from June 2009

[I found this on my old livejournal, it's quite different from how I feel about things now but I thought it might be interesting.]

Liz called me yesterday because she was bored.

I'm accidentally rereading my favorite book, Send in the Idiots by Kamran Nazeer. I just accidentally reread it all the time; whenever I see it I kind of fall into it. I read it for the first time two and a half years ago and it's what made me interested in working with special needs people, which I'm now convinced that I want to do forever. A guy who was diagnosed with classic autism as a kid, and has improved to the point that he's pretty much normal, profiles other autistic kids from his childhood school. The people he profiles are all verbal and have attained different levels of "being better"--one is in a relationship, three have jobs, one lives alone, one doesn't "look" autistic to other people. They all have coping mechanisms they use to manage their autism, some more unusual than others, and Nazeer wanders off into long explorations of why these mechanisms are necessary, what they do, and which ones he uses himself. Actually he wanders off into long explorations of everything so that, for example, we get a discussion of the word "genius" and how it's used to excuse people's bad behavior, and whether the purpose of a conversation is to express what you think. So it's not just a book about being autistic, it's a book about being human, from an autistic perspective.

Maybe because I've been reading the book I kept talking to Liz about putting up a front. She kept asking me doesn't it bother me, but I can't really imagine another way of being. When I started figuring this out a few years ago, I feel like that's when I grew up. Like three years ago: I have trouble putting words together, fast, in the right ways. And I have trouble talking or reacting in what looks like a normal way, or figuring out how to react at all. So I figured out that when I was looking for an emotion, I'd choose "excited." I couldn't buy things before because I didn't know what to do while I was waiting for the thing to be rung up. Then I figured out I could act excited about what I was buying, and it went from there.

So now I have this whole conception of my personality: young, excited, spacey, stoned, random giggling, weird questions. It doesn't involve doing things I would never do, I guess, but it does try to put them in a palatable Manic Pixie Dream Girl package because I feel like that's the only acceptable way for a girl to be weird. And also, if I seem like this cute kid who is really overwhelmed by things, then people will be more likely to make allowances for me, whereas if I was an adult who was really smart and intense and could be sort of angry and nasty, like most people, and still needed people to make allowances for me--well, then it wouldn't be cute anymore. Once I have a negative interaction with someone, I feel like they know how awful I am. I don't feel like I can be both a negative person and a person who sometimes needs to be treated like a child.

Something that really bothers me is when people think that I'm immature. I understand why, it's the obvious reaction to a person who acts like I do. But I wish people could understand but this was the only way of synthesizing my AS into a reasonably acceptable personality, and that when I started acting like a kid, that's when I grew up.

cassie ainsworth & redemption rejection

this is just some Skins gibbering, mostly character- and not plot-based, which I think is interesting in terms of ideas of covering (or "disability redemption").



me: that was me being a bitch like oh wow but fuck you style
have I mentioned that's like my favorite line ever?
Joshua: haha, it's a good moment. I dunno Jal is being kind of patronising, and though she never deserved to be the target of evil Cassie, you can see why that would hit Cassie's angry spot!
me: like, it sort of reminds me of having to act really cute to make up for being disabled
Joshua: nice interpretation
me: that's what "oh wow but fuck you" means to me.
Joshua: and like.. even more charitable to S2 Cassie than I usually am.. which is very charitable.
me: oh I mean, I don't necessarily mean that's what she means. it's just sort of what it means to me. Like, I think she just says oh wow because she always says it, and then she gets to the actual content of what she's saying, which is fuck you. But to me like oh wow is a very important line, even though people act like it's stupid and annoying, it means something really important.
me: I remember once telling Ari that I liked working with severely disabled people because lots of the people I worked with hugged everyone they met, and for some reason I'd observed this was more common in adults than kids with similar disabilities
Joshua: like they feel they have to be like that?
me: and Ari suggested that some people are very isolated and it's like "oh wow a person! I never get to interact with a person!" He said something like, "I hope the next generation of pwds can decide that they're not particularly interested in someone or they don't like them"
I think this is interesting in terms of how Cassie is introduced in the first episode. I haven't seen it in a while, but I think she hugs tony, possibly hugs sid, and then hugs abigail--"YOU'RE SO LOVELY!!!"
the plot thickens!
then obviously throughout the season there's the constant "oh wow" and manic pixie dream girl reactions to everything--coupled with starving, suicide attempts which often seem in her cases to be engineered to hurt people or cause as much trouble as possible, and occasional moments of being pretty mean or pissed off.
me: I am sort of getting this from you because I remembered when you said that Cassie doesn't really change from s1-s2, not in a deep way.
Joshua: No she really doesn't.
me: yeah so in conclusion, the line "Oh wow, but fuck you" line means a lot to me because it's almost like Cassie sort of rejecting the things that she previously did to try to "earn" people's friendship and support.
Joshua: Cassie would not mean nearly as much to me without s2 as much as I love S1 Cassie. If she'd been left at that without the contrast of S2 she'd be a standard Manic Pixie Dream and a fairly borderline offensive idealised picture of mental illness.

