needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

Would you want to know if your absence was destroying someone if you didn’t care about them nearly as much?

#love #relationships #regret

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

Hey, here’s something fun:

I know what it’s like to spend your entire childhood, and a large portion of your adulthood, pretending to be someone you’re not. Wishing you could be anyone other than who you are.

I know how scary it is to decide to regain your own identity.

And I know how badly it hurts when someone you thought cared about you rejects you for who you turn out to be.

I’m not lgbtq+ (at least, that’s not what I’m referring to) — I’m autistic. I know our experiences are different and I can’t know exactly what it’s like for you. But if you’re queer and need some empathy, I’m here.

#actually autistic #lgbtq #allyship #loveislove #marginalised groups of society coming together to heal #coming together to fight #coming together to love

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

When you French inhale, I lose my breath.

When you top off my vodka and orange juice, I know you’ll stay a bit longer.

When you play me a song, I cling to every lyric like it’s keeping me alive.

When the crows start singing, I look into your unfocused eyes and thank the stars for seeing me through another night.

…Five years later, I have trouble remembering your face.

I no longer think of you every day.

I’m not the girl you were obsessed with.

Sometimes I don’t even believe you ever existed.

But without you, my life would’ve gone in a completely different direction. I don’t know if you saved me or ruined me. Possibly both. Thank you, and fuck you.

#j #love #relationships #smoking #alcohol #memories

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

The alcohol is giving me the good humour and indifference to pretend I’m okay.

The music is giving me the energy to suppress the pain.

The thunder is giving me the confidence to believe I have control.

The cigarettes just taste fucking good.

I’m embracing Mr. Hyde, and he’s ready to wreak some havoc.

#anger #love #alcohol #i’m a monster #and I’ll fucking own it #no more Dr. Jekyll #embracing my villainhood #give me my black tentacles #and let me crawl along the ocean floor #I will stand in volcanoes like children stand in playgrounds

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

My cigarettes are making me sick.

But I won’t stop smoking.

I want to enjoy them again.

#smoking

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

It sucks not having you around, but not as much as not being able to trust you not to knowingly let me hurt.

#hurt #relationships #sad #heartbroken

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

A carton of smokes, a bottle of Jack, and my depressing Spotify playlist. I’m in for some deep wallowing in despair.

#smoking #regret #love #whisky #sad #depression #wallowing

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

You’d be 38 today.

We had so many problems, but you were my first love and I’ll always be grateful to you. You tried so hard and I’m sorry you didn’t get the life you deserved.

Happy birthday.

#love #loss #regret #mental health #birthday

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

No one will ask me how I am today, so I’ll scream it into the void:

I’M NOT OKAY.

#mood #RSD #anxiety #depression #neurodivergent #lonely #sad

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

I learned how to live without love a long time ago. And you know what? I’m sick of it.

#love

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

People who are used to being thought of as “normal” often glamourize “not normal.”

“It must be so freeing.”

“I love how your brain works.”

“That’s so cool, I wish I could do that.”

You don’t understand. People have been telling me I’m “not normal” since I was born.

I’m multiracial, so right off the bat, I was different from the other kids. No matter where I was. I’m a foreigner in every country. I don’t belong anywhere.

“Yeah, but you’re special! You stand out!”

Do you know how exhausting it is to stand out every time you leave your house? Do you know how many times strangers have demanded to know why I look different? And do you know how much it sucks to constantly be praised for being able to speak my first language?

All throughout my school years, teachers told my parents I was different. I was highly gifted, unusually intelligent, full of potential. When I took math tests and had to show my work, my math teachers would be dumbfounded because I solved problems in my own ways, completely differently from what they taught us. On standardized tests, I was always in the 99th percentile. Classmates would submit their homework to me to get it checked before submitting it to our teachers. I was called a walking encyclopedia, a cyborg, and even a term that basically meant “mafia lieutenant.” I was regularly discounted from class surveys for being an anomaly and teachers told students not to compare themselves to me because I “didn’t count.” Everyone in my life defined me by how “not normal” I was.

That prompted the masking. I spent years and years desperately trying to hide my authentic self. I manufactured my outward appearance by scripting what I would say, rehearsing my behaviour, and actively suppressing the most objectionable aspects of my individuality. But every time I got comfortable around someone and let bits of my true self show, I was seen as a novelty. At best, I felt like a museum exhibit. At worst, I felt like a shackled circus sideshow. I was never just another person. No one felt the need to recognize my humanity.

Over the last few years, I’ve been fighting hard to undo the damage of masking for so long. I have friends who accept me for who I am, even if they don’t quite understand. I’ve had romantic relationships, and a few people have even been in love with me. I’m still “not normal,” though, and thought it would always be that way.

Then something happened. I met someone, someone who identifies as “normal,” and seems it, at first. But I started noticing something bizarre. He can finish my sentences. He isn’t surprised or caught off-guard by me. I’ve never had to explain my thought process to him. My own mother has to ask me what I’m talking about all the time, but he just gets it. He’s never called me “special.” He doesn’t laugh at the way I act. He doesn’t point out when I do something others would think of as outrageous. And, for the first time in my life, I get to feel “normal.”

Imagine living your entire life breathing smog and secondhand smoke. Then one day, someone drives you up to the mountains in the middle of nowhere and you breathe fresh air for the first time. Your reaction is probably along the lines of:

“What the FUCK is this? Do other people know about this?? …They do? …Wait, some people get to experience this all the time?”

You find out not only that there are people who have never had to breathe smog, but that you were missing out on fresh air without even knowing it.

