An Ass Outta U

 


People make an awful lot of assumptions & logic leaps they have no business making.  Even if you could oh, I dunno,  read a person's every Google search, email, private message & handwritten journal entry, you still have N-O idea what's going on in their mind or life, or what they've gone through to get to that point...the context behind it.  You don't know what they're like when not being perceived (read: alone) vs. in your presence, around only you vs. others, what they're like in a relationship vs. single, under extreme stress vs. a period of good fortune & so on.  What you see, no matter how telling or complete it appears in that moment, is always just a sliver of the Big Picture.  But you can only understand this if you give said Picture a chance to develop before storming out & going conclusion-jumping.  You know, conclusion-jumping?  It's kinda like base-jumping or bungee jumping but way more dangerous, at least to relationships.  

People say "walk a mile in my shoes" but that's literally impossible.  What they really mean is "listen to me, TAKE ME AT MY WORD and at least feign some empathy.  Pretend you believe me or care even if you don't.  But whatever you do, please don't gaslight me or argue with my basic perception of reality."  You shouldn't need to know exactly how somebody feels or have gone through an identical situation to empathize because empathy is not about YOU.  Just the opposite.  You should be able to see that someone's struggling (or thriving) and feel pain (or joy) for them.  When in doubt, follow their lead.  Do they seem elated?  Depressed?  Confused as Biden at a sundown debate?  Then take that & run with it.

No matter what I'm going through, good bad or indifferent, I always find myself having to over-explain and present a case to "prove it".   I've been told "You can't possibly be that dumb/helpless" when asking for help or "you don't know what you're talking about" when I very much DO.  This wears on your self-worth after a while by making you question your own perception of reality.  If nothing else, a person wants to believe that they understand themselves.  But when you're constantly told you're wrong whether you're confident or asking for help, you start to believe it and give up altogether.  Why bother doing your best, showing up on time, being honest/sober/polite when you'll just be accused of something you didn't do or treated like a criminal anyway?

Eventually you find that living down to their expectations is just easier.  And why not?  They've already made up their mind about you anyway.





Line in the Sand

Do not cross

No more.  You do NOT know me better than I know myself.  No amount of shady gossipping, backdoor intel gathering or other sneaky, underhanded bullshit will ever be as effective as just fucking ASKING me directly what you wanna know.  Since some of you seem so fucking invested (lol), I'll let you in on a little of what's going on in my life of late:

My sister, who is a single mom, just quit her job & has no idea what to do next.  (The story is much worse than that but isn't mine to tell).  I have both a cousin and an old friend who are actively dying, neither is a day over 55 (one isn't even 45).  And I found out today that my best friend in this world is having pretty severe health problems & isn't sure what's causing them just yet, but she has an extensive family history of cancer which is always at the back of my mind. 

On the financial front, there's a legal issue with 80 acres of my family's land involving the greediest member of said family, and my insurance randomly decided to stop covering my ADHD meds.  Oh, and my brother just lost his insurance & had to quit his cholesterol & blood pressure medications cold turkey.  I'm sure there's more but I'll stop there.  Every day is a new fresh Hell under the Trump admin.  There's no shortage of things I could rage-write about, from the genocide in the Middle East to the obscene Diddy verdict to the likely pardon for Jizzlaine Maxwell.  Yet I feel a moment of silence is in order. 

So for the rest of the summer, you won't hear much from me on this medium, not because I'm abandoning it (or you) but because I need a fucking minute.  MY life is going smoothly except for the nonsense mentioned above, so no worries there.  It's everybody I love that's got me stressin'.  🌡🥵

TL;DR - I'm off to spiral deeper into unhealthy coping mechanisms while taking on the problems, emotional burdens & chaos of others... as per usual.  If that bothers you, by all means help me.  Offer an alternative avenue:  Donation$, l♥ve, real tangible physical or emotional 🫂 support.  A sympathetic ear or friendly shoulder to cry on.  Otherwise you don't get a vote in how I cope.  I'll see ya when I see ya.

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Ozzy Osbourne: Drugs Did NOT Make Him That Way

I was never a huge Black Sabbath fan--they were before my time if I'm honest.  I'm more familiar with the reality show The Osbournes, which I also didn't watch at the time as I thought it was lame (though I'm revising that opinion after watching it the other night).  In any case, an opinion I keep seeing bandied about as fact is that Ozzy's speech and movement problems--indeed his behavioral problems & eventual degeneration & death--were a result of a lifetime of drug abuse.  Even Ozzy himself says so in one of the episodes of the reality show.  I saw one of the science pages I follow recently spout this same tired trope recently & had to correct them.  

Ozzy suffered from a variant of Parkinson's disease known as "Parkin 2".  Named after the gene that causes it, Parkin 2 is an early-onset form of Parkinson's that affects both movement and behavior.  It can even cause autism.  The median age of onset is 31 years, which means Ozzy likely had this the entire time he was in the spotlight.  Rather than being caused by his drug abuse, it probably contributed to it as well as to his strange & often violent behavior (biting the head off a bat, choking out his wife Sharon, etc).  It's slowly progressing but as stated, can cause a wider variety of issues than just movement problems, and it's 100% genetic.  That means things like head trauma or drug abuse can't cause it.  

