some house you haven’t seen in a while and knowing who exactly lives there and how you are, even in the most esoteric and faint way, known to them.
“Oh, don’t you know that kid you once went to school with, that you once played football with for a summer back in the nineties? Well, it turns out I had a really good chat with that person’s grandparents.”
Yeah, dad, I am vaguely familiar with that kid, sure. He had really blond, almost white hair, and it was very curly. I remember playing football with him, though, I never liked him and I certainly never liked playing football. It is easy to regard your surroundings growing up as something of a prison, or the trial process you're over-eager to get done with. Most of the kids I remember growing up alongside I would never as an adult choose to spend any time with. They were dreadfully dull people. I am not sure any of them would appreciate me starting this blog post by referencing Camus.
My parents decided to move here. I did not make the decision to be born here. Now, I am not all that struck by wanderlust. I wish not to move to some other country or some other region far away from home. I'd be quite content one day owning a quaint little house, with a sizeable area for me to convert into an artistic workshop, somewhere north of Stockholm, in Roslagen, the part of the country that I am from. But ideally, it shouldn't be exactly where I am from. If I could move some slight difference away, say some neighbouring municipality, then I'd be most pleased. Like I think most people, I want more of the same, just also vaguely not quite the same.
It always felt like my father was fixed in place. Permanent. Actually, it felt as if my father was some damn heavy rock, some soul that would always stay where he was, in just that position, forever and forever. Stubborn. Inflexible. Unyielding. Like those glacial erratics, big giant boulders found around the northern hemisphere. Part of me is as shocked by the disappearance of my father as I would be if some ancient mountain where to simply vanish. Tom? Dead? How did the gods allow that to happen? Fathers can die, just like that?
But in his youth, he wasn't so sedentary. My father used to entertain us with stories about his wayfaring youth. His adventures in France. The joys he felt going skiing. All the wine and cognac he drank. That time he got accidentally engaged with some farmer’s daughter. In all his tales, he seemed like such a different person, an individual so lush with life and with enthusiasm. I was enraptured hearing these tales from my dad, a person superficially so passionless. But it also hurt. To learn that a person so close to you used to have a daring and exciting life, then things changed just as you came into the picture.
I guess that this post is coming too late. I could have written this when he was still alive, I could have done something to express these thoughts to him when he was still capable of responding to my woes. But, at the same time, I don’t think I’d have the same perspective. The memories I have of my father are conflicted. Confusing, actually. But only now am I beginning to see some greater narrative emerging. We all need that. Some story to tell ourselves. It is important not to fall into the predictable traps, not to make reality seem more black and white than it really is, but... Just knowing where we belong, in the great chain that is our lineage, is instrumental to finding peace in grief.
And, even if he was still with us, I never would have learned if he too had autism. That man would ever have subjected himself to the kind of neuropsychiatric evaluation that I went through. It is really a pointless question to ask. The state of my father’s neurology was something that I was never going to learn about, and I am peace with that. Some people are more susceptible to these discussions than others. I am happy to occasionally hint to my mother that she may be “somewhere on the spectrum,” but I would never have felt at ease telling my dad he might have some significant neurological condition.
He could have been autistic, he could not have been autistic, I might as well pick up a flower and begin to pluck out the petals, that might just be the most reliable way for me to find out. He wasn't the sort of person inclined towards deep self-reflection. And it is true that my mother's family also exhibits traits of autism spectrum disorder. Especially my grandfather Erik, the other daddy I was named after.
I’ve written all of this late at night, after I've had some wine and some vodka. In so many ways, I am a chaotic person. I’ve always struggled to get to bed early, I’m always at my most productive those hours of the day I am supposed to be doing something else. I’ve always related to odd and weird people, those who seem to view the world from an outsider’s perspective. I am not good at behaving “normal.” One thing I could never comprehend was my father’s capacity to go to bed, every night, at a reasonable hour, and to awake early and before noon. I longed to see some dysfunction in my father, to see some evidence that I was truly his son, but all that he hid behind several walls of emotional sterility.
My father had a secular burial. It was quite a lovely little ceremony. We had a woman doing live performances of some of my father’s favourite bluesy songs from the 1970's. His family was there, some of his neighbours, also me and my sister, our mother and her sister (our aunt.) And I cried. A lot. My father’s older younger brother also cried a lot. He looked real tormented, actually. I felt acutely sorry for him. I have two uncles on my father's side, but one uncle is much younger than the other. My father and his brother closest in age grew up almost being twins, only one year separating them, they were really close. I have an older sister, no brother, so I can only imagine what it is like to have a fraternal relationship like that. I had my father for thirty-two years, he had him for seventy-six.
I am going to art school now. I am hoping that I will be able to keep going down this track, making "fine art," perhaps one day even receiving some recognition for my work. Working with these things physical, sculpting and painting, it gratifies me more than manipulating anything digital. No, I am not bitter. I am happy with where I am. But I am also paying for my current education with funds my father provided me with. Actually, the last conversation I had with him I called him to remind him to please send me some money so that I could pay the invoice I had just received. I could have regrets about that, wishing that our talk had been about something more profound and less tawdry, but I don't have any regrets. That's just life. And money is an integral part of it.
I am filled with heartache, and I am filled with confusion. I am not feeling the summertime bliss this year. It’s been months, yes, but grief is four-dimensional. Grief doesn't care about linear time, it comes and goes seemingly at random. At some times you may feel at peace, then suddenly, you remember that your dad is gone and a profound sadness overtakes you. The complexity of your relationship with him doesn’t really matter when you’re at that point just repeating in your head “my daddy is dead, my daddy is dead, my daddy is dead.”
Grief is primal, and sorrow is animal. It’d be much easier to deal with it all if we were just a bunch of logical aliens, some cold androids, but we’re messy human beings, no matter our diagnoses. It really doesn’t matter, in the end, if my father was autistic or not, all that matters is that he’s now no longer with us, so all we’ve got left is our memories of him. And one day I will figure out exactly what kind of narrative I wish to tell about his life, just how I wish to capture all the confusion I feel when I think about him. Maybe it wouldn't be all wrong if I chose to focus on the good things.
Rest in peace, Tom, my dad, and I hope that you may have thought of me, or my sister, the very last time you closed your eyes.
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There is this song by the musician John Grant that I very much appreciate, lyrically, though I can’t say that I am too familiar with him as a musician. It’s a song called “It’s Easier.”
And it's easier for me, to believe that you are lying to me,
When you say you love me and when you say you need me,
Yes it's easier for me to walk away and get on with my life
If I believe that you're deceiving me,
If I believe that you'd be leaving me one day, be leaving me one day,
Be leaving me one day
I’d rather be forgotten, than remembered. Or, well, maybe that’s wrong. I want to be remembered, but not quite like that. I don’t want you to know me. Not truly. I don’t want you to feel me. I don’t want you to touch me. I don’t want you to feel me. I want you to know me, to get a sense of who I am intellectually, but emotionally, I am shut off. I am in lockdown. Don’t think you belong here, don’t think you belong here with me. I am not just going to open up to anyone I see walking down the street, I am not going to open up to anyone I feel is close to me. I’ve got my secrets. I’ve got my lies. I better pretend I am someone I am not. Because I am worried you’ll be leaving me one day.
I hate you. You, the other. Why should I care for you? Have you ever cared for me? You’re strange. You’re foreign. You’re mean. I should isolate myself. I should build a wall around myself. If I am on my own, then I will know that I don’t have to worry about any unpredictable agents of chaos. Other people are hard to predict. Hard to truly know. They do as they please, and, by fuck, are they willing to act according to their own sense of what’s proper. The world isn’t a stage play laid out for the likes of me. Other people aren’t marionettes doing their best to satisfy our personal narratives. Narratives are all lies. There’s no narration to life. Good and bad only exist as fictions. In truth, there’s only that which is acceptable and that which is less acceptable. It’s all just a big blur. We’re all caught in the maelstrom of life.
The internet destroyed our previous conceptions of relationships. It used to be the case that one could casually state that no long-distance relationship could ever work, but these days? We’ve got the internet. It’s easier than ever to maintain a long-distance relationship. It’s easier than ever to communicate daily, without actually touching each other. Intimacy is different these days, though I am sure certain oldies will refuse to accept that. The net, for those of us who grew up with it, has permanently altered our way of perceiving others. For better or worse, distances mean less now than they did before. A lonely woman in Leith, Scotland may find the love of her life in Tehran, Iran. Does it make sense? Not necessarily. In many ways, the world we exist in today is utterly incomprehensible. But it is reality. It is the world that we find ourselves in. Reality trumps fiction. Reality trumps romanticism.
No, it’s not just a dream. Something was real, right? We had something. Here I am, scrambling for pieces, while you’ve likely moved on, realising that there’s some better place for you somewhere far away from here. I represent the old. You’re looking for the new. I can’t blame you. In fact, I congratulate you. After all you’ve been through. After that dreadful suicide attempt. Swallowing too many pills. Sure, I took it very hard when I read your message on Discord, but don’t you worry about my little opinions. Your life matters most. Or rather, your decision not to have a life matters the most. You decided to commit suicide. Unlucky for you, it did not succeed.
I deleted every picture I had for you. Because, of course, you broke up with me, and I wanted to be a good guy. A real good sort, the kind of a man you can point at and say that he’s not like those other males. You sent me naughty pictures, but I no longer have those naughty pictures. For a while I fantasised about taking a picture of your face and keeping it with me, the way that a proper romantic should respond to their partner committing suicide. But then I realised that you weren’t dead, and frankly, it would feel so awkward for me to keep your picture around. Why keep the picture of an entirely living girl around with me? It’s not as if she’s gone. She’s only gone in an alternate timeline. One separate from my own.
I can’t hate her. Of course I can’t. We bonded because we both had our mental health issues. And of course, for her to even attempt suicide, it makes her condition so much worse than mine. I am lucky in that I suffer from thanatophobia, the extreme and unreasonable fear of death. Yes I know, many might wonder how fearing death can ever be extreme, but I’ll remind you that phobias aren’t really phobias unless they get overwhelming. The fear of death does impede my everyday existence. The fear of death, ironically, makes me not want to live. I can only assume that this is where my OCD has taken its hold. The fear of the unpredictable. And really, what is less predictable than human mortality?
You woke up. From your coma, you woke up. Are you the same person? Am I to think of you as the same person? I don’t know if it is possible. To me, a real part of you died that night. I spent the hours just crying, just blaming myself. Can I tell you how much you hurt me? Or would that be wrong of me? After all, it was you that attempted suicide. How dare I pretend that I’ve got the slightest thing to complain about. You’re holy. You’re a martyr. If I happen to resent you, ever so slightly, then surely it is my fault. It is my fault for not owning the wider perspective. I am a little crab, and you’re the net that caught me. I feel insignificant.
I miss you, but I also fear you. I don’t want anything to do with you, but I also yearn for your attention. I yearn to know you’re doing fine, I want to know you've got everything handled, but I know things are probably just as bad as ever. There’s no rest for the wicked, and though I find you as innocent as ever, I can still recognise that you were deliciously wicked to my eyes. My eager eyes. Some may think that I am some innocent boob, some little 6’2” boy barely capable of perceiving the world outside of himself, but let me tell you, there's nothing about you that shocked me. I was all prepared for you. I was ready to love you. But you could never love yourself.
I am so sorry. I guess I didn’t do enough. Surely, there must have been some way for me to do more? Surely, if the butterfly effect is to be believed, then your attempted suicide all came down to some arbitrary detail, something I could have fixed. Why don’t I revert the tape, why don’t I simply press the right button on the remote? Why don’t I make it so that all of life is predictable and perfect? I should be able to, right? My lack of ability to make heartbreak like this not happen must mean that I am incompetent. It must mean that I deserve to feel this loneliness. That I deserved to have you attempt suicide.
Things can never be the same. You don’t need things to be the same. You need to recover. You need space. You need time. You need to take a breath. It’s hard to take any breaths when you’re dead. But luckily, girl, you survived. You just spent a couple of days in a coma, nothing much to worry about there. It’s not as if you’re deceased. Though, I am sure that some part of you wishes you did in fact die. I will never share this blog post with you, because I don’t want you to know just how much I resent you for putting me through what you put me through. I know you're suicidal. And please, hjärtat, I’d never want to see you actually die. I just want you to know that those days I spent thinking you were gone, those days caused me a lot of pain.
What's done is done,
I cannot change the way I feel,
And what's more, I am certain that I don't regret a single thing,
But sometimes I really miss your sweet, sweet love,
And wish that I'd wake up, and this would all be just a dream
Am I disabled? I suppose that I am. Legally, I am disabled. I’ve got the rights of a disabled person. I’m autistic. I struggle to function in what is considered “normal and everyday society.” Struggling to function like the normies? Surely that makes you, by definition, disabled. Still, for whatever reason, I feel like a major impostor if I ever refer to myself as being disabled. No, no, I am fine. Physically, I am not limited. I’ve got my two legs, I’ve got my two arms. Sometimes I feel back pain, but that has mostly to do with being taller than average, being overweight, and struggling to get good sleep at night. It’s not like I've got some chronic pain, something that really impedes me. I get headaches, but it’s not like I’ve got some brain tumour. There’s nothing physically wrong with me. I’m just wrong. As a person, I am wrong. But it’s not as if I am disabled. Right?
I’ve recently been in contact with the Swedish employment agency. The part of the government that seeks to keep people in employment, and if needed, pays out unemployment benefits. I sure have tried to make my way being an artist, building up an income based on freelance work and Patreon, but it’s not going as well as I need it to go. I need some job to pay the bill. Despite working full time as an illustrator and a writer, spending most of my time delivering work to an audience eager to see the things that I produce, I am by all means considered a NEET. “Not in Education, Employment, or Training.” I ought to be grateful for those people who are willing to pay me, and I am, undoubtedly. It’s just that living is expensive, and between taxes and rent, I am not sure what amount I’d need from Patreon before I could start actually monetarily benefiting from the work that I do. We do not live in a world where artists are recognised as labourers. I can’t spend as much time as I do on art and still live without being a parasite on my family. It is looking as if I need to give up on the idea of being a full-time artist, sometime soon.
I’ve got a comic here on Tumblr that has received more than 60,000 notes. That’s quite a lot. At some level, well, actually, at all levels, I feel as if that comic doesn’t belong to me any more. That’s typical. Once something you’ve created goes popular it stops being personal to you. That’s how I felt back when I used to do “animations” for the Yogscast. The first one I did, by far the most low-effort one I did, has over a million views on YouTube. Surely, that’s a lot. It’s actually been over ten years now since it got uploaded, I missed the date. I can’t say that time has flown by. During those ten years I’ve spent suffering depression, getting diagnosed, going to university to study philosophy and art history, watching in horror as Britain voted for Brexit and America voted for Trump, two grandparents dying, and two cousins having children. People who say that time passes by quickly don’t really pay enough attention. Life goes by at a monolithic speed. We’re all just too narcissistic to count the events that don’t directly involve us.
In medieval times, artists were considered to be craftsmen. Today we expect artists to be special, practically gifted by God, meant to produce things that are fundamentally singular, works able to change the course of human history. Blame the likes of Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo for that. The renaissance probably fucked over artists more than most artists are willing to acknowledge. Sure, it’s great for those artists who are already successful, (and by that I mean, artists who are able to feed themselves,) but to the rest of us? Well, we’re not so preoccupied thinking about how history at large will see us. We’re just interested in making a living. And it is by far a lot harder to make a living when society thinks that artists are already a special class of people belonging to some higher shelf of being compared to most people. No, I am not Michelangelo. I am not van Gogh. I am no Kandinsky. But surely I am not some petulant brat simply for stating that there ought to be some level of artistry that is respected while not being earthshakingly revolutionary?
Honestly, my biggest impediment in life is not autism. It is depression. I like to lie to people, telling them that I haven’t felt depressed in years, but actually… I feel depressed most every day. Now, I am taking antidepressants, and they are working. At least when it comes to my anxiety, compared to how it used to manifest itself, it is basically neutered now. Not to say that I don’t still feel anxiety. I still feel more anxiety than the average individual, I am still a profoundly neurotic individual, but these days, my anxiety doesn’t dominate me. I am not now made to be a submissive to GAD, or SAD, or OCD. I am me. Thanks to venlafaxine, I am simply a regular guy, some groovy dude, a man who just happens to be a little bit more anxious than most. Anxiety very much still exists in my life. Anxiety hasn’t been deported, it’s still a sizable portion of my inner mental workings, but it is now controllable. That makes all the difference. Anxiety does not rule me. Anxiety is not my monarch. Anxiety is simply my awkward roommate.
Have I wasted my life? I ought to have spent less time doing art and more time, I dunno, doing plumbing? I guess I have. If I can’t make enough to make a proper living, I guess all that time I spent learning to do art, that time was wasted. I am no artist. I am just a dreamer, someone who thought that I could make my childhood ideals come true. I’ve always wanted to be an artist. Always wanted to do art. I’ve always thought that my creativity could carry me forwards, could be something that would benefit me. But turns out, I fooled myself. I am of no benefit to myself. I am my own impediment. Surely, I am disabled. If only I could find the button on my body that lets me switch to being fully enabled. I heard that if you stick you finger far enough into your navel, you'll hit the reset button.
Perhaps one of the strangest expressions in the Swedish language is “glida in på en räkmacka.” To glide in on a shrimp sandwich. If you’ve glided in on a shrimp sandwich, it means you’ve had it easy. Probably at somebody else’s expense. I can’t explain to you the logic behind the expression, other than simply acknowledging that, yes, all Scandinavians see the world through a lens of seafood. Still, the expression is about something very universal, something that even desert-dwelling nomads who've never even seen a wet crustacean will have some understanding of. That some people just have it easy. And it is not even, as I imagine some people might be thinking, that they’re just lucky to be born into a wealthy family. There are plenty of fuck-ups who comes from wealthy families, let’s not pretend as if being a rich kid is guaranteed to come with a ticket to paradise. But, rather, it simply seems to be the case that for some people, existence is easy. They glide through life, somehow manoeuvring past all those pitfalls that the likes of me, the worriers and the melancholiacs, keep falling into.
What is it that they’ve got? The X-factor? Are they even real? Have I imagined this kind of antagonist just to explain my own sense of frustrations with society? Yeah, probably, but let’s just go with it for now. It is probably true that all people struggle, one way or another, no-one’s life is simple enough to be summed up in a sentence or two. That person everyone thinks must have it made might be suffering terribly from some kind of horrendous affliction. Maybe they’ve got some weird birthmark the shape of a swastika somewhere on their body, and it makes them terrified of entering into a sexual relationship with any person, in fear that their sexual partner may think that they were biologically engineered in some laboratory in Brazil overseen by some crazy ex-Nazi eager to find some way to develop a clone of Hitler. We don’t know the struggles of other people. Still… Some fuckers really do seem to have it real easy. Right?
