Unexpected...-ish
Or kind of one of those sad-trombone whooooomp whoooooooomp noises
Disclaimer: I love my child more than anything. I would and have sacrificed the world for her and I adore her to pieces. Also. I'm an introvert and I need a break.
Prologue: As you probably know by now, my allergy to the world makes it impossible to do much outside of my heavily filtered and hypoallergenic house. I can't travel. Most public spaces are a problem even with a mask. I can barely visit other people's houses without getting throat swelling and hives. The great outdoors isn't always much safer unless it's very cold and rainy outside. And when I do manage to go out for more than an hour or two, I'm usually wrecked for several days afterwards.
Lucky for me, I am a simple AuDHDer and can get by in a limited environment with enough stimulation (and the occasional redecorating binge).
The challenge is that I usually have waaaaay more than enough stimulation at home.
Because I have parental good news and bad news on that front.
The Good News: The child's wicked separation anxiety has largely improved. I can use the bathroom by myself again. I can take a good hour long walk without her noticing I'm gone.
Heck, I've even been able to go to several overly long medical appointments without her much noticing of late. So many appointments, in fact!
Which is, yes, kind of a sad way to populate your social calendar.
But hey, my PT loves my Pokemon shirts. And ain't gonna lie, it feels nice to have somebody kind of taking care of me in a weird (kinda painful) way.
The Bad News: That's mostly because she has taken up the couch area as her desmaine, with the computer and the big screen tv as her duchies. This dominates the main floor, making almost any other activity there impossible, and relegates me to fleeing upstairs when I hit a Kpop Demon Hunters singalong break on the headphones, or when I need to have a conversation or two with myself outloud.
I do technically have the bedroom, but that isn't really my space since it's more or less shared with every other member of the house, and it isn't set up for much more than sleeping. So it's a little claustrophobic.
It's an acknowledged issue.
Andrew has tried his darndest to lure her out with him...
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| Usually looks a bit like this |
Sadly this typically just entrenches a sort of demand avoidant barnacle-butt on the couch or bed.
Andrew and I thought maybe Her Majesty would be willing to take a trip down to California if she were promised theme park action. Her original demand was Disney World, but we bargained her down to Six Flags. Andrew spent solid months preparing, researching, and applying for disability passes so she wouldn't have to wait in line. He could write a detailed tome about how to optimize an AuDHD kids' trip to Six Flags and miss nary a brilliant idea! This shiznet is his love language. (Allan's seems to be cryptic text messages. Mine is hiding candy in strange places like luggage. We all have our thang.)
And it all seemed like we were riding a wave. But then. The time came to head to the airport and the panic set in. We talked to her personified anxiety (a dog named Betty). We showed off all our accomodations. We threatened and bribed. We blasted KPop Demon Hunters music in the car and had a family sing along. We managed to get her to the transfer train station for the airport. We rerouted to the airport. We wandered in circles from parking spot to relevant gate entrance, and eventually got to the security line. I spun some pokestops while attempting to keep breathing through the airport miasma.
And... Andrew went into the security line while Allan and I walked back to the car. (Me staggering through the beginnings of an allergy attack that would take a few hours and some rescue meds to get back out of)
Back to the car that was on the roof of the parking garage.
And, surprising nobody, also the car which I spent untold hours trying to find again in increasing levels of hysteria.
Apparently when I took a picture of our parking spot number earlier, the luggage was covering the actually relevant information so all I got in my "helpful" picture was a useless number that was repeated in every single row on that infinite hellscape of a parking roof! Thank goodness for the panic button on my keys.
Ironically by that point, I was the one quietly sobbing and muttering to myself, while Allan was completely cool and composed and reassuring me that we would eventually find it!
whoooooomp whooooooomp
So I guess I don't actually get to sit down and binge a random TV-MA show or continue to redecorate the house. Nor do I get to just freely wander around the house in various stages of undress muttering to myself and singing at the top of my lungs to my primo playlist! I guess it's just another weekend. But you get two blogs in a week so there's that!
And we damned well will be compromising on tv time, and watching The Acolyte together
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| Darth Bortles makes it all better |
Party time.
Excellent.
Also, damn, I'm so introverted out! And kind of angrily bored at the same time. Possibly because we're finishing up a fully asinine youtube before we get to sexy Sith bro..
(more restlessness than boredom!)
But hey. I suppose I had plenty of chores to do anyways. None of which I wanted to do.
