#autism notes

I was diagnosed as autistic right before these became popular So I was telling my family about looking for stimming toys. Because a lot of autistic people stim so I figured maybe it would be helpful for the anxious energy.

So my dad had got me a fidget cube (which I was excited about because I had seen the Kickstarter and totally was tempted), and then eventually a fidget spinner. I was like ‘well this is kind of weird but it should be a good addition to my new arsenal of stim junk’

So it kind of cracks me up how it just suddenly became huuuuge. And how bothered people are lol

I just feel like— mwahahahaha My mentally ill ass is ruining your liiiife~ Spinnahhhhs!

I don’t even really get it, but I can see why kids like it. For me I need something more constantly interactive.

It’s hard to have schedule. Parameters. It’s hard to let go. As it is, autistic people seem full of words. ADD people too. So both at once, am I just always full of words, and constantly forgetting why I opened my notes, why the pen is in my hand, what important insight I wanted to message, what I was in this room for or why I got up… while simultaneously deeply analyzing everything all the time and constantly reflecting…. So really, the words never stop, and when could they? How does one know a safe stopping point when there is never a pause?

Perhaps in being autistic, the act of reflecting itself like some sort of safety blanket I carry around- Because understanding feels like control

But you need to use both hands to get most stuff done. And I don’t wanna set the safety blanket down.

But I feel like if I don’t master those things, it will guarantee my life will only be obsessing about that Because I will always have to do it from scratch. I will never have a handle on it. I will never have control. Because ADD, if not autism, makes that impossible. I will always be lost and always scraping by trying to pull it off, frazzled at thought of groceries and ingredients and calculating if I have time to eat successfully and also sleep

I have this idea like people have their shit together, when really they don’t. People improvise like everything, constantly. And taking good care of yourself is really hard in a society where people work long hours for not enough pay. So it’s not the norm to have well-rounded sleep and eat all the meals, homemade each day..

I suppose they just don’t care. Mostly. And are ok with that? I’m not ok with it for some reason. So I stress myself out, in ways maybe other people don’t agonize at all.

I think what it comes down to is this:

I am autistic and have ADD. I have a very very uneasy feeling when it comes to my self-control and ability to trust myself. Things I do take a lot of effort and I tend to interrupt myself and things take a long time.

Planning and coordinating, time management, and making the steps flow is incredibly hard for me.

Also, things take me a lot of energy. I have managed to get 8 hours of sleep over and over lately. 9 sometimes. I never feel rested. I always feel burnt out mentally. Just from small things. Small actions. Just trying to decide what to eat for lunch makes me feel confused and tired. So balancing my life around work is very scary for me.

So while I might be doing just as well, if not incredibly better in my day to day life compared to some or most people… I always feel like I’m going to slip and lose any and all progress at any moment and then no longer have the momentum to try

Basically becoming a vacuum of depression and eating myself out of house and home* … and then anxiety keeping me awake and feeling like I can never claw my way back up

*(I could eat myself out of house and home, since I have only the money to really cover half of my life despite working nearly full time, [and my hours got cut so it got tighter] since rent is impossibly high here– so I have to stay very strict within my half-my-life budget, I can’t get stuff like out-food)

So for me there’s a huge feeling of dismay and anxiety and uneasiness surrounding my day to day life. Because my brain is already built to run in circles. It’s very hard to go forward.

I think what’s hard is, I must have killer motivation. But damn if it isn’t frustrating as all hell to not see myself ever successfully making it forward and staying forward.

Life is up and down up and down and that’s how it is. But I can’t really feel or sense that graph slowly bobbing upward overall.

Trouble is I micromanage down to the day. Every day feels like a day where I can feel ok or a day when I can’t. A day where I managed or a day where I didn’t. It’s hard for me to see life in a bigger scale. To have trust and patience that my effort adds up. That I put in enough that my life could get better. That I’m not just burning myself out on all this want.

People don’t really care. They survive. They half-ass their days and survive. They improvise. They get through.

But the thing is, it always feels like my exhaustion follows me day in and day out. Like it cumulates. And I don’t know how to fix that. So I feel more and more scared when I can’t take better care of myself. When I can’t seem to get it down. When I fail, the next day is impacted. And the next. And the next. I miss a meal. I lose a couple hours of sleep. The next day I’m more confused. More tired. And fail more.

And then it feels like it just leads straight down to that hopeless mess of losing momentum and depression.

How does one loosen their grip when they are convinced they probably have no grip at all?

I drag laundry to my family’s house every week to dodge paying for laundry here. I just read online that you’re supposed to wash your exercise clothes after every use. That makes me want to panic lol. I only have like two pairs of sweatpants so.. how..?? And I only have time to do laundry once a week.

So it’s just very… ??? Idealisms… I can’t have it all so what matters most? What do I need most?

And can I even pull -that- off?

Will my trying amount to something? Is there a way to let go without losing? Can I do this slowly and will it work, will I be able to eat enough and sleep enough and have more energy someday if I’m just patient through the very slow process of making that work?