Oh, my old roommate is friends with my new roommate
and he walked in the front door unexpectedly
and he assaulted my sister once and did worse to another friend
and I'm having a panic attack and I can't believe that HE'S IN MY FUCKING HOME
ah jeez
Hey uh. Nope! Kick that dude the fuck out
That's your place too and you have a right to veto people
ha ha ha like I can cause a confrontation right now I will just wait until he leaves and ensure he is never invited back
Oh absolutely handle it how you feel best doing it. I suck at confrontation a BUNCH so I wouldn't be able to talk the talk on that one. I had to kick ONE person out before because he was being a shit nozzle and put his hands on my sister in law in a way I took as threatening and he HAD to go. But it helps that I am/was married to my roommate and we were on the same page there.
Oh, my old roommate is friends with my new roommate
and he walked in the front door unexpectedly
and he assaulted my sister once and did worse to another friend
and I'm having a panic attack and I can't believe that HE'S IN MY FUCKING HOME
ah jeez
Hey uh. Nope! Kick that dude the fuck out
That's your place too and you have a right to veto people
ha ha ha like I can cause a confrontation right now I will just wait until he leaves and ensure he is never invited back
Oh absolutely handle it how you feel best doing it. I suck at confrontation a BUNCH so I wouldn't be able to talk the talk on that one. I had to kick ONE person out before because he was being a shit nozzle and put his hands on my sister in law in a way I took as threatening and he HAD to go. But it helps that I am/was married to my roommate and we were on the same page there.
If he was causing a problem or talking to me it would be different. Dude came over for a game night at the behest of my roomie, causing a scene would be way worse and lead to potentially shitty consequences.
I just hid in my room and eventually fell asleep. Panicking for three hours straight before falling asleep later than I wanted and waking up at 5 AM means I'm not in the best state this morning
Oh, my old roommate is friends with my new roommate
and he walked in the front door unexpectedly
and he assaulted my sister once and did worse to another friend
and I'm having a panic attack and I can't believe that HE'S IN MY FUCKING HOME
ah jeez
Hey uh. Nope! Kick that dude the fuck out
That's your place too and you have a right to veto people
ha ha ha like I can cause a confrontation right now I will just wait until he leaves and ensure he is never invited back
Oh absolutely handle it how you feel best doing it. I suck at confrontation a BUNCH so I wouldn't be able to talk the talk on that one. I had to kick ONE person out before because he was being a shit nozzle and put his hands on my sister in law in a way I took as threatening and he HAD to go. But it helps that I am/was married to my roommate and we were on the same page there.
If he was causing a problem or talking to me it would be different. Dude came over for a game night at the behest of my roomie, causing a scene would be way worse and lead to potentially shitty consequences.
I just hid in my room and eventually fell asleep. Panicking for three hours straight before falling asleep later than I wanted and waking up at 5 AM means I'm not in the best state this morning
I did imagine you double dropkicking a dude as soon as the door opened
it's a pretty funny mental image, if that helps
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Oh, my old roommate is friends with my new roommate
and he walked in the front door unexpectedly
and he assaulted my sister once and did worse to another friend
and I'm having a panic attack and I can't believe that HE'S IN MY FUCKING HOME
ah jeez
Hey uh. Nope! Kick that dude the fuck out
That's your place too and you have a right to veto people
ha ha ha like I can cause a confrontation right now I will just wait until he leaves and ensure he is never invited back
Oh absolutely handle it how you feel best doing it. I suck at confrontation a BUNCH so I wouldn't be able to talk the talk on that one. I had to kick ONE person out before because he was being a shit nozzle and put his hands on my sister in law in a way I took as threatening and he HAD to go. But it helps that I am/was married to my roommate and we were on the same page there.
If he was causing a problem or talking to me it would be different. Dude came over for a game night at the behest of my roomie, causing a scene would be way worse and lead to potentially shitty consequences.
