#just a friendly reminder I am autistic and if that changes your view on me and you start to infantilize me or use me for ur weird disability

[gncrevan]

dear m.,

i write this in case you still check my blog (i'm sorry i checked yours, i was acting on paranoia, but i have stopped) and i have unblocked you for that reason. i hate to be misunderstood more than anything. i spent my whole life with my actions being misinterpreted and it breaks my heart. i really hope you read this.

from my perspective, here is what happened: we both were triggered by things the other did. when two traumatized people interact, this is something that can occur. i don't believe it's either of our fault and it's normal that we acted irrationally.

you wanted distance, which i respected. i didn't like not being told what happened/what i did wrong, and i didn't like the way you told me you wanted distance. this is also something that can happen when you have different needs. it reminded me of bad situations i had been in, which wasn't your fault, and i think i made it explicit that i didn't think it was your fault.

i was not in a good place when you offered to talk about it, and coming at it with questions about my intentions, whether my personal recounting of trauma was about you, didn't help. i should have told you there that i wasn't ready, but i failed to do that, as i didn't quite realize that this was the case. instead, i reacted flippantly at first and i apologize for that (i think i also apologized back then). your reaction, telling me to check my attitude, was unfortunately extremely reminiscent of things my father said, and further triggered me. you couldn't have known that, and i don't blame you. i realized in the moment that you couldn't know these things, and i took a breath. i did my all to calm down, look at it rationally. i told you that i didn't understand what was going on, i still don't really understand. i'm sorry if that sounds bad to you. it's not that i don't believe you or don't try to empathize. i have huge problems understanding what goes on in other people's heads. it helps me if they explain. my best guess is that i played into your hypervigilance by mistake and i'm really sorry i made you feel unsafe like that. it's hard sometimes to find the balance between expressing yourself and not stepping on other people's toes. i do think we could have talked this through and found a solution.

in the moment, I felt very lost and confused. i tried to explain myself to you and hold myself accountable. i admitted that seeing you say things that upset me meant more than seeing some random person say those things, cause i had related to you, and this might be why i overreacted. i apologized. i felt very exhausted and overwhelmed when you did not respect my request to not tell me what i didn't want to hear. i frankly also didn't agree with it. i think i gave you time and respected your boundaries. looking back, i can only interpret that me trying to explain myself sounded like i was accusing you. this was not my intention and i deeply regret that i wasn't able to convey what i intended. i have a thing in my brain where i think i need to explain myself and this will make things better. evidently, that's not always the case. maybe i should have asked you what you wanted to talk about, what you were feeling, and have you lead the conversation. i was tripping over myself trying to explain where i was coming from because i was scared of being misunderstood, and in the process i only made the misunderstanding worse. back there, you said you understood where i was coming from, but i'm not sure you did.

this is what happened next from my perspective: we both tried to process our feelings. i didn't know where we stood and i didn't know how or when to ask. the reason i looked at your blog was to see if there was any hint i could ask you. i should have just asked you and i regret not doing that. i thought asking you about your post was okay because you did the same thing before. i did my best to be friendly and not upset you, but i probably just shouldn't have lead with that in the first place, maybe not do it at all. i was acting out of hurt over being misunderstood and misrepresented. that's not an excuse, it's an explanation. i thought i was being diplomatic but i probably wasn't. when you told me off, that didn't make sense to me. i had said i could leave you alone but you never told me if that was what you wanted. from my point of view, i had offered and then never received a confirmation. that's like genuinely a problem for me, i can't infer meaning from vague sentences. and again, i realize i should have just asked, and not asking is on me. i'm still working on my hang-ups here. you seemed angry and i felt hurt. i still think we should have negotiated this better. i am not good at setting my own boundaries until it's too late, i'm mostly reactive. i should have told you earlier that i wasn't ready to talk, or that i didn't like you reading my blog after you unfollowed me. my defenses are weak and i never know when to enforce them. i enforced them too late, and in a manner that was fuelled by anger. i apologize for being indignant.

