#conflicting needs

There is no reality in which everyone’s needs are 100% accommodated 100% of the time. As much as I wish that could be the case, that possibility would require much more homogeneity than what human beings experience as a species. We are not monolithic enough for everyone to be accommodated all of the time. The range of human experience is too expansive for that.

This goes for every type of disability. As an example, an autistic person or a person who has sensory processing disorder may need an area to have low light so as to not be overstimulated. However, a blind person may need that same area to have brighter lights so that they can maneuver the space. Someone with light sensitive migraines may also need low lighting. My first thought is in a space like a sensory room. Designed for autistic folks, yes, but what of blind autistic folks? Do they not have the same right to access a space created for autistic people?

It’s me, always, it feels

Cast as the villain

Never quite more than a friendly extra

But the days,

The days go on.

Days move and I move

It feels she stays stagnant

It feels like minutes when it’s been hours

It feels like hours when it’s been days

I lose track of everything

I lose track of her

She doesn’t like my habits

Yet she cares about me a lot

But the betrayal she feels is more than what she deserves

And I actually agree with the sentiment.

How to be a good person?

How to be a good friend?

How do I stop unintentionally harming her fragile heart?

How do I be perfect?

How do I meet her demands?

Demands that drain me of joy?

I move with time and forget it all the same.

I don’t think she does.

I think she knows time all too well, and knows moving as well as she knows a stranger.

And yet, why do I have to do the majority of things?

I get punished for ignoring the bare minimum.

I don’t do the bare minimum because I think I’d rather have my teeth plucked out.

Her luck is bad.

My luck is fine.

I want to share that luck but how do I show *love?*

My version isn’t correct.

It never is.

Demands of love

Demands of care

Demands of friendship

Demands of… something.

What?

What is it?

All I feel are demands

And it’s difficult to feel the determination to try anymore.

I want to let go,

I can’t quite do that yet.

How do I let go of something so worn down?

How do I set it free?

It’s nothing but something tattered.

But despite this,

Despite the chore it has become to try to make her happy,

There’s a deep feeling of care I have.

I think I will always have it.

I care about her.

I want her gone from my life.

I hope she finds great happiness.

I want to go to her house just to keep driving by with a sneer.

I desperately need for her to catch that break she deserves.

I want to remove her from any place I can see her.

I would give anything for the burden life has given her to be lifted.

I hate her.

I despise the idea of what this friendship is, now.

The work it takes and the shitty yield don’t feel equal.

I am blind to time, and yet, it has felt like this has gone on too long.

I hate her.

Hi anon,

You aren't doing anything wrong. This sounds like one of this situations of "conflicting needs" that I've been talking about. Her needs don't outweigh yours and vice versa. Trying to find a compromise is how I'd proceed here.

Is it possible that you can sit down and have a conversation and maybe decide together when you'll message each other first? Example: "hey, how about we text each other good morning/good afternoon/etc every day, and we take turns doing it first?" Knowing that you're expecting her to message first might ease some of the nervousness. (Possible you can start even lower and suggest once a week.) Please keep in mind that it's possible this could make her feel more pressure/stress and that's super valid. This is just a suggestion.

Maybe you can ask her to send you memes, or dog/cat pictures or whatever you like when she sees them because you enjoy them? As someone with anxiety messaging first, it is way less stressful for me to send someone a funny picture or something. Maybe that might apply to others, too.

Have you tried telling her that you'd love to hear from her in a specific time frame? Like before going to bed say "hey, I'd really love you to message me in the morning." For me personally, having vague "I want you to message me first" doesn't ease my nerves, but someone telling me they'd specifically like to hear from me the next day does because I know they're expecting me.

Can you reassure her and start a thing where you mute notifications when it's not a good time to talk, so that she knows if it's a "bad time" you won't see it until you're ready to?

I was going to start this off with a list of statements that “can and should coexist” but for much the same reason that this post is going to be an essay unto itself, it is too complicated a subject to condense into such a nice pithy format. Recently I have reblogged some posts in favor of the presence of kink at pride. I have not changed on this regard but unfortunately this issue is also used by exclusionists to direct attacks at a-spec people. As such it is often hard to find posts that are pro-kink and pro-ace, so I decided to make one.