I just hid in my room and eventually fell asleep. Panicking for three hours straight before falling asleep later than I wanted and waking up at 5 AM means I'm not in the best state this morning
I did imagine you double dropkicking a dude as soon as the door opened
it's a pretty funny mental image, if that helps
Fuck I wish. He came in while I was gaming in the living room, I heard his laugh, froze up, had to deal with my roomie introducing us(I responded with the iciest "oh, we've met" ever,) finished my game, scooped up Rinzler, and hid in my bedroom.
Not a great night.
Was doing some writing yesterday and puzzled over a question that still eludes me and will likely continue to do so for the rest of my existence: what is love?
Gonna spoiler things but winding aromantic asexual thoughts ahead.
Not in the sense of defining it though. I've seen enough media to understand what love IS, but not how it FEELS. I've never felt that emotion, romantically that is, in regards to someone else. The closest analogue would be my cat, long passed, though that was more just caring for her well-being. I didn't cry when she died, though I came close when my dad asked if I wanted her cremated like the other two had been. I was sad but not depressed, and the feeling didn't last long. I missed her but it wasn't like an indelible scar that needed time to heal. She died about two years after I left home for San Diego and I remember at the time being thankful I hadn't been there to see her waste away as another of our cats had, slowly losing reason and health until it was time to make that final decision to ease her suffering.
That's the closest analogue to feeling love for someone else I have, and even then that's a platonic love. It's not a romantic, intimate love for which I have nothing even close to comparable. It's not an emotion I've felt or had symptoms I can think on and conclude that it must be love. Not even so much as a crush or infatuation. I care for some people, might lay down my life for them if need be, but that's again platonic.
Even the reason why I think about the question makes it evident that I'll likely never actually understand what love feels like. I don't think about it because I want to feel it for myself, I'm perfectly happy being aromantic and wouldn't change that, but because I want to be able to write it into my characters in a way that makes it believable for the reader. I may be an aromantic asexual but not all of the characters in my writing are. They feel love, they have crushes, they have healthy and intimate relationships with others, some of them even, I daresay, have sex with each other. In theory anyway. I can mimic to an extent by making use of other emotions. I understand loyalty, I understand sorrow, I understand protectiveness, etc. I've felt these emotions and can infuse them into my writing to approximate "love," but it feels hollow and insincere. Mechanical, not fluid, a show of puppets instead of the living, breathing characters I keep trying to strive for. A pale imitation of something that has been described as the reason for living, the source of happiness, the most powerful force in existence that can drive extreme benevolence and absolute evil, a healing salve that can draw someone back from the brink and a terrible spear that can utterly destroy a person's desire to live, etc.
There's really no easy answer to the question of what love is for me. I'll keep thinking about it, keep questioning it, keep turning it around and around in my hands like a particularly intriguing interlocking puzzle. But I doubt I'll ever solve it. Maybe the answer is to accept that, to cut the strings of those puppets and stop trying to mimic something that has never and will never come naturally. To not write about love, to have stories that are either completely platonic or where the romance is behind a curtain where it's talked about but never seen. It might make my voice more pronounced, focusing on where I'm strong rather than deliberately presenting where I'm weak for the sole purpose of following the same path "everyone" has walked. These are options. I'll likely have to pick one if I want to actually advance my writing eventually.
In the meanwhile I'll keep mulling over the question, if only to satisfy that academic curiosity of wanting to know the answer for the sake of the knowledge itself, regardless of its applications. Apologies if this isn't quite what the thread is for.
Was doing some writing yesterday and puzzled over a question that still eludes me and will likely continue to do so for the rest of my existence: what is love?
Gonna spoiler things but winding aromantic asexual thoughts ahead.
Not in the sense of defining it though. I've seen enough media to understand what love IS, but not how it FEELS. I've never felt that emotion, romantically that is, in regards to someone else. The closest analogue would be my cat, long passed, though that was more just caring for her well-being. I didn't cry when she died, though I came close when my dad asked if I wanted her cremated like the other two had been. I was sad but not depressed, and the feeling didn't last long. I missed her but it wasn't like an indelible scar that needed time to heal. She died about two years after I left home for San Diego and I remember at the time being thankful I hadn't been there to see her waste away as another of our cats had, slowly losing reason and health until it was time to make that final decision to ease her suffering.