people you want to hide vs. people who actually don't exist

Several years ago I remember reading a New Yorker piece by one of the Autism Pop Culture kids--John Elder Robison maybe? Whoever he was, he said something about having had to create his personality from scratch, instead of naturally having one. And I was like, "yeah totally this is such a good description of what ASD is like! I can relate to this better than anything else I've ever read!"

Whereas now I'm kind of like...seriously?

It's weird to say this because a few years ago I don't think there was anything I hated more than people saying, "Just be yourself," or, "Just act however you feel." But that's what I try to do now.

Obviously there are areas in which this totally doesn't work--of course there are things I have a lot of anxiety about, or can't learn how to do with any ease, and there's definitely an element of forcing myself to do things or trying to imitate how someone else would do them. But there's a difference between consciously going against your nature, or trying to play make-believe with yourself, in order to deal with something, and just playing a part all the time. I think there were some times when people would say, "Just be yourself," in a way that was super disrespectful of who I am; it was like, "Don't react to things in a way that I wouldn't react to them, because to me your reactions look unnatural." But the fact that I used to find "Just be yourself" to be the most ridiculous thing for anyone to say to me, ever, is now kind of hard for me to relate to.

Like 14 months ago, I made this post called I'm a fake person, and in the process of writing it--well, I knew everything that was in it, but actually writing it down made me incredibly depressed. There was just this fact inside me all the time, that I was fake, and I just tried to avoid thinking about it. But now I just don't feel like that thing is there anymore. (The trans aspect of that post is really weird. I think at that time I actually thought that being trans would make me happier than being cis, but that it just wouldn't be practical for me to transition...but now I, like, actually feel like a girl, in an uncomplicated way, which has never been the case before. So maybe feeling "I'm not a girl," for me, was just a way of feeling something else that I don't have to feel anymore, but I don't know.)

I'm not trying to say that everything is baller and in fact some stuff is much, much worse since I stopped being a fake person, but I do prefer life this way. And I know I'm not going very much into detail about what being "real" or not having a made-up personality means to me, but it's complicated and it may not even look that different superficially. It just feels incredibly different inside.

Anyway, where I was going with this was probably toward the idea of people being empty or being nothing or having nothing to them, because they're different or because they can't do the things other people can do. I think it's really important to acknowledge the difference between having a self that's not socially acceptable, and actually really not having a self at all. Even if your self does have to change or fake or learn a lot of things, or even if it never is accepted by other people, it does really exist.

It's also important to acknowledge the human being/human doing divide, i.e. the difference between not being able to do something, and not being something. For example, if you can't talk on the phone, and then, through scripting and imitating other people, you become able to talk on the phone--your old self wasn't a nothing that has been replaced by an improved, fake self that can talk on the phone. Your old self was just someone who couldn't talk on the phone.

(this is very 2nd-grade but that's what the Internet is for)

turn off the clocks
turn off the timers
turn off your phones
turn off you're alone

you are mine
outside space and time
the same old lines
inside space and time

turn off your scripts
they don't work on me
they cut me deep inside
where I've got the same old lines

you're mine
'cause we've got the same old lines
you could be me inside
outside of space and time

turn off the clocks
turn off the timers
turn off your bones
turn off

you're alone

(for some reason I always feel very driven to write love songs about scripting/passing and maybe a lot of them. which is actually probably less cheesy than other ideas for concept albums I've had.)

