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goremeat · 5 years

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Burning Embers: A short history of fire & obsessions.

Trigger warning for mentions of self harm and discussions of it.

My mother likes to tell a story about me, and fire. It isn’t something special, like if I survived a burning house or if I learned to swallow flaming swords at the age of thirteen. The story that she likes to tell is about her forgetting the eggs on the stove, and setting the kitchen on fire. I was barely a toddler when this happened. I sat on the edge of the step that lead to the kitchen, since my mother saw no need for a baby chair, and I watched the fire curiously as it began to spread.

I did not move. Fire did not set off a fight or flight instinct. I sat there and watched, not even calling out to my mother. She had only found out that the fire had started upon seeing flames in the corner of her eye. I was still sitting there, curious and silent. She wrapped me up in a blanket, and took me out of the house, to my grandmother’s house right next door. My grandmother was the one who called the firefighters.

To be honest, I don’t remember the incident quite well, all I really remember was the charred ceiling when we went back into the house three days later. My mother told me I was really lucky to have been spared by the flames. I only know the retelling that I’ve been told, since my memory of childhood is absolutely terrible. But, I do think that the fire was significant to me, because I think that was when my morbid curiosity was triggered. I always attribute my worst decisions, not to the lack of impulse control, but more so because I dared to ask the question, what if? Knowing the answer was always more valuable to me than my life. Curiosity killed the cat, they say.

From then onward, I was more reckless than the other kids, I wanted to know how things worked and if no one would tell me the answers, I would find them out myself. This lead to a string of notably bad events, including an attempt to swallow cleaning products, drowning myself in a bathtub and falling from the stairs multiple times--it didn’t help that the floor was marble. Some of these things I was able to pass off as my sister and I goofing around, others were passed off as me being a child who didn’t know any better.

But I did, I always did.

I don’t say that to be prideful, I was a curious child for a reason: I had an infinite thirst for knowledge. I had learned the rudimentary version of scientific methods when I was six years old, and began attempting crude scientific experiments with the help of a child-friendly textbook my grandfather bought me, and my mother. I loved learning the theories behind each experiment, and it certainly helped that my father would explain things in more detail when I asked. So, my morbid curiosity was satiated for a while, which was great for my parents, because it meant I was no longer putting myself in the direct line of danger and instead was reading.

Well, mostly.

The incident with the fire, I think awakened not only curiosity in me, but also kindled my love for flames. While I didn’t burn the first time I was within proximity of fire, I had multiple almost-arson attempts where I did get hurt. By the time I was eighteen I had burned my hair twice, my eyebrow once, and my arms a few times. It was never a house fire that injured me, it was almost always a deliberate act of self harm, out of curiosity. I had set my hair alight by trying to test out how flammable my hair was, the answer is very, and my eyebrow burned because my bang touched my eyebrow. I knew what would happen, but I still screamed when my hair started burning. My sister with her quick thinking poured her drink on me to put out the fire. Somehow, I was still unharmed with no actual burns or scarring. I was curious if I could burn, so the burns on my hands were made by holding lighters and matches too close to my skin. My parents just thought my injuries were due to childhood. I was always covered in scabs anyway, and blisters weren’t too different.

Later in my life, I found out that my mother was a pyromaniac. She set papers on fire with matches, and loved the smell of burning wood. I took after her more than intended.

I find comfort in the fire, and that is because I am always burning. I feel it underneath my skin. If I could tear my flesh apart, underneath it wouldn’t be muscle and bones ; it would be magma. My body always felt like it was containing something too big for it to hold. My bones would ache like they were being used as warming logs, and my chest felt constricted all the time. I was definitely raging, I just did not know how to identify it.

When I turned eighteen, I was told that burning in my chest was actually mania.

This unhealthy relationship with my body, the fact that I was hurting myself to learn more, was only exacerbated when I turned ten. See, at that point, I was tall enough to reach the books at the top of my mother’s bookshelf. My mother was a doctor, so all her books were mostly anatomy and pharmacology. I won’t lie and say I had any idea what any of it meant, but I was intrigued by pictures of muscles and bones. I wondered if I contained any of those inside of me. Obviously, just by the laws of basic biology, I did, but I wanted to make sure. Thankfully, vivisection, especially by ten year olds, was frowned upon. My mother instead bought me a book about the human body. It was slightly above my reading level, but I finished it overnight, and began quoting it to my mom the day after. My mother then bought me an anatomical model and a skeleton which I would break down and put back together often. They’re both in my childhood bedroom, I have fond memories of them.

I was once again, satiated, if only for a little while.