That's the closest analogue to feeling love for someone else I have, and even then that's a platonic love. It's not a romantic, intimate love for which I have nothing even close to comparable. It's not an emotion I've felt or had symptoms I can think on and conclude that it must be love. Not even so much as a crush or infatuation. I care for some people, might lay down my life for them if need be, but that's again platonic.
Even the reason why I think about the question makes it evident that I'll likely never actually understand what love feels like. I don't think about it because I want to feel it for myself, I'm perfectly happy being aromantic and wouldn't change that, but because I want to be able to write it into my characters in a way that makes it believable for the reader. I may be an aromantic asexual but not all of the characters in my writing are. They feel love, they have crushes, they have healthy and intimate relationships with others, some of them even, I daresay, have sex with each other. In theory anyway. I can mimic to an extent by making use of other emotions. I understand loyalty, I understand sorrow, I understand protectiveness, etc. I've felt these emotions and can infuse them into my writing to approximate "love," but it feels hollow and insincere. Mechanical, not fluid, a show of puppets instead of the living, breathing characters I keep trying to strive for. A pale imitation of something that has been described as the reason for living, the source of happiness, the most powerful force in existence that can drive extreme benevolence and absolute evil, a healing salve that can draw someone back from the brink and a terrible spear that can utterly destroy a person's desire to live, etc.
There's really no easy answer to the question of what love is for me. I'll keep thinking about it, keep questioning it, keep turning it around and around in my hands like a particularly intriguing interlocking puzzle. But I doubt I'll ever solve it. Maybe the answer is to accept that, to cut the strings of those puppets and stop trying to mimic something that has never and will never come naturally. To not write about love, to have stories that are either completely platonic or where the romance is behind a curtain where it's talked about but never seen. It might make my voice more pronounced, focusing on where I'm strong rather than deliberately presenting where I'm weak for the sole purpose of following the same path "everyone" has walked. These are options. I'll likely have to pick one if I want to actually advance my writing eventually.
In the meanwhile I'll keep mulling over the question, if only to satisfy that academic curiosity of wanting to know the answer for the sake of the knowledge itself, regardless of its applications. Apologies if this isn't quite what the thread is for.
It's hard to define the way it feels. I'm sure it varies a lot, depending on how strong a person feels that way towards someone.
For me it's a sort of light warmth, like a really pleasant euphoria. A really intense feeling of happiness, I suppose.
After my Facebook hiatus earlier this year I've found myself using it a lot less and being able to resist getting into arguments better. The extra free time (which I still squander) is nice.
Remind me never to get into twitter arguments please. Especially with assholes.
I've started prioritizing certain types of people when it comes to having arguments online.
I had to do this after coming to the conclusion that no amount of effort or intellect will be enough for someone who is completely unwilling or unable to be reasonable. Dealing with unreasonable people is literally a trigger for me. so I can't put up with it for very long before I start to feel physically awful, and potentially ruin my mood for hours.
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HyperBalladA ball of vivid colour and barely contained emotionsSydney. Lost in time and space.Registered Userregular
Was doing some writing yesterday and puzzled over a question that still eludes me and will likely continue to do so for the rest of my existence: what is love?
Gonna spoiler things but winding aromantic asexual thoughts ahead.
Not in the sense of defining it though. I've seen enough media to understand what love IS, but not how it FEELS. I've never felt that emotion, romantically that is, in regards to someone else. The closest analogue would be my cat, long passed, though that was more just caring for her well-being. I didn't cry when she died, though I came close when my dad asked if I wanted her cremated like the other two had been. I was sad but not depressed, and the feeling didn't last long. I missed her but it wasn't like an indelible scar that needed time to heal. She died about two years after I left home for San Diego and I remember at the time being thankful I hadn't been there to see her waste away as another of our cats had, slowly losing reason and health until it was time to make that final decision to ease her suffering.
