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stsgyuri · 5 years

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writing gift exchange thing for @thetravelingdreamer97!! i hope u like it

A lean girl with dark skin and even darker hair sits on a rust ridden park bench. Her sketchbook, a small thing with crinkled pages and dirty edges, sits on her crossed legs; on top of the sketchbook sits her hand, creating sweeping gestures with a granite pencil.

The girl has always enjoyed nature: the organic shapes, the soft greens and heavy browns. It’s real, definitely, positively real. There is no denying nature, and she loves the truth of it. It does not hide behind kind lies, although flowers may deceive from time to time. She prefers to steer clear of people.

People can lie and deceive. People have lied and deceived.

But the girl would rather not think about that right now, so she simply drags her pencil loosely across the page, the lines giving the impression of a tree dancing in the wind. The park is empty at such an early hour. Oranges and reds are still painting houses in their hues. It’s worth the inevitable exhaustion that comes with being up and at it at 6 AM. No one bothers her, and she bothers no one. It’s just her and the dancing trees.

At least, until she hears a click.

Now it’s just her, the dancing trees, and a pretty photographer.

A plump girl with tan skin and sea foam dyed hair stands a few feet away, smiling brilliantly at her camera screen. She’s clad in bleached jeans, a plain white shirt, and a sap green jacket embroidered with white roses. Her hair is braided down the side, falling over her shoulder in a long rope.

A few thoughts string themselves together in the lean and dark girl’s head:

One; she has a beautiful smile.

Two; she looks like a she was a mermaid in her past life.

Three; I need to get the hell out of here before she starts speaking to me.

Attempting to draw minimal to no attention to herself, the sketch artist quietly assembles her pencils and tools, shoves them into her bag, stands up, and is about to make a break for it, until--

“Oh, hey! I didn’t expect anyone to be at the park so early in the morning on a Saturday,” the pretty photographer says from behind her. At the back of her mind, she thinks how the pretty girl has a pretty voice.

She sighs, turns around, and sees that same bright smile still plastered on the pretty girl’s face. She shrugs in response.

The photographer is not deterred. In fact, she seems to be encouraged by the silence. “I usually come here to avoid crowds. In the morning, that is,” she clarifies. “Anyways, I’m Allie,” she sticks out a hand.

The sketch artist stares for a bit. She could’ve sworn this only happens in books and movies. People actually shake hands when they meet? Nonetheless, she takes the pretty girl’s hand and offers her name in exchange: “Salem.”

Somehow, impossibly, Allie’s smile grows brighter. Salem suspects that prolonged exposure will likely cause blindness. Not that’d she mind. It is a beautiful smile. And it looks so real…

“Oh, that’s a pretty name,” Allie says. It’s weird, how it sounds like she’s telling the truth. Salem eyes her a bit warily. Why is she so nice? What’s her motive? Maybe she is genuinely nice, but maybe not.

“Thanks,” Salem responds a bit slowly. She’s not sure what else to say, curse that social anxiety, but Allie beats her to it.

“Hey, want to get some coffee? Or are you a tea person?”

Salem has not met anyone who talks so fast. She has also not met anyone who invited her to coffee twenty seconds after meeting her. She’s about to automatically refuse, but she’s curious, so instead she asks, “Why?”

Allie’s smile falters a bit. “Well, why not? It’s just so early so I thought, you know, coffee? Get to know each other? But if you don’t want to it’s completely fine! I just thought it’d be nice…?” Somehow, she got that out all in one breath.

She’s not sure why she nods and says, sure, I guess. Maybe it’s because she’s never had much of a close friend to go get coffee with. Maybe it’s because the girl is another art student, someone to relate with. Maybe it’s because the girl seems so honest and real, not a common trait among most.

So, they go to get coffee. And maybe a donut, who knows.

-x-

They talked on the way there. Well, Allie was the one who did most of the talking. Salem listened to every word, though she wouldn’t admit to the pretty photographer. In the fifteen minutes it took to reach the coffee shop, Salem learned that Allie adores cats, flowers, and art. They go to the same college, but don’t have the same classes. It’s strange how they haven’t seen each other before, but Salem tries to avoid people for the most part and Allie is usually too focused on her new assignments to notice anyone.

Allie managed to get a few things out of Salem: she also prefers cats, though she’s not a big fan of flowers she loves trees and other plants. The walk was filled with Allie’s bright smiles and Salem’s contemplative silences.

Salem has never been on a walk with someone before.