I still wanted to see how far I could push myself. I was only human, but surely the human could withstand more than papercuts? I had seen the people my mother worked on, how their eyes were perfectly protected despite having a head-on collision. I couldn’t test such extremes on myself, I wasn’t particularly set on dying, however I was curious about my threshold of pain, and I began obsessively picking at my scabs and cuts. I hated band aids, and I would never put them on because I wanted the freedom to pick at my scabs whenever. This lead to my school uniform being dotted in blood. Soon I realized I could also peel off my nails and the skin at the heel of my foot, no one was going to say anything, of course. All hell broke loose when I had unlocked that door.

When I was fifteen, I was told that was my obsessive compulsive disorder.

Once I learned that no one would see the injuries I had given myself by peeling the skin off my foot, I decided to push myself to the limit. I would set time every evening, and I would just use various tools to pull the skin off. It had gotten so bad once, that my entire heel was red and raw. My mother forced me to wrap my foot in gauze and use antibiotics till the skin of my heel grew back. I, of course, found it to be a drag and unfair. She was just scared I would get an infection.

What my mother and I had both failed to recognize, was the fact that this was an early sign of what would lead me to a darker path of self-harm.

I say that I don’t understand how people work, and I say it without humor. Everyone remembers the first time they had actually took a razor or knife or whatever to their skin, but I don’t. I just woke up one day, and realized, it was part of who I am now. It was a natural reaction to my life, an extension of curiosity from a girl who’d spent years studying the body. Initially, I wasn’t depressed, I didn’t even know what a cutter was. I only remember crude gestures my schoolmates would mimic to one of my closest friends, because she wore black and was generally a quiet girl. I believe they would mimic the dragging of a knife against their wrists to make fun of her. I didn’t really understand. She did.

I was socially inept, and people loved keeping me in the dark about most things. I always had to figure everything out myself. There was a struggle when I tried catching up with other girls, I was never enough of a girl, to know what other girls liked. We listened to the same music, we ate similar foods, but why were we so different? I couldn’t understand why people didn’t like me.

It had a lot to do with the fact that I was downright weird. Everyone likes to make fun of the nerd with her head in a book and I was that girl, but I was also gross. I still picked scabs, and plucked at my hair and chewed off the skin off my lips. I didn’t learn social cues easily either, so I was isolated. Social isolation was something of my best friend in a weird sort of ironic way. I think as a kid I understood that. There was a sort of shock factor that you were allowed to have if you were weird and gross. Sure, you rarely got invited to parties and ate lunch by yourself with your legs crossed on the sand, but you got all sorts of attention when you freaked people out.

In the fifth grade, I was playing with a pair of needles and an eraser. All of a sudden I felt a dull pain in my finger, only to see that the needle had pierced through my skin and muscle. I waited a few minutes, not in shock, but curious to see who would notice. Needless to say, people noticed, and my mother ended up picking me up from the school and taking me to the hospital. She bought me icecream on my way back to school. Pain was something to be rewarded.

In between the fifth and seventh grade, I spent a year having a love affair with an eating disorder and my parent’s pain medication. I wouldn’t consider them long lasting relationships, because each of them had lasted less than a few months. They would’ve continued I suppose, had I not learned about the art of cutting. I say art because it is. Art is fifty percent intimacy and fifty percent work. Cutting had both of those things in the perfect ratios. I did create art, it wasn’t the type you could hang on the wall, it was more the type that could only be shared with those who knew your soul well.

You have to be very intimate with yourself to hurt yourself in such a fashion. Six years later, I’m still doing it when I feel alone, or when I feel grateful. I joke that I am the stereotypical cutter, that I do it all for attention, but there is a sort of relationship that you develop with yourself when you spend most of your time alone which makes pain king. Most people had their cute pinky promises with their best friends, but all I really had was a sharpener that I could take a part. Cutting can be your #selfcare moment if you’ve twisted what you thought was caring.

It turned out that I was really good at disassembling and hiding blades. I had ten in my room at any given time, and a few in my backpack when I went to school. Things were beginning to smolder once I had learned that you could cut your flesh. And for a while, I wasn’t depressed while doing it, it was just another ritual that I needed to do so that I could sleep. While other girls were beginning to learn new face-care routines; I was busy pushing myself to bleed.

I told my friends, who probably weren’t surprised, then I became sad. I had been riding the attention so hard for six months, that it all finally crashed down on me the second that people took it away from me, because I was being so weird and gross. There weren’t other ways you could describe what I did, it was freakish. I was a freak.