The Veil/On Speaking Badly, part 2

Sometimes, in writing workshops, people will just start evaluating your character! It's sort of hard to tell if this is cute or offensive. Especially given the evaluation I received last night:

"Amanda speaks from behind this veil of shyness and uncertainty, and, like, in class she's always apologizing and you think she's just rambling, but the veil is deceptive; behind it there's this brute force of powerful honesty."

No, I fucking don't know how people can say this stuff out loud. Veil? Am I Sirius Black? I'm not even exactly saying it's a bad thing to say, but just that I'm impressed that someone can come up with an image so fast and just spit it out and have it mean something right away. Or even if he wrote it down first, how did he deliver it in a way that didn't sound scripted?

And therein lies the problem.

I am not the way I talk. I just want to say that, over and over again. I mean, there are some classes where I would describe myself as shy but this isn't one of them. Sometimes I don't do the reading, so I don't talk then. I talk during workshops. I say stuff. Even in classes where I don't talk, it's not like talking makes me terrified. I just know I'm a shitty talker, that I sort of mumble a bunch of words, as simple as possible, definitely not anything as smart as talking about a veil--I mean, any attempt to use creative language just turns into me sounding the way people with schizophrenia talk in my Abnormal Psych textbook. Is it disorganized speech if you're capable of speaking normally if you plan it out beforehand? Well, it doesn't really matter, I can't exactly plan for every topic that could possibly arise. So it comes out like this, or not at all.

But I'm not. Fucking. Shy.

This is a situation I'm kind of prone to, where I make a really mean blog post about someone who I actually have no problem with in Real Life. This guy in my class is a really good writer and seems nice. I don't doubt he meant what he said completely positively. But it's kind of weird to have your speech issues characterized as "shyness" and a "veil." And the fact that you don't lie (which isn't a choice) characterized as some sort of accomplishment or virtue. I don't know. I mean, my story wasn't very good and I understand that a lot of people were saying it was "honest" maybe as a way of being tactful. That's fine. But that doesn't mean I have to be told that I'm honest.

If I just say what I think, people tend to laugh because it's so plain and brief--and that is maybe part of why I say so many ums and apologize so much, just to kind of mask it and pad it a little. But I'm so fucking careful about what I say in class! I can't believe someone still thinks it's rambling.

As you can probably imagine, I spend most of my time in class feeling incredibly stupid. And then, sometimes, it just hits me, when some jargony English major says, "Why are you so sure the speaker of this poem is a woman?" when the poem is about being pregnant--I'm actually smarter than some of them. It's just the way I talk. I remember when I realized last year, in my Aeneid class, that my professor's look of bafflement didn't mean my translation was actually bad. He was just knocked off balance by The Veil.

I'm sort of joking calling it The Veil, of course; it's not a way of hiding any more than any other way of talking is. It's kind of stupid that my inability to adjust to the way people are supposed to talk in different settings, and the fact that I think of content more slowly and tend to have to cover for that by any means necessary, are seen as being some sort of disguise. Other people talk differently in class and out of class, and even in different classes. Isn't that more of a disguise? If you're going to call anyone's way of being a disguise, I mean.

Just like I'm stuck sounding stupid, there are presumably ASD people who are stuck sounding smart. Actually, no presumably about it, I just met one. He can do pretty much everything I can't, and I'm sort of jealous, but on the other hand he probably doesn't get half as much free stuff as I do. In non-academic contexts, the way I talk can read as very charming.

reasons to have bangs/reading

I've never liked having eyebrows and today I decided to stop having them. There are kids at Oberlin who draw lines on their faces or grow half a beard, and I figure I won't be here forever. Maybe I won't even be able to have green hair when I'm older (that would be a tragedy but I'm slo-o-o-owly trying to adjust myself to the idea that maybe super-blond would look okay; red is definitely a trial and there's no way I'd ever go back to not dyeing it at all).

(I deleted the pictures because I think they're creepy.)

I'm also trying to give up makeup for Lent (to some extent). Although I just realized that drawing on eyebrows is going to take WAY more time. Argh.

