I never know how to do titles, I don’t plan things. I just felt the need to read and write while I could.
Something I haven’t fully processed with the hurricane and the poverty and the lack of food… Well, I have no clue how to transition from this little intro.
So I took some tests and I have no idea how I feel about “self diagnosis” on this sort of neurodivergence or any really as my relation to mental health becomes more and more speculative to whether or not most therapists are out to help others or just stuff them into a box.
We all must cram into boxes. Some of that is just how humans think and process the world but a larger amount of the check list boxes and labels are ways to decide whether or not we deserve to live in accordance to this system. I’m struggling to break down ideas so I hope to get back to that before I lose momentum or I’m randomly interrupted by the cleaning person or Mom’s needs or Little Man’s needs.
Anyway – here are some “numbers” that represent shit for the normies and maybe myself and others like me too? I don’t even know how to relate to myself at the moment besides “Sabi, you fucking need food,” and “oh look you get to stay not dead from heat and hurricanes and shit for a few days…” That’s not the point, I’m sick of reiterating that I fucking deserve to live.
The numbers – in little pictures!
So I hide better than I ever even realized and I can’t figure out if it’s just because I’ve wanted to disappear longer than I can even fathom or if some part of me always felt I didn’t fit the norm. I felt alien even with my own family. I always hated camo…
Some more pictures!
According to this thingy “The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale–Revised (RAADS–R) is a self-report questionnaire designed to identify adult autistics who “escape diagnosis” due to a subclinical level presentation.” Keeping in mind that “clinical” anything in this system is rotten with ablism. I feel like this just means I wasn’t branded as “useless” for a good ol’ long time.
Last bit of pictures!
So if you’re wondering what led me to even go down this rabbit hole while I’m fighting to survive poverty and starving and lacking sleep and well a whole lot of shit – I’ll tell you!
There was this post on the MetaDemon by a black ND sociologist and educator named Asiatu Lawoyin about autistic burnout and for the first time I had the spoons to really find out what it even is or means.
Most things I see online from ND folx talking about autistism is really inaccessible to me. They talk in weird code that make me feel incredibly othered and I just assumed I couldn’t possibly be on the spectrum since the “relatable” and “quirky” millennial and gen z content about it was so alien to me. None of it makes sense, all of it is intangible, all of it seems like something I couldn’t ever connect as something I have “been through.”
I took the test (a few times) based on the DSM and much to my not surprise I didn’t fit into the little white amab spectrum box of ND but Asiatu’s post about burn out felt familiar as everytime I reach my limit I feel like a whole different human, less capable according to the colonializers, less willing to just glaze myself over and scrap my soul against the walls of the boxes thry want me to sit in…
Just more and more not okay for them.
I’ve always hidden to stay safe. If I was undetectable, unburdensome, stuffed deep inside a cave in my flesh then Mom wouldn’t get beaten to a pulp emotionally, physically, mentally. It meant I got food and got to keep shelter. As time went on that conditioning got worse but everything was different when my father left. Different how, I can’t really say except Mom was always safe but I still hid everywhere I was and I never cared for connection – humans felt weird, other animals felt like home, plants even felt more relatable.
My reflection was in the trees and in my pets, in a blue jay looking through the dirt for food outside my window, in catapillars crawling on human made structures being crushed by humans who found them disgusting. Other humans were kind sometimes but I never felt seen or heard or worth being seen and heard but solitude didn’t bother me. What did bother me were my needs and when they were unmet I didn’t know I was allowed to ask. So when it came to contemplating my “normal” social capacity I just thought well I’m artsy and weird and a hermit because I’m an introvert.
I was never one of the “cool kids” and I didn’t care to be. I thought that was just the normal range of introversion. Endless posts about “social norms” and “social rules” to connecting felt silly and just the effects of colonialism and patriarchy. What “pressure to fit in” from whom? I didn’t have friends. I called people friend to placate them. When I did form bonds in mid-high school they hurt me and neglected me and eventually abandoned me.
Other connections I made eventually feels artificial in retrospect because it seemed like the “Christian” thing to do and my innate desire to bring goodness and warmth into this world far removed from dogma made me feel it was the right thing to do. They hurt me too and many for much longer. When I left Christian circles I still wanted to help people, knowing them seemed like the right thing, that led to TAM and eventually exploring mental health and to this blog and SabiLewSounds in general.
So I’m probably autistic and it changes nothing except everything that I’ve ever struggled with my entire life that no one even heard or saw or cared about…
Sounds hurt!
Lights hurt!
Too much input hurts!
Every job I tried to keep to make sure my Mom and my bunny didn’t die hungry HURT!
There are many other things I can’t even process right now or maybe ever especially not alone…
I’m even more marginalized and even within those who want to center the marginalized I’m forgotten – watching the world burn on the edge just wishing someone cared enough to keep me able to do what I love, what makes me feel alive.
This system wants me dead. The “weirder” I get the more it wants me dead.
I want to help humans and other animals and plants and this earth. The only resources I have aren’t valued in this system even by other disabled people – I’m branded as “needy” and therefore useless yet not needy enough to be kept alive.
Everything hurts…
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