I was forced into a suspension from the school at that point. At that point I had finally been taken to a doctor, and my freakish behavior could finally be classified into a category: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It ran in the family. I wasn’t told because my mother thought it wouldn’t affect me. I was such a lovely, harmless, and messy child. I had never shared the thoughts of harming others with my mother, I had never shared the thoughts of death with my mother, so she could have lived her entire life without knowing her lovely daughter had OCD.

My self harm, read cutting, was characterized as ritualistic, which, I suppose, is the reason why I can’t pinpoint when it began. Everything about the first few times were a blurry haze of figuring out weaponry and santaizing it. It left me angry, confused and humiliated when I had to stop doing it. My mother would strip me down daily and examine the skin on my body. My mother and my psychiatrist had different routes of treatment. Instead of therapy, my mother had decided to force me to quit with no help, and I was consumed with depression. That’s when my self-harm became a way of self-expression rather than a symptom of OCD. No one was listening to my words, and I had to make threats with my body.

When I wasn’t depressed, I had turned to anger to fuel me. The cycling between the anger and the depression and the relapsing of OCD, it made my teenage years harder than the should be. I was always stuck in between a rock and a hard place, and I fought tooth and nail to keep myself alive while I was being torn apart by maina and intrusive thoughts.

I wish I could say I learned how to control it or how to live with it, but I spent a day this May, after an easy day, learning I had gotten accepted into grad school, I laid bleeding in the bathtub because I couldn’t process how I felt. I couldn’t explain to people when I was younger that I was pushing my body, and I can’t explain it people today. I was overwhelmed with happiness when I had gotten accepted, and I wanted to release more of that pleasure with something that was so deeply rooted in my personality. I was on fire. I was burning. I was alive when I was bleeding.

My roommate wasn’t terribly happy when he found me.

There really isn’t anything new to say about self harm, because all of the good things that can be said about it are in textbooks and psych lectures, and I’m just a guy who bought a four dollar pack of blades and called it a day. We call cutters attention whores, and psychopaths, and for people with some sort of humor and self denial it’s okay.

But for some people, like me it goes deeper than just a symptom of a disorder, for me it was an entire disorder that was left in the dark for years because I had a history of curiosity and morbidity. I wouldn’t fault my family or missing my obsessive compulsive disorder, I would have too, if it hadn’t escalated to bleeding.

It’s hard to talk about it self harm, because it comes with the assumption that you’re an emo-girl with black hair to her waist. Most will even assume that you don’t function properly, but I lead a successful life for a Gen-Zer in their twenties. I just also have more scars than your average twenty something. It is something that is forever ingrained inside of you, a permanent flight or fight response.

The fire I saw when I was a child was not-traumatic. It wasn’t my mother’s fault my father never paid attention. The fire I saw when I was a child gave the embers in my chest light to learn more about the world and its metaphysical limits, and indirectly how to push my own. I just hope someday it’ll all turn to ash.

#txt #personal.#essay #self harm mention #ocd #actuallyOCD #ok 2 rb #personal essay #My writing.

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lets-get-fictional · 7 years

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Hi there! I'm not sure if you've answered something similar to this, but I'm wanting to write an autistic character. She's very severe, and has trouble communicating (slurred speech), her personality is also very spacey and oblivious. Any tips, or things to learn about writing an autistic character when I myself am not autistic? Thank you! Take your time!

Thanks for your question, love! I apologize for the wait, but I’m happy to finally get to answer this :)

So first, I’ve got a a note on what you’ve described about your character. For one thing, it’s preferred among most autistic people that there be no “sliding scale” of severity – because there are so many different symptoms and combinations of symptoms, and “severity” seems to only relate to symptoms that bother allistic people most. Here’s a masterpost on how to handle this topic.

So now that this is out of the way, here are my official tips for writing autistic characters!

How to Write Autistic Characters

So it took me some time to prepare for this question, primarily because I saw so little information out there for writing about autism! And that’s understandable, since it’s such a complex topic – after all, no two autistic people have exactly the same symptoms and coping mechanisms. Plus, since autism is basically a top-to-bottom different living experience, it’s difficult for allistics to identify with.

But I’m going to discuss this in a few different parts: symptoms, coping mechanisms, positive qualities, and stereotypes to avoid. I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible without sparing any information :)

Symptoms of Autism

There are many different symptoms of autism, although the mental/emotional aspects of the disorder is most often overlooked by the general public. It’s important to recognize that every autistic person’s experience and symptoms are different. Some people have few social problems but they can’t handle the sensory experience of a restaurant; some have few physical problems, but they struggle with OCD and can’t maintain a conversation. The only difference between symptoms is that some are talked about and some are not, which makes them seem “uncommon.”

