the-archenlandian-court

[the-archenlandian-court]

I am currently writing a novel with a character who has type 1 diabetes.

While I have learned enough about the condition through family members and other research to get by, is there any advice people with this condition can give me on writing this character?

For example: things that affect every day life, what it’s like to be young with diabetes, important aspects of diabetes that often get overlooked, stereotypes to avoid….

Any thoughts or suggestions on this would be appreciated

#type 1 diabetes #diabetes #writer #novel #author #disablilty

[the-archenlandian-court]

Something they don’t tell you about living on your own in Australia is that you’re now the one responsible for dealing with the spiders

#*shudders* #I didn’t realise how many there would be #there was one next to my light switch the other day #where is spiders georg when you need him #the horrors #australia #aussie #spiders

[the-archenlandian-court]

Autism diagnosis:

“Here’s a 50 page document outlining all your symptoms based on the results of a rigorous test, sighted and signed by 3 other doctors, and includes a management plan for your doctors and other medical professionals”

Any other diagnosis:

“Oh, yeah, you have this thing”

“Can I have some documentation for that?”

“I’ll put a footnote in your file”

“And treatment?”

“Here’s some meds, and a referral to a specialist who probably can’t help you. Otherwise, look it up on google 🤷”

#my autism diagnosis was hard to get #but at least I have proof #the rest of my stuff were verbal diagnoses #autism #actually autistic #asd #adhd #actually adhd #chronic illness #chronic pain #disabled #disability #me/cfs #diagnosis #doctors #anxiety #depession

[the-archenlandian-court]

I sit before you, on my throne of woe, consuming a slightly over cooked, discounted steak. Reason being: my physician informed me the iron capsules I have been ingesting aren’t succeeding in their purpose and as such I need to consume the meat of a cow to stop the stars from visiting my mind

#iron deficiency #anemia #chronic illness

[the-archenlandian-court]

crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.

i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.

in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.

i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.

i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.

plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.

the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.

we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.

i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.

a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.

today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.

loved beyond thinking.

[the-archenlandian-court]

OCD isn’t always:

“Remember when *insert specific memory* ”

Sometimes it’s:

“Hey remember earlier when you- *Wave of anxiety* ”

“When I what?”

“ *Anxiety intensifies* ”

#i hope this makes sense #sometimes ocd is #ocd #actually ocd #ocd awareness #obsessive compulsive disorder

[the-archenlandian-court]

There's something really awful about when you first start to really notice chronic pain. I used to make jokes about how I have "old man joints" and how funny it was that my joints crack when I squat or bend my knees.

Eventually, though, I started to realize that "some part of your body hurts every day no matter what you do" is very much not normal and not just something everyone deals with. And then the pain comes with a persistent worry that this is the best the pain is ever going to be, that it'll only get worse as you age, and you may not even be able to do things that were once easy within a few short years.

That fear is ever present, and it is absolutely torturous when combined with all the question marks of an unknown or dynamic disability. It's really so much more than just the pain.

#chronic pain #joint pain #disabled #physically disabled #cane user #chronic illness #disability #fibromyalgia #ehlers danlos syndrome

[the-archenlandian-court]

#poll #polls #hyper specific poll #chronic illness #disability #disabled #chronic pain #me cfs #cfs/me

[the-archenlandian-court]

OCD isn’t always:

“You’re a bad person and deserve to be shunned”

Sometimes it’s:

“People are judging you”

“What people?”

“Just, people…. Idk”

#sometimes ocd is #ocd awareness #actually ocd #ocd #obsessive compulsive disorder

[the-archenlandian-court]

OCD isn’t always:

“Stop reading that, it’s stupid and boring”

Sometimes it’s:

“This is boring to read”

“Okay, I’ll skip it”

“NO…. Now you have to read it 15 times…. Every. Single. Word”

#sometimes ocd is #ocd #ocd awareness #actually ocd #obsessive compulsive disorder

[the-archenlandian-court]

OCD isn’t always:

“You need to leave the room because there’s a bad smell”

Sometimes it’s:

“Stop breathing”

“Why?”

“Because, what if the air is yucky”

#sometimes ocd is #actually ocd #ocd awareness #obsessive compulsive disorder #ocd

[the-archenlandian-court]

OCD isn’t always:

“Hey remember when this awful thing happened?”

Sometimes it’s:

“Hey *insert very graphic thing that has never and will never happen*”

#sometimes ocd is #ocd #obsessive compulsive disorder #actually ocd #ocd awareness

[the-archenlandian-court]

OCD isn’t always:

“Here are all the reasons you’re a bad person”

Sometimes it’s:

“Remember: You’re a horrible person”

“Sources?”

“Coz I said so”

#ocd #actually ocd #ocd awareness #sometimes ocd is

[the-archenlandian-court]

OCD isn’t always:

“You’re contaminated by a virus and you’re going to die”

Sometimes it’s:

“You’re contaminated”

“With what?”

“…. Contamination”

#this may become a series #we’ll see #actually ocd #ocd #obsessive compulsive disorder #ocd awareness

[the-archenlandian-court]

OCD isn’t always:

“If you don’t do the thing your family will die”

Sometimes it’s:

“If you don’t do the thing, bad things will happen”

“What bad things?”

“Bad things. Very bad things”

#actually ocd #ocd #obsessive compulsive disorder #ocd awareness

[the-archenlandian-court]

Person: What’s the time?

Me: One sec I’ll-

*Gets Duolingo notification*

Me: It is 10:23 pm

#whenever I hear that sound I know what time it is #duolingo #second language #pavlov #I wouldn’t put it past them to use classical conditioning methods #duo owl

[the-archenlandian-court]

Something my parents always said to us kids when we talked about marriage is “Love isn’t enough”. What they meant is that love isn’t enough to hold a marriage or a family together. It’s about similarities, choices, and a willingness to work with each other.

While finding someone who is your opposite is a great idea when it comes to love, it is better to find someone similar to you when you want to create a life and a family.

It doesn’t mean that love isn’t important, but there are other thing that are needed to form a strong relationship, and often those things require hard work.

Sadly “love isn’t enough”. It’s just one if many things that make a relationship work.

A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life. Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.

#relationships #marriage #love