Speaking of people who don't have eyebrows, I was thinking of writing about reading people. I mean, trying to figure out if people are Like Me (which means, I guess, ASD people, intellectually disabled people, and some people with mental illnesses, or people who are just sort of on the border of having something, but actually don't--well, if you know what I mean, you know what I mean, and if you don't, you don't). This is an activity that can be comforting and a lot of fun.

In Edinburgh there was this girl in my building who was also from America--an international student, a first year. I only talked to her a few times, but if you asked her a question, she would answer it and then say, "You?" I guess this is another thing that you either know what I mean or don't, but I wish I had tried to be friends with her. I wish I could have said, I know you plan out what you say before you say it, but you don't have to do that with me.

There is a way of being serious and concerned and planning things out, and if you pass to normal people, they fucking ride you about it. Don't be so serious! Don't get so upset! Why do you have to know exactly what's going to happen? Just be yourself! Just do whatever you feel like doing! Whatever I'm concentrating on is never as hard as hiding my look of concentration to calm the norms. Planning out what to say is not so bad, is even fun, but delivering it so it doesn't sound like a script is just--they frequently catch you, and if it's something that's supposed to be spontaneous, well--

What I'm trying to say is that even though I think Evelyn Evelyn is kind of a stupid idea, I wasn't that upset about it. I mean, I completely respected that other people were and admired them for saying so. However, then I saw this video (start at 2:20--however, a really good example is 4:10):



This video makes me feel upset because Amanda Palmer is using body language that isn't hers. I'm not into Jason Webley's music, so I don't know what his body language is usually like, but she doesn't move like that or make those kind of facial expressions or hold herself that way. There are lots of people who do have intense/scared/stiff/otherwise nonstandard body language who are musicians--like Jeff Mangum, Laura Marling, and Daniel Johnston. It's awesome that their fans like the way they move or don't move (in fact I'm a fan of all three of them, and love watching videos of them). But I've been a fan of AFP for years and her body language and expressions in that video are super fake.

It just kind of hurts my feelings as a person who actually moves/looks like that. Is that a weird thing to say?

ETA: I think when I shaved my eyebrows I was possibly in some kind of shutdown that I might still be in. I think I've been in it for like two days. The Longest Shutdown sounds like the title of a children's book or maybe something for the Guinness Book of World Records.

I think I might need to talk to someone, I mean I started doing this blog as a way of being absent because I didn't want to feel things that might make me hurt myself. For the past two months I've been returning, and that is an odd experience, like your blood coming back into your hands after you've been cold outside. I don't know. It would explain why I can't seem to get anything done, if there's actually something seriously wrong with me. When I think about the UK I almost can't remember being there. I think of time visually and it's just, August, Christmas. I know I was there but I can't see it.

Language as maintenance

So basically, I think there are ways of being with people that don't involve exchanging strings of words, or are about something besides or more than words. I was thinking about this because I was trying to explain to myself in my head, in an objective way, why flapping your hands is not the same as masturbating in public or asking repetitive questions. Which means explaining exactly why it is that those other two things are invasive.

Hopefully we know why masturbating in public is invasive--you should only have sex with yourself or other people who have agreed to have sex with you; if you masturbate in public you are, on a mild level, performing a nonconsensual sexual act. The reason asking repetitive questions is invasive is because you are forcing another person to apply themselves to the task of trying to answer you, for no reason, because you don't actually stand to gain anything from their answer. It's like asking someone to tie your shoe when you can tie your own shoe. Of course I'm not trying to say that a person who does either of those things is intentionally trying to be invasive; especially if they're disabled or ill, they might not understand the context of what they're doing. I'm just saying that those two acts are objectively hurtful to other people, and I don't see how flapping your hands is in the same league.

But then, while I was thinking about repetitive questions, I immediately thought of situations where it seems perfectly okay to ask repetitive questions. A long time ago I made a post where I said that when I was really overloaded, I talked to my friend "in a way that was like holding hands." What I meant by this is that what I said didn't have a lot of content, and I was just saying it as a way of being with my friend. Also, last spring when I was volunteering a lot with intellectually disabled people, I developed a habit of just saying "hi" to people a lot in the middle of conversations. This is because I had started saying "hi" a lot to people with intellectual disabilities who couldn't speak or process language that well. When we kept saying "hi," looking at each other, and smiling, we were maintaining a connection over a period of time in a different way than the conventional method, exchanging information, which doesn't work for everyone.