I am pretty well back to almost-full function shoulder-wise. I have a pretty limited reach and can't really stick my arm behind my back with proficiency (so there goes my social life, I guess), but I can do most daily chores about as well as I ever could.
Which is either pathetically or brilliantly depending on the day.
Chores Galores!
Most days, Chores require an apt system more than brawn. With love to my double divergent executive dysfunction, my system needs to cycle every handful of months with an inevitable decline into chaos by the end of any given cycle.
Right now, I am using Finch. Finch is a to-do app with a cute bird that's called a birb. I get rainbow coins when I check off a list item and I can use coins to dress my birb and send vibes to my birb's friend birbs. Which is pretty sweet. And so far, fairly motivating. Except when I totally forget to open it and poor birb Athena never gets out of her pjs for the day! But even birbs need a break day!
I suspect I have about another month or two before I need to revamp it all. Because I've started letting chores slip, at this point. But for now! TWEET, everyone in the household is using it, which has a nice self-reinforcing cycle. When you hear somebody checking off an item, you kind of have to join in on the checking! Sheer unadulterated dopamine every time that little noise goes off!
And Then There's Hyperfocus...
But sometimes I don't need any kind of system at all. Sometimes, I run on sheer hyperdrive. Like when I'm feeling restive after months of being incapacitated so I suddenly start flexing my inner Merry Maid. I got new storage containers and boxed up a sheer ton of Allan's limbo-toys (things she doesn't want but can't get rid of). Then cleaned out the closet to fit them all in. Then cleaned a couple of drawers. Then cleaned out all the shelves and... it was work.
(Yes, I did so listening to the Kpop Demon Hunters Soundtrack... I mean obvi!)
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Before After
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I think it looks lovely. Enough to give me a little surge of pleasure anyways. The mess persists in most places of the house, but less stuff means lower density messes at least!
And I ain't gonna lie, I'm pretty much tapped out since then and just trying not to neglect my birb. So I'm sure I'll get some chores. And some walks. And... a lot of time kind of not exactly to myself.
And, well, I suppose I shall while away the time by writing some more. And writing means mulling. And... shield your eyes, because this is a bit lurid!
I suppose my last blog started some shreds of thinking that diverged from my main focus there, but which connect to it. I mentioned that a lot of my friends came from a dating to ex to bro pipeline, and that took its own direction.
I've thought a lot about my relationship with relationships. Often from the lens of being female in a world where certain rules codify men and women in specific ways.
And how my chronic illness and disability has impacted my sense of self.
And I've thought a lot about how my unwittingly masked AuDHD influenced my sense of self. But I haven't necessarily let them converge in a nice bloggy stew yet!
So shall we?
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| There were... hints... |
Late diagnosis is a double-edged sword. Would life had been better if I'd known earlier? Honestly, probably not as much as I want to believe, but also just not very possible anyways. It wasn't until Asperger's was added in the mid 1990's that I would have come under the autism umbrella. By then I was heavily masking in ways that practitioners didn't start to understand until well into the 2000s. It wasn't until 2013 that one could even be diagnosed with both ADHD and autism, and they have ways of complicating and obscuring each other. A lot of the time I focus on my autism, because I suppose it was the first thing I discovered. But ADHD often feels more relevant to my day-to-day struggles. And, I really do think that AuDHD is its own distinct neurotype.
Still, gentler words would have been nice. Because there are other words - disappointing, black sheep, weird, lazy, inconsistent, failure, too much and not enough, cowardly, over sensitive, undisciplined - that have always been there. And for me, will always be there in my self-talk.
And when you start with those words - when you see them everywhere you try to connect with other people: you start to feel pretty damned lonely.
Let's Talk about Sex, Femininity, and AuDHD.
Buckle up, baby.
I wouldn't necessarily say that I had "pretty privilege." I am not somebody I would have ever described as conventionally "pretty" - though everyone is pretty to somebody. By a conventional feminine standard though, I diverge: I can't apply makeup well to save my life, and even if I could, I would damned well scrape off half my skin away to get it off after a few hours. I can't use product in my hair, and even when I tried, I got too wrapped up in stimming with hand-in-hair until everything flattened out while also frizzing up anyways.
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| Though there are a few hours after it air dries from the shower... |
Not pretty-pretty in that very particular way, but I do think I've experienced something analogous to "pretty privilege" in my masking journey. If I'm not pretty-pretty, I'm (1) presentable, and (2) F-able.