after that, i tried to sort through my thoughts. i realized that i had set a boundary at one point, albeit weakly and possibly not clearly enough (by trying to appeal to your pity in a way that was probably really pathetic). it's possible that i expected you to understand and realize things that you couldn't know about me because you cannot look into my head. i still felt like my boundary was disrespected and that i had thought that your boundaries would equally apply the other way around. i should have communicated that more clearly, i guess, but that's where my hurt was. that, and being misunderstood, and failing to clear up the misunderstanding.

background info: that is genuinely one of my biggest fears, being misunderstood. it has lead to so much shit in my life. i've done so much therapy focused on that and i still can't figure out what happens in those situations. i think it's because i'm autistic, that's the only explanation i have because listen, i really have tried to change this, i've tried so hard, and it just doesn't work! and i know my brain works in a weird way, and i'm assuming that's the problem. that's why i can't get it right. i told you before i don't know what i'm doing wrong when communicating with you, or others for that matter, and it's not me trying to just be "oh it isn't my fault, you have to pity me, i'm such a poor autistic", it's a genuine fucking problem and it has ruined my life and i wish i could stop it. i overexplain myself in hopes that this does the trick, and it works with some people, like people close to me, but i get that it can be overwhelming. if we ever talk again, i ask you to just tell me if i'm being overwhelming. i know i often talk too much. it's my brain.

back to the topic: i actually think we both made mistakes. i don't think either of us was acting maliciously. it can be hard to convey tone over the internet, and we both apparently pressed the wrong buttons. i accept that you are hurt and that you weren't feeling good and that we both clashed in a situation where we were feeling vulnerable, and proceeded to do things that unfortunately were triggers to the other one without knowing it. that sucks! what's done is done. it's ok if you're angry at me. you can do what you must to protect yourself emotionally, and i guess if that means i don't get my closure, then i must live with it. i'm trying to get closure inside my head, with myself.

the only thing i want to clarify is that i never saw you as my bff or therapist and never projected that onto you. i was actually often intimidated by you and exasperated by how much i was failing to convey things to you correctly. as you might recall, i wrote asks and messages to you about this sentiment. i felt a certain attachment because we related over trauma stuff, that's what i meant when i said projecting. i actually realised a long time ago you weren't exactly like me, and that's an experience i go through every time i relate to someone, and it just happens, it's neutral, it's only in my head etc. but yeah i want you to know that i never wanted to put pressure on you and didn't expect you to carry me or whatever and that i really didn't overestimate how close we were. people online are often really just concepts for us and it's complex to interact. i can relate to a concept, but i don't know that much about you, the person. i know that and i never meant to infer anything different. it's important to me that you don't think i'm like that, because i really don't appreciate people like that, i've had my fair share of them.

i hope that this can bring clarity and peace. i truly never want to upset people. i strive for better understanding and a kinder way that we treat each other.

#don't reblog

[rpbetter]

i feel like i'm the only autistic person on this site who actually finds double spaced prose EASIER to read than single spaced? i guess because justified text is easier to read than aligned left? so i wanted to start doing it myself, but i didn't, even if it was more easy and aesthetically pleasing to me personally, because so many people are the opposite. formatting is something i genuinely enjoy, it feels playful, relaxing, and makes rp a lot more fun for me. also, differentiates it from other creative writing, among other things. i totally get where people who dislike formatting for aesthetic are coming from, though! not trying to start shit, just i'm vaguely amused that i'm an anomaly among fellow neurodivergent roleplayers with this!

Oh, no, it totally doesn't sound like you're starting shit! That was an excellently explanatory message while still coming off friendly, you are awesome for that. This was really interesting to get because you're right, that is funny...and interesting, I think!

You know what I don't do that I find more appealing? Indent sentences. I used to, I have a lot of editing as a novella RPer, so it isn't like I'm not already going over things with the opportunity to do it lol but...so many people were complaining about this coming off as too stiff or throwing them while they were reading longer replies, so, I stopped doing it. Not complaining to me, which I realize probably should have mattered a little more, in retrospect, right? If the people I was writing with didn't have an issue with it, I probably shouldn't have paid attention to things I saw being reblogged on my dash by people I wasn't writing with.