It has often struck me as remarkable how far you can get in life simply by bullshitting. I am fascinated by individuals who have risen far in their careers on the back of no discernible competency, but rather, they’ve just conned others into thinking that they’re really good at their job. Whatever their job is, most of the time, it is undefined. Dress well, shake hands, and pretend you know what you’re doing. You’re gonna do fine! Don’t worry about it. Most people like to think of themselves as being the sceptical type, generally being good at the whole critically thinking thing, but the truth is that almost all humans are universally naive. We have to be naive, society would collapse if people weren’t willing to take others at their word, it’s how we organise ourselves. Contracts are occasionally signed, but things usually aren’t all that formal. Typically, we like to keep things casual, and that’s a good thing. Imagine the bureaucratic nightmare of a society that refused to sign off on even the smallest little agreement without first requiring a three-week long inquiry to determine if it is worth it. Yes, I’m going to buy a coffee, and I can buy one for you too, but only if you fill in this application form, show me some identification, and give me a urine sample. If we didn’t trust anyone, we’d get nothing done. Believing that others are fundamentally good is necessary for human civilization to properly function. Though, it can be exploited by any old psychopath with a winsome smile.
If I really wanted to have it easy, I should learn to be more smarmy. I should go to one of those cult-like business courses that teaches you to look at other people purely as prey, as common NPCs that you can manipulate as you please. If you do it right, you can get straight ahead in life without ever having to show you’re actually really worth the money you are getting paid. It’s all about learning the right language, learning “neuro-linguistic programming,” that vile pseudo-science aiming to teach you how to take advantage of perfectly friendly people who made the grave mistake of thinking you’re not a conniving little shit. Maybe my biggest mistake was always seeking authenticity, trying to be a genuine person. Sure it’s made it so I am generally quite liked, most people I interact with go away thinking I’m really quite the decent sort. But who cares about being a genuinely good person, when you can instead make enough money to own a Tesla or two?
Though, I think I’m gonna keep on doing what I’ve always been doing. Keep on being me. For as much as I fear that it’s not working out, I still prefer having my soul, than selling it to Satan. I could be making money right now selling NFTs, but, y’know what, I’d rather just not do that. I don’t believe in no heaven, but I still don’t want to go to my grave with a guilty conscience. I’m kinda a nice guy, in that way.
I talk. Quite a lot. I am a good talker. My brain talks to me. I know that the internet has been set ablaze lately discoursing about how the brain’s mental mechanics differ from person to person. Some have an inner monologue going on at all times, others don’t. Some are able to visualise information quite easily in their head, whereas others suffer from total aphantasia. Though, I am not sure if I am supposed to refer to aphantasiacs as “sufferers.” According to those blank-minded dorks, everyone else seems utterly insane when they go on talking about how just thinking about an apple makes them literally see the fruit right in front of them. I am sure that to those that have never experienced what it is like to feel like some big stormy cloud of chaos walking with two legs, what I would consider to be my normal level of mental functioning would to them appear to be utter lunacy. Not only do I have an inner monologue, I often have three or five of them at the same time. And quite often, at least one of them is being needlessly shouty.
When needed I am able to connect one of these rambling inner monologues straight to my mouth. My lips move, spilling out words in that typical stream of consciousness style that some time ago dominated the literary genre. Remember that? When nearly every new book that came out was written in a pretentious stream of consciousness style that made it practically impossible to keep up with even the slimmest of narratives? Well, I guess that I can’t be looking down on those writers, because what is this blog if not a burlesque feast of stream of consciousness diatribes. Still, what I am attempting to get at is that when I am expected to talk, I can go on talking for a long time. Perhaps even eternally, if not for the fact that I’d occasionally need to eat and drink, and that of course one day I would inevitably die from old age unless it were to turn out that vampires do indeed exist and they are absolutely desperate to see me continue talking. Surely, I am fascinating enough to get the attention of the blood-drinking fiends of the night?
I have, at times in the past, found myself talking too much. Not by intention, mind you, but I have been accused of the occasional railroading of conversations, or at other times derailing conversations, generally acting like quite the irresponsible rail driver. All conversation is narrative, and I all too frequently act like the sole author. But, y’know, it is easier that way because others are so damn quiet. And so damn shy. I’ve come to loathe shy people. Those mousy little irritants. No matter how many times I try to pressure them to talk, to make their piece heard, they keep on murmuring in that silent little hum that makes everyone nearby wonder if they have all suddenly gone deaf, or if it is truly possible for a person’s voice to be so truly lacking in volume. Speak up! Say something without spending five minutes first apologising for your mere existence. You are a human, a radiant spark of intelligence and ingenuity, not some pesky rodent that must hide away from sight in the stinking sewers underneath our feet. Don’t you have anything to contribute to this conversation? No? Then why should I feel guilt over being so awfully domineering? I talk too much? You don’t talk at all!
But, still, I’ve done work on myself. I aim towards self-improvement. I try to be more considerate, patient, and generally less of an ass. I seek to be liked, of course I want to be liked. It is often assumed that autistic people don’t aim to please, that we’re so deep in our own heads that if we come across as unlikeable, we don’t much care what you think about us. Of course, this is a gross misconception, just part of the wider plethora of misunderstandings that if I tried to dispel them all, I’d end up working on this blog 24-7 for decades to come. “But Fred, you can’t be autistic, you are a very empathetic person!” “Okay, maybe you are autistic, but you’re not like those other autistic people.” The way that much of society seems to labour under the impression that autism is in some way comparable to psychopathy causes me some concern. Certainly telling people to be more sympathetic with autistic folks is going to get an awful lot harder if the general conception of autistic folks is that we’re all a bunch of inconsiderate jerks.
I’ve put it this way in the past, conversations are like a minefield. All the little stuff, all the unspoken stuff, the subtleties of body language, the slight emotional timbre of the voice, the at times arcane context you must keep in mind before opening your mouth, all those things are the landmines. To some it is easy to spot these traps from a far distance. But to those of us who suffer a constant flurry of thoughts, those of us who at times can’t help but babble on, clumsily but enthusiastically, the probability is high of accidentally placing your foot somewhere it doesn’t belong. “Sorry, I know how that came across, but I didn’t mean it that way. I used the wrong word. I used a word whereas I shouldn’t have used no word, silly me.” Sure, it is true that autistic people can often accidentally offend others, but the thing about not seeing the landmines, you still feel it when they explode.
I have noticed, in the last few years, as I’ve gotten better at talking to others, less impatient and more concerned with what others wish to communicate, I am still scolded for talking too much. Believe me, I have improved, I go into conversations now actively monitoring myself, exercising a great deal of restraint, but effort has largely gone unrecognised. I know that, as a person, it is difficult to judge oneself objectively, and I recognized that I may come across as being somewhat conceited in this, claiming that others are wrong when saying that I talk too much. Though, the funny thing I’ve learned, the years I’ve spent living with autism, is that neurotypical folks, they sure don’t spend a lot of time thinking about others. Try as much as you might to make changes to your way of being, the odds of anyone picking up on it? Don’t kid yourself, this effort of yours simply won’t go recognised.
I don’t wish to bellow like some bore about family drama, but I had an instance recently of my sister constantly interrupting me in a conversation we had, declaring that I talk too much and I should just shut up and let her speak. And true, I do talk too much, but in this conversation I had barely gotten more than a couple of sentences out. We were all a little tipsy, so I am not going to say that any of us were at our peak performance, but it struck me how in my sister’s mind, it just wasn’t even a possibility that she was the one dominating the conversation. That she, the non-autistic sibling, was the one acting like the ass. No, no, the established narrative, the way these things work is that Fred is the one talking too much, so it is never wrong to interrupt Fred. The fact that we had found ourselves very much in the reverse positions didn’t occur to her at that moment. Because, of course, people never change, do they?
It is hard not to occasionally feel beaten down and bitter. Here you are, stuck between balancing your own output, with your willingness to hear from others. Here I am writing another blog post. How many blogs do I read? Do I subscribe to any other blogs about living with autism? I’m just some dumb puppet going on and on about my own experiences, expecting people to listen, but do I actually listen in return? If we are meant to have a conversation, it should go roughly fifty-fifty, right? A fair exchange of ideas, back and forth, like a dance. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. But how are you supposed to handle this great communion with people who either, a, don’t want to fully participate out of shyness, or b, actively refuse to believe you’re doing your best trying to do better than you did in your past? Should I talk, or shouldn’t I talk? What must I do to convince you that I am coming at this in good faith?
A consequence of living with some psychiatric diagnosis, whatever it may be, is that you will often find yourself working harder at improving yourself, at cultivating good mental health for yourself, than the majority of people without any psychiatric diagnosis. Want to find a real mess of a human being, someone barely able to keep it together? Don’t go looking for people diagnosed with mental illness, we’re the ones actually working on ourselves. And at times it feels unfair, to have spent so much time trying to rehabilitate these fundamental parts of your psyche, only to still get stereotyped. Only to still get told that you’re hopeless.
I think it is well-understood by now that IQ tests don’t really measure intelligence. Or, rather, having a high IQ does not necessarily indicate that you are really all that smart. You could still be plenty dumb. And scoring low on an IQ test does not mean that you lack brainpower. Sure, some folks may roll their eyes when they hear the term “emotional intelligence,” probably thinking that it’s just some politically correct euphemism for “stupid, but occasionally quite nice and friendly to strangers.” But, actually, how do we regard empathy? Isn’t being highly empathetic a certain sign of intelligence? Being able to empathise with another individual, being able to interface with them, conceptualising in your head a facsimile of what is going on in their head, all that sounds like it would require quite the number of functioning brain cells. And surely we could well call the textbook psychopath, who’s wholly trapped inside their own selves, incapable of ever truly putting themselves in somebody else’s shoes, a bit ignorant? A bit of a blockhead? A dumb-dumb ignoramus who’ll never truly understand what it means to be a human living and sharing this planet with others who are as insecure and anxious and bonkers as they are? Isn’t it rather obvious that, yes indeed, at least part of what makes a smart person smart is some functioning degree of emotional intelligence. And that is not something that an IQ test will measure.
But IQ tests must have some merit, right? It can't all be bullshit, it's not purely pseudoscience, it's way too accepted by the mainstream to be all that bad. Of course, lobotomies were also once considered to be sound science, and Freud used to be hugely respected within the field of psychology. Those days are gone. Seeing a modern Freudian for therapy is a bit like breaking a leg and going to an expert in the four humours. But those comparisons are unfair. The IQ test may have been used historically in some real shitty ways, and we all know how annoying people who brag about their high IQs are, but reason dictate that being able to solve complex puzzles that requires the ability to sense patterns, follow chains of logic, and being able to visualise solutions to problems, must make you kinda smart. At least you are a kind of smart. There may be countless ways to be smart, but you've sure hit one.
Earlier today I saw a Reddit thread mocking a… Well, obviously they were mocking a woman. Most Reddit users would probably never admit to truly being misogynistic pricks, but it is curious how often videos or articles discussing women who fucked up gets upvoted to the near-empyrean skies. There are always excuses to be had for men who act like total shits, but if it is a woman, then that must say something deep and troubling about all of womankind. In any case, in this thread they were mocking a woman who in a video greatly overestimated her intelligence, believing herself to be the second-smartest person in the room, only to later be shown to have the lowest IQ score. Satisfying, right? To see some arrogant narcissist get forced to eat humble pie. But the peculiar thing about the video is that this woman did not get shown to have some real abysmally poor IQ score. She scored 112. That is above average. Sure, it’s not high above average, it still counts within the spectrum of what we’d call “normal.” But she was not some dumb woman. Just a bit of an irritating one. So, of course, Reddit had it in for her.
I’m guessing that the video creators must have been very happy with the result. It would have been awkward if the braggadocious jerk came out on top. In fact, having her score last almost feels planned out, like as if they rigged the video just to make that outcome happen. I’m not of the conspiracy theorist mindset, but we’re talking about people making clickbait-y videos for YouTube. It’s probably best to take any videos like that with a truckload of salt. Still, it does seem to confirm one suspicion I’ve had for the longest time. I think that if you ask people to report on their own intelligence, most people of average to above-average intelligence, will claim to be somewhere in the lower end of high intelligence. The internet is now largely familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, though, ironically many people do slightly misunderstand it. But effectively, what it shows is that in order to judge your own competency in a particular field, you need some level of expertise in that field to do so accurately. Total novices will overestimate their level of skill, whereas total masters may lean towards underestimating their level of skill. Typically the measured phenomena is not as extreme as some popular internet graphs make it out to be, where you get this huge valley in the middle showing people’s sense of self completely collapse as they are getting a sense of their true value. The Dunning-Kruger effect is likely real, but like most such similar things, it’s more subtle than obvious.
(You may have seen graph 1 get shared online, and it’s bad. If you want to share a graph with the world, share graph 2.)
I have never done an IQ test. Not a proper one. No, like most people, all I’ve ever done is tests promising to give me an estimate of what my IQ may be. Y’know, the ones offered by various groups associated with Mensa that you may find online. Yeah, don’t take those tests too seriously, if you really want to know your IQ score, you need to do a supervised test. Still, most of the time, these sites will acknowledge that what they’re offering is an estimate, and quite often, that estimate will get it roughly correct. Give or take a few points. And recently I felt like doing one of those tests, last time I did one was several years ago, and… Well, yes, I scored high. 133 to be precise. That’s considered to be gifted. I could join Mensa if I wanted to. Not that I do want to. Mensa is for nerds. I am a cool kid. I smoked pot once.
Now, am I intelligent? How humble should I be? Should I say “well, I guess so?” Should I shrug and say that I don’t really care either way whether I am smart or dumb? But when does being humble turn into false modesty? I am pretty well-convinced that I am intelligent, and so are most people who come into contact with me. Sure, I won’t claim to be a hugely brilliant genius, that’d be stretching it, but surely I should be able to state, as a fact, that I am of high intelligence. If you ask a strongman whether or not he considers himself of high physical strength, he won’t feel embarrassed to admit that yes, he’s quite ripped. I desperately do not wish to come across as an asshole, and I don’t want people thinking I’m like that woman in that video, but it’s a strange balancing act, maintaining your ego without going too far in either direction. I don’t want to seem conceited, but I also don’t want to pretend to be dumber than I am, just to come across as a more unpretentious, unassuming, dude. Does the strongman try to pretend that his muscles are actually all fat, and that anyone could easily lift those big boulders if they just use the right posture? You know how annoying it is when good singers claim that everyone can learn to sing as good as them? Yeah... Let's not do that.
“I know that I know nothing.” That’s Socrates. Or, well, it’s Plato’s account of Socrates. We don’t really know how much of Socrates may actually have been just Plato using Socrates as some elaborate ventriloquist’s puppet. Still, the sentiment is pretty clear. The more you know, the wiser you get, the more aware you are of all the things you don’t know. We’re back to the Dunning-Kruger effect. To be smart is to know you are not really smart. The more you stare into the void, the deeper the void will seem. Complex systems only get more complex the more you study them. There’s no limit to comprehension of the universe. You could always be smarter. You could always learn more. Perhaps you require a certain level of intelligence to truly grasp this fact, to truly estimate your role within existence, your position relative to eternity. It’s bound to get you feeling quite humbled. To the cosmos, we’re all a bit like that woman in that YouTube video. We may all think of ourselves as being quite clever, but then the universe logs on to Reddit to talk shit about how contemptuous we really are, and how satisfying it is to see us get made to eat that bland humble pie. It somehow manages to taste rancid and like nothing at the very same time.
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Welcome to my mind cottage. I used to have a mind palace, but I decided to downsize, go for something more quaint and modest. All I need is a hearth, to keep myself warm, and I’ll be happy. Don’t need these endless rooms filled with old dreams and memories. What I want to avoid, most of all, is never-ending compartmentalisation. Oh, I remember how it used to be, back when I kept that big mind palace. The constant sectioning of thoughts, keeping idea A tucked neatly away from idea B, to avoid contamination at all cost. Surely, it is a bad idea to keep a messy mind? Growing up, how many times don’t we get told to clean up after ourselves? Don’t leave your toys lying all over the floor! Surely, that’s the approach a healthy mind should take towards their own psyche? Constant vigilance. Don’t let that stray thought out of its compartment, lock it down! What you are is the warden, and your thoughts are your prisoners. You gotta keep a tight ship, don’t let any of those pesky little beliefs of yours rock the boat, making you question the very core of your existence. It is stressful to be the master of such an impressive mind palace, there’s so much to do and keep track of, you never get the chance to admire the architecture. No, believe me, I’m far better off with this tiny mind cottage of mine. It’s best to let those madcap ideas run wild in the woods. These days, I’m only raising free-range thoughts.
Compartmentalisation is bad. Some minor compartmentalisation is inevitable, the human mind is naturally segmented, but frequently I see the negative impact over-eager compartmentalisation has on people. The black-and-white type of thinking. Ideas and beliefs are meant to mix, to be stirred together into a wondrous conceptual soup. At times there will be contradictions, you may get a headache from dealing with all that cognitive dissonance, but all you need is a good mental massage, and you will find it gets easier. The mind needs to be flexible, it’s not made out of steel and concrete, it’s a squishy bundle of nerves. I’m sorry to tell you, but sometimes those annoying hippies got the right idea. Maybe it’ll do you some good to relax a little, take off your shoes and let your hair down. Stop trying to impose order on chaos. Go with the flow. I assure you, you can let go of control once, without losing yourself to madness.
I’ve often thought of anxiety as being a form of hyper-sanity. Those that suffer from anxiety disorders, they aren’t insane, they are hyper-sane. Sane to the point of causing themselves harm. Sane to the point of ridiculousness. Can you be too sane? Of course you can. The world is mad, you need to be a little mad to want to go along with it. Besides, that touch of madness is what gives life its spark, its unexpected moments of unbridled joy. Imagine if life was truly mathematically predictable, with all variables taken out. Who’d want to live a life like that? Oh, sure, at first it might bring you some comfort knowing there’s no nasty surprises waiting for you around the corner, some sudden bad news that’s gonna hit you like a monster truck, but then? All that monotony, all that bland sameness every day of the week, the month, the year? God, no, I don’t want that. Imagine spending an eternity in a retirement home, the same schedule every day, only the blandest of food on your plate, and the most numbing of programming on the television. The only highpoint of your existence is when your grandchildren come to visit. You're certainly safe, there’s no risk of you falling down the stairs breaking your hips twenty times over. But surely it can’t be worth it, eliminating all risks, if you also end up eliminating all sense of good fun.
But I know that, from time to time, when I am feeling the anxiety overwhelm me, my perspective changes. How lovely, isn’t it, to be on a destined path. Imagine the terror of a rollercoaster. Now imagine the terror of a rollercoaster that’s flown off its hinges. It’s easy to speak of the value of the freer life, when you’re not convinced that there’s dire peril out there, waiting for you to leave the safety of your personal hidey-hole. We’re at an impasse, here. If you’re truly convinced that the world, at large, is an evil and wicked place and leaving your home is not some fun and rewarding adventure, but a careless flirtation with mortal danger, I can’t use logic to convince you otherwise. The world, I dare say, is neither particularly good nor particularly terrible. It’s fairly neutral. There’s positives and negatives to living here on planet earth, and our personal perspective is what gives our surroundings its flavour. If you look for evil, you will find evil. It’s not quite all in your mind (I am sure a lethal snake bite will kill you, even if you try to maintain a positive attitude,) but I know that agoraphobia is amplified when you’re in emotional distress. A walk down to the shop can feel utterly terrifying, if you're in the wrong mind space. That barking dog you hear in the distance, can either be a gorgeous little puppy just desperate to be played with, or a demonic hellhound sent by the devils to tear a hole in your torso and rip out your intestines. Really, it’s all just subjective. Much like whether or not you like the taste of marmite.