So in this case, the word "hi" is not really a greeting, just maintenance, and it becomes something more/other than language. Another example of language as maintenance is something that A.T. did a lot in the last few days of the year. She made a cover for a book with an embarrassing title she was reading, and I wrote on the cover, "Dragon Love: A Romance Novel About Dragons." Over the next few days, when we were sitting quietly on a bus, or walking around, A.T. would sing in an odd, spooky-sounding melody, "dra-gon-love." I would laugh when she did this, so I guess you could call it an inside joke, but I feel like she wasn't doing it because she thought, "This will make Amanda laugh," but was just saying it without thinking of it, the way you would scratch your nose or put your hand in your pocket. Of course, I could be wrong, and I hesitate to say this because A.T. isn't a very affectionate person, but I have a theory that when she was singing "dra-gon-love," it was like how other people might hold hands with their friend or say something conventionally affectionate. It was a way of saying "even though we're not talking I'm still here with you."

really charming things people have said to me on the Internet

"What are your interests? My interests are California and Harry Potter...sorry, I'm being weird, I guess I'm at the lower-functioning end of the Asperger's spectrum." (I think this was somewhat sincere, that's why it's charming)

"I haven't emailed you because all I can think about is how you'll just answer me and tell me what a dick I am."

"No one really cares about the world or about people." (This is charming because it's a Francisco Hernandez reference!)

A set of pictures of rooms crammed with food, books, clothes, and possibly garbage, labeled "Life skills"

"I thought I should email you before I email my family because you'll get more nervous if I don't email you and think that I'm mad." (same person as #2--how cute is her theory of mind?)

I could say more but I don't want this list to become a Toddopoly, and I think that's likely to happen. Basically, I just feel really lucky that ASD people sometimes get in contact with me because of YouTube, because I don't know any ASD people in real life (well, one person seems ASD, but isn't diagnosed and doesn't describe herself that way). It's nice to watch people become scared in the same way that I am scared, and be careful in the same way that I'm careful.

My friend who seems ASD (who I haven't seen in eight months, but who is on campus, so I'll probably see her within the next few days) is a girl named Jane who always skips around and apologizes for things. One of my favorite things with Jane is that sometimes we both just sort of run off at the mouth using all our apology and carefulness scripts, and then we both rush to reassure each other. "I'm sorry I'm being so weird"/"No I'm sorry I'm being weird"/"But you're not being weird, it's my fault, I'm the one being weird"/"No you're not being weird, I think you're great"/"No, you're wrong, actually you're the one who's great, I think you confused the pronouns you were trying to use." It's like a puppet show after a while; the words aren't really language, just a game. A really safe game full of history.

I am not an especially good friend, by any means, but my friendship can have a systematic quality, and I don't think that's such a bad thing because I'm starting to realize how nice it is in others.

11:36 AM

I missed my flight which was really terrifying because I didn't have my key or my sheets or anything, so I couldn't go back and live in my room for a few more days which is what it was seeming like I'd have to do. I love the Reason for the season but I sure hate the season. But with help from my parents and people at the airport it has come to pass that I'm going through Dublin and then turning up home only seven hours later than was planned. I'm not upset about this at all; actually I'm sort of glad because I love airports so much.

Maybe when I'm older I could work in an airport kiosk. I think people are nicer at airports, in fact I think there's a romantic comedy focused on exactly this phenomenon, but more than that, I just think it would be nice to be in an airport. Also, my relationship with all the customers would stay at the same level so I could act the same all the time because they'd always be different people.

I know I shouldn't act so jolly when this is a major fuckup. I basically left my room something like two hours later than I should have, and didn't realize this would be a problem, which isn't appropriate behavior for a 21-year-old and isn't even appropriate behavior for whatever my developmental age is. As I said in my first entry, my developmental age has been increasing mega quick in the past few years, and it's a point of pride that I always have a supremely easy time flying to Oberlin and can fit all of my stuff into a backpack so I don't have to check anything. So I'm really disappointed in myself. It's true that I asked about a million strangers for help today and if I hadn't I'd be in much more of a fuckup than I am now. Actually, I would never have even made it to the airport in the first place because I had trouble finding the bus.

