I Feel Like If Your MRI Doesn't Show Anything You Should Get A Refund

I know.

I know why your autistic child screams in public.

I know why they "do weird things".

I know why they repeat you.

I know why they repeat a word over and over.

I know why they dont like that food.

I know why they dont like hugs.

I know why they repeat themselves a lot.

I know why they are who they are. But you wont listen to me to help your child. Your child could thrive if you listened.

And why do I know all this? Because I'm an autistic adult.

Disabled people have to live somewhere poor people have to live somewhere you cant just exclude us from everywhere

The problem with thinking I'm 'recovered' is that every time I lie without thinking about it, I spiral into a panic that I'm slipping back into old habits or that maybe I was never better to begin with.

.

Okay.

People with low empathy are great.

Not despite it, or because of it, y'all are good ppl because you are people.

Ppl with lower empathy can be friendly, loving, caretakers.

I was thinking maybe I'd do a couple audio clips of me talking to kind of demonstrate what some speech disabilities can sound like, one of me just talking and one reciting a few scripted lines from work.

Is there anyone else who doesn't remember the "before my TBI" time? Like, you were super young (I was eighteen months) when the TBI happened, and there was never really a "before" for you, this has just always been your reality?

imagine if disabled people could scroll through our own goddamn tags without being bombarded with OCs and medfet. imagine.

Communicating about problems is hard for me.

I don't know why. If I'm having a problem like I'm sick or I'm having a migraine or I can't do something, I can't just tell people that verbally. It gets harder to make my thoughts come out of my mouth. I stutter and I pause and I use a lot of filler words and even then, usually I can't actually say what's wrong. If I can manage to say it, I can't... like, if I tell my manager that I can't do a specific task right now and she pushes back and says there's no one else to do it or that if I can't do it she'll send me home, I can't stick up for myself. The second I meet a tiny bit of resistance, I always fold. I always try and force myself to stick it through. Even if it's an issue where I really, really need to go home, I can't communicate that with my words.

Writing out what I need to say is better. I can write out my thoughts and feelings way easier and better than I can speak them. So I write down what I want to say. I explain the issue, and I explain why said issue is causing a problem and why I need some intervention here. But even then, actually communicating with that is hard. Because it's hard to just hand my manager a note. It feels weird. Like, socially, it feels like I thing I absolutely should not be doing. But say I manage to give her the note. Now I need to explain why I am handing her this note and we're back to the first problem. And if she chooses to push back, I still can't help but fold.

I don't know what it is. But it's hard to deal with

"Fun" little things I did as a pyromaniac growing up (with possibly a hint of pyrophilia)

-staring into every candle flame ever especially the tealights around the house

-staring directly into every fireplace, the automatic one my grandparents had, the fake one at Tim Hortons, the display fire at a lobby in what was probably an airport

-staring and watching the flames of campfires and bonfires, watching with a smile as marshmallows caught fire, paper and cardboard turned to ash, the wood for kindle cracked and popped as it turned to charcoal even watching while my eyes watered from the smoak

- playing with lighters once I taught myself how to use them and got over the hot sting of the metal on my thumb when it's been recently lit. Flicking it over and over till the sparks turn to a steady flame and doing it again when the flame dies out

- burned my hair clippings in my friends garage after she did my hair during high school

- burned old school papers I no longer needed

- accidentally burned a while in a plastic bag full of garbage and created a burnt mess in my room after trying to burn some receipts over the garbage so the ashes would fall into the bag but instead the stuff in the bag caught fire and yeah wasn't fun cleaning up

- stole from my mom's tealight stash and burned candle after candle

- left a candle burning too long and got wax everywhere

- enjoyed standing in the candle isle in stores and wishing I could have them all except the scented ones

- got happy when places my mom took me too had some sort of flame like a candle in the corner even if it was scented (cuz it was usually mild and okay enough for my sensory issues to handle, like lavender or vanilla)

- got sad or bored when other people blew out birthday candles

- waited for cars to catch fire while driving past a crash scene. They never did

- related way too hard to the meme with the girl and the burning house behind her

- thought burnt down buildings were aesthetically pleasing

- loved every fire scene in media especially loving stuff with explosions

- staring at YouTube videos for days about people burning stuff, blowing stuff up, watching lava, worked with hot metal etc

- got fixated on the tv whenever the fireplace channel was on

- got way to into science class when fire was involved and asked the teachers assistant to demonstrate again so I could sit with her and watch tirth up paper turn to ash

- proceeding to poke said ashes

- always trying to touch something after its been burned

- sometimes enjoying the smell of burnt food like popcorn or pancakes

- trying to see how long I could hold something that was on fire

- daydreamed about fire eating esp after mark and Ethan did it for unus anus that one time

- proceed to ask my mom for sparklers after my friends mom stood us on the back deck and and gave us all a bunch of sparklers to hold and watch fizzle for my friends birthday. Never got sparklers

- daydreamed about lighting the matches I had given my mom after finding them near our back yard. At least I was responsible and didn't let my little siblings have them when I found them.

- related far too deeply to this girl in a book of misfits who lit matches and put them out on her arm just to feel something.

- again with a girl who did something similar with a lighter on her thighs in some show my mom watched.

- loved every character ever with fire powers

- wished I was a firebender like Zuko and being afraid of the fact that I related to azula just as much as I did Zuko. But also thinking azuka was badass until I realized we're both just mentally ill.

- demanding fire resistance even if I didn't play a teifling in dnd

- dragons.

- saved and still save up things like leaves from my house plants just so I can burn them later

- purposefully trying anything to do with fire in my witchcraft, whatever involves fire and burning stuff I wanted to do

- made several attempts to start a fire without any idea how to make one

- tried lighting a fire in our firepit during winter, did not last

And much more

Pyromania is not just burning down a building one day, not just waking up one day and deciding to start fires on people's property or blow stuff up and become a terror and a menace.

Pyromania is much much more than staring at flames as a kid because its visually stimulating, and more than just being drawn to the fire element.

It's impulses, it's intrusive thoughts, it's the small things for satisfaction, it builds up, it typically starts during childhood development because we're all fucking mentally ill and likely very traumatized.

It's not quirky or cool, it gets scary.

It kept me from doing worse things, it saved me when my brain chemistry was so unbalanced I would have done a lot of regrettable things, it terrorises my mind with constant "what if x burned or you burned x" thoughts

And so on

It's never been a thing to take lightly