Physical Symptoms

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) – SPD is defined as the struggle to process different sensory input – visual, auditory, tactile, taste, olfactory, proprioception, vestibular and interoception. SPD causes hyper- or hyposentitivities to certain sensory stimuli (e.g. certain clothing textures, food textures, scents, and lighting – especially fluorescent lighting. Ugh.)

Dyspraxia – A result of SPD, dyspraxia makes it difficult to control one’s physical movement. It creates problems with planning and executing actions, as well as speaking or judging spacial proximity.

Sleep Disorder – Many autistic people struggle with sleeping for various reasons – hypersensitivity seems to be the greatest cause. Offensive sheet fabric, noises, or lighting can cause sleep problems, as well as racing thoughts or anxiety.

Lack of Energy (or Spoons) – Often caused by sleep problems or SPD, a lack of energy intensifies normal symptoms. Understand that when an autistic person engages in a stressful or energy-consuming experience (prolonged socialization, insomnia, bad sensory environments, anxiety, etc.)

Nonverbal Communication – This type of communication is used by nearly one-third of autistic people, either because they aren’t able to use language in a meaningful way, because it requires an excessive amount of mental/social energy, or because they suffer from a learning disability. Some people go temporarily nonverbal in times of stress to conserve energy. Most nonverbal autistic people learn other means of communication, like writing, sign language, or scripting/echolalia.

Mental Symptoms

Executive Dysfunction – This dysfunction makes it difficult for some autistic people to start, finish, and quit tasks; to make decisions and switch activities; and/or create, organize, and follow through with plans. This should not be confused with procrastination, as it is not a decision – it’s a result of low energy.

Alexithymia – Alexithymia can cause autistic people to struggle to identify their own emotions, or separate physical feelings from emotional feelings. It’s closely tied with lowered interoception, which is defined as the struggle (or inability) to define and assess physical sensations like hunger, thirst, tension, etc.

Meltdowns – Meltdowns are an emotional response to overstimulation and stress, causing some autistic people to “lose control” of visceral emotional responses (e.g. shaking, kicking, crying, shouting, etc.). There is another type of meltdown called a shutdown, which causes an opposite reaction: dissociation and lack of external response. It’s a flight reaction rather than a fight reaction.

Increased Likelihood for Other Mental Disorders – Since the world isn’t exactly built for autistic people, there are plenty of everyday challenges and stressors (as well as difficulty maintaining supportive relationships) that can cause other comorbid disorders, such as OCD, anxiety, and depression.

Learning Disability and Late Childhood Development – While autism itself is not classified as a learning disability, it’s often comorbid with different types of learning disabilities. Autism can also cause late development of speech and motor skills, among other things.

Social Symptoms

Hyperempathy or Low Empathy – On two ends of the spectrum, autistic people often struggle with the “right balance” of empathy – being either unable to identify, express, and empathize with emotions, or unable to shut off or control their own emotions as well as to separate themselves from other people’s emotions.

Impulsive Behavior – Because of a (sometimes) weak understanding of social rules and/or imbalanced empathy, an autistic person may struggle to stop and think before they say or do something impulsively. This can cause interpersonal issues, as impulsive speech may offend or hurt others, while impulsive actions may feel too “out-of-control” or “hard to manage” for loved ones.

Difficulty Interpreting or Expressing Social Cues – Autistic people often struggle to understand facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, sarcasm, flirting, or figures of speech – and because of this, they can often come off as “oblivious” or “simple” (although this is inaccurate and contributes to a lot of misrepresentation). It can also be difficult to express social cues, which is why some autistic people can appear to be awkward, clingy, aloof, or uninterested in friendship/romance.

Social Anxiety – Social situations can be especially stressful for autistic people, due to the amount of thinking it requires – to interpret cues, to “pass” as allistic, to express themselves clearly, to curb impulses, to handle sensory challenges – and this leads to social anxiety.

Social Isolation – As a result of social anxiety, some autistic people experience isolation, as they may feel more comfortable in their own environment, alone. This is an unfortunate result of ableist culture, and may be worsened by executive dysfunction which can make it difficult to reach out to others.

Struggle with Change – Whether in routine, environment, appearance, or the natural changes of life (such as graduation, moving, marriage, death in the family, new job, etc.), change can cause great stress for some autistic people. This is why many autistic people enjoy comfort objects, old music, childhood memories/interests, or specific, consistent colors, styles, or textures for their belongings.

Coping Mechanisms for Autistic People

There are many methods of coping with the negative aspects of autism, but there are a few that are most popular:

Behavioral & Occupational Therapy – Therapy (often combined with medication) is a continuous process of reducing symptoms, coping with stressors, and learning how to function in an allistic world. (The most common method of behavioral therapy, ABA, has reports of being abusive, so be mindful of this if you’re researching/writing about therapy!)

