Umblys Rantings

for one, there’s sensory overload. having one too many senses engaged is enough to make me want to hide in a dark space forever.

but there’s also the fact that each task can feel like millions of tasks lumped together. making dinner isn’t just about making dinner. it’s about walking to the kitchen, and then getting out the ingredients, and then chopping things up, and then preparing everything and then… on and on.

there’s also the fact that my attention to detail is unavoidable. I am noticing so many things all the time, because my brain can’t tell the difference between important and unimportant information. everything is just “information” that I’m constantly scrambling to keep up with.

I struggled keeping it clean.

I struggled getting it clean.

I would sincerely put in quite a bit of effort and be really proud of the progress I made. Then one of my parents would come check and see how I was doing.

"Well, you've still got a long way to go."

That sentence. I was like, 11 when my parents were saying that to me. It was crushing. All my pride and satisfaction with my work was completely gone. All my effort was worthless to them. All they saw what everything I didn't do.

At the age of ELEVEN, I knew that wasn't right. That wasn't fair. I swore to myself I would never invalidate someone's work like that.

Now, at 30, I catch myself thinking 'I cleaned up, but my apartment is still so messy.' and I flashback to standing in my bedroom as a child, hearing those fucking words from my parents.

'No. I wouldn't invalidate someone else's work. I'm not going to invalidate my own. I did good. I made progress.' and I'll list the things that I DID get done to myself.

You deserve credit for all the progress you make.

You deserve credit for all the work you do.

It doesn't matter how much work you have left.

What you accomplish, no matter how small, counts. Even when what you accomplished was taking a day to rest and recharge and give yourself a break.

That list might say things like “Paint a picture. Go birdwatching. Finish that great novel I started reading. Call my grandma. Learn to bake a cake. Visit my sister. Play piano.”

Did you know that in post-mortem examinations there is zero correlation between weight and levels of arteriosclerosis and related diseases found?

Did you know that people with an overweight BMI have the longest life expectancy, that those with an “ideal” and an “obese” have about the same life expectancy, and that being “underweight” raises mortality rates more than being “morbidly obese”?

Did you know that losing weight and then gaining it back is worse for your heart than remaining at the weight you started consistently?

Did you know that 95% of people who lose weight do gain it back, and there has never been a single documented weight loss program that has been demonstrated to keep the weight off for five years or more in the majority or even a significant minority of people? Like, telling people to lose weight isn’t much use if we don’t know HOW to make that happen.

Like I have read The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos and Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata and Big Fat Lies by Glenn A Gaesser (Ph.D!) And Fat!So? and several other books that I don’t own and so don’t remember all of their names I spent like four years reading every single study coming out and looking at the methodology and noting which ones had huge holes or terrible methods and which didn’t (the holes were almost always in the pro-weight-loss studies) and like

Big Fat Lies has 27 pages of bibliography. 27 pages worth of scientific citation. The book content itself is only 197 pages. That’s a page of references for every 7 pages of book. Reading the book is just reference after reference and study after study. Most of these doctors (like Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size) started out the same way. They wanted to use the scientific method to find a real weight loss program or health solution that worked and could be proven to work, and so studied everything they could about weight and fitness only to find out that we didn’t need weight loss in the first place. That all the studies calling for it were lacking or nonexistent. That weight and underlying metabolic health have very little relation. That the history of our relationship with health and obesity has little basis in fact and a LOT of basis in capitalism, politics, and fashion. No, really, the association between weight and health was first proposed by insurance companies looking for ways to charge people more by claiming risk. They also charged tall and short people more. And people with different skin colors. When they got in trouble for charging people for things they had no control over and had no bearing on their health, they set out to prove that weight was controllable and that fat was unhealthy to make money. 

These are also a lot of the same people who went on to invent the President’s fitness program, so if you went to public school you probably already hate them. 

To explain a bit further, autistic people often have lag time or a slower processing speed when it comes to taking in, organizing, and using information. One of the most common forms of casual ableism we experience on a day to day basis comes from this fact - allistic people see what they feel is a person struggling with a task or concept, and immediately jump in unasked with solutions or demonstrations. This is not helpful and almost always comes across as patronizing or forcibly railroading the autistic person into a method or decision they did not have time to come to themselves.

For an example, I popped my tire last week. After it happened, I sat in my car on the side of the road for 15 minutes scrolling tumblr before I did anything towards the issue at hand. This was the time it took me to process the sudden change in the day's plans and come to a decision on how to act. If I had been with an allistic family member, this would not have been accepted, and I most likely would have ended up forced into decisions I had not had time to fully process or agree to. This has happened to me in the past and it is what caused me not to contact anyone for help. If I'm already trying to process a situation, I cannot explain my inaction to someone or argue with them as they offer a million suggestions. This will just increase the processing time needed before I can act as communication is difficult, and allistic people will make me monitor my tone of voice as well so I don't come off as irritated.

This is a big reason I prefer to solve my problems as independently as possible. I don't have a lone wolf complex - I have experiences that tell me inviting an allistic person to assist me is as good as assuming I will be taking a back burner in my own life until they decide to give it back. Usually, they just end up bombarding me with impatience and too many options and make the whole situation 10 times more difficult to process. They don't mean to - they assume the lag means that I'm overwhelmed and struggling. Processing behavior looks to allistics like total overwhelm and as I understand it, it's polite and caring to take over for someone in that state.

Rose says, "It is believed with alarming pervasiveness that autistic and other neurodivergent people 'don't understand social cues/social situations.' My question to neurotypicals is, do you?

“It seems to me that culturally we’re all so acclimated to being disingenuous and mildly manipulative in social settings and calling that normal and acceptable. As a result, many of you are severely disconnected from authentic connections with others.

“Afraid to say ‘this is how I really feel’ or ‘this is what I really think of this/you,’ instead you speak and act in a cryptic coded language under a veneer of straight up falsehood. Doesn’t that get exhausting? We are certainly exhausted by it.”

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I feel it's really unfair to divide physically and mentally disabled people as if a lot of neurodivergencies aren't physically taxing and feels like a chronic illness.

I keep seeing this said, but jesus christ, just because we may have different needs doesn't mean mentally disabled people are ablebodied.

Mental illness and mental disabilities will affect you physically and that's fucking true.

If you have a mental disability and need a mobility aid, you need a mobility aid.

It's really difficult living with ADHD as it affects me more than anything else. I am unmedicated and you have no idea how many times I have not been able to clean my room before b*gs came in, or how many dentist appointments I've been in because I struggle with physical hygiene. I can't even exercise because of my executive dysfunction. I am low spoons.