But, y’know, maybe it is good to challenge one’s own subjective reality, from time to time. If you’re convinced that you hate coffee, but haven’t had any coffee in well over ten years, then maybe you should go get some coffee to see if you still hate it. We’ve only got one life, why spend it rigorously adhering to a personal belief that if scrutinised seems to actually not correspond to who you really are, deep down? The fears that you feel, are they really yours? Perhaps they once were, but not any more. You are not the same person today as the one you were yesterday. You’re certainly not the same person you were back when you were a teenager. While I can’t fault anyone suffering from the malady that is anxiety for wanting to limit their lives, to compartmentalise, I feel a definite urge to encourage them to, well, just live a little. I can’t help but hearing Supertramp’s track “Hide in Your Shell” playing in my head as I am typing this. Not that often this aspect of the human experience gets expressed in song. It’s actually quite alienating to feel alienated. Once you’ve hit that point of isolation, of wanting to escape the world, it feels like you’re experiencing something that no-one has ever felt before. Yes, there are songs, poems, movies, video games, stand-up routines, prayers, and social media shitposts all about love, but when was the last time you encountered some work of art that truly captured that dread some of us feel when we consider stepping out our front door?
If you’re all at home, all day, what are you supposed to do other than start organising the mess that’s begun accumulating around you? Not to brag, but I am personally a very messy person, so I am not guilty of any of that obsessive-compulsive cleaning that some of you, my readers, may have indulged in. But I do understand where the urge comes from, to clean and clean and clean and clean, never feeling as if you’ve managed to finish the job. There’s always some dust left under the bed, some dishes to be done, some cobwebs up there somewhere by the ceiling. I’ve experienced that, but for me it’s all been mental. I could just never keep my mind palace clean. Palaces aren’t meant to be lived in, not these days. In the olden days, if you lived in a palace, you had a staff that would take care of it for you. Living in a palace, being some high and fancy lord, meant you ran your own little company at home, with a team of employees that would help you keep everything running smooth and pretty. How many stories haven’t you encountered that’s all about some lonely widow or widower who lives all on their own in a mansion and how miserable it makes them? The tragedy of seeing such a vast estate be so empty of life, it's only occupants being the memories of the past. You may have heard of the old Hollywood business magnet (along with aviator, film director, and inspiration for countless fictional characters) Howard Hughes. He was an “eccentric” billionaire who ended up spending the latter part of his life isolated in penthouses, failing to take care of himself and storing his urine in bottles. That last fact has certainly gotten people speculating, it’s exactly the sort of lurid detail that is bound to get people gossiping.
From Wikipedia. “His reclusiveness and possibly his drug use made him practically unrecognisable. His hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails were long—his tall 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) frame now weighed barely 90 pounds (41 kg), and the FBI had to use fingerprints to conclusively identify the body.” I’m willing to reckon that’s not a fate anyone reading this blog would want to face.
I suppose I don’t need to convince you or anyone that it’s good to leave your house, occasionally and to shake things up. Agoraphobia is bad, and stating that is not gonna cause any kind of controversy, I know. But I think that, especially coming at this from the point of view of someone diagnosed with Asperger's, I fear agoraphobia will stay with me, throughout my life, only getting stronger with age. I don’t want to allow myself to grow dependent on routines, and the monotony of a predictable life. Yes, I am definitely someone who, if I am going away somewhere, will pack several days ahead of schedule. If I am going somewhere, I will plan out the route in my head, so that I will know exactly where I am going and what I will do when I get there. I know what it is like when you face a change in plan, and I know how frustrating it can get to try and explain this to others. It is indescribable. I have felt so immature, childlike, in the past knowing that others may see my rigidity as some kind of failure to act adult, to live with the ever-changing tumult that is grown-up life. You’re supposed to roll with the punches, not act all despondent just ‘cause you didn’t get it just the way you wanted it. The fact is, if you’re in constant need to map everything out, to create order out of disorder, then you will only be setting up traps for yourself, and if you get caught in any of these traps, then that might be enough to make you never want to leave your home again.
I should write again about chaos in the future. I could write about my potential religious awakening as an adherent of discordianism. (Hail Eris! All hail Discordia!) If I have a spiritual side, then that spirituality stems from a desire to find comfort in chaos. The lack of structure, the anti-clockwork nature of our universe. I feel like as if by maybe trying to turn the frightening grimace of the chaotic forces that makes living life feel at times like going from dice toss to dice toss in a tabletop RPG, into something more benevolent (and even beneficial,) I could reach an epiphany in how I relate to this world. Those moments of a reversal of plans, those soul-shaking moments of stepping out into the world to go to the shop, would suddenly no longer feel so insurmountable. I don’t want to embrace routine. I don’t want to end up living life all alone surrounded by jars of my own piss neatly organised next to my perfectly formulated obsessive concerns. I seek an organic life. I’d rather live in a small cottage in the woods, than in some mansion in which I will lose myself. A home should be a shelter for the night, not a mausoleum for your thoughts.
On occasion, it strikes me how different the experience must be for today’s gay teenagers, compared to what it is was like for gay people my age when we were teenagers some ten plus years ago. Oh, I may be a withered and decrepit thirty-year-old, but I do like to imagine that I am not all too removed from my adolescent years. Though, when I see the teenagers of today eagerly discussing their LGBTQ+ identities, with neither shame nor hesitation, I feel positively ancient. Back in my days, being labelled as gay was comparable to in medieval times being labelled as a leper. Certainly, the gay liberation movement was in full swing, and our teachers would routinely remind us that making fun of gay people was no longer acceptable in the new millennia. “I am sure Daniel is not gay, but even if he is, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, so don’t make fun of Daniel for being gay, okay? I mean, yeah, he does look kinda gay, but it’s fine if he is gay, so if you’ve gotta make fun of him, make fun of him for wearing glasses or for having red hair. Remember, students, it’s okay to be gay.”
Teenagers tend to be opportunistic bastards, and if they sense that there’s some taboo inherent in a word, they will latch onto it. If calling someone gay made the teachers cross, then that must mean there’s something bad about being gay. “Are you gay, or what?” became the preferred way to degrade your classmates. Anything could make you gay. Being smart, being dumb, being fat, being skinny, dressing nice, dressing poorly, liking boys, liking girls, anything could count towards you being gay. Today people play multiplayer games where certain players take on secret roles, and it is up to the other players to figure out who’s the secret imposter. Well, I don’t much enjoy those kinds of games, because that was my high school experience, and I didn’t much enjoy high school. Really, being gay had nothing to do with whether or not you were same-sex attracted. The problem with being gay, according to our loutish teenage minds, was not that same-sex relationships were icky, but rather, we were acutely aware that being gay meant that you were an outsider, a weirdo. Someone on the periphery of society. Being gay meant that you could never be normal, and thus, if anyone of us was secretly gay, that had to be figured out, so that we could adequately ostracize that person and make sure that they were never truly integrated into our little social group.
I was terrified of anyone figuring out that I was gay. I’m not gay. I’m way into ladies to be gay. Not even bisexual. The only way I could imagine myself dating another man, I’d prefer for that man to be much shorter than me and for that man to dress androgynously, preferably in dresses and wear make-up and have breasts. I think it is safe to say that I am by no means attracted to men, but still… I knew that was weird, and as such, I was terrified they might think I was gay. As a teenager, I felt like an imposter, and unlike what certain games would like you to believe, being an imposter is no fun.
Has gay liberation been a success? While there are some big notable exceptions, (looking at you, Russia. If you’re reading this Putin, shame on you,) it is rather impressive how fast the normalisation of homosexuality has been. We’re at the point now where older gays often grumble about how the young gays of today lack the proper amount of respect for their elders, and I can’t think of a more perfect expression of societal normality than that. If gay folks now take it for granted that they have the rights that they have, I don’t necessarily consider that to be a bad thing. Yes, I think we should all take the time to count our blessings, and be thankful for the generations that came before us, but surely it is unbelievably positive that so much progressive change has happened over just a few decades. Certainly, it’s unspeakably frustrating to see how trans rights are now being contested (looking at you, Britain. If you’re reading this The Guardian, shame on you,) but overall, the model of the gay liberation movement seem to have worked. Is there any way we could apply the same strategy to other minority groups?
I am conflicted when it comes to most neurodiversity activists. On one hand, yes, I am absolutely convinced that if it weren’t for our society’s inherent stigma against those who happen to function neurologically differently, then the suffering experienced by those with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolarity, etc., would likely be much minimised. The continued ostracization of those who are different, the weirdos of this world, creates an environment that can best be described as Kafkaesque. You exist within a half-state where you are told to contribute to your community, while at the same time you’re being told you are unable to contribute to your community. It is especially strange, for many of us, to hear society peddle this cliché of “just be yourself and things will work out,” when you’ve been told that your natural behaviour is a little too much and it would be for the best if you were to tone it down, just a little. “Be yourself, but not like that. Be yourself based on how I imagine yourself to be.”
On the other hand, some people have it worse than I. I’m high-functioning. Now, I know that certain individuals find the terms “high-” and “low-functioning” to be problematic. I tend to disagree, as I find these terms useful on a purely pragmatic basis, but I acknowledge that I could be wrong in this. Still, I try to keep in mind that when I am speaking about autism, I am speaking from the perspective of only a subsection of the autistic population. At times, I fear discussing my own experiences with autism, in the eventuality that some were to interpret my words as me attempting to explain the total experience all autistic people face. I cannot speak on behalf of all who happened to have received this diagnosis, indeed, I dread the thought of being put in that position.
As the readers of this blog undoubtedly are aware of, autism comes with a spectrum. The myriad of ways that autism can manifest itself varies from person to person, and those difficulties that I face, may not be as much of a concern for others who place elsewhere on the spectrum. On the whole, I would consider myself mostly at peace with my condition. Overall, I value the positive aspects that come with my autism higher than I fear the more negative aspects. If there is an enemy in my mind, it is my anxiety, my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. There’s a flurry of thoughts swirling in my head making it occasionally difficult for me to think in a straight line. At least not without soon feeling weary and awfully inadequate. At times I get stuck in these thought loops that I can’t help but repeat to myself, over and over, never feeling as if I’ve managed to successfully think the thought right. Yes, it is preposterous, but that’s OCD for you.
I’m certainly sensitive to loud sounds. I’ve experienced overstimulation in the past. But it does tend to pass relatively quickly. I get headaches, which is naturally no fun, but when bombarded with a lot of noise, I can still get by. And the joy I get from listening to pleasant sounds, music especially, fills me with such radiating euphoria that I am utterly baffled by those who claim to not care much about music. Music has the wondrous quality of at the same time being calming and stimulating. Listening to music puts me in a state of meditation. I am a believer in the positive results of regular meditation, but I can not easily meditate. Again, the obsessive tendencies of my mind makes it difficult for me to reach any kind of peace without something to keep the chaos within occupied. This is where “stimming” comes in, a term you may be familiar with if you’ve spent any time reading about autism online. Some repetitive movement of the body to keep you anchored and focused. I usually tap my leg or rub my finger together. I am fairly lucky in that my version of stimming is mostly normalised by society. Plenty of people bounce their legs any time they sit down on a chair. Perhaps they get accused of being impatient, or possibly worst of all, they may get accused of being drummers.
Sure, I tend to struggle with making close personal contacts. I am not a man of many friends. But I am friendly enough, and in most social situations I tend to shine. I like to think of myself as being adequately charming and even charismatic. I’ve certainly been told that I am, having had many people in my life enthuse about how good of a conversationalist I can be. I do not fear public speaking, in fact, I revel in it. So, I suppose on that basis, I do not exhibit many of those stereotypes associated with autism. Indeed, this is a major reason why I am so sceptical towards the terms “introversion” and “extroversion.” After all, I am extremely introverted, while also being extremely extroverted. These terms are just another example of how the spectre of Jung has come to define the popular conception of the mind and it seems unlikely we’ll ever truly be free from his pseudo-mystical take on psychology. In any case, the point I wish to make is that I do not struggle with making myself understood by others. In some ways, I have the best of both worlds. I can both find comfort when placed in groups, and also when I am on my own. I’m lucky.
It is natural that many stigmatised minority groups should be looking towards the gay liberation movement and consider the lessons that can be learned from it. But we must also be conscious of the fact that different minorities face different challenges. There aren’t all that many shades or levels to being gay. You’re either gay, or you’re not. Bears are not more or less gay than twinks, and for the most part, any old gay guy can adequately explain what it means to be gay without utterly failing to get to the core of it. Homosexuality is not a difficult concept to grasp, it does not manifest itself as a wide spectrum of behaviour. You’re homosexual if you’re same-sex attracted, and that’s it. All that other stuff, the pageantry of the pride festivals or the gay clubs that people get hung up about has more to do with a particular subculture than the sexual orientation itself. It is certainly part of the gay experience, but it is not what homosexuality is. To be a gay man is simply to engage in the act of loving another man. What the gay liberation movement did was convince society that same-sex relationships were quite fine, actually. Even wholesome. Naturally, it wasn’t easy. There have been protests and there have been riots. But I dare say that once the phenomenon of a man being in a relationship with another man started becoming a common sight on the television, the normalisation process took off like a big fat rocket. Gay people could suddenly make it in the mainstream.
Let’s say I get to write my own sitcom for a popular television channel. I want there to be some autism representation in the show, so I decided to make one of the main characters autistic. Now, the question is how should I go about making them autistic? I can certainly model them after myself, that would be more than reasonable, but as I’ve made it clear earlier in this post, I don’t necessarily come across as the most typical autistic person. I’m unfamiliar with some of the experiences other people with autism consider to be key to their understanding of what autism is. So am I obliged to create a character that goes beyond my own lived experience, to start incorporating the experiences of others? If I just made the character a reflection of me, would that character be a good representation of autism, or just the particular case of autism that I happen to have? Should I try to cover as much ground as possible, by adding in more typical traits of autism that I myself happen to not experience as much? After all, I want to make a difference, and I want autistic persons watching the show to feel as if I’ve fully captured what it means to have autism. But, sooner or later, in my quest to be as comprehensive as possible, I find myself having created just the most abysmal caricature of an autistic character, one with so many disparate characteristics that now no-one watching the show can relate to them.
It is hard to convey what autism is without launching into some hour-long lecture. And I am sure that no matter how I write the character, there’s bound to be a legion of armchair diagnosticians watching the show at home unaware of my status as an autistic writer, accusing me of relying on poorly-researched and offensive stereotypes. And I know the frustration in having to explain to others how just ‘cause you’re not all that similar to some famous autistic character in a book or a movie or a show or a game that doesn’t mean that you’re not actually autistic. “But you don’t struggle with understanding sarcasm, so surely you’re not really all that autistic?” Yes, well, some people with autism do struggle with understanding sarcasm, for me it happens to be easier, but it’s not all that relevant to what autism is and… sigh. Those discussions can go on and on. There is no one way to be autistic, and that’s a large part of why mainstream society struggles to comprehend the condition, outside of a few flighty media archetypes. It just can’t be boiled down to just one easy comprehensible sentence.
It frustrates me seeing the efforts of some people trying to destigmatize neurodivergent behaviour by fetishizing those behaviours. Oh, you know what I’m referring to, the kinds of people who try their best to make it seem all cool and radical to be neurodivergent. I understand the temptation, especially if you’re a younger person who recently got your diagnosis. You want to turn something that society perceives to be a weakness in you into a strength. But if I tell you that I’m autistic, I want neither your admiration nor your damnation. Love me or hate me based on my character, not my diagnosis.
Again, it is important for those of us who are perceived as being higher-functioning to understand that our experiences can differ from those who are perceived as being lower-functioning. While in weaker moments, I may wish to wear my autism with pride, even feel delight in reading lists of historical people speculated to have had autism and feeling a certain kinship with them. Maybe I can derive some self-worth from that. But I must remember that for many, they’d much rather not have the diagnosis at all. I could try to chastise them, to accuse them of being self-loathing, or allowing the stigma to get to them, but that would be an absolutely fruitless endeavour, and one that would erode my actual goal of making life overall better for anyone with a neuropsychiatric condition. I am not privy to their personal experiences, and I should not make the assumption that just because I’ve had it relatively easy, that is the experience of all people with autism. I may just be lucky, and I should be conscious of that.
Ultimately, while we may one day have our neurodivergent pride day, where neurodiversity is celebrated and brought into the fold of mainstream society, I am wary of those that try to simplify what it means to be neurodivergent in an attempt to make the process of normalisation go faster. We cannot allow this project to be led solely by the few of us lucky enough to find self-expression easy, those of us with prominent communication skills. We do not get to represent the whole group, and we do not get to act like captains, the arbiters of what the neurodivergent experience is like. I can only speak for myself and my own experiences. I seek personal liberation. I am autistic, but I am not all autistic people. I do not know if future generations will have it easier than my generation. Whatever state of liberty I seek, it may be that it will come tomorrow, or it may never come. I cannot pretend to know what it means for others to be autistic, when I do not myself know what it means for me to be autistic. I wish I had the easy answers to give as selling uncertainty is no easy feat. If we truly wish for the neurodivergent to be accepted, our hope is to one day be able to convince the mainstream that, when it comes to the mind, no singular experience can explain all of it.
Do you remember when PETA ran that campaign that suggested that drinking milk makes you autistic? They did a parody of that old American advertising campaign “Got Milk?” What PETA did, very cleverly, was replace the word milk with the word autism. “Has your child got autism? Learn about the link between autism and dairy products at PETA.org.” Now, I think it is fairly well-known by now that PETA is a comically incompetent organisation that routinely euthanizes healthy animals due to the radical belief that the mere act of pet ownership is inherently cruel, and that an animal is better off dead than as a pet. Now, ragging on PETA is not going to be controversial, and this blog isn’t about animal rights or the validity of PETA’s cause. What this blog is about is me, a person on the autism spectrum, reflecting on what it means to have this diagnosis, and occasionally sighing profusely over the terrible stigma that comes with it.
Does milk cause autism? Of course not, don’t be absurd. Drink as much milk as you want, go ahead, it won’t suddenly get you really interested in trains. Unless you’re lactose intolerant, I want you to practically swim in dairy, eat all the cheese, guzzle on that cream, and feast on butter. I suppose that maybe some of you are vegans, and in that case, while I don’t approve of your crazy life of consuming zero delicious fermented milk products, I will defend your right to abstain from dairy if, and only if, your reasoning for it does not stem from some ludicrous fear that you may just catch the autism. You don’t catch autism, it’s not transmissible, and it is still quite a rare diagnosis. It is possible that for a period of time the condition was overdiagnosed (particularly in America,) but even then, we’re talking about a small percentage of the population. And the most likely cause of autism? Genetics. Just like most other neuropsychiatric conditions, it is most likely that if you’re somewhere on the autism spectrum, you’ve got family members that are also somewhere on the autism spectrum.
But the scary ghost of autism still lurks there somewhere in the dark. We all know that if you’re diagnosed with autism, then that’s it for you. You’re doomed to live an unfulfilled life just babbling to yourself in the corner of some room unable to operate like a fully functioning member of society. You might even start liking comic books. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare to wake up one day and notice that their child is getting just that little bit too interested in LEGO, finding the stillsome activity of playing on their own using their creativity and spatial awareness to build fantastical constructs preferable to kicking some stupid ball around while their friends tease them for being rubbish at sports. For a condition that does not come with any real harmful physical symptoms, it is remarkable that so many treat it like a death sentence. Granted, you might not like seeing your child getting bullied for being different, but shouldn’t we at this point recognise that the problem there lies with the bullies and not your child? Besides, I can guarantee you that the parents who obsess the most in making their autistic children “normal” are the ones that are going to instil in their children a profound sense of self-loathing and desperate need to be anyone but themselves. Why are we looking for a cure for autism, when we should be looking for a cure for bad parents?