I love being able to ask people for help. It's like a superpower. Also, I found out the best script: "Is it possible for--" It sounds sort of arcane which calms me down and it also makes you sound like less of an asshole.

There is the most wonderful little boy flying to Dublin today. The whole time he was waiting to check in he walked in circles, feeling the walls and pillars and ropes, and fitting his feet into the patterns on the floor. Then he sat down and hugged his knees and looked at everything for a while. He's very sweet with his mom but I've barely heard him talk and he must be at least seven or eight. He also has earbuds in his ears which is a common thing to do when you are traveling with a kid who has sensory issues. But whether he is a kwd or a kw/od, I think he's awesome as can be and I want to be just like him.

Now it's time to watch some more Crime and Punishment in Suburbia. So far, Vincent Kartheiser has given himself a tattoo while wearing giant owl glasses. Probably the most fantastic movie I've ever seen.

(presently: actually home. Xander couldn't remember who I was and wouldn't kiss me but then I kissed his nose and he totally got it. His mirror neurons are off the hook. Crime and Punishment in Suburbia was like holy shit amazing and so are my parents and my dogs and the New World.

)

Manners

I just finished my Latin exam. Having done the math, I think it's pretty likely that I just scraped by. Literally, like I got one point above failing. Does this matter? Not at all.

It's time for another edition of Kartheiser is Magic, but in this case, it's a segue into an actual disability-related topic! Hooray!

[In response to the statement that he seems younger in real life than he does on the show] "I actually have been through a lot more in my life than Pete has. I think Pete is less of a man than me. The difference in the visual is that Pete had a finishing-school upbringing. I'm an actor, so part of my job is looking like a bum. So I think manners and age are being confused here."

YES VINCENT KARTHEISER! THANKS FOR BEING SO FUCKING COOL ALL THE TIME! Manners are not age. And the fact that people think they are smacks me in the face about a million times a day.

I sometimes have very Pollyanna-ish reactions to things. This is both because of ordinary ASD sensitivity to details, and because of the nature of my scripting. As I think I've previously said, it used to be very hard for me to do things like buy candy bars, ask for directions, or, well, anything. I felt overwhelmed by the task because I knew that as well as the stated task there were lots of other secret implied tasks about my tone of voice and the way my face should be looking. (If you think this isn't true, you're just stupid. Go to a sandwich shop and use nonstandard tone and body language and have trouble processing and making decisions while you are ordering your sandwich. The people at the sandwich stop will be super happy to point out, verbally or with body language, everything that's wrong with what you're doing. Or, if you have a very serious, tense expression on your face because you're trying to make decisions fast to not inconvenience them, they'll ask if you're okay.)

Anyway, everything was such a big challenge that it was hard to do anything, so I figured out the solution of acting really excited and optimistic and young and innocent. This is a very simple persona that lends itself to easy scripting. When you are buying a candy bar you just think to yourself how excited you are about the candy bar and focus on expressing that. When you are asking for directions you try to be cute and make a joke out of how young you are. Suddenly, in the space of like a year, the amount of things I was able to do increased a huge amount.

Previously, I had found it very hard to talk in class or ask teachers for help because I didn't know how to talk or look. Now, I approached teachers with a persona of being young and adorably baffled--a persona that was partly sincere, but could also be used to humorous effect if the teacher was the joking kind. I had an easier time talking in class because if I had trouble understanding something, or if I was expressing a lot of ideas and my script broke or wasn't properly set up, I could giggle and make a joke out of it. Once I started scripting, my grades, and my comfort with my teachers and classmates, improved enormously.

I am a bit more academically impaired at Oberlin than I was in high school. Even though Oberlin is a very small and laid-back school, it is not comparable to my high school which had 50 kids in a grade and had a high population of students with learning disabilities. Besides, there's just the fact that for most of the time I was in high school, I was legally a child, and even after my eighteenth birthday I might as well have been. It seemed more natural for my teachers to have a motherly or fatherly relationship to me. In college, I am expected to some extent to behave like an adult, and if I come to a professor's office hours acting ditzy and young, they might think I am annoying, unmotivated, or manipulative. So at Oberlin, I have to be doing pretty badly to go see a professor, unless they have a very casual, accepting attitude (like most of the classics professors). The only professor I am actually close to in an admissions brochure sort of way, like I've been to her house, used to forget to come to class sometimes--so she's someone I can feel completely safe with. All in all, I still do a lot better than was expected of me.