The unavoidable question is whether his 6 children will inherit this faulty gene and, if so, how it will manifest.  Son Jack already has multiple sclerosis though he seems to be doing well managing it.  I find it tragic that Ozzy blamed himself for his health issues as late as the early 2000s and cite this as another example of pseudoscientific anti-drug propaganda causing real-world harm.  While the abuse of certain drugs like methamphetamine has been linked to an increased risk of Parksinson's disease, there's absolutely zero evidence that drugs caused Ozzy Osbourne's purely genetic form of the disease.  (Or any of the odd behavioral or speech anomalies that go along with the Parkin 2 variant he suffered from).  That means everyone who mocked the way he spoke or claimed that he was "brain damaged" due to drugs over the years owes the family a huge apology.  Like this wench who had the gall to sue Sharon Osbourne for assault after calling her husband a "brain dead rockstar" and "a vegetable".  🤬

Who Has the Communication Disorder Again?

 

THEM:  "No, and while we're at it, let me never speak to you a-fucking-gain with no reason given & no goodbye while you flail like an air-starved fish and wonder what you did wrong for the rest of your insignificant life as I move on seamlessly like I never knew you."

ME:  "Oh."

This is doubly cruel because of the way the "neurodivergent" broken autard brain replays traumatic events on a loop, broken-record style, over & over with zero consent from the conscious mind.  Each replay just as fresh & painful as the first time it happened.  It's like we're wired for PTSD or someshit.  (See: "thinking in pictures").  The flashbacks, nightmares & VHS-like looping tape replays of events that seem to pause on the worst parts in a way that the normal brain mercifully doesn't have to deal with is something I didn't realize everyone didn't deal with until I was older.  Much older. 

And then just to triple-ensure we get stuck with PTSD & self-esteem issues, the lovely "neurotypical" people in our lives pull the scenario shown above.  Over and over until we're 100% certain we're not worthy of human interaction or love or connection because we'll just fuck it up and not even know WHY or HOW.  Just that it always seems to happen riiiiiight as we're getting--I won't even say "comfortable"--just slightly less hyper-vigilant & paranoid than usual.  Almost enough to relax (overstatement) and let our "real" selves shine through.  And then, like a cruel God killing ants with a sledgehammer, we're snuffed out with one swift blow.  No warning, no escape plan.  Just darkness and pain. 




What I DO Understand

I shave with this razor daily

I get that there are some behaviors that are just unacceptable and we aren't owed an explanation should we be cut off for them.  Sleeping with someone's spouse.  Identity theft.  Defacing property, physical abuse, threats against loved ones.  In fact, you should go straight to the cops about some of that because YIKES.  Neither autism nor any other disorder is an excuse or explanation for illegal or massively immoral behavior of that nature.  Those are calculating acts that require malice & pre-planning.  If you catch someone in the act or have sufficient evidence that they did those types of things, turn them in.

 But if the issue is something less serious--a misunderstanding, a failure to anticipate the other person's needs that were never clearly communicated in the first place--maybe cut us some fucking slack.  Assume ignorance before malice (Hanlon's razor).  If the autistic person is acting truly baffled about WHY you're so upset, default to believing them because there's about a 90% chance it's not an "act".  Unless a person has a long history of telling big whoppers or exaggerating for no reason, always believe them.  Ask yourself what do they have to gain by doing the thing they're being accused of?  Or by lying about it?  

 What's not acceptable is cutting someone off abruptly without giving them a chance to explain themselves or without clarifying for them what they've actually done wrong.  You always have the right to kick someone out of your life--that's one of the perks of being an adult.  But doing so in the manner shown above is cowardly & chickenshit (unless they've violated a safety boundary).  It ensures that absolutely nothing is gained or learned by the person: all they know is they're a massive fuckup whose relationships are doomed to fail for reasons they don't understand, and they're not even worth an explanation.  That leaves them in a state of permanent paralysis because why tf wouldn't it? 

Even if you're angry at someone, surely you don't want to destroy them forever?  (I guess maybe some of you do--I honestly don't presume to understand humans anymore).  If you ever cared at any point, take 2 seconds to provide closure & let them know where they fucked up so they can be mindful & avoid making the same mistake going forward.  Then you can go on your merry way to dance on their grave or whatever.  

TL;DR - A person can only handle so many rugpulls before they stop trusting the ground beneath them & quit trying to step out into the world altogether.  "A person" is me.  I've literally been the guy in the comic strip more times than I care to think about.  Interesting to see that other autists have had a similar experience (IDK who made the graphic but clearly they've been "there").  Too many people expect too much mind-reading & then get too mad when it fails to materialize.  If that's a "me" problem, so be it.  But I think I speak for all autistic people when I say:  it would be nice if the folks without the communication disorder would try communicating their feelings before flying off the handle at us once in a while. 

Even when we straight up ask for exactly what we need (which is already hard because, hello, communication disorder), y'all refuse to meet us halfway.  It's almost like you're the ones with the problem. But because you lack the unfortunate brain wiring & sensitivity to torture yourselves about it, we're the ones who end up in therapy dealing with the fallout.  Super convenient. 👌🏻