But, let’s get to the main topic for this blog post. Vaccines. Do vaccines cause autism? No. Okay, now let’s move on.
I try not to be bothered… Oh, wait, you’ve still got questions about vaccines? Am I actually really certain that vaccines don’t cause autism? Yes, I am. If that is all, I’d rather talk about something else that is actually more relevant to the autistic experience. But, sadly, I am willing to reckon that no matter how firm one is in declaring that there is absolutely no link between vaccinations and autism, the memetic quality of that profound misconception is strong enough that it will keep on lingering in the back of our collective societal consciousness. “Well, I heard…”
The anti-vaccination crowd certainly has gotten their time in the spotlight. Conspiracy theories have grown especially virulent now that they have to compete with COVID. It seems almost daily that you find otherwise sensible people repeating certain hogwash ridiculous statements about the virus and the effects of the vaccinations against it. There’s the obvious loony stuff that you’ve undoubtedly heard about Bill Gates and some secret plot to put microchips in people that will somehow result in the establishment of a New World Order. But even beyond that, towards the more “reasonable” end of the vaccine denialism you will find people who don’t view themselves as tinfoil-wearing nutcases, they’re simply raising questions. Questions, in this context, do not actually mean questions. They don’t expect to receive answers, or if they do, they certainly don’t engage with those answers. They’re just obtuse individuals who like the attention they get from being stubborn cranks refusing to go with the mainstream thought, no matter how sensible that mainstream thought happens to be. Vaccines should not be controversial. I’m happy to have a taste in music that is a little bit weird and eclectic, but when it comes to vaccinations, I am proud to be as milquetoast vanilla as I can possibly get. Get fucking vaccinated, you dumb-dumbs.
I recently watched a documentary series about medical history. Fascinating enough, especially the episode on poisons and their medical uses. In one of the episodes, they talk about the massive international effort to completely eradicate smallpox through widespread vaccinations. The episode concludes in stating that the success of this endeavour is perhaps the single most impressive feat of modern science, and humanity’s noble goal of ending world suffering. Yes, yes, we landed on the moon, but we also fucking wiped out a disease that has been preying upon humanity since ancient history. We did that. Through vaccinations. We’ve saved countless lives that would have without modern medicine suffered unthinkable painful deaths, barely able to breathe as their mouths swell up with painful ulcers and their bodies scarred from the legions of pus-filled blisters that cover their skin. The fact that there exists people today that doubt the validity of vaccines when in just recent history we’ve gotten to experience one of the biggest triumphs of medical history just boggles the mind. Vaccinations are good. And they don’t cause fucking autism.
Just get vaccinated against COVID. Your arm will hurt for maybe a day, you might feel a little sick and tired, or you might not feel anything at all. Be as sceptical as you wish about big pharma, and some of the corporations that peddle dangerous and addictive opioids to the masses, without care or legal repercussions, but don’t you doubt the existence of vaccines. If you haven’t, vaccinate your child. Vaccinate your dog, vaccinate fucking anything in your life that can be vaccinated. Let me tell you, autism is way more preferable to have than fucking smallpox. I’d look an awful lot less pretty if my face was covered in blisters.
I love music. Do you love music? Want to listen to some of the music that I like to listen to? Okay? What do you mean I listen to awful music? I really like the music I listen to. It’s complex, and it’s sophisticated, and it’s not like the other kind of music you hear on the radio. Surely, the kind of music that I like to listen to is the good kind of music. All that other music, it’s just noise. It’s pop. It’s mainstream. I listen to the genuine stuff, the stuff made by real musicians, who care more about the music than the image. I don’t listen to pop. I listen to the real strange stuff, the avant-garde stuff, the stuff that gets the close minded masses all scared and concerned. They don’t know music. Not like I know music. I am music. They’re not.
Except, I am not musical. Or maybe I am. I often dream of music. I have dreams where I remember having perfect ideas for songs, or compositions. I wake up, and I can’t remember the melodies I had in my head as I was dreaming. It’s frustrating. I could be a master composer if only I could remember those tunes in my sleeping head. I suppose it’d be easier if I actually knew how to play any instruments. I don’t know how to play any instruments. The best I’ve ever gotten at any instrument is learning how to play the Swedish national anthem on the mouth organ. I can’t remember how to play the Swedish national anthem on the mouth organ. But I did know how to play the Swedish national anthem on the mouth organ once upon a time.
I am not too regretful over my lack of musicality. After all, I spent most of my energy learning how to write, and how to draw, and I consider myself really quite good at both. One has to choose one’s preferred fields in life. You cannot be good at everything. I chose to become good at the written word, and I chose to become good at art. I’ve got passion for music, but I’ve got passion for many things. I decided to let music be one of those things I love without intimately understanding. I know what sounds good and what sounds bad. That’s it. I can’t tell you what’s up or down with music theory. I could certainly go on and on about colour theory. Show me a painting from any decade or century and I can tell you what it is trying to communicate, and whether or not it is done well or poorly. I’ll happily tell you why Caravaggio stands so much apart from the rest of the counter-reformation, how he belongs to a movement, without necessarily meaning to stand for that movement, and… well, art history gets rather complex. Caravaggio is not my favourite painter, but I like how he used light and shadow in his works. I also like Raphael and his world of vivid colours. I am accepting of the Italians. They made some good stuff.
I like Rothko. I really, really, like Rothko. I one day wish to visit the Rothko Chapel. I am not spiritual, but I do love painting. Painting is spiritual. Whether or not I am spiritual, it matters little. Painting is, and will always be, inspired by the spirits. I love art, I love painting. I have to accept the status quo. Art is religious. Even when it is irreligious. Art is desperate to hit the sublime. The sublime is God. Or well, maybe that is a reductive take on the sublime, but I frankly think that is what most artists have historically considered the sublime to be. To be one with God. To be one with the universe. To cease to exist as a mortal. To become immortal. To become one of the endless. Don’t we all wish to become endless? To become eternal? Art promised to get you there. Art failed to fulfil its promise. Art could only tease you, give you a hint of the divine. In the end, you fell down like any other mortal. Became one of the many. Not blessed by the highest one. Not offered a place in heaven. Just another fool thinking that at the end of their life, they’d be given a place in paradise. Instead they were forgotten. Painters started painting in different styles. Culture moved on. Society forgot about you.
I like to watch videos on YouTube of educated musicians talking about what makes certain music good, and what makes other music less good. It is not necessarily all about snobbism. Well, to a certain degree, it is, but I don’t think it is everything. There is something delightful about being able to dissect true complexity. A song that switches between time signatures will always be more intriguing than a song that remains placid, non-changing. If you get used to the standard, you will look towards what is not standard. The average pop song won't satisfy you, if you’ve spent too much time researching pop songs. You will be looking for something new, something novel. You will want to discover the progressive, the innovative, the absolutely new. Your curiosity will swell to the point of not being able to fit into your old clothes, it will demand that new thing, that new state of existence. You won’t settle for what’s obvious. You will want what’s never been explored before.
Curiosity is greed. Greed is curiosity. One reason why I never fault companies for wanting to expand. How could I? I want to expand. Well, I don’t mean physically, but my point is, don’t we all wish to transcend our physical limits? Don’t we all wish to be limitless? I know that we exist in a time where it is not exactly popular or well-accepted to be forgiving of great corporations, and capitalism on the whole, but I can’t help but think that we’re all the same. Corporations are people, too. We all wish to grow bigger, grow stronger and more competent. To face the future, to become salient. You cannot be drowned if you’re a masthead. Always stand above the sea level. Always shout the loudest. Always stand apart. Be the genius that others consider worth saving. No-one wants to be considered average, when average people will get sacrificed in the great cull that is to come.
Musicians, they are so great. They must have so much going on in their heads. As an artist, all I’ve got going on is this single picture. I know what I wish to depict, I’ve got this still image in my head, and my job is to create something physical that reflects what I’ve got in mind. Musicians, oh, they’ve got to keep the myriad of possibilities in their heads, all these potentials, all these different sounds that they could express through their instruments. The multitude of noises. Hold your finger the wrong way, and the flute will sound entirely different from how you intended it. Accidentally miss the right beat, and your job as a drummer will be all lost. Music seems hard. Art is easy. Whatever I do, I can sell it. Artists are all a bunch of bullshitters. Musicians are held to a much greater standard. Musicians are disciplined. Musicians are soldiers.
Don’t trust painters. Painters will deceive you. Painters will want you thinking one thing, while they’re actually communicating something entirely different. There’s a reason why I’ve mostly been working with collages, lately. Collages are more truthful than paintings. Collages are more truthful because you are working with what already exists. You are piecing together elements that precedes your creation. You are not making something. You are remaking something. Taking creations and developing something new. You are a crow, making a crow’s nest. Whatever materials you find, you use those little bits to create your home. You make a house out of nothing. You place yourself, your little feet, in a new place. You create a resting point, a pillar you can trust and rely on. It’s always comfortable to be able to come back to that singular starting point. That place that makes you feel safe. Calm. Makes you feel as if you’ve got no worries to speak of. A place you can reside assured of whatever comes. No evil can touch you, when you are at home.
Paint your house white. White is an innocent colour. White lets the light in. Open your windows. Stay safe behind your walls, but make sure to let the outside in. Exist in this limbo. Allow the others to influence you, but exist independently. Be both. Be both yourself, and be what the others expect you to be. Find the duality of existence difficult to put up with? It’s all that is expected of you. You should know better. You should do better. Asking for a simple life is to give up. Respectable people know that life is complex, and they learn to live with that complexity. They exist at several time signatures at the same time. They don’t complain about having to switch from one mode to another. They are multifaceted. What are you? Limited? Are you getting another headache? Migraine? What are you, some infant creature? Some little minor creation? Blossom into a multi-limbed marvel, learn to exist on several planes at the same time. If you can’t exist knowing all of music, all of music theory, then why do you insist on living? If you don’t know the multitudes of layers that make up human consciousness, then you don’t deserve to reserve that little piece of reality for yourself. Why exist when you can’t explain existence?
Music theorists are all lying, aren’t they? They don’t know what they’re talking about. Not really. They’re just improvising. They’ll use charts, try to refer to graphs to try to explain their worldview. They’re as lost as I am. As you are. As we are all. God, it sure is comfortable knowing that we’re all confused. Maybe I am alone in this, but I sure appreciate knowing that there are no gurus, no wise men, no magis, to trust and rely on. Humans all share this planet. We all are equally as lost. Doesn’t matter that I am autistic. You may not be autistic, but you’re just like me. You don’t know the answers. You aren’t self-assured. You don’t know the truth. You are fearful. Even if you know music, you don’t really know music better than me. You are just playing a role, keeping to some gimmick. Beneath it all, beneath all of the pretense. We’re the same. We’re all mortals. How are you? How does it feel to recognise that you are one day bound to die, and be forgotten and made wholly irrelevant?
No, as a colour theorist, I must object. Blue is not the same as red. We can make some sense of reality. It’s not all just subjective. Of course I am not denying that all humans equally deserve our place on this planet, but maybe it is the case that some of us are more wrong in our convictions than others. Maybe some of us are more correct. Don’t get pulled down by the majority. Don’t get weakened by the masses that knock on your door. Allow yourself to stand strong and tall. You are vibrant. You aren’t desaturated. Be vivid. Stand ahead of the rest. Be the fucker who thinks that you’ve got the whole world ahead of you. You don’t need to limit yourself, just to fit in with the majority. Be a freak. Be the avant-garde. Play the tunes no-one else understands. Be a weirdo.
I feel as if I am returning to the same place. Be yourself. Don’t let others influence you. Like a composition that is returning to normalcy, over and over again. Painting doesn’t really do that. Look at Picasso, one of the greatest painters of all time, though he has certain recognisable hallmarks, things that make him uniquely himself, you never get the sense he is always eager to return to his homeplace. Musicians always try to return to square one. To find themselves where they started. It is how most musical creations work. The prelude sounds similar to the interlude. In music, everything is cyclical. One two three, turns to three two one. Other art offers a break from the pattern. Don’t bother repeating yourself. Don’t bother creating music. Create an upwards swing. You don’t need to create a downward swing just to remain sympathetic. Be what’s good. You don’t need to also be what’s bad.
Yes, yes, I naturally understand we all sometimes have to put up the darkness. The black dog. I am not suggesting you aren’t allowed to sense those darker tones. All I am saying is, why do we keep insisting on sadness as being necessary to balance out happiness? Why do we keep thinking black and white must remain 50/50? Can’t we permit ourselves to be mostly satisfied with life? Must we always keep that bit of misery in the back of our minds? Like as if we’re trying to keep some balance? If we have a part of ourselves constantly looking outwards, trying to find something new, something splendid and revolutionary, why not rely on that part of ourselves? Why not be happy looking ahead? Let’s leave behind the misery. Let’s live for art. Let’s live for what’s spiritual. Let’s live for aesthetics. Let’s compartmentalise. Adore goodness. Idealise your ideal. Leave behind your negativity.
Good music don’t include ugly sounds. You don’t interrupt the rock star guitarist by insisting the jug band leader get to do a ditty on their washboard. Some music holds good quality. Some music fails to impress. Some tunes sound awful. Some tunes embarrass. Still, does that mean those tunes don't get to exist? Aren’t we allowed to receive lessons from those tunes? We only learn to be our best when we know the parts of ourselves that aren’t wanted. Aren’t needed. Find what’s wicked within you, and learn to recognise that wickedness, then work to rise above it. Learn to regard that wickedness as something existing beneath you. Exist beyond it. Why not? Must you keep defining yourself based on your worst characteristics?
I’m immensely moved by the lyrics of Talking Head’s song Heaven. "Heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens."
Allow me to brag for a moment. As a kid, whenever I would get a haircut, I would consistently get told by the person cutting my hair that I was the calmest kid they have ever had the fortune to give a haircut. Oh, yes. I was a calm kid. I knew qi. Qi knew me. I existed in harmony with nature, even back then. I was a special kid. I was a calm kid. A silent kid. A quiet kid. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t throw tantrums. I didn’t take up too much space. If the person cutting my hair wanted me to look down, I’d look down. If they wanted me to turn my head left, I turned my head left. If they wanted me to turn my head right, I turned my head right. I didn’t complain. I didn’t act up. I knew what I expected from me. I knew the rules. I obliged. It was easy, after all. Not as if it took a lot of effort to do as they said. I’d get complimented for doing something so easy as following simple instructions. I was a good boy. I did as I was told. And I got my hair cut. Even as a child, when being commended for my good behaviour when getting my hair cut, I wondered what in hell other kids must be getting up to when they go to get their hair cut. Like, don’t those kids know who’s got the scissors? Do they want to get their ears cut off? If you go to get your new haircut, do as the person cutting your hair wants you to do. Or else they might leave you one-eared.
Look at me now, however, and you wouldn’t think I’m particularly good with getting my hair cut. My hair is long, untamed, and I’ve got a big beard, too. Some folks inaccurately might say I look like Jesus, but we all know that Jesus wasn’t white like me. I’m as Scandinavian as they come, and Jesus certainly wasn’t Nordic (not even of the extraterrestrial variety.) But I am bearded and longhaired. Recently I’ve been using the excuse that I haven’t gotten my hair cut because of COVID, which is partly true. I’ve certainly been more scared of COVID than I think most scenesters my age. Plenty of younger adults seem to think of themselves as being immortal. That’s not really me. I’m not as hypochondriacal as I could be. Frankly it is one of those areas my mothers got me beat, when it comes to anxiety. Sure, I’ve got experience with OCD, my mother hasn’t, but she’s way more of a hypochondriac than me. COVID isn’t the reason why I haven’t gotten my hair cut. I haven’t gotten my hair cut because… well… I don’t see the point of getting my hair cut.
And also I am scared. My hair doesn’t feel pain, I know it doesn’t. If we as humans needed to get our fingers cut every so often, only for them later to regrow, I am sure most people would agree with me that getting that regular trim is honestly not so important. Our fingers have got nerves. Our hair doesn't. Cutting your hair isn’t painful. I am still unthinkably nervous whenever I go to have my hair cut. Why? Well, why not? Do I need an excuse to get unthinkably nervous? Just let a man exist on a wholly different plane of anxiety and nervousness. Don’t expect me to act normal. Or well, if you do, then don’t expect me to be your friend. I’m vibrating at a different frequency. I am tuned differently. I am smart and you are dumb. Yes, don’t act all dumbfounded. I am clearly gripped by intelligence that is foreign to you. My anxiety must be because I am so smart, right? Neurosis is a consequence of intelligence, right? I am eccentric, yes, but eccentric people are remarkably intelligent individuals. I am not a basket case. Please don’t tell me I’m a basket case.
“I love my son. He’s so intelligent.” I know how to ride a bike, too. Eventually, at least, I learned how to ride a bike. Can you believe I spent a lot of time as a child feeling ashamed over how long it took for me to learn how to ride a bike? Okay, yeah, if you’re a regular reader of this blog you probably can believe that. Maybe I am mistaken in this, but I have to imagine I felt an unusual amount of shame as a child. Some of my earliest memories involve me feeling shame. Feeling shame I didn’t know how to ride a bike. Feeling shame I still sometimes sucked on my thumb. Feeling shame I wasn’t developing as fast as the other boys. Feeling shame I wasn’t as butch as them. Feeling shame over the fact that I was feeling shame, and they weren’t. Shame begets shame. Miserable little worm-creatures better not expose themselves to direct sunlight. Burrow into the dirt. Hide away from the gaze of others. Worry. Despair. Don’t feel pride. You don’t know how to ride a bike. You aren’t intelligent. Sleep a lonely sleep. Relieve others of your presence. Go dormant. Hibernate. Disappear from society.
Let me be available. I am not always available. I can’t pretend to always be on top of things, clearly, I am not. But when I am good and in the mood, let me be available. I’ll help you. I’ll prove myself to you. Pick me up, and turn me round. I guess I must be having fun. Why make enemies when you can make friends? Why frustrate others, when you can please them? Why cause unnecessary arguments? Why quarrel? That’s not me. That’s not what I am about. I’m just an animal looking for a home. Don’t think I’m going to upset you. I will act according to your wishes. Ask me to look up, I will look up. Ask me to look down, I will look down. Whatever I need to make you want to help me, I will do that. If I ever do something that does not please you, that goes against you, then you better know I didn’t mean to do that thing. That was something I did unintentionally. I did that without meaning it. I can’t help it. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Didn't mean to speak too loud. Didn’t mean to act carelessly. I love you. Do you love me?
I always got along better with adults than kids my age. Adults loved me. Adults always assumed I’d be the bright shining star of the next generation. I am a millennial. I suppose I was meant to be a great millennial, but really, I am just one of the many millions of millennials out there. If only we had just come out of some big world war. That’s how previous generations got to make their mark. It is much easier to get a job when the world needs rebuilding. As much as I hated being a teenager, I sort of miss those moments where I got to feel special. Being surrounded by adults who believed in me. Thought I’d make a difference as I grew older. Thought I’d make an impressive career. I was depressed, sure, but the future was still ahead of me. If I could travel back in time and slap myself. One, two, three, four, five, six times across the face. Get over yourself you miserable punk. Don’t you see the chances you got? It’s not all too late now, is it? Don’t tell me it’s all too late. Tell me I’m still that kid. Tell me the adults still respect me.