He’s my fresh air.

Unfortunately, he’s not interested in me, so my lungs are still full of smog.

But why, you ask, does feeling “normal” feel good?

Being “not normal” means you are constantly justifying, rationalizing, defending, and explaining yourself.

I just want to breathe.

#normal #not normal #neurotypical #neurodivergent #multicultural #third culture kid #hapa #masking #auDHD #gifted kid #love #relationships

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

I haven’t heard from you in over a year. I’d forgotten how you made me feel.

I read an old text from you and I felt it again. A shivering heat radiating out from my chest and shortness of breath. Fuzziness in my brain and a swooping in my gut.

Nothing has ever before or since made me feel the way you did.

#love #j

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

I work five days a week, nine hours a day. I get two nonconsecutive days off and an hour’s worth of breaks every day, split into several small breaks.

My commute takes an hour to an hour and a half, one way. So a total of two to three hours.

There’s twelve hours right there.

Today, I’m working from eleven to eight. Which means I set my alarm for seven this morning so I would have enough time to wake up, take my pills, eat breakfast, have a shower, and get ready for work (physically and mentally).

I’ll get home around nine-thirty, when I’ll be so tired that I’ll eat something small I bought at a convenience store in bed, then fall asleep.

I have to wake up at five tomorrow to start at nine, so if I’m lucky, I’ll get seven hours sleep. The thing is, seven hours is not enough for me to get sufficient REM sleep (15% of total sleep compared to 25% for allists). I’ll be more exhausted than usual tomorrow, and I’ll need all of Sunday (one of my days off) to recover.

But what about laundry? And dishes? When will I take out the trash, or clean the bathroom? Will I go grocery shopping?

Short answer: none of that gets done.

Hang on, what about hobbies? Can I do a bit of painting or writing? How about a walk to the park to see the cherry blossoms? Wouldn’t I like to grab a drink with friends?

Short answer: I wish.

I… I don’t know what to do. I got my psychiatrist to write a note saying I need a week off, but how often will I have to do that? What happens when I use up all my PTO?

I’ve told my employer about my various diagnoses and they’ve been surprisingly understanding so far, but once they realize I’m not going to get better, what will happen?

I can hear them saying “We can’t promote her, she’s unreliable,” and “she doesn’t deserve a raise, she doesn’t do as much work as everyone else.”

In a world where even neurotypicals are suffering from karoshi, how are the neurodivergents supposed to survive?

#audhd #autism #work #karoshi #neurodiversity #executive dysfunction

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

I’ve been named in an obituary.

It would’ve been different if he had gone peacefully in his sleep after a long and happy life.

He was 32.

I feel like they gave me a tattoo without my permission. But instead of putting the ink on my skin, they put in on paper. It went through a print run. It ended up in the homes of thousands of strangers, strangers whose eyes skimmed over it as they drank their morning coffee.

My name may have lined the bottom of hamster cages, or been used by six-year-olds to make papier mache.

It’s a weird sort of unintentional objectification of my pain. They wrote my name next to a dead man’s, made it indelible, then turned it into garbage.

And it’s exactly what I deserve.

#mental health #memory #love #pain #regret #sad #loss

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

I remember getting into a heated argument with a teacher in sixth grade (so I would’ve been… maybe 12?) and when my mom came to pick me up, we sat outside the school and I told her about it. Then the teacher came over and apologized to me. My mom said “Is there anything you’d like to say?” and I turned to my teacher and said “Yeah, I won’t be attending the curry dinner tonight.”

I viscerally remember the feeling of “I’m not giving him an apology. He doesn’t deserve one, even a fake one. He was in the wrong and I don’t forgive him. He needs to know that.”

So, like, I understood social cues enough to know:

A. His apology was insincere.

B. My mom was trying to get me to apologize.

C. He would understand that I was purposefully not apologizing when I said something else instead.

But I didn’t understand the whole, “be the bigger person” thing?? And I still sometimes don’t. I prefer to call out injustices and make a fuss over them while everyone tells me to just “be civil.”

What is that? Autists supposedly can’t pick up on social cues and tend to be very blunt and direct when they speak. Yet I could “read between the lines” and drop nuances like Victorian handkerchiefs before my kneecaps had even hardened.

But I love when I can be brutally honest. It’s so freeing to say exactly what you think without putting it through multiple filters that translate it into something allists are comfortable with.

Is it possible… that even though I understand the convoluted and, frankly, stupid way modern communication works, I’m still masking by trying to adapt to it? That maybe if someone with autism says something that can be construed as callous, they know what they’re doing? They’re not being malicious, they just know how they like to speak and aren’t afraid to show it?

I don’t know. I’m new here.

#autism #asd #auDHD #masking #theory #probably wildly inaccurate #maybe it’s just me #and my shitty personality

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

I love my dad, but sometimes he drives me absolutely crazy.

I told him today that I’m autistic.

You know what that bastard said?

“I know. Ever since you were little.”

WELL COULD YOU HAVE MAYBE LET ME IN ON IT A BIT SOONER? BECAUSE I SURE AS HELL DIDN’T.

The fuck, Dad.

#dad #family #autism #audhd #neurodivergent

[needlessthoughtsandpoordecisions]

People need to stop saying “but it could be worse” when they’re in a bad situation. Stop downplaying your own suffering, or thinking you’re not worthy of help or whatever because others have it “worse.”

When people say “it could be worse” to me, I say “but it could be better.” Don’t settle for “not too bad.” Strive for “good.”

#health #suffering #normalize getting help