Stimming – “Stimming” or self-stimulating is a physical coping mechanism for sensory overload and similar stress. Stimming can be healthy or unhealthy depending on the action involved (some unhealthy stims include skin-peeling or hitting one’s head), and it can be conscious or subconscious. It’s often seen as “weird” or “bad” by allistics (especially parents), so some autistic people train themselves out of the habit from a young age.

Special Interests – Special interests are half a coping mechanism and half a natural part of autistic people’s lifestyles. It’s defined as a devoted interest to one or two subjects or activities – special interests can reduce stress, help focus, and provide motivation against executive dysfunction.

Positive Qualities of Autism

Now that we’ve gotten all the bad stuff out of the way, I’m gonna list a few common positive qualities of autistic people. Remember that these do not apply to all autistic people, but may be a natural consequence of autistic traits:

Determination

Dedication

Divergence (from trends and social expectations)

Passion

Honesty

Uncritical nature

Attention to detail

Good memory

Logical reasoning

Active imagination

Integrity

Understanding of what it’s like to be judged or left out

Skilled with children

Autistic people, of course, have many other great qualities, and may struggle with many of the above. Creating a character with all these qualities will yield you a stereotype, so be mindful!

Stereotypes of Autistic People

Finally, there are a few popular stereotypes of autistic characters, which should be avoided at all costs:

Autistic People are Psychic – We get this courtesy of shows like Touch, where the (usually nonverbal) autistic child suddenly starts speaking because they see ghosts or are somehow connected to “another world”. Autistic people joke about themselves being “aliens”… but allistic people really shouldn’t.

Autistic People Need Caretakers – While some autistic people do struggle to manage their lives alone, it’s a pretty harmful stereotype in media considering the lack of positive representation autistic people get. Plenty of autistic people (whether you consider them high- or low-functioning) lead successful lives on their own, and they deserve representation.

Autistic People are Burdens – The most stereotypical portrayal of autistic people is that they are the weight pulling on their parents’ ankles – that they destroy parents’ sex lives and make teachers crazy and their friends need a “night off” from their autistic friends.

Autistic People are Childlike – While many autistic people enjoy activities geared toward children, and while meltdowns can resemble an allistic child’s temper tantrum, autistic people are not childish or unintelligent. Autistic adults are adults, no matter their struggles.

Autistic People Look Different – Autistic people don’t all look a certain way from birth – this is a myth that has been debunked time and time again, the same way that the Vaccines Cause Autism myth has been debunked, time and time again. Don’t perpetuate these myths in your writing.

Autistic People are Like Robots – Autistic people may not express their feelings well, but they have feelings. Being nonverbal, being dissociative, being aloof or awkward – none of these things make an autistic person unfeeling or non-human. Be mindful to show the emotional side of your autistic character, even if they struggle to express it to others.

Resources for Researching Autism

A lot of these are courtesy of @anonymusauthorin, whom I thank very much for her information and deep connection to the autistic community!

Ballastexistenz’s blog (on her personal experience with multiple disabilities and autism). [NSFW language]

Yes, That Too (blog on the personal experience of an autistic person with other neurodivergencies).

Aspects of Aspergers (specifically about Asperger’s, which is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder).

Disability in Kid Lit (discussions of disability representation in children’s/YA literature).

@scriptautistic is an active advice blog for writing about autism.

@autism-asks is an active blog that takes questions about autism.

@undiagnosedautismfeels is an active blog that receives submitted anecdotes about autistic struggles, some specific to being undiagnosed/self-diagnosed.

@autisticheadcanons is an active blog that receives submissions of characters that actual autistic people headcanon as autistic. You can find some common submissions (e.g. Lilo Pelekai, Newt Scamander, Sherlock Holmes) and check them out for examples!

Final Note: You may notice that none of these links are affiliated with Autism Speaks, which is for a purpose. Autism Speaks has a long history of promoting eugenics, abusing autistic children and adolescents, silencing the voice of actual autistics, and promoting a “find a cure” narrative that’s harmful to the minds of both autistic people and potential parents of autistic children. When doing research, I’d advise you to refrain from using their resources.

Anyway, this was hugely long but I wanted to really go into it, since I didn’t see many other extensive guides on writing about autism. Note that while I, myself, am autistic, this is only the perspective of one autistic person. Either way, I hope this helps you with your character! If you have any further questions, my inbox is open and waiting :)

Good luck!

If you need advice on general writing or fanfiction, you should maybe ask me!

#writing #writeblr #writing blog #writing tips #writing advice #my post #ask #sharkie-heart #autism #mental disorders #research

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