Basically because I'm at generally presentable and figured out pretty quickly how to style myself as "non-threatening", my behavioral "off" has been generally approached as "acceptable." I was seen as more quirky than awkward once I solidly hit sexual maturity. And I leaned into that. Being ditzy made me both more attractive and lowered expectations that my jagged profile would have been able to keep up with otherwise. Oh, I'm smart? Well, yes, but don't expect me to perform consistently! Much better to hide that ball.
I think that made my life a lot easier in many ways. But not without complications. Because being accepted in that kind of sideways fashion can actually feel like a deeper rejection.
But let's talk f-able:
Throughout my fertile years, I have had a reasonably shapely figure. My features are within normal parameters. And I have never been particularly modest. I have this somewhat breezy carelessness (and aversion to restrictive costumery) that somehow translates to my clothes always being on the verge of falling off. I move in a "feminine" way. Add the non-threatening and sort of bubbly quirkiness. There's a lot more to it. But that's honestly probably enough for most.
Like a lot of autistic women, I landed in a lot of friendships with guys, partially because neurotypical female social nuances are too hard to keep up with, and partially because when a guy is even background level attracted to a woman, he gets all kinds more tolerant of weirdness.
That's if he doesn't fully fetishize the weird, because manic pixie dream girls have a certain momentary allure. I will cure your depression with my zany social ineptitude and sparkly sense of whimsy! But I will probably cause more depression by all my other issues, so have fun with that!
Unshockingly, that led to a lot of complicated relationships, because when you add emotional intimacy to even light sexual attraction, it's really hard to distinguish that combo from romantic feels. And sometimes that leads to everyone feeling taken advantage of. There's a lot of guilt and self-blame for how certain relationships played out.
For a good while, I consequently tended to fall for the guys who weren't sexually interested in me or who were otherwise unavailable. Their motives in caring about me weren't suspect, so it was easier to believe. Though sometimes somebody can both genuinely like you as you and develop feelings for you and that is wild. But when that doesn't work out, it's a whole different level of rejection. One that I fastidiously avoided for a long time, before realizing it's virtually impossible to do so, and trying simply makes everything feel harder.
Things changed in my mid-twenties. I stopped being friends with men as often and instead centered the sexual tension. I made more (undiagnosed neurodivergent) female friends where I could. And there were still bros here or there in my menagerie. But I mainly sought out intimacy through sexual connection, in the hopes that this would lead to an acceptance I was so starved for.
That didn't necessarily go as well as planned either. Because even enthusiastically consensual sexuality does not necessarily engender emotional intimacy. And even a little of both intimacies doesn't necessarily add up to romantic connection. In the end, I found myself f-able but maybe not lovable a little bit too often. To the point where I resented the former, but felt it was even more essential to being accepted.
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| But even then my makeup is uneven!! Ah well! |
For a good spell, I doubled down on being sexually appealing. Dancing was already a role to inhabit. I just extended that dialogue off the dance floor. As long as I was in character, it was a blast. I like play-acting, and I studied well. I had a natural knack for flirtation, but I also learned the flipping rules of seduction (fully lost to me now as a harried mom of a highly present child!). And I can enjoy a good game, so I did enjoy it. I knew how to hit that middle ground of suggestive and ambiguous in a just-so kind of way.
***
We about to go on a minor side quest here...
This is all amusing, because in all honesty I love the physical act, but I've come to loathe the copious heaps of bullshit around sex, and all the unspoken inching and ambiguity that goes towards getting into bed without ever saying "hey you wanna get into bed?"
I used to suppress this intense, internalized annoyance with potential partners who sent weak or ambiguous signals of interest. Some men send clear signals even without saying certain words. I'm not devoid of pattern recognition. But a lot of men... don't. I can't speak to what the internal ambivalence is, but even I can pick up on it existing. Body language communicates all kinds of conflicting things and I didn't say I can interpret that savvily. So, yes to unambiguous desire, but this sort of half-in-half-out thing that often goes into the dance of seduction is hard for me.
In lieu of some unspoken understanding, I would often just roll my eyes on the inside and be the proactive one, as much to force them to decide whether they did or did not want that (they did by that point - Schrodinger's lust).
But I didn't love it.
I used to think it was some kind of toxic femininity where I was brainwashed into wanting a "strong man".
But really it wasn't that.
What's that meme?