The queer community is a massive and diverse group and with that diversity comes conflict. There is no one size fits all solution. What helps one part of the community will not necessarily benefit another. Gay bars are a great place to meet people. They are also loud, crowded, and serve alcohol which makes them difficult for people with sensory over stimulation or substance abuse issues. So people who want these spaces are often accused of being prudes and people who want to include kink at pride are often accused of being deviants. And oddly I can think of a historical figure who has had both of these accusations leveled at him. Cue historical flashback for a Very Special Episode.

Richard Berkowitz was in his own words an S&M Hustler. He was a sex worker and professional Dom. He is Jewish, lives in New York, has a degree in Journalism from Rutgers and called his mom in New Jersey everyday. He is also one of the co-inventors of Safe Sex.

In the early 80s he was diagnosed with GRID. Gay Related Immunodeficiency which would later be called AIDS. He was a patient of Dr Joseph Sonnabend along with another man Michael Callen. Sonnabend was himself a gay man and an immunologist. Sonnabend hypothesized that GRID was spread through sex and was caused by “immune overload.” This was a hypothesis that was not popular in the gay community at large because many felt it validated the homophobic abuse that was constantly flung at the community. Sonnabend was not giften with words and was terrible as a science educator so Berkowitz and Callen teamed up to help him get the word out.

While the 60’s was known for the Free Love movement for straight people the seventies saw the repeal of many anti sodomy laws and it was the decade of free love for gay people. Many saw promiscuity as a part of that liberation. It should also be noted that at the time I am talking about no one knew yet what caused GRID, so the hypothesis that it was caused by promiscuity was viewed as tantamount to blasphemy. I should also note that Dr. Sonnabend was not claiming to be above promiscuity. He himself frequented gay bathhouses where many gay men would meet to have sex. Berkowitz and Callen met through Sonnabend and together worked to help Sonnabend to spread the word. Their first attempt was an article in the New York Native a local gay newspaper titled “We Know Who We Are.” The Native editorial staff insisted on a subtitle, “Two Gay Men Declare War on Promiscuity.”

Berkowitz and Callen were immediately reviled by the gay community of New York. They were accused of being prudes and self hating gay men. But they kept following Dr. Sonnabend and helping him communicate his findings and theories to the populace even if no one would listen to them. The next year was hard of them and journalism work wasn’t paying the bills for Berkowitz. He eventually returned to work as a Dom. However this time he worked with clients who wanted to be Dominated but not penetrated. As time went on he found ways of doing his job that minimized risk for both him and his clients. This led him and Callen to write a pamphlet on sexual health called “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach” In it they explained the basics of Safe Sex that are now taught in Health Classrooms in the US. One of my favorite tips they gave was to love your partner even if it is just for one night. If you love them you won’t want to risk hurting them and you will be more careful.

The fate of different gay venues would continue to be a hot button issue in the community even to this day. There were arguments made about closing gay bars, sex clubs, and bathhouses in the name of public health. And there were arguments made to keep them open because many feared if they closed down they would never open again.  

So what am I getting at here? Well really I just wanted to highlight how the needs of the community can conflict with themselves. And how that conflict has always been part of the community. We need a diversity of spaces in order to embrace the diversity of our community. We need non sexual spaces. We need them for our a-spec siblings and so that I can go on a nice date with a guy and talk in peace and safety without having my ears blown out by a subwoofer. We need loud party spaces. We need places we can dance and grind and flirt with strangers. We need sexual spaces where people who are interested in kink can explore that interest with like minded people.

And finally we need to acknowledge that kink is an integral part of our community. Our community was built by sex workers and we need them. First and foremost they are a part of our community and they are valuable in their own right. But further, for many reasons that are too numerous to name many members of our community will experience their first time with a professional. Many queer people will for numerous reason be sex workers. Their involvement in our movement can help make us resistant to those who would sanitize Pride. It can make our events advertiser unfriendly and help keep corporate greed from monetizing our identities. We have to remember that although our community is becoming more respected, that respectability is not the goal. Liberation is the goal.

-characters who actually heal slowly, and have the results of their past injuries making them weaker and prone to flareups and pain. Characters needing to relearn their limits over and over again and needing to find alternate ways to do things that used to be more straightforward before. Characters who have to learn to ask and accept help...and actually recieve it

-characters who ARE actually healed. Not just healed, but healed quickly and are even BETTER than they were before. No constant itch or twinge or tingle or rubber or glass or “wet and leadpipe” feeling of moderate inflamation. No shrieking pain or sudden collapse. They’re actually Whole. More Whole than ever. Stronger and with more vitality and energy and endurance than ever.

And just. The equivalence of this for mental health, too.