I fear. I cuddle up in bed, I hold a pillow in my arms. I like to cuddle with a pillow. I am genetically a big spoon, I don’t want to feel anybody’s arms around me, but I want to hold somebody else. If I was more desperate than I am, I’d get a body pillow. But I am not that far gone, I’m happy to report. Still, I am a big old bear that’d make a good hubby one day. Feed me a little bit of honey, and I’ll do anything you ask me. I’d look down, if you told me to look down. I’d look up, if you told me to look up. Cut my hair, if you wish. I’ve got long hair now, but I am willing to go shorthaired if that is what you want in a man. If longhaired men are too effeminate for you, baby, then trust me, I’ll cut my hair. I’ll be a proper man for you, darling. I’ll be the leather-clad biker of your dreams. Go on, sniff my jacket, ride my bike, I’m all ready to take you on. I will find a way to please you. Just like that person who cut my hair as a kid. I won’t cause you any trouble. I will be the most courteous kid you’ve ever come across. I’ll make your job easy. I’ll be your favourite little boy.
They’ll hate me, if I turn up being myself. I am not easy to love. I’ve got my… peculiarities. I’m not easy to love...
… But I am easy to love. I don’t have the same edges other people have. I am not rude. I am not unreasonable. I am not some sadist. I’m no Marquis de Sade. I like other people. I want to be liked. I want them to like me. I can be myself, and they actually ought to love me. Why do I keep on thinking I’m some kind of monster, some kind of unlovable freak? I keep accusing myself of being a freak, a fucking monster, a fucking horrendous piece of shit! Why do I find it so difficult to love myself? And what is that part of my brain that makes me insist that other people ought to find it as difficult to love me as I find it difficult to love me? Surely, just ‘cause I have certain issues with seeing my own self-worth doesn’t mean that other people have got to have the very same issues. If another person loves me, then maybe that should be enough proof to show that I am loveable. If they can do it, then I should be able to do it. I’ve never experienced as much hate from anybody as the hate that I’ve received from myself. I am loveable. I am adorable. I am precious, and it’s time that I recognise that. It’s time I rise above all that self-loathing and become a fully self-realised person.
I’ve probably got quite a high IQ. I can’t say for certain, as I’ve never done a proper IQ test, but I’ve done plenty of estimates. Part of the reason why I’ve done the tests is because like most people, I like to be able to brag. Who doesn’t want to have a high IQ? But also, I’m kinda insecure about my intelligence. Believe it or not. I certainly seem rather arrogant, at times, but it’s part of my comedy persona. I exaggerate certain things for comedic effects. I am not nearly as much of an alcoholic as I sometimes portray myself as. Unlike a proper alcoholic, I merely drink too much a couple of times a week, not all the days of the week. But my drinking, I like to intellectualise it. I like to depersonalise it, to remove it from my emotional core, to make it all into some question of theory or debate of ideas. I don’t like to discuss my physical flesh. I’d rather exist as a concept, than as a pile of muscle, blood, and skin. I shouldn’t care about stuff like IQ, because IQ is how you measure the intelligence of mortals. And I should be better than that. I should be immortal.
But autistic people are retards, right? Sorry to use the r-word, but I feel as if I’ve at some level got the right to use that word. Even though I’ve never actually used it, even in my more immature younger days. I very much squirm any time I hear it used, and I don’t appreciate any edgy comedians who think that they can use that word ironically. The r-word strongly bothers me, even if I never really grew up being called one. It’s the rejection that I’m afraid of. For a time I went to a school that had a separate curriculum for those with special needs. I remember how all the “normal” students mercilessly teased and humiliated those kids who weren’t like them. Who needed extra help. Extra care. Who weren’t like the rest of us. Who weren’t accepted. I wasn’t like them. Surely, I wasn’t like them. I couldn’t be, I couldn’t be as ostracised as they were. I wasn’t a freak, I wasn’t some retard, I was normal. I feared them. I knew I was different, but I hoped real bad I wasn't like them.
I am intelligent, right? I am good. I am polite. I can contribute to society. You should like me. You should be on my side. I do as I am told. Though… maybe I’ve gotten naughtier with age. Like, maybe, I am willing to tell you to fuck off every so often. If I gotta be living my life in vain, then I reserve the right to be able to tell the rest of you that you’ve got your priorities configured all the wrong way. I don’t want to be free of hope. And I don’t think I am at the end of my rope. I can try to get by. I feel an obligation to be somebody. To get past that brain fog I suffer most days. It’s easy when you’ve got a voice telling you where to look. To look down, or to look left or right. I don’t freak out when I hear that buzzing of the hair trimmer next to my ear. I know that the haircutter won’t hurt me. If he did, then he wouldn’t get paid. I am not some animal, I’m not driven by my instincts. I can stay calm. I can look ahead. I can be an example, some glorious ideal for all the retards to look up to. I can be their hero.
I just want to be myself. I just want to go to bed. I don’t want you to like me, or to hate me, I just don’t want to feel like every single interaction has to do with me trying to present a persona to you. I don’t want to have to worry whether or not you find me normal. I don’t want to have to worry whether or not you find me to be a freak or not. I don’t want you to have to wonder if I am intelligent or not. I don’t want you wondering whether or not I am retarded. I don’t want to go to a special class, for kids just like me with neurological issues, with learning disabilities. I want to be likeable. I want to be agreeable. I want everyone to be able to have something positive to say about me. I want to be given a good grade. I want to be told I did good. I want to stay with my friends, don’t tell me I’m a retard, don’t tell me I’m not normal. Please, just let me be. Don’t see through me. Don’t leave me naked. Don’t leave me vulnerable. Don’t make me a freak.
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I am fleeing. If I ever experience a fight-or-flight response, I fly. I need to get outside, away from school, to the nearby lake. It’s late autumn, I can be safe knowing there’s nobody there. I don’t want to have to deal with people right now. If I can get somewhere where I will be all alone, I can reset my mind. The bubbling sensation of a coming panic attack is overwhelming me. Like a beast rising from some primordial genetic pool in a science fiction movie. I feel the stink overtake me. I can’t think of anything else but escape. I leave my friends and I am out there. No words said. I hope I don’t look like I’m crying. That’d be embarrassing.
I sit on a tree log and I try to relax. In front of me there’s the lake. Well, technically it is not a lake, but actually a part of the Baltic sea that’s creeping all the way around the slew of islands that forms the great archipelago we call Stockholm. Still, it looks like a lake to me, and there are plenty of lakes in this part of the world. Something to do with the last ice age, glaciers, and whatnot… No matter, that’s all irrelevant right now. If you grew up around where I grew up (or somewhere similar, like the Great Lakes region of North America,) you know the kind of empty solace that can be found by a lake, a cold day in fall. At most you may see someone in the far distance, perhaps walking a dog. But it’s a weekday, I can’t remember if it was Tuesday or Thursday, but I don’t think it matters. People are off working. The kids, they’re supposed to be at school. I am at school, but I’d rather be at home.
I call my mother. I tell her that I can’t do this. I wanna be back home. She tells me to hold on. She calms me down. I don’t believe I made much sense, at that moment. I probably gave her a real fright, calling her out of the blue while she was busy at work. I can’t remember what advice she gave me, but I assume she told me that if I wanted to, I could go home and skip school for the rest of the day, but that I should probably tell a teacher I’m feeling sick, first. Just to let them know where I am going. But, seeing as there’s not many hours left in the day, maybe I should just try to collect myself and wait it out. Take a deep breath. Remember, all things must pass. Even this, even this moment, it shall pass. I hang up. I sit. I look at the lake. I breathe.
Emptiness. Sweet emptiness. A head empty of all thoughts. Whenever I feel stressed I wish to escape to nature. Or, well, some idealised tamed version of nature. I don’t want to go out camping. I don’t wish to go all survivalist. I’m no prepper. I’d hate to live truly isolated. I’d like to be able to order pizzas every so often. Maybe go and get a cappuccino. I’m clearly way too urban to truly become some lonely mountain man living all on my own out in the wilderness. Fantasies aren’t reality. Sure, it sounds swell owning my own boat, sailing the ocean blue, forgetting about the social ills of the landlubbers. But owning a boat, well, that’s a lot of work. Gotta get insurance, gotta find a place to store it in the winters, gotta learn proper safety and boat maintenance. What do you do when barnacles get all stuck on your ship’s hull? I’d probably go way too aggressive and damage both my own boat and my own hands in the process of scraping them off. Fantasy is soft, cuddly, and easy. Reality is hard and full of edges.
Still… Nature is pretty. I see a duck swim by. I’ve sadly been informed by quite a number of people that male ducks are apparently very aggressive breeders. To be more precise, male ducks are a bunch of rapists. I have to admit, knowing that does sour my attitude towards ducks just a little, though, I still consider it a fine day if I get to see a duck. I suppose one cannot judge them for not fully comprehending the vital importance of consent before lovemaking. They’re just ducks, after all. They probably shouldn’t be anthropomorphised. Wittgenstein said that “if a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” Well, I’d say the same thing goes for ducks as well.
Animals are intriguing because they’re not us. Though, they are like us. We’ve created a world for ourselves filled with gadgets and social conventions that should make life easier for us, though, it has also created that modernist sense of disillusionment that makes many of us question the very purpose of going on living. We shouldn’t be ungrateful, however. Despite the doom and gloom that dominates online discourse, we’re living in a golden age. The standard of living, across the globe, has never been this high. We should stop clinging to this myth of an old age where man lived in total harmony with the cosmos, in a grand communion with the celestial creators. That only later, due to man’s corruptible nature, our propensity for sin, that utopia got washed away by some all-encompassing apocalyptic flood. The festering idea that all things start off innocent and pristine, only to later inevitably fall from grace, it causes bad things to the human mind. It makes us fatalistic, cynical, and worst of all, rather grumpy. Not to say that things are always destined to get better, we may still fuck things up if we don’t pull our shit together, but let’s be happy with what we’ve got. Let’s count our blessings.
It’s pretty damn cool that I got to go to school as a kid. Historically, that wasn’t guaranteed. Actually, it is not always guaranteed even now, it depends on where you live here on Earth. Some kids don’t get to go to school. Most of the folks reading this, however, can’t imagine living under such conditions. Trying to imagine a society where only the rich kids gets to get an education. Only the wee little prodigies of the ruling class. Well, to be precise, only the wee little male prodigies of the ruling class. I’ve struggled, and I still struggle, with finding my role in life. I feel confused, and afraid, and as if I am a stranger in a strange land. But I still cherish the fact that I do get a choice. I’d hate to be a farmer, and I am lucky I wasn’t born in a time when you didn’t get a choice whether or not you wanted to be a farmer. You do what your old pa did, and that’s that. If I had to do what my dad did, then I’d be an electrician. I don’t want to be an electrician. I’m overjoyed not to be stuck living in a caste system.
I make my way back to the school. I liked looking at the lake, but I can’t spend all day looking at it. Gotta give some impression to the teachers that I care about doing well at school. I’m not doing well at school. I’m doing well at art, but that’s about it. I do act engaged when it comes to the lectures, I’m always ready to raise my hand up and ask questions. But I find doing any of the assignments to be so boring. It’s just pointless. I know that I learned all this stuff, I did read the textbooks, why must I prove it to the teachers? Learning is fun. It’s even fundamental. But being grilled on what you know? Being measured? Being prodded and massaged and appraised? I don’t like that. Though I eventually did get better at school, even graduating with quite the impressive grades, I still never learned to love the byzantine nature of academia. I am more free-flowing. I’m an artist, a long-haired freak who listens to jazz, I can’t handle all these rules and restrictions. Do I really need to show up early in the morning for this class? You need me to wake up before noon? That’s fascism, right there. Let a humble man sleep!
I see my friends. I could take the time to calmly explain why I rushed off, why I needed some time on my own, away from them, but I’m not going to do that. Still, I am surprised when one of them offers an apology to me, saying that he’s sorry if he said something that hurt my feelings. Being a bunch of teenage boys any actual display of sincerity, any actual recognition that we are humans with emotions and sometimes we feel vulnerable, that’s… well… that’s gay. It’s gay to care about each other. It’s gay to not relentlessly bully each other, to constantly make each other feel just that little bit unsafe, to try and establish dominance over your peers. This friend group I was a part of, I dare say it was somewhat toxic. Perhaps we were no more toxic than your average group of boys that age. I won’t claim to not partaking in, and perpetuating, that toxicity. Puberty twists your brain, it makes teenagers into feral beasts with big sharp fangs and sneering snouts. I hated school, because I hated being a teenager. I hated everything about that teenage life some folks can’t help but romanticise. Being asked if I was okay, well, that was unexpected. I expected to get teased for being such a wuss. Though, I responded saying that I’m fine, I just needed to get some fresh air. I'm not gay or nothing...
Can’t remember what happened next. The day passed by as normal. Took the bus home. Probably ate something unhealthy but tasty. Might have lied down in bed and cried. Or tried to forget about things by watching TV. May have gone to school the next day, or may not have. I stayed at home a lot back then. Honestly, I’d love to say that at some point I had an epiphany, some grand moment of sudden realisation that helped me overcome my quiet desperation. But no, life just kept on going. Some days I made it to school, other days I stayed home watching TV. Some days I went to bed without crying, other days I cried myself to sleep. I never triumphed, nor did I plummet. I never reached that nadir of total overwhelming despair. I suffered suicidal thoughts, sure, who hasn’t? I’ve never attempted to kill myself, however. I’ve never been taken to a mental hospital against my will. Never been restrained in fear of me harming myself. No, nothing as dramatic as that. I very calmly entered that desaturated world of bleak depression, and I stayed there for several years. Monotony. Boredom. Desolation. Nothing to hurt you, nothing to excite you. I became very dull.
To keep myself from crying, I stopped feeling. If I had to keep going to school, then I’d have to learn how to be there in the flesh, without being there in mind. I’ve always relied on fantasy to take me away. I romanticise. I dream of a future life, where everything will be fixed and I will be happy. I will get to live the kind of life I was meant to live. I will find satisfaction in living. I will do something that grants me a sense of purpose, makes me feel appreciated. I just have to wait and be patient. This current moment in time, this period of my life, it is not going to be salvaged. I am never going to enjoy this, so I better disengage. I’ll only be partly present. Enough so that the teachers don’t complain. I’ll just do the bare minimum. Scrape by. I’ll save my energy for a better day, a rosier tomorrow awaits me. I’ll just need to grow up. I hate being a teenager. One day I’ll be an adult. I am sure that I’ll be happy when I’m an adult.
All I want is to be loved, profess the unlovable. I need you to understand me, says the ununderstable. I am just a person, claims the unperson. Why write a blog about how human you are, when you are not in fact human. It should be obvious, as plain as day, that you’re a fraud. You are an intruder. You do not belong. You’re not one of us. Oh, is it imposter syndrome? Are you feeling like some freak? You may look like we do, talk like we do. But you know how it is. You’re not one of us. Not one of us.
They’re laughing at me. I know that they are. I saw them looking at me. They think I’m hideous. They see right through me. They know that though I look vaguely normal, inside I’m abnormal. They’re giggling. They’re surely talking about me. They’re making fun of me. They are right to make fun of me. Hell, they ought to make fun of me. I’m a worthless worm of a human being. I don’t deserve anybody’s respect. I don’t deserve anyone's love. I don’t deserve to lead a normal life. I should be in a cage. I should be strangled. I should be whipped. All I am doing is disrupting the peace. Freaks like me, we don’t belong in society. I hate myself. They do good, laughing at me. Everyone ought to laugh at me. I am not human.
I am sitting on this train, but I am all alone. Even more alone than most of my fellow passengers. They’ve got loved ones. Partners. Girlfriends, boyfriends. Spouses. They’ve got people like them in their lives. They’re just temporarily alone. I am a ghost. A spectre, going through life thinking that there’s a point to it all. Why haven’t I ended it all, yet? Why am I lingering? I’ve seen enough ghost stories. I know they all end with the ghost deciding to move on. I stick to this world because I am too much of a coward to move on to the next. No-one would miss me if I was gone. Those that claim that they do like me, they’re misguided. I’d do them a favour if I went away. They’d get to rebuild their lives, without me muddying things up. I’m to blame for everything that’s gone wrong. I am to blame for all their woes. It’s all about me. I’m the centre of everyone’s attention…
No, they’re not laughing at me. They don't know who I am. They’re not paying the slightest bit of attention to me. I sit down, and I am anonymous. Just another face in the crowd. I feel as if I am drowning, but I am not really drowning. I am such a drama queen. I am not in pain. There’s nothing wrong with me. I am just desperately in need of people to pay attention to me. I want everyone to see me, to adore me. Just trying to be a regular normal person, it makes my skin crawl. I wish to be famous. I wish to be beloved. Just stepping on a train and noticing people laughing at something that in no way involves me, that hurts me. I want to be the centre of attention. I want to be splendid. Special. I want everyone to think that without me, life wouldn’t be the same. So long as I don’t get what I want, that’s when I convince myself that I am hated. That’s the only answer, isn’t it? For why they don’t know who I am? It’s because they hate me, right? I am a narcissist. I should feel ashamed of myself. I hate myself.
Am I suffering an identity crisis? No, I think I know who I am. What I don’t know is what I am to other people. I feel a disconnect between me and other people. There’s a barrier disconnecting me from others. Or, maybe there is, or maybe there isn’t. Maybe I’m just not doing enough to try and reach through to others. I feel isolated, but it could well be my own fault for making me feel isolated. I don’t know. I am plagued with self-doubt. I’ve often been commended for my intelligence, been told that I am a smart lad, I should be better than this. I should excel at living. I should be living a life that makes others jealous, I am competent. I am skilful, I am charming, I am moderately attractive. Yet, I self-sabotage. Constantly. I don’t want to see myself succeed. I loathe myself. I am my own worst enemy. I am sorry. I wish I could do better.
Do you sometimes feel as if your brain is conspiring against you? I feel as if my brain uses headaches to make me submit. I’ve got a headache. My head is spinning. I feel tired. There are so many worthwhile things I could do today, yet I am here stuck feeling worthless. Most people figure out how to live with their brains before they turn twenty, yet here I am about to turn thirty and I am still a miserable sloppy mess. I wish I could, like the phoenix, rise from the ashes. But I feel flat like a pancake. I don’t lack ambitions, I very much do have dreams, but I feel so defeated. Is it the depression again? Is the black dog back to stay? I’ve had episodes here and there throughout the years, I haven’t been wholly cured of my melancholy, but I’ve overall felt as if I’ve gotten past the worst. Am I about to stumble back into depression now? After all the effort and time I’ve spent trying to get better? How can I continue pretending to be able to give others advice as to how to take care of their mental health if I can’t take care of my own? I doubt myself. Because you have to doubt someone, and the only one I know worth doubting is myself.