Sometimes people say that I am immature or use words like "crazy," "insane," "annoying," and "obnoxious" to describe the way I am. Also, when they notice that I am apologizing a lot or putting a lot of concentration into figuring out how to do something right, they tell me not to be so nervous, to have more confidence, or not to be so insecure. All these words imply that I am an unfinished person. Either I am unpleasant or annoying, and I should improve myself so I won't bother people, or I am incomplete on a deeper level--inappropriately anxious and self-hating. If I stop being a person who can be described with all these words, then I will be an adult.

While I have been in the UK, I have not made very much use of the Pollyanna persona. I feel that I don't know the culture well enough to know if it will be appropriate or if it will be annoying. When I am buying things, I mostly make use of something I taught myself to do at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, where people are always staring at my hair:



If there is any downtime while I'm waiting for my sandwich to be made or my groceries to be rung up, I simply mentally remove myself from the situation and try to stim out on some band posters or ceiling lights. That way no one thinks about me at all. The only problem is when the other person tries to be friendly. Niyatee was trying to explain to me that when the lady at the burrito store guesses what kind of burrito I'm going to order, she isn't trying to a)mess up my script and b)make me feel guilty about my repetitive eating habits. I still feel scared about going to the burrito store, though.

I don't ask my professors for help because it might be annoying and as a result I got very behind in two of my classes and will be very close to failing them if I don't fail completely.

I haven't struck anyone as crazy, obnoxious, immature, adorable, otherworldly, or any of the other things I am called, because I barely talk to people at all and when I do I am nervous and blank. I say what I'm required to say and then feel it wasn't good enough.

It is hard for me to go anywhere or do anything because I don't feel I have a system for how.

When I go home, when I pick up a lot of jangly exclamations and interrupt myself in the middle of my sentences, when I raise my hand and preface my question with, "I know this is really stupid, and maybe I shouldn't even be in this class if I don't know this, but," when I stick out my hand towards people to say hello to them, when I skid around and call everyone "kids" and act incredibly delighted about yogurt-covered pretzels at the student cafe, when I eat snow and lie down on the floor because I have kyphosis and accidentally start stimmily running across campus because I feel hopeful and happy coming out of my ExCo on a cold starry night, I will be a person who is accomplished and capable in a lot of ways. I will be more of an adult when I am a quirkfest than I am now that I am paralyzed by a desire to be unseen. To be inoffensive. I feel calcified here, but with worse manners I can really make something of myself.

I am at the University of Edinburgh Library Cafe and unfortunately I have two mince pies sitting sadly on a plate in front of me. This is what I get for not scripting.

I'm a fake person.

Niyatee asked me another question. I like how I'm setting her up as this strawnormalperson, who exists to ask me questions so I can shed light on things in an interesting manner, like I'm a classical philosopher. For the record, she is much smarter than I am. And the reason she was asking me questions is that she's a neurology student and she works with people who have PTSD, and I think she was thinking about whether stimming is similar to the thought processes of non-stimmers who are under stress, whether it's a physical manifestation of something other people do invisibly. But for some reason, we/I got off track enough that I ended up telling her about this time when my friend told me about something really awful that had happened to her.

My immediate reaction was of a piece with my standard social interaction persona, which is, as I might have mentioned, a poor imitation of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. My voice is kind of soft and little-girl-ish, I am solicitous to the point of sometimes going too far, I interject, I tease. Not that I teased my friend when she told me what had happened, but I reacted the way my MPDG persona would react. I said, "Oh no! That's terrible! I'm so sorry!" in this breathy little voice. But then I thought: what the fuck am I doing? What she just told me is heartbreaking and infuriating; she deserves more than a shitty, cutesy performance of sympathy. So as she continued to tell me about her experience, I went and sat next to her at the table where she was sitting, and I looked at my hands, and I spoke the way God intended--in soft gray lines.