Now, they sit at a circular table in a small coffee shop, steam wafting up into the air and tickling their faces. Allie is prattling on about her cats and how they always try to eat her food and is that normal because she’s pretty sure a cat should not be trying to eat potato chips and Salem feels a smile creeping across her lips.

“I’ve never had any pets,” she admits. “But… I’ve always wanted a kitten.” That is likely the most she’s spoken so far. Her social walls are starting to melt a little for this pretty photographer with potato chip eating cats.

Allie swallows her coffee before answering. “We had a lot of stray cats in our neighborhood and they all kept making babies. At one point we had eight cats at once. It was kind of ridiculous.”

“I can’t tell if that would be an awful experience or a cute one,” Salem says, and the pretty photographer gives her a pretty laugh. Salem didn’t know she made a joke, but she smiles anyway. Allie’s laugh is as infectious as her smile.

They talk for a few hours about nothing. Like time is nothing. It’s ten in the morning when Allie says she has to leave for class. She offers to walk Salem back to wherever she needs to go, but Salem waves her on. She’d love to walk with the pretty photographer for as long as possible, but she needs a few minutes to collect her wits.

She’s still staring at her coffee cup when Allie leaves. She whispers to herself, in all the elegance she can muster up, “Holy shit.”

-x-

They text each other. At first, it was mainly Allie keeping up the conversation. But after a few days, Salem started adding to the conversation more and more. She likes how Allie is so honest. Salem is honest in return. Allie’s text messages consist of minimal grammar and an enormous amount of emojis. Salem’s contain more grammar than necessary and, that’s it.

They meet up, occasionally. They’ll walk to the park and Allie will snatch a photo or two of Salem, who discreetly sketches the pretty photographer. They discuss their favorite artists, their favorite type of cat, their favorite anything. Salem snatches glances of Allie whenever she can and ignores the feeling in her chest as best she can.

Two weeks after they’ve met, they’re sitting on the bed in Allie’s dorm. Her roommate is gone for the day, for whatever reason. Salem didn’t pay much attention, too absorbed in looking over Allie’s side of the room.

There’s a few prints hung along the wall, both of paintings and photographs, along with a few of Allie’s own photographs. One of them is of Salem, sitting on a park bench with her sketchbook out and a wistful smile as she stares at some point past the camera. Allie’s desk has a few cat plushes, a mint green laptop, and a scattering of pens and pencils. Her schoolwork is shoved unceremoniously beneath the bed, which has soft green sheets and another cat plush.

She looks back to Allie, who’s wringing her braided her as if she’s nervous. “There’s a lot of cat stuff, I know,” she says, as if she were expecting that kind of comment.

Instead, Salem comments, “I love the green. It’s cute,” like you, she doesn’t add,

That seems to restore Allie’s mood, as she beams immediately like a sun. “Thanks! It’s my favorite color, if you can’t tell,” she adds, gesturing to her hair, her bed, her… well, everything.

“Yeah? Mine too,” Salem admits. She notices for the first time that Allie has brown eyes. Green hair, brown skin, brown eyes… Honest and real… It’s no wonder Salem fell for this pretty photographer.

Allie smiles back. Salem’s heart stutters a little.

Allie hops off the bed towards her camera, eyes twinkling. “Okay, so you’re gonna pose for me, right?” After Salem nods, she smiles. “Great! Just sit right there.” She fiddles with a few things of her camera.

“What do I need to do?” Salem asks. She’s just sitting on the rumpled bed, sketchbook thrown across her lap, hair in a messy knot on her head. Not exactly the epitome of perfection.

As if reading her thoughts, Allie smiles softly. “Nothing. You’re perfect.”

Click.

-x-

“Do you mind if I try something?” Allie asks.

They’re sitting on a park bench, the one Salem had been occupying when they first met. There’s only an inch of space between them, though they both have enough room on either side to move away if they wanted. Neither did.

Salem looks up from her sketch, a dancing tree made of charcoal strokes. Allie looks nervous, but there’s a sort of resolve in her warm brown eyes. Salem thinks that if wood nymphs existed, Allie would be the striking image of one.

It’s been two months since they first met, and in that time, Salem has come to trust Allie. She’s no longer afraid that Allie is being ingenuine, deceiving her like most people are apt to do. She’s more comfortable around the girl, has even opened up to her.

So, she says, “Sure.”

And Allie kisses her.

It’s soft, just like everything about Allie, but it still paints colors behind Salem’s eyelids. Greens and brown mixing with the soft red of passion. Her hand reaches up to tangle itself in Allie’s loose hair. Allie lifts a hand and strokes Salem’s jaw, softly, as if she were about to evaporate at any moment.