I wish I could be impulsive. I wish I had a driver’s license. I could just take the car and go driving. Drive up north. Drive up where no-one lives but trolls and giants. Where there deep forests are. Where the mountains are. I could go sit somewhere no other human has ever sat. No-one around me. The closest human would be miles away. Isolation. If I’m gonna feel isolated, then I better feel isolated for real. Not this false pseudo-isolation that I feel now. I recently got my other dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. I’ve considered going to Stockholm, the city proper, and going to some museums. Look at some paintings. But that’d place me right amongst others. I’d be in the thick of it. If only I had some spell that would render the entire city free of people, then I could go and look at all that fancy art I want to see without any other human around to disturb me. Or maybe if I had some spell to make me go invisible. I just don’t want to go on the train and have to worry about anyone laughing at me.
Will it surprise you if I at this point proclaim that I don’t feel like much of an introvert? Or well, maybe I do. But I also feel like an extrovert. After all, I am sharing this blog with the rest of the world. Oh, the confessions in here, some of the passages I’ve written have been plenty candid. But maybe you don’t think that counts, it’s just the internet, after all. The internet doesn't count. The internet doesn’t provide social interaction, we’re all just talking to digital ghosts of ones and zeroes, the internet is all fake. Social media is a lie. If it is not done in the fleshworld, it doesn’t count. The internet is just this shared psychosis we all share, this lie that we all have agreed to perpetuate. But maybe that’s why I like it. If we all invented it, then that means that it operates based on the rules that we imposed on it. Humans don’t create things that lack structure. Everything we make is like clockwork, it follows some rules, something to make it make sense. The internet, it may be all false, it may be all a big delusion designed to trap us ne’er-do-wells, but at least it is built upon certain axioms. It is built on good foundations. Real life isn’t. Simulated life is.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not on Facebook. I am not crazy. But I am on Twitter, so I suppose that makes me at the very least somewhat screwy. I’ve always been a participant, even when I’ve claimed to never be able to fit in. Yeah, I am an insider, all things considered, I belong to mainstream society. Compare where I am to where some member of an isolated tribe in the middle amazon rainforest is. I could say we should improve society somewhat, yet I participate in society. Curious. I am very intelligent, but clearly I am a charlatan. Pretending to be at odds with society, yet I am partaking in it. I should apologise. I should apologise to anyone thinking I had something special to say. I am not some true outsider looking at society with a fresh perspective. I am just another disillusioned thirty-year-old not sure where I stand. I am one in a million. Frankly, I am one of the 99 percent. Shouldn’t I be able to feel some certain sense of comfort in that?
Yes, I know that everything I write carries with it a certain degree of #relatable. Someone will read this and feel as if I’ve just put into words what they’ve felt all along, all this time. Here I am making their existence make more sense. All the weaknesses I expose about myself, the length I go to to describe my own insecurities, my own pains. Well, it just gets some people thinking I’m a brave hero existing to make them feel less alone. But, surely, that should make me feel less alone, too? Isn’t that why I am doing this? Writing these blog posts? Isn’t the point to try and form connections? Well, yes, maybe it is, but I still feel like complaining about it, goddamnit! What do you expect? Seeing me be satisfied? Seeing me be fulfilled? Do you want me to tell you that I do in fact greatly enjoy it when a post of mine online gets several likes? Do you want me to tell you that I do my best to try and succeed at social media, to try and get the right amount of engagement that I need to feel better about myself? Well, yes! Of course I do! Of course I am desperate for that kind of attention! I am a narcissist! I step on a train and I think everybody is looking at me, talking about me, laughing at me. I think I am the centre of all of the world. I am a maw, I am never satisfied. My hunger is endless. I always want more.
I can never truly go isolating myself. I am too addicted to social contact. I don’t want you laughing at me, but I sure don’t mind you laughing at something I’ve said. Oh, I want you to like me. I want you to clap when you see me. Like in those old sitcoms filmed before live studio audiences. I want to be able to step on the stage and have a whole crowd applaud me. To validate me. To make me know that my existence isn’t in vain. I came about for a reason. I am fulfilling a purpose. I am bringing joy to others. I am a funnyman, some real joker, I am making you smile. I may never feel like just one of the people, but I can feel like I am entertaining the people. I may be apart from the rest, but at least I am celebrated. I am not shunned, I am not treated like some freak. I am not pitied. I am loved. I made you chuckle, I made you feel things. Please want me. Please feed me. Please don’t forget me. I am yours.
I am a wreck. Could you love me? You’re also a wreck, I know it, I can see it. You’re not perfect, you’re also sinking. Maybe we could make some connection, maybe we could go hand-in-hand, showing the world we belong to each other. We could love each other. I could tell you that you’re special, and you could tell me that I am special. We could chat every night, we could share our thoughts, we could make each other smile. I could be there with you, at least in spirit, and I could hold you. I am an engine of love. I am warm, and I am cozy, I wish to make you feel warm. Let’s lead a simple life. Let’s just care for each other. Be there for each other. You’re mine. I am yours. Isn’t this nice? You’re not going anywhere, are you? You’re not going to commit suicide, now are you? Oh… You are?
That week you spent in a coma, you’ll never know just how much I needed you to respond to my unread message. You came back eventually, you apologised, and we both tried to pretend as if your overdose never happened. But then you said you needed time away from the internet. I don’t feel as if I ever got the time to tell you... I hated it when I thought you were dead.
For about a year I’ve been helping to take care of my aunt’s cat, Klara. She’s very affectionate, though in that certain feline way where she does cherish petting but only on her own terms. She’s quite old, she’s only got one eye. I like to joke she’s offered her other eye to Mimir’s well in exchange for knowledge. Like, y’know, Odin did. And now Klara is dead. A couple of days ago I found her lying dead by a window. She seemed to have picked quite the peaceful spot to die. At first I thought she was snoozing, as cats are known to do, but when I came up to touch her I noticed her body was all stiff. Rigor mortis. That’s a fucking metal word, isn’t it? There’s gotta be so many bands out there named Rigor Mortis. A quick look at the Encyclopaedia Metallum and… yes, I see there’s fifteen bands listed called Rigor Mortis. Nineteen bands, if you include variations of Rigor Mortis, like Rigor Mortis Brazil. Well, in any case, rest in peace Klara. I will miss you very much.
I recently watched a few videos of diagnosed psychopaths answering questions about their condition. Psychopaths don’t fear death, or well, maybe that’s generalising. I apologise to any psychopaths reading this that do fear death. I think in general, most psychopaths don’t fear death. Psychopaths are all too happy to engage with risk-taking behaviour. Many psychopaths take part in extreme sports. Perhaps it has something to do with being so emotionally stunted. In one of the videos the psychopath being interviewed revealed she only ever feels three different kinds of emotions. Happy, angry, or hungry. If humans are machines, then psychopaths are those machines where you’ve stripped out all of the unnecessary parts. Imagine buying a new car, but you decide that there’s lots of features there you simply don’t need. No GPS, no radio or CD player, no seat warmer, no little place for you to put your cup of coffee. If you’re already getting rid of all that stuff, why not get rid of the seat belt?
Though, there’s no real reason to pity psychopaths. I know that as an empathetic person you may wonder if it is alright to act demeaning towards psychopaths, to refer to them as “stripped-down machines.” Surely, they’re still humans? Shouldn’t we show them the kindness of our hearts, no matter their particular shortcomings? Of course, yes, I feel that impulse too. I am a kind-hearted softie, a bleeding-heart liberal. But… psychopaths genuinely don’t care. Psychopaths don’t get hurt that easily. Sadness isn’t a psychopathic trait. Vulnerability isn’t a psychopathic thing. It’s us non-psychopaths that have been gifted with grief. Kinda sounds like, at some level, it’s quite nice being a psychopath. Especially if you’re someone who can get overwhelmed by the stink of melancholia. The funk of gloominess. The malodorous pervasiveness of the blues. Psychopaths don’t feel that. They just feel happiness, anger, or hunger. Sometimes all three at once.
Psychopaths may own pets. When those pets die, psychopaths may appear like they’re mourning, and they will be, to a certain degree. But true psychopaths (in the sense that they’re truly, and wholly, wired towards psychopathy with no room for non-psychopathic thinking,) will not regard their pets as being anything other than property. They lost their dog, and they’re vexed. They’re not truly sad, no. Sadness isn’t part of the psychopath’s emotional repertoire, remember. The psychopath mourns the death of their pet like you may mourn the death of your computer. Suddenly, one day, your computer just got busted, and now you’re all annoyed because you know you’ve gotta buy a new one. While, sure, I know that some lesser psychopaths may actually have the capability to extend some true love for their pets, I think it is safe to say that to love one’s pet, one needs to be able to exhibit functioning levels of empathy. It is one thing to love another human. It requires quite the high degree of empathy for someone to be able to love a member of another species.
But autistic people don’t feel empathy, right? There is a frustratingly common misconception about autism that autistic people don’t feel empathy. It is pervasive, it is how the media loves to portray autistic people. Cold, uncaring, thinking machines. Calculators made into flesh. After all, if you are socially awkward, if you don’t like hanging out in big crowds, then surely, you don’t care that much about other people. You probably just find other folks to be annoying, to be unpredictable variables that ruin your perfect system. You’re like that, aren’t you? All anal and mathematical? Hey, do you want to come and join me on a trip to Las Vegas? I am sure you know how to count cards, like, that’s one of the diagnostic criteria for autism, right? I’ll be Tom Cruise, and you’ll be Dustin Hoffman. I’ll be the cool guy, and you’ll be my dumpy friend. Don’t complain about me pigeonholing you, treating you like some curiosity, and not a real person. You’re autistic, you’re just a machine, you don’t have any true feelings. I’m being nice to you, taking you out to count cards for me. If it weren’t for me, you’d be locked up in some sanatorium. It’s probably where you belong, come to think about it. That's where I'll park you when I don't need you.
Yes, I know the hypocrisy of me complaining about being dehumanised, when I just did the same thing with psychopaths. But the difference is that autistic people actually do feel the same kind of emotional depth as everyone else. Autistic people do have the capability to feel empathy, to care for others, even to be considerate and polite. Yes, it sucks struggling with certain social cues, sometimes it can make interactions quite painful, but I can assure you that we autistic people, we do care. We try our best. This is why so many of us experience such severe anxiety. I know it is why I’ve developed social anxiety, and agoraphobia. I don’t want to hurt others. I don’t want to come across like some social misfit. I want to belong. I want to share the love, to be a big and cuddly pacifist with a heart so big and able to give hugs that are even bigger. No, I don’t view pets as property. I view animals as remarkable creatures that can tell us many important things about what it means to be alive. Klara the cat is dead. And I am sad. I am scared of death.
I know it sounds silly, but I had my first big existential crisis around the age of five. That’s when I learned that, in fact, all people die. I knew that death was a thing, I can remember fully comprehending what death was, and that it was something that happened to people when they grew really old. But I thought, well… I had convinced myself that death was a choice. Like, I thought that you got to choose when you wanted to die. Or rather, I thought it was a bit like that snooze button on your alarm clock. I knew that we all had to go at some point, but we could delay it if we wanted to. I thought we could all just keep postponing death, until we felt as if we had finished living. The fact that really scared me, what actually traumatised me, was not that we were all going to die, but rather that we were all going to die whether or not we were prepared for it. The uncaring nature of death, that is what scared me. Ready or not, here it comes. It’s like a hawk, soaring above you, just waiting to strike when you are at your most feeble. The indifference of it all. The uncaring coldness, it beat me. Death is a psychopath. Death doesn’t have any feelings. It only occasionally feels hungry.
No surprise that as an adult I’ve come to entertain certain macabre interests. I like horror, particularly the creeping subsets of horror that work to make the reader or the viewer feel that certain sense of impending doom. Gothic horror, or cosmic horror à la Lovecraft. (I do like body horror, too, but that has more to do with me just being a weirdo pervert.) I have a tendency to stay up late at night, reading about atrocities, about real crime murder cases, or whatever else piques my particularly gruesome obsessions. I like art, but I particularly like art that’s unsettling. There’s some button inside of me that yearns to be pressed, and I can only reach that button by exposing myself to media that as a kid, would have profoundly messed me up. I suppose that is common. Ask any horror geek why they got into horror, and they’re likely to go into some long story about how they used to be this really neurotic kid, scared of everything, and how as they grew older they found that the horror genre became a go-to way for them to confront their fears and feel better about themselves and the world around them. I am not sure that you are what you eat, but I think that, to some extent, you become what you fear.
For Klara I made a little cross. Two twigs put together with some string. Yes, Klara probably wasn’t Christian. I’m not really Christian (though, like many Scandinavians, I will profess a certain kind of cultural Lutheranism.) But it was easier making a cross than preparing a big tombstone. I think ceremonies help. I’m not a superstitious fool, I do not believe that some creature will suffer in hell just ‘cause you bury them in an unmarked grave. The dead, they are dead. They don’t care if you take care of their graves, or even if you remember them. Only the living care about cemeteries. Cemeteries are places where the living gather. Graveyards aren’t for the dead. Klara is dead, and that is that. I didn’t really make the cross for her. I made it for myself. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. At least I did it out of love. I do feel more emotions than happiness, anger, and hunger. Sometimes I feel affection for those that no longer can feel affection back.
I am reminded of some lyrics from a band that I like. A band that, for the most part, does some quite macabre music. I can’t exactly recommend them to any old fella that comes across this blog. But the lyrics also reminds me of when my grandmother died, and we all stood in a line to place flowers on her casket.
“Lies can often give you power. Like a coffin filled with flowers, gives life to the living, not the dead.”
The key to success is networking. Oh, God, how am I ever going to succeed? Networking? Talking to other people? Making friends? That’s not me, that’s not me at all. I don’t want to make superficial connections with other people just so that I can one day use my connections to get ahead in life. I don’t want to force myself on others, trying to convince them that I am some decent guy that’s totally worth getting to know and be friends with. I don’t know if you’re going to like me or not. I imagine some people would like to be my friend, and I imagine some people would hate to be my friend. I’d rather just forget about the latter group, and not torture myself trying to make friends with people who are fundamentally at odds who I am as a person. I’d rather have a small circle of close friends than a thousand acquaintances. But the key to success is networking.
I’ll never be an insider. This is not me just doubting myself, not some decision to undermine myself. I know that making statements about things that are impossible for you to achieve comes across as very self-defeating, but I know that I will never be an insider. I will never fit into a social clique. I am not going to be part of the boys’ club, yucking it up with my mates. I’m not going to be in any gangs, no bands, most certainly no crews. I am a solo-player. I prefer to work on my own. All my life, I’ve kept to myself, one way or another. I don’t ask for help. Growing up, my sister used to get a lot of help from my mother with school assignments, because she wanted it and she asked for it. My sister and my mother would spend a lot of time together making sure that my sister’s schoolwork turned out well. Looking over spelling, fixing grammatical errors, making sure that the text was easy to read and had a flow to it. Normal parental stuff, really. Kids are supposed to get help from their parents, it’s part of the learning process, no-one gets by all on their own. Well, except for me. I never asked for help.
I actually found it really unbearable to have my mother look over my schoolwork to see if I made any errors. Not because I am such a horrid narcissist that I refuse to admit that there were any errors, but rather because… well, it felt invasive. Like as if you spot someone spying on you through your window. It made me feel very self-conscious, in a way that I realise now is similar to how I feel when I make eye contact. Yes, I am bad at making eye contact, especially when I am speaking at the same time. I don’t mind making eye contact when you are speaking, but I don’t want to make eye contact with you when I am speaking. Is that funny? Is that odd? Well, the way I feel about it is that eye contact is intimate, it’s almost like touching. It’s mental touching. If you share eye contact with somebody you are sharing a connection. You are mind-touching each other. Oh, well… I guess that maybe it’s not quite like that, but I still don’t find it easy.
At times, I find much of the discussions about neurodiversity online somewhat off-putting. Especially when it comes to those people who are really keen on being all out positive, all the time. Those people who see any shade of negativity as outright hazardous. Don’t bring up the fact that being neurodivergent can be difficult, don’t mention the difficulties that come with being on the autism spectrum. Engage with self-empowerment! Celebrate what makes you different! Go out there and be proud of yourself, be happy about your autism, it is cool to be autistic! And, sure, I understand the importance of injecting optimism into the neurodivergent community. We need optimism, we need to profess our desire to be happy, to show the world that you don’t need to be neurotypical to be content with your life. No-one wants to be around a sourpuss just wallowing in their discontentment. But, sometimes things just suck, okay? Having a positive attitude may project confidence, may make others think you’ve got it together, but be wary when that positive attitude just becomes a mask you hide behind.
Look, we live in a society. Whether you like it or not, you live in a society. We need to rage against this society, because this society is no good. Things may look good to some people, but those people are wrong, and I am right. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore! Let’s have ourselves a little revolution and see if we can piece a new society together, one that doesn’t commit to the same mistakes as the last one. Oh, wait, how do we do that? And how do we make sure that we win the revolution, we could easily lose, and that might actually just make things worse for us. What if this society we live in got even worse? Yikes, that’s a thought too scary to even really consider. Can things get worse? I don’t want things to get worse. Maybe I just shouldn’t rock the boat. Let’s calm down, and let’s not make any rash decisions here. We can overthrow society at some other point. For now, let’s just have some tea.
Yes, society stinks, but what can you do about it? It is absolutely the case that neurotypical people have it easier navigating modern society than neurodivergent people. Others expect you to function just like they function. If you wish to fit in, you are required to act more neurotypical. People expect that from you. Learn to adapt, to hide amongst them. Trick them. Make them think you are one of them. Be the wolf in sheep’s clothing. They’ll never know the truth of who you are. An outsider that managed to get on the inside. You stand by the watercooler, and by gosh, you make yourself laugh at their jokes even though you’d rather not be there at all. You partake in the small talk, talking about the weather, feigning interest in the footballs, and pretending to be an all-around wholesome compatriot. You’re not at all secretly some kind of anti-social misfit, who’d rather stay at home sitting behind a monitor and playing strategy games on your own. Do you want to come and join your workmates for a drink or two later? Oh, yes, of course you’d like that, but you might need to limit your alcohol intake so that you don’t get too drunk and begin to let the mask slip. It’s too easy getting into hyper-specific rants about obscure topics no normal person would care about when you’re inebriated, so let’s not risk that.
“Be yourself.” Pfth, bah, humbug. Neurotypicals love to state empty platitudes. You don’t want me to be myself. You’ve made it very clear that you don’t want me to be myself. Call me a cynic all you want, but you can’t get nowhere in life simply by being yourself. For better or worse, authenticity is nowhere near as desired as some people make it out to be. Name a single really successful person who is truly themselves. Fake-authenticity does better than the real deal. True sincerity, of the kind that’s naked, shameless, ugly, and challenging, it is difficult to love. And that’s not all bad, it’s just a fact of life. We all need to cover some things about ourselves up, and need to keep some secrets, because that is what is expected from us. Just as we wear clothes to cover up our naked bodies. No shame on the nudists, they’re free to embrace whatever alternative lifestyle they want, but I don’t want to see your naked body. Don’t get nude in front of me. I already struggle with eye contact, I sure wouldn’t struggle less if you stood in front of me nude as well.