***Wait Wait... a scenario where your partner just tells you what they want from you and then you are supposed do it and if you fail to do what they want, they just tell you you're a bad girl, and then atonement happens immediately with a clear cause and effect connection!?! AND and and... if you're doing the right thing or you've gone through the thing to make up for not doing the right thing, then your partner takes care of you and tells you you're a "very good girl" and you just know without having to do any guess work that you did the right thing, and you don't have to live in this constant miasma of autistic uncertainty and flailing guestimation until somebody tells you that you let them down like months ago but you never got their voodoo nonverbals about all this? Because this whole time they just told you!!! (And you know other stuff probably...) Damn that's the dream!)***
Aaaaaanyways.
Yes, really consent-bending men are way more direct with what they want and that can feel like a relief. And oh yes upon yes: Very expressive men can be perfectly direct without words. But most men aren't - cuz society man! - and consent really does snap if it's bent too aggressively.
Typical seduction is a million little unspokens full of elaborate non-verbal cues and billions of crucial inflection points. I find it can be painfully delicate, sometimes more so once the onrush of hormones and neurochemical love-soup have settled into something more sustainable. I have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria as well as any of us, and a lot of my partners also have had RSD. In that combo, it's really easy to accidentally make somebody feel rejected when you meant to make them feel hot. Oh and with the ADHD, it's pretty easy for anyone to get distracted in the middle of any elaborate rituals. And that's not getting into the details of what the monolithic "sex" actually means to a given partner on a given day. Like some things I'm into and others not so much.
Once the initial dopamine wears down, it can just get tricky.
Imagine if I could just list out what my timeframe and level of athleticism in a given encounter!
In my personal autopia, I just want to be able to talk about sex like it's a video game or going on a run or any other zesty enterprise we share with our intimates.
Like this is absolutely sexy talk to me here:
Partner A: "hey, wanna do a little sex in a few?"
Partner B :"I'm bloated now from that lunch, but when that clears, def! Catch back in a couple hours?
Partner A: "Cool. Wanna play some Mario in the meantime?"
Partner B: "Sweet."
And so on.
Which, in case you're wondering, is an absolute turn off to every man known to this earth. Even the most hypersexual neurodivergent man needs a little smooth talk and fantasy, it seems. But ah well. We live and learn.
So, basically, to come back to that meme a bit, I admire the (generally neurodivergent: you're shocked) kink community for the whole clarity of consent and safewords and all that and I'm a fan of the "unsexy" ways that mega progressive consent culture peeps make sure that everyone has given clear consent on every last detail.
If you wanna get fancy, then a handwritten ink pen invitation reading "Your Presence is Requested... In the bedroom... In ten minutes" is acceptable.
I'm not a robot about this. I do have an extensive erotic flame that needs stoking. I like flirting. I like building up the tension. I just want it more like spread out across the background of a connection instead of busting it out in the critical moment. Definitely I want to feel that low simmer, before things get going, but don't bring out the luv when the horny hits and expect it to be anything other than a non-verbal cue that I'm begrudgingly but suspiciously familiar with. And that seems like a pretty universal statement from womankind, so I guess I'm girlier than I think.
**
Aaaaaaan we return to the main thread
Anyways, needless to say, it was a complex cycle. The more desirable I was, the less loveable I felt. To a point where sexual desire itself felt like a precursor to rejection. But also a necessity to acceptance. Which felt like kind of a conundrum there.
Never fear though! Magic Woobly things happened. I decided to be practical and look for "earnest" and "straightforward" (undiagnosed autistic?). I got married, had a kid and well... I'm just careening towards my crone years.
So now who cares if the general world thinks I'm f-able? I'm no longer the Maiden by a long shot, and who the heck has time even for fancily inscribed letters when you are your disabled child's primary caregiver?
Neurotically Ever After...
But also, you internalize things. And f-able still has some overlap with "acceptable" in my head, despite how complicated it was.
And now, as an old married who produced the requisite heir, it feels like I should have moved on, but between societal pressures and my own history, that doesn't always feel easy.
Here's The Thing...
From all I know, I'm pretty heterosexual. And sometimes I'm a bit bummed by that. Not because "I'm giving up on men" or anything like that. I actually rather like a lot of men (and some of them are not fictional characters even!).
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| Some aren't... Some... |
The real thing is this: with my health issues, I'm no longer quite as accessible within the heterosexual framework. Sexuality runs a wide and creative gamut in queer culture. In heterosexual haunts, it's a pretty obnoxiously simple formula. And to be blunt, I can't hold my end of the PIV bargain up anymore.
For ... reasons...
... medical reasons.
Not a libido issue, but a more essentially mechanical one. I feel I've found a decent level of creativity that ought to garner a few gold stars just for variety. I have put a lot more thought into intimacy than most heterosexual women.