It doesn’t last long, and after they’ve caught their breaths, Allie sputters out an apology, speaking at a mile a minute. “I’m sorry, was it too soon? Too much? I didn’t mean to over step anything and I’m really sorry if you’re uncomfortable now and if you don’t want to be friends anymore I completely understa--”

Salem kisses her silent.

-x-

Allie leans over Salem’s shoulder, her arm draped around her girlfriend as she looks at the sketch. It’s a pair of soft and full lips with a small dip in the middle. They’re a little pouty.

“What’s that?” she asks, though she already knows. She just wants to hear her say it.

Salem smiles slightly, eyes flickering from Allie’s lips to the page of charcoal smudges. “Oh, you know.”

She tilts her head up and plants a brief kiss on Allie’s lips. She feels her girlfriend smile against her own mouth. Allie has a tendency to smile when they kiss. Especially when they kiss. Salem finds it a little bit adorable. Okay, a lot adorable.

Salem runs a dark hand across Allie’s still grinning lips. “Just those.”

#writing #my writing #ehh #text

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thelonelyrainbowguy · 6 years

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My ASD Testing Experience

I promised that I would write up a post about my autism testing, so here goes. (And yes, I am SO counting this toward NaNoWriMo!)

When I arrived at the practice, the psychiatrist who I’d seen for my initial intake appointment took me back to her office and told me to pull a chair up to the desk.

The first task she had me do, after attempting to make small talk with me (which I am TERRIBLE at and crashed and burned, lol), was to arrange foam puzzle pieces to fit a pre-drawn puzzle. She gave me three pieces (it clearly called for like 9) and I placed them, then expected her to hand me more, but she didn’t until I asked her for them. I guess that kind of confused me. I saw notes in her file for me that mentioned a “confused expression”, and I think it was in reference to that.

Afterward, she took out a book and informed me that it had no words, that we were going to make up the story. I’m a good writer, but making up stories on the spot and telling them aloud is incredibly difficult for me.

The book was about these frogs whose lilypads suddenly started floating, and pretty soon these freaking frogs were zooming all over creation. Instead of telling a story like a story, I just pointed out things that I saw. “Those fish are like WHAT THE HECK and that turtle looks pretty pissed, and the frogs are still flying.” Yeah, it was a weird story.

Then she brought out a bag of very random objects, and informed me that we were each going to pick five of them and use them to tell a story, which was even more foreboding than the idea of turning the story of the wordless picture book into English.

She went first, with a sponge, a cocktail umbrella, a feather, a shoelace, and... I forget what else. Her story was about Mama Umbrella, her kid Spongebob, and Baby Feather. They went to the beach, and the mama told SpongeBob to watch Baby Feather. But he was annoyed with watching her and went off and did his own thing. Then Baby Feather crawled into the ocean and SpongeBob threw a rope (shoelace) in to save her. Mama Umbrella was really mad but she was glad her baby was okay.

I had no idea what to do so I stared at the items in the bag for a good while, until a morbid story came into my head and it was the only thing that I could think of. I used the car, a paper circle, the feather, a wooden block, and a toy dollhouse candle.

“Okay,” I said, “so there's people driving down the road in this car, and then the wife goes “I think I’m gonna light your birthday candles on the cake now, because that sounds like a great idea,” so she did, and then a bird (represented by the feather) distracted the driver and made him run over a pothole (the paper circle) and slam into a wall (the wooden block).” Cue lots of spitty explosion noises (jk I just said they exploded). So yeah, I’m sure that heightened her image of me a good bit. XD

We talked then about the trouble I’m having at work, how I keep getting told off for not being empathetic when truly, I am (usually- I mean there are LOTS of people I deal with who are just plain annoying/dumb). My tone does not sound kind enough, even though I’ve been trying.

She asked me about my dating life and I updated her on the nonexistence of any type of relationship prospects and how the last girl I dated ghosted me (she hasn’t texted me since November 1, if anyone's wondering).

She asked me what a friend was, and then she asked me what the difference was between a friend, and a co-worker. Well, that was tough. I told her I guessed co-workers I thought were my friends were just my favorite coworkers, because I never saw them outside of work?

She then asked me how emotions felt, and how I knew I was happy, or angry, or anxious, or sad, and made me explain examples of times when I had felt these things, and asked whether I thought other people felt the same things. She asked me if I had ever been picked on or bullied, and sadly, I had to tell her that my family were my worst bullies growing up. I told her how there were certain noises my siblings would make that really bothered and hurt me, and how they’d deliberately make those noises over and over just to watch me and laugh as I’d get tenser and tenser and finally run from the room, usually crying, to have a meltdown in my bedroom.