Actually, to a certain extent, these social rules we all conform to can actually be quite appreciated by those of us who are on the spectrum. It is easier to know what you must do in a formal social situation than in a casual social situation. Casual people, they’re just so… unpredictable. Sticking their casual bits everywhere, acting like guests at your house who don’t seem to understand that your home is not their home. Even as a kid I hated having friends of mine over at my place. They’d play with my toys, place my toys where they don’t belong, or even worse, they may break some of my toys. Don’t touch that, it’s mine. Don’t put your icky hands on my bed, I sleep there. Don’t rip pages out of that book, it’s my favourite book. Don’t breathe in my room, I breathe in my room. I just can’t handle you coming here and disturbing the peace. I had it all ordered, I knew where everything was, and I liked it. Now you brought with you the forces of chaos, and dealing with that is just now what I had in mind for today.
I could never be a freemason. Sure, I have some good ideas for how to secretly rule the world, but if you’re a freemason, you’re expected to be part of the team. There’s no “I” in freemasonry. The secret cabal that controls all of the world’s governments, they don’t want independent folks like me to show up thinking that I can do my work assignments on my own. The Illuminati is run by a committee. You don’t get far in that world by being some freewheeling bohemian incapable of getting along with others. You don’t establish a New World Order by promoting self-reliance. Institutions are great for those who like to get chummy with their pals, the gregarious sorts who know exactly who to talk to in order to advance in the ranks. You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. Favours for favours. One of the reasons why I inherently distrust many institutions is because they are rife with nepotism. You know that whoever gets to sit on the high council of the Illuminati didn’t get there via competency alone. No, they knew a guy, who was cousins with this other guy, who used to work for this guy, and y’know, you pull one string and suddenly there you are on top of the social hierarchy. Most often people get promoted, not because they do good work, but because they happen to know the right people. But again, maybe I’m just being cynical.
I’ve had a recurring fantasy, in the past, of being a lighthouse keeper. Living out somewhere all on my own, not having to deal with any human relationships. Maybe I could befriend a seagull, but even that seems a little too much. Seagulls can be very needy. No, I’d just get on with whatever I’d most like to be doing, writing or making art, just enjoying my solitude. I imagine that the toughest thing about being a lighthouse keeper is the loneliness, but the loneliness is only a plus for me. I’ve long ago decided to like being lonely. I don’t want to face the fact that I too yearn for company, I like to pretend as if I am fine with being alone. So the fantasy of being a lighthouse keeper is perfect for me, I could get far away from society and I could earn a living not having to give a fuck about what others think about me. I could allow myself to get as weird as I would want to get, not having to wash my image, acting like I’m all rational and well-adjusted. It would just be me and my seagull. How simple life would be. Too bad I think most lighthouses are automated, these days.
Maybe being the perpetual malcontent cynic incapable of fitting with mainstream society isn’t all so bad. In some regards, I have made that my brand. Generally, I like to think that I don’t take myself too seriously, but like a lot of people, I’ve turned those edgier parts of my personality into armour that I wear to protect myself from the scorn of others. You can’t accuse me of being a miserable piece of shit when I’ve decided to make being a miserable piece of shit my thing. It’s what I am, and I am not going to change. I’m not really all that mean, or nasty. I am fairly cynical, but I don’t act like some asshole. I don’t think anyone is upset with me for how I act. I’ve only occasionally gotten told off for being too gloomy. But the problem here does not lie with how I end up treating others, but rather how I end up treating myself. I don’t want to make cynicism part of my sense of self. I don’t want to be this person, this misanthrope who only sees problems, and never celebrates the good things in life. I should engage with self-empowerment. I should be happy.
It’s okay being neurodivergent! Sure, you may find other people strange or foreign, with their yapping mouths and their over-eager desire to look you directly in the eyes, but just ignore them! Neurotypicals are just so last century, the future is all neurodivergent! You’re on the right side of history, bud! You’re cool, and radical, and you’re absolutely a sexy little cupcake. You either learn to love yourself, or you lose yourself. Make funny memes, find some online community to be a part of. You can absolutely be a freemason if you want to be a freemason. Don’t let your diagnosis get in your way, so long as you’ve got that inner fire driving you, you can be anything you want to be. Go ahead and rule the world, babe. Remember, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and right now, it’s good vibes only.
(I wrote this after having a few drinks, so I apologise for the occasional digression.)
One time, some years ago, I was at medborgarplatsen in Stockholm. I was about to watch a movie at the cinema there, Filmstaden Söder. I can’t remember the movie, but this was at a time I wanted to prove my worth as a cinephile, so it wasn’t a blockbuster. For those of you who don’t know the way around Stockholm, medborgarplatsen is a square that is pretty close to the heart of the city, some may even argue that it is the heart of the city (though, I wouldn’t.) The name translates to “the citizen’s place,” an example of Swedes’ general commitment to all things egalitarian. Though, nowadays, most citizens can only dream of living in a place as central as medborgarplatsen. Södermalm, the borough in which medborgarplatsen is located, used to be known as quite the working class slum. Though, like with most global cities these days, things have changed. I don’t much like to complain about gentrification, I think it has more to do with governments’ reluctance to build new apartments, preferring instead to stick their heads in the sand and pretend as if population numbers aren’t increasing. Like, sure, I am not asking you to tear down all those old buildings to build new ones that’ll have enough room for more people, all I am asking is for you to expand, build more homes near the city and develop the right kind of infrastructure and public transport that allows for people to not need a car to get around. Cities are supposed to be lived in, they are not history museums! It drives me nuts, all these NIMBYs and their incessant whining and complaining about basic and inevitable societal progress. GAH! JUST BUILD MORE GODDAMMIT!
… I am sorry, I think I happened upon a tangent here divorced from the actual topic I wish to discuss. In any case, I was about to watch a movie at the cinema, and I had an hour or so to spend before it started. I was around people. Naturally, I was uncomfortable. People, you never know what they’re up to. They could be spying on you. They could be recording you. Or worse, they could be entirely indifferent to your presence. It is scary how others treat you, or how they refuse to treat you. It is easier not to be around people. Or well, be around people on the internet. That way you can get some social interaction, without having to be physically present. Being face-to-face with a person, that can go either one of two ways. Either you find a familiar soul, someone you can relate to. Someone you can love. Someone you could imagine spending your life with. Or you find someone that makes you feel icky, someone who makes you want to jump off a cliff. And it is difficult to find a cliff when you’re standing in the middle of a city, at a public square. Not many cliffs are to be found in the middle of cities. You’ve likely experienced the sensation of finding yourself in an uncomfortable situation, one you wish you could escape from, yet knowing that you are stuck. The icy feeling overtaking you. The dread. The profound desire to just do whatever you can to convince whoever is pressuring you to go away and leave you alone. Even if that means paying them money.
A person came up to me looking for charitable donations. Now, I am not a rich man. I certainly don’t spend all day long biddy biddy bum. I am not a wealthy man with a wife looking like a rich man’s wife with a proper double-chin, supervising meals to her heart’s delight. I wish I could give more to charity, but I can’t. I feel very uncertain about my future. I fear for my economic prospects. Don’t ask me for money, I don’t have any to give. There are plenty of filthy rich people in this world, ask them for their charitable donations. Many of them don’t even pay taxes. Surely, they have lots of cash. They stay in their penthouses, worshipping Mammon, and they certainly don't go down any citizens’ squares. What kind of money do you expect to receive from bothering a person like me? I don’t look rich. Or maybe I do. Someone might look at me and think I’m one of those rich kinds of nerds, an internet wiz kid, a programmer who made some website that’s now really famous. In any case, I am not. I am just a lost and confused sheep yearning for a shepherd to guide me.
The person showed me a series of photographs of women being victimised. Some tortured, some beaten up, some exploited. Pakistani women. The person was raising money to help Pakistani women. A noble mission, certainly. What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to say that “no, I don’t care about Pakistani women” and just walk away? I didn't want the person to think of me as some callous western chauvinist who isn’t willing to spend some of my money to make a real change. I do care. I care very deeply. But, well, I just don’t really have money. Not in that way. Not in a way that can make a difference. Still, if you’ve got a truly burning sense of justice, a desire to see things wrong get fixed, see the righteous win, then you will want any kind of cash donation you can get. I sympathise. I understand that the person showing me the photographs may not have cared to figure out whether I had money or not. I clearly did not look starving (I am fat.) Surely I could afford to make a donation. Even the littlest bit counts. I needed to give. They needed me to give. Just give a little bit. C’mon. Don’t you care about Pakistani women?
I ummed and ahhed for a bit. I felt cautious, nervous, wondering how I could possibly explain my concern for these women while also recognising my lack of being able to really contribute monetarily to help them. Of course, at the moment, my cognitive functions weren’t properly functioning. No, I was stammering, I was overwhelmed, I was suffering a sensory overload. All these people around me, all this noise. I could have given the person asking me for a donation just some coins, a paltry sum, then pretended as if that was enough. But I didn’t. I gave him half of the money that I had on me. Not too much, but a significant amount of Swedish crowns. More than the cinema ticket cost me. Money I wasn’t prepared to spend at that moment. Still, it served the purpose. It made the world around me calm down. It lessened the storm. I don’t want to live in a world of chaos. I want things to be ordered. An ordered world can be understood, it can be categorised. Chaotic agents threaten the peace. Chaos makes me worry I might be exposed. I don’t want anyone knowing just how weird I am, just the kind of freak that I am. I want them to think I am normal. It’s easier to pretend to be normal when everything is calm, when people don’t freak me out.
One of the biggest social mistakes I’ve made is engaging in conversation with a person claiming to need money to take a bus to the dentist. They claimed that they had a dentist appointment, and in fact, it was paid for. They just didn’t have the money to pay for the bus. They needed me to give them just that little bit of money to buy a bus ticket. Simple, right? They were eager to convince me, so they began sticking their finger in their mouth, pointing at the tooth that needed to be pulled out. I told them that they didn’t need to show me, I believed them. But of course, I only said that because they made me feel uncomfortable. Did I believe them? Of course not. The person was clearly just looking for cash, a real scam artist, but I wasn’t socially adept enough to dismiss them. Sure, I can look back on it and think about this or that thing I should've said. Instead I just awkwardly mentioned needing to catch my own bus and that I didn’t have the time to talk. The scam artist followed me, continuing to engage me in conversation. I tried to appear sympathetic, I tried to appear normal, and the person took advantage of that. They needled me. They urged me to pay attention to them, making me feel like a monster if I didn’t. In the end I told them I would get them the money, but instead I ran and stepped on the bus heading back home to my place. They didn’t follow me. Of course they didn’t follow me. They didn’t have a bus ticket.
I came across them later, days later, at the subway. They saw me, tried to get my attention, but I ran into the crowd, hitting the escalator before they could get close. Later I saw them get accosted by security guards, clearly reprimanded for their behaviour, scamming people. Cornering people, telling them lies, then asking for cash. That’s not virtuous behaviour. Still, the security guards could only do so much. Did they stop the person from trying to scam people? Of course not. The person kept on badgering whoever paid them just the littlest bit of attention. Whoever looked kind. Whoever would be inclined towards making charitable donations. I had escaped that one time, but the person was adamant that they wanted me to give them the money they thought they deserved. Whenever I’d take the subway, they’d be there, trying to get my attention. And I kept running. I kept doing my best to avoid them. I felt like a real fool. Why couldn’t I just assert myself, pump up my chest and tell them that I was on to them? I knew the truth, I knew they were a fraud. Yet, I just wanted to avoid it all. I wanted to pretend as if I didn’t know them. That everything was just calm and peaceful, and there wasn’t a storm brewing somewhere nearby. This was everything about being surrounded by people that I hated. This, right here, was the ultimate reason I knew for wanting to become a hermit. Not having to put up with this kind of bullshit.
One time, the last time, the person came up to me, I couldn’t escape. I was waiting for the train. I was about to get to a lecture. The person saw me, and they stood right in front me. I was wearing headphones. I pretended I could not hear them. I pretended I could not even conceive of them, as if my mind were someplace else entirely. I pretended as if I had erased them from existence. They didn’t immediately catch on. They stood in front of me and they began commenting on my appearance. They decided, quite unusually, to congratulate me for my beard. Stating that I looked good with facial hair. Of course, I do. My beard looks amazing. I am not insecure about my beard. I may be insecure about my weight, I may be insecure about some things, but the two things I am not insecure about are my height (I’m 6’2”) and my beard. Still, I refused to acknowledge the scam artist’s existence. Other people waiting for the train were looking at us. They thought it was strange that I just stood there, looking straight ahead ignoring the person standing in front of me. But I did what I needed to do. The scam artist touched me, I still ignored them. Honestly, that is one of the most uncomfortable things I have ever experienced. Their hand on my chest. Them touching me. Still, I didn’t budge. Eventually, they gave up. They went away. I had won. I should’ve felt good about myself, I had come out on top. But I didn’t. I still felt awful. I had hurt their feelings. Why am I so weird, why am I so awkward? I really don’t know how to behave like a normal person.
I think I do better in long conversations with people than in short little chats. You can’t just get a quick impression of me and think you know me. One reason why I don’t think I could ever make for a good one-night stand. Unless you know me, I’m not a real person. I am just a caricature. I don’t feel as if I am really there, as if my presence alone is enough to make me a person. I am only a person through commitment, through being understood by someone else that has the right kind of patience to put up with me. For the most part, only I myself have that kind of patience. That’s why I enjoy my own company. I feel as if I freak out too easily when meeting new people. I feel as if I overwhelm them with information, like as if I am some walking thunderstorm demanding their attention. Yes, that’s the great irony of it all. I say that I struggle to put up with the chaos of others, the wild sea of people swarming the city, yet I am the worst chaotic agent of them all. I am a mess of a person. I am hullabaloo incarnate. And that is why I feel such an incessant need to repress. Don’t press the button that lets open the floodgates. Keep it all bottled up. Keep on being repressed. Keep on staring straight forwards, ignoring that person trying to scam you for money.
Of course that person isn’t reading this blog post. They’re busy trying to find some other sucker to pay for their drug fix, or whatever it is that they need money for. Maybe they’re just trying to pay for rent. In any case, if I had the person here with me, right at this moment, I would tell them… Well, I would yell at them… I would absolutely admonish them… I would... I would… I would probably just ignore them. It is so easy to try and pretend as if you’re more sociable than you actually are. In your head, things seem so easy. Yes, I know what I’d say, I know exactly how to express myself. But in reality, well, things are complex, the overwhelming actuality of it all swamps you. When haven’t you had that idea for the perfect comeback of a line to sling at a person you’re quarrelling with only after the argument is over? When haven’t you had an idea for just the right and proper way to awe another person with your mind and your words. I am sure they will be impressed with me now, if only I say the right things. If only I can act the right way. If only I don’t fuck it up. If only I don’t act like such a dork.
This blog is easy. I get to think about every word I express here. I get to erase sentences I don’t like. That backspace on the keyboard, it’s well-worn with use. Some folks don’t understand how I can be autistic and still be as good with words as I am. This is my second language that I am writing in. I am not some mute little chicken, some gagged little monkey. I know how to express myself, when I get the time. When I get that moment to write, I will write, and I won’t stop until I am done. All my posts I tend to write in one go, late at night when I should be going to bed. When I am in the right mood. When all those synapses in my brain fire the right way. Those moments, they are common, but they aren’t to be summoned just when I need them. They come when they wish to come. I can only be a passenger, going along with my brain, doing whatever it demands. In those other moments, those moments I am standing there, waiting for the train, I may become entirely mute. I may not have a single thing to say. I may look like a real dummy, some real himbo, utterly lost for words. I am not pretending, at those moments. I truly am lost for words. At some times, language is easy. At other times, I don’t even understand how to string a basic sentence together.
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I decided to start writing a book. A novel, it’s going to be fiction. It’s a big project. I dread big projects. I don’t feel as if I am ever able to complete them. It’s going to be left unfinished, why do I even bother? So many projects that I’ve started and never finished. I get an idea, then I can’t make myself do the actual work to make it a reality. Why do I think I can write a book when I can barely read books without becoming distracted and doing something else instead? I give up too easily. But, then again, do I really have it in me to produce something that is good? That people would want to read? Insecurity creeps in, telling me that I will fail. I fear failure. Of course I do, who doesn’t? Whenever people say that their greatest fear is failure, all I wonder is who out there is not afraid of failure? Is there someone out there with so much confidence that they absolutely do not in any way fear failure? Even narcissists technically fear failure, it is what leads them to such ridiculous overcompensation, putting on the facade of bravado to mask their actual dire sense of insecurity. Do not fall for the scams, no person is truly without self-doubt. (Well, I guess maybe psychopaths, but there’s a whole lot of things amiss with them.)
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve entertained myself by coming up with stories, fictional universes that I would populate with characters of my own invention. When I was a kid, what I really wanted was to become a comic book writer and artist. Well, in between other gigs I imagined would suit me, including at one point wanting to be a “singing farmer,” as I put it. Still, I’ve always returned to fiction and storytelling. There’s something about creating a world that lets you so fully distract yourself from all the stressful daily hullabaloo that goes on around you. Escapism, it’s fun, it’s therapeutic, I think. There’s a reason why humans have been telling each other stories for millennia, since even before we lived in houses. Back when we were all huddled around the fire, wearing our best comfortable animal furs, sharing tales of the hunt. Your uncle who once took part in killing a mammoth, the impressive beast nearly gorging him with its big tusks. How clever he was when he noticed that the mammoth had one leg weaker than the others, and used that to his advantage. How the entire hunting party banded together to bring the behemoth down, getting all that meat to feed their families with for months! Stories make you feel good. Like as if you have something to celebrate, even when you might be starving due to the more recent hunts not having gone as well. Damn that saber-tooth tiger that killed your uncle…
Storytelling is linked to acting. Both with acting and with storytelling you have to commit. Whatever you are doing, whatever role you are performing, you have to sell it. You may be on stage talking about that time you went scuba diving with your future wife, and how you encountered an oyster with the most magnificent pearl inside, and how you made a ring for the pearl and used it when you proposed to her. You have to sell it. You have to get the audience laughing, gasping, crying, going “aww,” feeling as if they were there with you that day. Of course, they don’t know it is all just lies. You made it up. It’s all fiction. But you committed, so they won’t ever know. Storytelling is a gift to others, people will appreciate you if you tell good stories, but you’re also kinda deviant. Even if it’s technically based on a true story, you’ve certainly added your embellishments. You’re a trickster, a devious individual. No wonder actors have historically been seen as dubious folks. They come into town, romances all the young women and men, telling them big tales of their lives on the road, and they can’t possibly know if you are telling the truth or not. You may just be lying. You probably are lying. Let’s be honest, you’ve probably not told a single true thing in your life.
I am bad at the hustle. No, I can talk quite well, and I can keep people’s attention for a long while. But I can’t be a huckster. Going out there, putting myself on the line hoping people will swallow my bullshit. I can’t really avoid speaking from my heart when I do speak. Or when I write, as I happen to be doing now. This blog has so far been thoroughly candid in places, in such a way I may come across like I’m at a confessional. Not that I have much evil to confess, but I can’t help but be transparent. I can’t flip into different kinds of personalities, each with its own schemes and plots, being some master manipulator, someone who you can never figure out what they're truly up to, or what they truly want. No, what I am is clearly written on my face. I’ve got one self, and it is the one before you. He’s hairy, and tall, and a bit of a dork. I am happy to talk to you, to engage with you, but I won’t be anyone but myself. I am me. I hope that’ll do.