I need to see others struggling (and failing) with their New Normal

i fully expect to be an absolute rage monster and go on crying jags a lot. i don’t know how long this will last. Past experience with this approximate kind of grief says it could be 3 days or it could be 2 weeks or it could be 3 years. 

this is what happens when traumatic stress becomes post traumatic stress, and yeah, I have a therapist and a doctor watching my mental health and they know what’s coming and why, and we’ve all pretty much agreed that it’s going to suck but I’m going to need to ride it out because there aren’t a lot of good options.

the only upside is that I should have time and space to grieve and rage the way I need to. 

right at the moment, about 30 hours away from one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do in my life, I can see the train coming. 

2/3 I suffer from bad social anxiety, very bad depression and ptsd and he often can be quiet blunt and sometimes hurtful. In normal situations I already struggle to be with people, it’s not just him. But for example, I gained a lot of weight because of medication and he said that I got fat. I know that he doesn’t do it with hurtful intent but I still felt hurt and ashamed of myself. Because of my ptsd I have issues with physical contact and he perceives personal space very differently than I.

¾ This is getting long and I’m sorry. I hope I’m not disrespectful and don’t offend you. I really don’t want it to seem, that this is all about me and he is bad or something. And please ignore this completely if you feel offended or I was disrespectful. I want to treat him fairly and don’t want to avoid him but I just feel very uncomfortable sometimes. It’s mostly because he is a man and I do not want him, or any man, standing to close to me.

4/4 Normally you take a step back, to regain your personal space and then it’s fine. I try to do that but he often then takes a step towards me again. Can you maybe tell me what I could do to treat him better? Or to understand why he does it? Again I apologise for the length of this or any disrespect I may have caused against you. I would ask of you that if you feel that you cannot answer my question for any reason that you delete it completely and write me a massage, would that be ok?

First, you are allowed to take space from someone if you need to.  If there’s something about a person that is interacting badly with your anxiety or depression or ptsd, you’re not a bad person for deciding you need to distance yourself a bit.

That said, if you’re going to distance yourself, he might appreciate having some idea of why so that you’re not just randomly disappearing.  A lot of us have experienced being randomly ditched by people we thought were friends, and reassuring him that you’re not ditching him but you just don’t have the energy to interact right now would probably be helpful for him.

When you do feel ready to interact with him again, it’s best to be direct about your needs.  We’re not always great at picking up social cues, so stepping back to regain your personal space is a thing that’s likely to go unnoticed.  If you say something like “My personal space bubble is a bit bigger than this.  Would you mind taking a step back?” then he knows what your personal space needs are and can react accordingly.  Similarly with the comment about your weight, you could say something like “I know you’re not trying to be hurtful but I don’t like when people comment on my body.”  Again, social cues and implicitly taught rules are a challenge for autistic people, so it’s possible he genuinely doesn’t realize what he’s doing wrong.  Being direct about your needs (while also giving him the benefit of the doubt about good intentions) can help him understand how to interact with you without compromising your mental health.

That said, if you try this and find that he is either unwilling or unable to respect your personal space needs or avoid commenting on your weight, you are allowed to decide you’d rather not interact with him when you don’t have to.  His autism does not invalidate your mental health needs.  And even when both people have the best intentions, some people can just be a bad match because of conflicting needs.  It doesn’t make either of you a bad person if you find that you’re just not well suited as friends.

-Liz

While I agree with everything Liz has said, I would like to add that, while talking to him about this and giving him the benefit of the doubt may be more considerate towards him, you are under no obligation to do so.

If someone has repeatedly made you feel uncomfortable, it is ok to distance yourself without giving an explanation. This may be less true for situations where someone has merely annoyed you. In your case, considering your own experiences and mental illnesses, your comfort comes first and protecting yourself should be a priority. It is not your job to accommodate an aquaintance at the expense of your own comfort.

It is very considerate of you to try and accommodate him and consider his autism. However, it is not your job to teach an adult manners, autistic or not. While his autism may account for his difficulties with boundaries (reading nonverbal signals), even an autistic person should have learned not to call another person fat, give uncalled-for opinions or comment on another person’s body by the time they are an adult. It is not unreasonable to expect this.

You sound very eager and anxious to make sure you treat him fairly, which is great. Just make sure you don’t forget to treat yourself with the same consideration as well and make sure that when you do talk to him about this you don’t take on responsibility for correcting behaviours that it would be his responsibility to correct.

All the best to you!