There are things I staunchly refuse to give up, like emphasis. It isn't for any aesthetic reason in my case, it's because I enjoy conveying the emotion in my conversational writing with my rather emotive muse, but when I read back over it, it can be visually appealing, too. I don't typically have too many problems (and if I do, it's something I can revisit more successful when I'm not having deeply unwanted concentration issues that have nothing to do with my interest in and excitement over them) focusing on my writing partners' replies, none are as uh, emphatic as I am, but with my own writing? Oh, yes. I wrote it, I edited it once after I was done writing it, then I edited the damn thing again before positing it - by the second or third time around, man, am I really over myself. So, having my muse's more direct thoughts in italic or the usual emphasis on words here and there, it visually breaks it up for me and makes that a more pleasing experience.

I can totally see how formatting is enjoyable! It's just another thing that makes it creatively your own, and I very much appreciate creativity regardless of whether it's my style. Additionally, I have seen formatting done in a way that I thought was approachable, tasteful, didn't take anything away from the writing while being attractive, that sort of thing. I'm not even sure how to describe the difference, but I think maybe...that it was such a cool combination of these couple of muns' ability to seamlessly mesh both?

There is no way in hell I could do that! These two were also novella, and I cannot imagine that undertaking. Have to admire that dedication and having gotten it down to a science!

I definitely appreciate you sending in your different view, thank you! It's always interesting to hear these sorts of things, I feel like a lot of the time everyone gets lumped together, and depending on what it is, it's either funny or annoying to be the different one. The latter being why those expressed differences can be done rather vehemently, and coming from an understandable place in that or not, that doesn't benefit a thing we need a ton more of in the RPC - toleration of differences.

We're all here to roleplay, yes, but that means something a little different to everyone. The process is different for everyone, what they enjoy, for how long, with what sort of muses, just a million little differences. What I, or anyone else, prefers or doesn't does not make it The Right Way or The Wrong Way. It's understandable we can get a bit vexed by that individuality, feel like one way is ruining what we like or need, feel like another way is pressuring us to change, and so on. As people, it is kind of hard sometimes to understand why something we can't stand is beloved by someone else, and harder still when it's almost everyone else.

So, I think it's important to the Sisyphean task of getting people to like and dislike with mutual respect to hear differences. It can help remind us of the human variable involved, and that it's not just alright, it's good to let other people do their thing. It's not coming at a cost to your thing the majority of the time, after all. It can just really feel that way when you're in the minority on the matter, as I'm sure you know!

Thanks again, I hope you're getting some lovely formatting done, Anon!

PS:

maybe, since you enjoy the double-spacing and find it easier, you should see if any of your writing partners would mind you doing so? Maybe I should rephrase that as seeing if they wouldn't have a difficult time reading it lol that might come off the wrong way! I don't mean to imply that anyone should ever be beholden to whatever others want them to do when it comes to this sort of thing, just that it might be a good way of discerning who was both into it and not going to struggle with it any. That way, you could get to do it without any risk of being inaccessible or losing partners.

And if you're a meme or musings blog (thank you for that, too, if you are), you could always try out doing the two versions! I really loved that, sometimes the shorter musings that were more formatting were truly added to by that, and I absolutely did reblog them over the plainer versions with minimal formatting. But, if they had characters that made my brain weird out or showed up as unreadable on my browser and so forth, there was a duplicate version that was "stripped down." Seems like muns even tagged them that way so that you could search those specifically or filter them out even.

Before someone takes issue with it, I'm not saying that meme, musings, or other resource blogs are obliged to do more work. (Anon harassment did not trigger my paranoia, I said, like a liar lmao) It could be beneficial though, like, for the resource blog, maybe! Put in the plain version and queue it, copy it and paste, format away, queue it for another day. Double the output, double the chances of interaction with your posts!

#answered #anonymous #formatting #nd rping