Of course you are familiar with all those pick-up artists that plagues the internet. Or well, not just the internet. Go into any old-fashioned bookstore (where they store books on paper, not in digital code,) and you are bound to find some sleazy book written by a sleazy guy about how to sleazily seduce women. Those books don’t want you acting like me. According to them, seduction is all about manipulation. To figure out the very right thing to say to get women to fawn all over you. They don’t want you to be sincere, telling the truth as you see it. Nah, you gotta keep that stuff bottled up, deep down inside your soul, because most likely, your true self is ugly. It’s interesting how you can get little details from these pick-up artists depending on the sort of things they say, the tips they provide. The fact that all of them seem to harbour this festering misogyny is no big surprise, but every so often, you get these little glimpses of these people’s true worldview, one where power is everything, true love is a fallacy, and happiness is a lie manufactured by Hollywood to make us all into docile consumers. No wonder the “red-pill” so often leads to people taking the “black-pill.” First hucksters will lure you in, telling you that they’ve got the secret as to how to be a success, then when they’ve got you isolated, they reveal to you how truly misanthropic and bleak their actual beliefs are.
I am fascinated with cults, for much of the same reason why I am fascinated with storytelling. What is a cult leader if not just a great storyteller? They’re something like the modern day shaman, capable of spellbinding people with their weird idiosyncratic way of speaking. High-functioning people with autism are often said to have an idiosyncratic way of speaking. No, I am not suggesting that cult leaders are all somewhere on the spectrum, though it wouldn’t surprise me if some famous cult leaders did turn out to have been on the spectrum. However, for an autistic person to become a cult leader, I think they would have to be a true believer, and not some fraud just looking to scam others. Ultimately, no autistic person would want to surround themselves with people unless they truly do believe it is essential, to like, save mankind from damnation or something. It’s the difference between sincerity and insincerity. It is difficult for autistic people to be insincere, as insincerity requires a lot of social skills that autistic people struggle with. Having to juggle all these balls in the air, making sure you keep the big lie going, that you remember to change your behaviour depending on who you are speaking to in order to keep them from figuring out that you’re a bullshitter. Hollow people are great at being insincere. People like L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the highly profitable cult that is Scientology, was at his core a hollow individual. He had no problems twisting the minds of the people around him, because he never felt a need to be sincere. If an autistic person were to become a cult leader, I can guarantee you that it wouldn’t be a profitable cult. Nah, autistic people aren’t in it for the money, we’re all about keeping it real.
Being a sincere person, surely I should be able to write a novel and make it feel earnest. Like it was delivered with passion, because I wouldn’t be able to write anything that wasn’t true to myself. Well, I do hope so. Having something I’ve made be referred to as genuine is something I see as a great compliment. I’m a student of art history, I’ve made some “serious” art before, I know how terrible art can be when it is not delivered with good faith. Sure, some art is cynical, or ironic, but even then, it tends to come from a real place. Good artists, even when they’re fully armed with the dada mindset, must believe in what they are doing. Whether they are doing it for a laugh or not, that’s irrelevant. Even if all you wish is to be silly and make something that is comical, you have to believe in what you are creating. Or else people won’t bother engaging with it. Why look at a painting by someone who is just interested in making money? Insincere artists do exist, and they can end up becoming quite successful, but ultimately, history won’t be kind to them. Damien Hirst comes to mind, heard he's into NFTs now.
Sure, I don’t like insincere people. Does that make me a bigot? Like, it’s not as if they can help themselves. It’s just who they are, spineless maggots with no soul. It doesn’t mean we have to hate them. No, no, no... I am just generalising. Don’t go thinking there’s just two kinds of people in the world, the sincere and the insincere. It’s not a binary. Most people are both, just like with introverts and extroverts, humans are complex. But there are definitely those that decide to feed into their insincere side, realising that it is often the key to success. Through insincerity, you learn to let go of self-doubt, you stop worrying so much about what others think of you, because you are never truly yourself. If they hate you, then so what? They don’t actually hate you, they just hate a role that you are playing. So what if you seduced that woman, made her feel as if you were the perfect match, then you ghosted her and completely forgot about her? It’s her fault for falling for your tricks. You were clearly just playing the game, being a super-seducer, she should have known better. By embracing insincerity, it’s like gaining a superpower. No longer do you have to care about the impact you have on others, no longer do you have to worry about what it means to be a social human being making choices that affect the others around you. Because you’re not the person they think you are. Actually, you’re not quite sure you’re the person you think you are… Who are you?
I’ve got the plot all laid out in my head for the novel. It’s going to be based in the fantasy world that I’ve been working on for the last few years. I’ve been working on this world for almost half a decade now, come to think of it. Why do I keep feeling as if I am never able to keep to a project, when I’ve clearly been working on a massive project all this time? Sure, it’s all just in my head, but it’s not as if most people have the kind of patience to keep going back to a single big project, even if it is just in their head. Not once, while thinking about my fantasy world have I been distracted and started thinking about cute puppies, instead. And you know how difficult that is. Maybe I am too hard on myself. Maybe I will finish this book, and maybe people will want to read it. Maybe it will even get a minimal number of angry reviews, like, I may get a book published without some folks trying to harass me into committing suicide for daring to think I can write. Some people may even be enthusiastic, blowing up my ego with great praise. Maybe someone will come along and tell me that they want to buy the rights to make my book into a movie or a television series. Maybe I will get rich? Maybe I will get famous! Woo! Success here I come!
Well, no, here I go being insincere. That’s not what it’s about. I should be writing this book because I want to write it. Because I want to prove to myself that I am able to write it. Sure, it’s not as if there’s not a little brain goblin inside my mind whispering sweet nothings about how one day I might turn out a real respected author. One with real fans that gets to do big book tours talking about how brilliant I am, how brilliant my work is, and how brilliant things are going for me. I am not going to pretend I don’t have the same aspirations for success that others have. Inside of me you will find the same greedy piglet of an ego hungry for more adoration and more validation that you will find in any person. Humans don’t know when to quit, we always want more. But I am at least safe knowing that I will never debase myself, descending to the same depths as those inhabited by soulless grifters who go through life abusing the trust of others in order to get by. I’m sincere, in the end. I always turn out sincere, in the end. I am a good boy.
And I am also really sexy. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before on this blog, but I am really, REALLY, sexy. Like, you wouldn’t believe it. Oh, I am so hot. And if you follow and subscribe and hit that bell, I will teach you how you can be just as sexy as I am! And buy my book! And my merch! And my new single! And of course, my new cryptocurrency, by the name of “autism-coin.” It’s going to be a real success on 4chan, let me tell ya!
The aesthetic of suffering, the allure of victimhood, it’s important to acknowledge that to many people, the idea of struggling with mental illness is hot. A common trope in teen dramas is the existence of the sexy bad boy haunted by demons of depression or addiction or some other psychological malady. Women with mental illness tend to be sexualised, less, but then again, women are most typically always sexualised, no matter the state of their mental health. But it’s not just a case of some people finding mental illness to be attractive in others, many see mental illness in themselves as something to take pride in, to celebrate and nurture. To seek out a diagnosis, to infiltrate communities that exist to provide support to those in need, and to declare themselves as being special. Fakers, you could call them. Yes, we’re going to be entering into dangerous grounds here, talking about a potentially incendiary topic that might feed the flames of controversy, but it’s a topic worth discussing. Self-diagnosis. Is self-diagnosis valid or not? Should one self-diagnose? Is it ableism to be against self-diagnosis? Is it ableism to be for self-diagnosis? Is it ableism itself ableist? I don’t know, sweetheart, you are asking a whole bunch of questions and I am hungover… But let’s go on rambling about what it means to be labelled neurodivergent.
Do you have an identity? Do you root for a particular sports team? Do you like a particular kind of music? Do you dance a lot? Are you a dancer? What are you? Simply stating that you’re just “a human” probably won’t do. Sure, it’s correct, but I am also a human, and we could be two very different kinds of people. Your identity should be that certain something that makes you stand apart from the rest, that distinguishes you from the squirming mass of flesh that is the whole of humanity. There are plenty of things about you that do figure in your identity, even though you wish it didn’t. You’re black, you don’t wish to always be “that black guy over there,” but you’ve come to realise that’s just how society views you. Maybe you are a transwoman, and you very eagerly want your friend to stop introducing you as her “trans bestie.” You’re just a woman, you don’t need her to keep labelling you as trans, even though that's what you are. There are many ways we can change our identity through direct personal action. Maybe you could start wearing a hat, and be known as “that hat guy” to the people you work with. Maybe you could embrace a punk aesthetic, looking like young Johnny Rotten stepped into a time machine and got transported to the current day. Actions like these can have a big or small impact on how others see you, but it feels good to be able to make a decision like that and get a response. This is me, this is what I am. I’m the guy who wears bow-ties, don’t I look cool? If only shaping your sense of self always came down to personal decisions like that. You don’t always have a choice.
I’ve lately been watching some Conan O’Brien (American TV talk show host who’s recently decided not to be a TV talk show host) clips. I am sure I don’t need to explain who Conan O’Brien is to my readers, but just in case this is being read by aliens ten-thousand years from now, what I can tell you is that Conan O’Brien is well known for being freakishly tall. Like, really tall. He’s an elongated leprechaun. He’s turned being tall into one of his trademarks. Like many comedians, he’s come to use his corporeal form as a source for levity and fun. While, naturally, the man did not choose to grow as tall as he did, he’s come around to use his height not as a hindrance to success, but rather as an asset. He’s “that tall irish guy on the TV,” and he’s been that person for nearly thirty years. It pays to have some distinguishing feature if you wish to be distinguished. Mr. Joe Average might be perfectly funny and charming, but being an average-looking guy can be wholly detrimental in making a career for yourself as a funnyman. At least get yourself some weird voice, or something. Maybe pretend to be some foreigner and put on a fake accent. As a comedian your job is to be exploited, you wish to be made into a commodity to be sold. People will want to watch your special because of that funny face you pull in the thumbnail. To be different can be financially lucrative.
What’s the best approach in turning something that could be perceived as an abnormal feature into something that is beneficial to you? To make jokes about it? Certainly, if I were to meet a man with a heavily scarred face, I feel there’d likely be a tension between me and him that could be dispelled if that man with the heavily scarred face made some little joke about his appearance, some little quip. “I’m sorry, I cut myself shaving this morning,” would do. The person isn’t obliged to justify his existence to me, he does not have to go out of his way to make me feel less uncomfortable. I am the one in the wrong, certainly. I shouldn’t look at a person with a heavily scarred face and feel uncomfortable, that’s me letting prejudices get in the way, I know that. But, it is what it is. If you’re looking for a practical solution, telling people to simply get over themselves and learn to not be so awkward around folks with physical deformities won’t do. It may be the right thing, but it’s not going to happen any time soon. I am sure that the man with the heavily scarred face isn’t interested in being defined by his heavily scarred face. He's probably sick and tired of that little joke, and wish he didn’t have to make it. But it does the job. Suddenly, you are not looking at something to be feared, the other, you are looking at a person, and someone with a sense of humour. The importance of humour in eradicating stigma, making it possible for the ostracised to enter in society, cannot be understated. Through humour, you can convince most everyone that you are someone worthy of inclusion, because… well, you’re just a funny guy, who doesn’t wanna hang out with you?
For those who have grown up not feeling normal, worrying that there are aspects of your character that others may perceive as unwanted, the yearning to be liked can at times become excruciating. I like to consider myself a funny person, while this blog isn’t intended to be a humorous one, occasionally small little jokes will squirm their way to the top, like worms coming up to the surface during a rainstorm. I am also a cartoonist, and produce a new cartoon every other day. My humour isn’t universal, no good humour ever is universal, but it’s done good in getting some folks to like me. Some people want to be admired, some people want to be feared. I only want to be liked. The one thing I absolutely do not want to be is pitied. I don’t want your pity, I fear your pity.
You’re probably familiar with The Sims, right? It’s a life simulation game, where you control a little digital human, known as a sim, and try to help them make the right decision through life. Each sim has a number of meters that measures their current needs. Hunger, hygiene, energy, if they need to urinate or defecate (though, frankly, the distinction between the two isn’t made in the game, so one can assume that sims are like birds and have just one cloaca that does both,) and so on. One of these meters is for social activities. If a sim hasn’t been social in a while, they go nutty. What’s interesting here, the reason why I bring it up, is that in real life, though we all (to a lesser or greater degree) crave to socialise with others, what kind of socialising you do is of a very big importance. There are a myriad of ways in which one can be social, and depending on your needs at the time, one kind of socialising may not do, whereas another kind of socialising may be just what you need. Do you want to hang out with your pals, cracking jokes and maybe drinking a couple of beers? Do you want to have a serious conversation with your partner about what you wish to accomplish together? Do you want to play with your dog? These different social situations scratch different parts of your mind, and you can’t just substitute one for the other and think that’s all alright. A person may have tonnes of friends, lots of buddies to spend their time with, but they may still desperately be yearning for another kind of social interaction, one that none of their friends can deliver. The human need for company is more complex than how it is depicted in The Sims… which, to be fair, probably shocks nobody. The Sims doesn’t pretend that it’s some highly realistic simulation of real life, it’s a game meant to be played for fun. But what’s important here is the fact that while humans do have a need to be social, how that need is fed changes dramatically on the person, and their conditions. Socialising that may bring comfort to one person, may bring discomfort to another person.
I don’t want you to pity me. I may list my diagnoses, I may tell you of the difficulties that I face in life, but I do not want you to feel sorry for me. I want you to be entertained reading this, I don’t want to make you weep thinking about how cruel life can be. I don’t want you thinking I’m special, or different, because of my diagnoses. I want you to think I’m special and different because of my writing. Sure, this blog is about living with autism spectrum disorder, but I don’t want you reading this blog just because it’s about autism spectrum disorder. I want you to read this because, while it is about a diagnosis you are interested in learning more about, you also find what I write to be well-written and at times, mildly humorous. This blog isn’t my rabid manifesto detailing all the ways my life sucks, and what must be done by society to appease me. Nah, I’m doing relatively fine, don’t feel bad for me, please. I don’t want that kind of attention. I do want attention, I won’t lie and tell you that I don’t have an ego, or that I don’t get pleased seeing people like the things I put out there. I do have a social need, it’s just that being pitied does not do it for me. It doesn’t make me feel good. It makes me feel bad. It makes me feel sad. It really makes me feel mad.
We’re finally getting around to the topic I promised I would discuss. Self-diagnosis. A principal concern people have with self-diagnosis is that people only self-diagnose in order to receive pity from others. The difference between someone like me, who’s got a proper official diagnosis, and someone who is self-diagnosed, is that I don’t want your pity. I don’t want you to fetishise my diagnosis, this thing about me that I did not choose to be. I don’t want special favours just because of my diagnosis, I don’t want to be known as “that cartoonist with autism.” I am autistic, I’ve come to accept that, but I don’t want anyone to introduce me as “their friend who’s on the spectrum.” Some may accuse me of self-loathing, treating being autistic like some bad thing that I am ashamed of. But that’s not it. After all, I did start this blog to discuss what it is like. I just don’t want to be defined by this certain something that lies outside of my control. I don’t want it to be my “thing.” I don’t mind being referred to as a hairy cartoonist, because I am pretty hairy. I don’t want to cut my hair any time soon (especially with this plague going around.) No-one would pity me just because I am hairy. At most they may regard me as a good-for-nothing beatnik, and I’m okay with that. Ideally, I still want to be liked, but anything is better than being pitied. To be pitied is to be robbed of your own agency, your own potential. Sure, it gets you that attention you may be craving, but at the cost of infantilization. Autistic people often struggle with being infantilized by society, to the point where some folks don’t even realise that there are autistic grown-ups in the world. Anyone who would voluntarily seek out a diagnosis just to be pitied, well… it doesn’t sit right with me. It makes me, quite frankly, feel demoralised.
But not all people self-diagnose just to get pity from others, right? For some it’s genuinely their only option, likely living in a barely-functioning country like the United States where receiving psychiatric care is expensive and it’s just not something they can afford. It’s unfair of me to phrase self-diagnosing as just a quest to receive pity, it’s way more complicated than that. And yes, I’d have to agree. To know all the reasons why a person may self-diagnose, you have to go personally ask them. Even if it is possible to highlight a few certain trends, things that they all have in common, it’s bound to be impossible to make this one sweeping generalisation to explain everything. All I am saying is that there absolutely are those people who do self-diagnose with the explicit goal of getting pitied. Whether they are knowingly faking their condition or not, to them, being pigeonholed as a person with autism isn’t at all a negative. It’s their identity. It is how they have chosen to let the world see them. They made a choice. They chose this label. This is why many people who have official diagnoses are sceptical of those who've only got a self-diagnosis. Whether your self-diagnosis is accurate or not, in the end, you chose to identify yourself with it. You made a decision, oblivious of the fact that many people don’t get to make that kind of a decision, and they may bear resentment for how you are turning something they’ve faced ostracization for, into what is potentially on the same level as listening to a certain kind of music, or being a supporter of a sports team. A diagnosis is not something you should choose to have.
There are other things to say about self-diagnosis. First of all, it can be dangerous. Some of the diagnoses I’ve seen people give themselves are really serious, things like personality disorders or psychosis. Psychiatrists are very careful when putting these kinds of labels on people, knowing the harm that it can do. A diagnosis is meant to only be given after careful deliberation, and after long conversations with the patient. Psychiatrists know that reducing a person to a set of symptoms can have detrimental effects to that person’s sense of self. If you’re trying to cling on to a diagnosis, seeing it as a major part of your identity, then that may hamper any attempts you make to become a better person, to improve your mental health. You will feel as if you need to correspond to the exact specifications of the disorder, and you will not allow yourself to grow naturally as a complicated human being, a human being whose internal life is far too vast to be fully rounded up with some psychiatric jargon. There are plenty of things about me that do not line up with the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder, and guess what, that’s quite good actually. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have autism, I very much do, but I realise that as a person, I am more than just my diagnosis. The diagnosis does not define me, I define the diagnosis. If you self-diagnose, do you comprehend all that you are getting yourself into? Are you going to find yourself in psychological traps that will only serve to worsen your mental health? It’s hard to look at yourself objectively, you could easily be misrepresenting yourself inside your own mind. You may effectively be locking parts of yourself away, making it so you are no longer able to see the full you. You will no longer be all there, you will be segmented in favour of upholding the defining marks of a diagnosis that doesn’t suit you.
Instead of self-diagnosing, try doing a self-assessment. Keep in mind that, while you may have this diagnosis, it’s too early to say for sure. You’re going to need somebody else’s input. You’ll need to sit with it for a while to see if it sticks. Keep an open mind, realise that there’s no easy way to explain exactly who you are, or what you are like. It’s very possible that you will come to realise that you are in fact autistic, or have whatever other diagnosis you may suspect describes you. I, after all, came to the conclusion that I was autistic before I got the diagnosis (though, I was going to therapy at that point, and I was on the way to undergo a neuropsychiatric evaluation.) It’s not bad to try and get to understand yourself, don’t come out of this thinking that self-reflection is only possible with a psychiatrist looming over you, telling you how to think about things. We all need to come to certain conclusions over how we self-identify, and sometimes you need to take mental leaps to explain certain things. Just don’t feel as if your best option is to put a label on yourself that can potentially negatively affect your psychological well-being. If you are truly searching for understanding, if your goal is to find out more about yourself, you should act with caution and concern for what you are doing. If all you are looking for is to have people pity you, then… well… I don’t know what to say, really…
