thinking about how i just… never complained about anything as an undiagnosed autistic kid. i was dressed in button-down shirts that made me feel like i was choking all day to the point i could only think about that and corduroy pants that filled my ears with nothing but the sound of the fabric rubbing between my thighs all day. i was fed food whose texture made me feel sick. i was scolded for being strange and rude when i was going out of my way to be nice or helpful.
but i never brought it up. when i had tantrums or cried, it was always about tiny unrelated things that set me off after all the stress had built up. i knew that these experiences were uncomfortable, but seeing no one else around me complain about them just made me assume that life was meant to be kind of painful in those ways.
even today it barely crosses my mind to tell people when i don’t like something, and i’m quick to accept requests that are actually too much for me because of the idea that everyone else can do it. ironically, most neurotypical people are much better at saying that they don’t want to do something, even when this is often due to something as simple as not feeling like it as opposed to me who is struggling due to sensory, executive function, or socializing issues.
i wish i had learned earlier that it’s not just good, but also necessary to tell people when something is hurting you. that you’re both allowed and supposed to take action to make life less painful for yourself, especially when that pain isn’t going to earn you anything. i wish i was able to make requests for my own good without automatically feeling guilty for being ‘selfish’.
have you tried to use youtube without an adblocker recently? i guarantee you’ll be leaving bombs and spraying question marks around the city like the riddler
So uuuuhhhh…got my daughter a yogurt this morning and learned something new.
Guys I just realized they meant there’s a city in Texas called Ding Dong. I thought the people at GoGurt were really like, “DING DONG! WAKE UP SHEEPLE. BIG GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW. TEXAS IS REAL. LOOK IT UP. GET THIS TO THE PEOPLE.” Like some big exec at Yoplait is ready to lose his life over exposing a national secret through the medium of childrens’ yogurt snack tubes.
Growing up, I thought people were born with their heads cocked because that’s how they’ve always looked at me.
Boxes. Check one, check other.
People don’t know. They don’t furrow between the layers like I do. They don’t switch and twitch and actively make the decisions of which; which part of me belongs today? Which aspect of my personality will offend the least and blend the most, and work and succeed and bury the lead like a switchboard of traits that decide my fate, and I’m always an impostor?
Always lost, always asking for directions, and people point my way like the scarecrow. Like tornadoes blowing me whichever way the wind blows.
Well, Dorothy doesn’t want to play today.
She’s prepping for the SAT. Just the Scantron. The box is empty and glaring, and daring me to chose one. Well I’m an expert at boxes. My whole life can fit inside it, and I’ve got it down to a science. I can pack my entire identity in an hour ‘cause where there’s roots, there’s power, but I’m all topsoil.
My blood runs like water and oil refusing to stick.
My dad’s old books, read in secret nooks. That camera that locks all my memories in a flash, saved for when my recollection doesn’t last. That lighter that sparked that fire. All fit in a box ready to be carried from door to door.
But that’s not the kind of box people ever ask for.
So many lines in the sand, so many can’ts and cans. I see both worlds so clearly, and I skip and jump and dance and fall between, never seen.
I belong in the spaces between. Check all that may apply.
-Ginny’s “Where do you feel you most belong?” essay
Ginny and Georgia (Netflix, 2021-) s1e8, “Check One, Check Other”