When I said this, Niyatee said some disclaimers about this being a personal question and she wouldn't be judgmental--but how do I actually feel when a person's in pain? Really. Because I had been saying, I guess normal people sense what other people are feeling, and feel what they feel, right? Is that how it is? Implying that I don't sense what other people are feeling. But when she asked me how I feel when someone's in pain, I felt myself starting to respond, "Oh no! That's terrible!"

Which isn't a feeling. And I just said it's an act.

What do I feel, actually? Maybe I feel interested. When I was a kid, I got bullied a lot and other kids didn't seem to respond to my expressions of pain, and they didn't seem to respond to logic. So I kind of believed other people didn't have an inner life. Even now, before I get to know people I tend to have a sense that they're different from me, inside. I can only be attracted to girls after I've seen them in a visible bad mood; I need physical evidence that they have feelings too. My immediate reaction to someone telling me that they're depressed or upset is that I feel closer to them, and more interested in them, maybe. Does that make me a bad person? I'm not really sure.

But I'm a behaviorist, maybe, when it comes to myself--I tend to think it doesn't matter what I feel. I might as well feel "Oh no! That's terrible!" Does it matter how I feel if I respond correctly? Not that I respond that well. My MPDG persona is a mess, I know I act like a silly little kid, but I couldn't talk in class or make friends without it. I need someone to be. "Be yourself" is the stupidest thing you could say to me, because I don't really remember who I am, and if I do find out, it won't matter, because who I am is not someone who can function in the outside world.

Something I know is that I'm not really a girl. I'm not saying I'm repressing transgenderism, because I don't think I really have a gender identity on a deep level like most people do. But when I was a kid, I definitely remember that my brain felt like a boy's brain. There was just something about it. When I read about how men and women don't get along with each other, I always thought the man's point of view made sense. I remember being scared someone would find out--that when I woke up in the morning, when I thought the word "me," when I wrote, the first image that came was always, I'm a man. There was something wrong with me.

But when I grew up in my mid-to-late teens, and started trying to work out ways to be functional, the idea of being male (and the fact that I thought of myself as maybe trans, and read about transmen, and wanted to look like a boy) was something I just didn't have room for anymore. I didn't have the spoons to transition, that was for sure. And besides, the MPDG box was the only one I could even halfway fit, and like the name says, it's a girl's box. And I wouldn't pass, anyway. I'm sure not tough enough. So now I'm a girl. Okay. Who the hell cares what I feel?

See, I am definitely not a classical philosopher because I'm not shedding very much light. I'm out to prove I've got nothing to prove, like Napoleon Dynamite. And what can I demand from the world that would make this stuff any different? What would the world have had to be like for me to not have had to learn all these fake reactions? And besides, it really is an innate good for me to notice when someone burns their hand on the stove and how to help them. Can I separate that from the emotional performance that I learned as part of that reaction? Also, I know that I have to batter my way discreetly through tiredness and executive dysfunction and shoes that are too tight and questions I don't understand, and can I really separate that from the injuries and illnesses that have either gone untreated or been diagnosed quite a while after they first appeared, because I didn't make enough of a fuss?

I feel really fucking sorry for myself, I know. But I just feel like I'm not really anyone, and that gets to me from time to time.

Two wonderful things

I went into a store thinking of buying a sandwich. The previous customer left, and the woman at the counter looked at me. I said "Sorry," indicating that I hadn't yet decided what kind of sandwich I wanted, and had to spend more time reading the menu on the wall. She said, "That's all right, I'm here until half-past four." (It was 9:30.) After I looked a while longer she said, "We have everything here if you want to look at it--it's a bit confusing to look at everything in black and white. We have small and large rolls." Then I said what kind of roll I would like, and had already thought enough to be able to keep up with her questions about what kinds of things I would like on the sandwich.

Later, I was activating my debit card on the Royal Bank of Scotland website. After I had entered my activation code, I was asked to enter a password and a PIN number. Under that was an item designated as being "for customers with special needs." It gave me the option of choosing not to have forms time out, in case it took me an unusually long time to finish them.

Taking a longer time to do things is not that big a deal unless people make it one.