Untitled.

Therapist, solution: wait to see if the other person laughs, if they don’t, it’s probably not a joke.

Me: {laughing}

Therapist: {silence}

It’s common for a great deal of autistic people (neurodivergent people in general) to feel like others’ bad behaviour towards us must somehow be our fault.

We’re the “weirdos”, so sure we must have done something weird to deserve it, expecially when those others clearly state that much. Or maybe we aren’t, maybe we didn’t, maybe - just maybe - that’s just a lame excuse they use for the inexcusable.

I don’t want to let one such people define me, define how I see myself and define how I see others.

One person’s narcissism with its typical taking advantage of and disregard for others won’t serve as the means through which I evaluate anyone else. They will not be the lens through which I see the world.

I will not apologise for being me, I will not be ashamed of my autism, and I will not automatically take someone else’s nasty behaviour towards me as being surely my fault.

1. Do they [specialists] even know what autism is?

2. Dr [name] has probably never seen an autistic person, my neighbour has an autistic son and he screams all the time.

3. Oh come on, do you really think autistic people can finish or even go to university?

4. No, you’re not. What you really are is actually hypochondriac.

5. You read too much. If you read less, you wouldn’t get such silly ideas into your head.

6. You don’t bite [ehh?!], bang your head against the wall, smell people’s shoes [wtf?!], {insert other behaviours along these lines people think all autistic individuals must absolutely display}, so you can’t be autistic.

7. So what? We’re all a bit autistic.

8. You just don’t go out enough, all you need is a few drinks and sunlight.

9. That’s a lame excuse. If you don’t want to come [to some get-together], just say it.

10. You have to make an effort and socialise more, that’s the only way you’ll snap out of it.

11. How long will it take to get cured?

12. [NEW] Does that mean you can’t work anymore?

…

I started “pruning” my friendships. I do not need friends who think “we’re all a bit autistic” and my problem is “not making an effort to be like others”, or even that my autism would “go away” if only I forced myself to “enjoy the same activities as everyone else”.

I came to a point where I had to make a choice: either follow specialist advice, or do as others (layman) expect me to do, which is basically what they themselves do.

I have spent my entire life during the latter. It’s time to try a different approach, so I’m going with the former.

Either people accept the difference or they don’t. It’s not my job to try to convince them to. Like it’s no homosexual person’s job to try to convince others to stop being homophobic, or any physically handicapped person’s job to convince them drop ableism.

Ready to start the conditioning to push my limits of endurance: Seoraksan, South Korea, this autumn.

There’s just something about mountains and their uncanny ability to induce perfect calm and absolute exhilaration simultaneously.

Basically, it feels okay to be me when I can actually be myself, without the awful burden of having to pretend to be someone else in order to be liked (or even accepted), knowing in advance that it isn’t me who those who say they like me are actually fond of - rather, it’s the image of what they want to see in me that I become a reflex of in order not to freak them out.

And that is something I should know to be a waste of time and effort which always leads me nowhere good: there’s only so much I can consistently pretend, only so much small talk I can make, and only so long I can pretend to be a bit daft for.

The longer and more consistently I pretend to be what others want to see in me, the more it hurts when the system crashes, as it always ends up doing.

Had someone asked me to predict my own future a year ago, today as it is wouldn’t even have been a possibility crossing my mind. All it took were a few clicks to trigger a massive cascade of life-changing events which are still developing (and some of which will hopefully continue to do so, correctly and for some time).

Would I have chosen things to happen the way they did, or would I not take back those clicks were I able to go eight months back in time? I certainly would. And yet here we are and, painful as it has been to get here, I am glad to be where I am. Lessons learnt through pain are often the hardest to forget. Thankfully so.

Not all I’ve learnt can be classified as “negative” - yes, I did learn that people can be virtually infinitely more twisted than I already thought they were and that, no matter how nice they seem, and how long they seem that way for, they should never be trusted, at least not fully so.

But I’ve also learnt that, no matter how hard I am kicked down, be it illness or just humans being what we are - predators always seeking new prey - I appear to always manage to get up again (with good, professional help, at least), stronger than I was before.

Most sounds tend to bother me deeply, and make me feel sick, even. Especially the high-pitch type. Yet I love the sound of walking on fresh, deep snow. It is a very soothing sound, very calming, reminiscent of happy memories.

With every step, it’s as if the snow itself were telling me, in its own language, that everything will be okay.

Snow makes me happy. And there are very few things that actually make me truly happy. At best, things tend to make me content.

Sudden snow cravings indeed.

[Picture taken during a lovely solo hike in Bergen, Norway]

Whilst that may be true for many of us that we can be easier to be taken advantage of than neuronormative people, what such vultures don’t seem to be aware of is that, another common trait amongst us is focus and persistance, for better or worse, it’s not easy for us to let go.

We spend our lives since we’re first socialised adapting to a world that is naturally hostile to us, because we are the exception, and the world is built for the norm. So we’re used to adversity, we’re used to emotional pain, we’re basically used to a constant fight for survival.

Unless we’re slightly horrible people, it’s hard not to empathise with someone like this. Yet, who we’re empathising with is quite possibly a narcissist. A so-called “vulnerable narcissist” to be specific.

The biggest strength and most powerful tool of the vulnerable narcissist is precisely the vulnerability they portray.

This is a type of narcissism we don’t talk about often, yet one which is as toxic as any other.

Awareness concerning vulnerable narcissism should be raised: both to allow those around them to protect themselves and to let vulnerable narcissists know that help is available (unlike other cluster B personalities, those with narcissistic personality disorder do suffer as a direct result of how their disorder makes them interact with the world and with themselves).

To love a person is to give them an incredible amount of power: the power to make us happy, to make us feel whole, alive, and that our lives are entirely worth living… and the power to make us feel the exact opposite too.

Hell is when you become trapped inside your mind, and that mind trapping you is made solely of an asphyxiating mix of abstract, overwhelming sadness, oppressive panic, undefinable confusion and a deep, frightening sense of being lost, accompanied by the fear of never again being able to find the way towards yourself again.

The self becomes unreachable, I know the person I am is still around but, in the midst of the handicapping chaos keeping me a prisoner inside my own mind, I just can’t seem to reach them.

Hell is made of acute, paralysing pain. A pain which cannot be pinpointed to any specific part of the body, but an extremely violent, blinding pain nonetheless.

20 years ago feels like yesterday. Although I can’t say I’ve wasted the last 20 years, I can certainly say that, unlike today, 20 years ago, it was easy to become whomever I wished to be become. Look the way I wanted to look. Live how and where I wanted to live.