After all this, she was done with me, and I went back to the waiting room to wait for the IQ test guy. I’d never met him before, so it was hard to look at his face, but I don’t think he ever smiled. And when I’d try to make a joke he’d just stare at me in this analyzing way. I didn’t like him.

His office was tiny and plain and felt dingy, and he had some sort of white noise sound machine going, which bothered me but I couldn’t figure out how to say so. He said he hoped it didn’t bother me, but in a way that made me feel like it would be a huge inconvenience if I told him that it did.

The first thing he had me do was to take these blocks that had two red sides and two white sides, and the remaining two sides were divided into half red and half white, split into triangles. First he gave me four and showed me a pattern, and I had to recreate that pattern. I guess he thought I was capable after that because he gave me the rest of the nine total blocks and show me more and more complicated patterns that I had to recreate. I’m ashamed to say that there was one I almost didn’t get, because I legitimately forgot that I could turn the cubes. I was looking at them and thinking that they were all half red and half white, but I needed solid red and solid white. I told him I couldn’t do it, that it was actually impossible. I thought it was a trick. He asked if I wanted to skip it, but at the last second I remembered, oh, these things have different sides. :P so obviously I recreated it pretty quickly from there.

After that exercise, he asked me some math word problem questions, which I had to figure out in my head, without paper and pencil. At first they were easy, but then the questions got into asking basically what 15 percent of 60 is, and I almost said it was 15, but caught myself and guessed 10 (probably still wrong; I don’t even know how to do that with a calculator).

Then he had me repeat sequences of numbers. It started out simple: 2, 4. He gradually added one number art a time until he reached... I think the highest any of these went was 8 numbers. 5, 9, 2, 4, 3, 2, 6, 1. I’d repeat the numbers in order. After that, he had me repeat his sequences backward- so 3, 7, 8, 5 would be 5, 8, 7, 3. This was more difficult, especially when he got up to the 8- digit ones. And finally, he made me put the number sequences in order, but there were often multiples of the same number, which was Super Confusing. It wasn’t too hard up until the 7 or 8 digit ones, but then it started getting really impossible to remember all of the numbers: 4, 7, 9, 2, 6, 2, 7, 8 for example. I’m pretty sure I only said 7 digits for at least one 8 digit one, and I had to start over on several of them.

Finally, we were done with that awful task, and we moved on to the fresh hell of a book of shapes. The top half of the paper showed a shape, and the bottom half had 6 different shapes that I had to put together to make the top shape. The catch was, it always had to be 3 of the shapes- i couldn’t pick 2 that also made the same shape. It had to be 3, and they could never overlap. At first it was pretty easy- a square, a house shape, etc. Then they got more complicated - like one had a blue octagon inside a yellow triangle inside a red square. And they got more complicated from there on out, in the ways the shapes were divided. For example, there was an oval and the pieces were cut in such a way that the middle piece resembled a butt with crooked arms. And in many of the advanced ones, all or many of the options were similar, so you really had to be able to pay attention and visualize it, which was difficult, especially after my brain was wasted from all the other stuff.

At last, we finished that, and he gave me a self- assessment test for autism. The possible answers were 1 (Never True), 2 (Sometimes True), 3 (Often True), and 4 (Almost Always True). It was one of those fill- in- the- dot things. The questions were things such as I feel most comfortable when I am alone, I behave in ways that seem strange or bizarre to others, I get upset when there are a lot of things going on, When stressed I show rigid and inflexible patterns of behavior, I have good personal hygiene, I think of other people the same way that I think of objects, I am extremely sensitive to certain sounds, textures, or smells, I have a narrow range of interests, I talk or think about the same thing over and over.

When I finished that, we were done and I got to go home. I have a feedback session scheduled for the 11th, where I’ll actually get my diagnosis.

Overall, the experience was weird and tiring. I felt analyzed, which was obviously what was happening, and it made me kind of squirmy. And I felt patronized, which was just plain annoying. I went along with everything though, and I think I proved my autism, so now I’m just waiting on my official diagnosis so I can tell the world and actually have it as a reason why I can’t do or handle certain things (not an excuse; that is a different thing altogether, just saying).

Anyway, I’m sorry this was so long. If you made it to the end, here, have a virtual... I don’t know, brownie, cookie, hug, pickle, whatever you’d like to have a virtual version of. XD

If you have any questions about any part of the process, please feel free to ask me! ❤️

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