But as a hetero woman, I feel like I'm intrinsically broken in a way that wouldn't be a deal if I were largely dating women or pegging my non-binary life mate. And... the phrase "too disabled to even have sex," has this way of echoing in the ether.
I've tried it all and most of it makes things worse. At the end of the day, MCAS is a bit of a jerk.
And it's an interesting mismatch between my generally high libido and the social world I inhabit.
For my own pleasure, this ain't no thang - in case anyone was wondering, 98% of women self-pleasure through clitoral stimulation, while fewer than half use any form of penetration, so it seems maybe a bit male driven that "heterosexual SEX!!!" is more based on what male masturbation is typically simulating. But that's a feminist rant for another era.
(Yeah yeah not all cishetmen. For sure. Boys get creative too sometimes. Partners can be supportive. But it's a general vibe and a lot of programming)
So, within myself, I'm good. But my role as pleasure-giver has altered. Which has both personal and societal baggage that rival my difficulties having a child without reproductive assistance.
To a certain extent, it has left me a feeling less aligned with my gender, in a way I wouldn't if I were clearly queer. Not enough that I would say I'm enby or agender, but there's a level of ambivalence there that I'm curious about. I still look, walk and quack like a lady. I'm beyond stereotypical in some ways. But more often I feel like I'm just a changeling imitating a woman because I don't really want the village throwing me on the fire here!
Like many women who have been masking their whole lives, I sometimes overexaggerate regular mannerisms and vocal tones. I talk in a bit more of a sing song; I swish, blush, and emote a bit more than typical. I've been known to fawn. To some extent I learned to "perform" my gender, much as a drag queen or a pageant girl does. And I was rewarded by being less judged for doing so. But that also adds a certain ambivalence. How much of the performance is external and how much is internal?
The thing about "masking" is that it's not that we put on an external face, while allowing what's underneath to develop in tandem. Masking is highly inaccurate as a metaphor. It's about systematically culling core aspects of your identity so they never develop; ignoring your sense of self so thoroughly you never quite get that back;, cultivating habits and mannerisms and patterns of thought based a the mismatch between your natural abilities and the world's expectations. Learning systems of "guessing" and "feigning" and "fawning" in order to navigate you innate lack of allistic intuition. To the point where that is all there is.
And you can "unmask" by trying on other ways of being. I think this is why people often "make it their whole identity" after diagnosis. You've been spending years pretending to be something other than you are, but what on earth are you? You have to try it all on and see what sticks. You have to go back to the basics to understand your basic operating system before you can even think about how it interacts with the rest of the world.
Some are going to fit better. You can give yourself permission to admit your discomfort, finally (and this is where I think unmasking is most valuable - recognizing that your discomfort is valid and is worth recognizing).You will change. You will evolve. And you will try on things that might suit better than previous coping mechanisms. But we are as much the sum of our reactions to others and the world as anything.
If there is a mask, it's one that's permanently fused to who I am. I am this feminine presentation, and I am the chronically ill person who can't perform certain aspects of my gender. I am socialized to cling to certain roles and rules that others feel more free to improvise with. This is what I am, whether I would have been or not. I have thoroughly internalized certain social rules and rituals. My habitual mirroring and deflection will never be fully eradicated. So I am what I am. And it isn't dysphoric in and of itself.
It's more that the mirror of the rest of the world feels like a fun mirror sometimes. Knowing that my internal experience is reflected all kinds of wonky out there in the real world!
Then again: What does it even mean to be female? I've always just assumed whatever I did was feminine by definition. Which seems like the definition of cisgender. But if I reach a point where I question everything and the rules I made for the gender no long apply... do I change the rules or change the identity?
What do I even feel like, other than a changeling?
I suppose I'm just beating many women to the punch here, as a generation contemplates the changes of perimenopause and what it means to no longer conform to certain gendered norms. Will it be freeing, I wonder? Will I understand the true centered nature of womanhood as I pass from Mother to Crone?
I hope so!
Because a lot of my self-worth has been uncomfortably tied to that to this point. And it can be exceptionally hard to even know how to accept love without sexual desire, even if sexual attraction can equally undermine the sense of safety to it. But I'd like to. And I want to.
But for now, now, what am I left with? My sparkling wit and playful demeanor? Oh dear!
Gonna have to be my Pokemon shirts I think!
At any rate! I think I've had my fill of background Youtube and will be stealing the television back from my sessile offspring now.
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