That's the closest analogue to feeling love for someone else I have, and even then that's a platonic love. It's not a romantic, intimate love for which I have nothing even close to comparable. It's not an emotion I've felt or had symptoms I can think on and conclude that it must be love. Not even so much as a crush or infatuation. I care for some people, might lay down my life for them if need be, but that's again platonic.
Even the reason why I think about the question makes it evident that I'll likely never actually understand what love feels like. I don't think about it because I want to feel it for myself, I'm perfectly happy being aromantic and wouldn't change that, but because I want to be able to write it into my characters in a way that makes it believable for the reader. I may be an aromantic asexual but not all of the characters in my writing are. They feel love, they have crushes, they have healthy and intimate relationships with others, some of them even, I daresay, have sex with each other. In theory anyway. I can mimic to an extent by making use of other emotions. I understand loyalty, I understand sorrow, I understand protectiveness, etc. I've felt these emotions and can infuse them into my writing to approximate "love," but it feels hollow and insincere. Mechanical, not fluid, a show of puppets instead of the living, breathing characters I keep trying to strive for. A pale imitation of something that has been described as the reason for living, the source of happiness, the most powerful force in existence that can drive extreme benevolence and absolute evil, a healing salve that can draw someone back from the brink and a terrible spear that can utterly destroy a person's desire to live, etc.
There's really no easy answer to the question of what love is for me. I'll keep thinking about it, keep questioning it, keep turning it around and around in my hands like a particularly intriguing interlocking puzzle. But I doubt I'll ever solve it. Maybe the answer is to accept that, to cut the strings of those puppets and stop trying to mimic something that has never and will never come naturally. To not write about love, to have stories that are either completely platonic or where the romance is behind a curtain where it's talked about but never seen. It might make my voice more pronounced, focusing on where I'm strong rather than deliberately presenting where I'm weak for the sole purpose of following the same path "everyone" has walked. These are options. I'll likely have to pick one if I want to actually advance my writing eventually.
In the meanwhile I'll keep mulling over the question, if only to satisfy that academic curiosity of wanting to know the answer for the sake of the knowledge itself, regardless of its applications. Apologies if this isn't quite what the thread is for.
Love? Love hurts. It the sweetest, most painful drug, and it hurts. Attraction is infectious, like a drug. That person invades your very thoughts, and leaves their mark in golden shiny handprints all over your interior spaces. These handprints don’t leave, by the way. Your senses change. Colours are brighter. Smells and tastes are different. You want to realign yourself with that person, and you want, nay, crave, for that person to feel the same for you. It is absolute blissful agony.
Love is a reduced, less intense, more realistic version of attraction. It manifests as knowing the other well, all their flaws, and that still being quite alright with you. Like when your cat sticks it’s butt in your face or your dog follows you into the loo. a knowing smirk of “yeah that would be right” when they’re tired and grumpy from mixing demos all night and have forgotten to eat. Love is being worried that they’ll get home safe because the trains don’t run after 12:30. Not because you’re jealous they’re sleeping with someone else, rather that you know it’s not fun for them and you want them to be ok. Love is willing to be there and clean up their puke when they have food poisoning. Love is not leaving when it gets tough.
Broken hearts are also love. Love with no-where to go. It bubbles up as an aching hollow in your chest, a headache that just won’t go away, a clouding of your senses. It bubbles up as 2am tears and numbing yourself because it hurts like nothing else. They’re gone. The centre, your root, your anchor has gone.
Well yes, race and sexuality and gender are all different things. That doesn't mean it isn't useful to find commonalities of minority experience.
that doesn't mean you should equivocate those things, either
I learned this only today and this bit of history makes a LOT of sense
and we have plenty of examples of people using more "generalized" arguments of queerness, womanhood, etc. to speak over people of color
there's damn good reason to use different terms for different kinds of things
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HyperBalladA ball of vivid colour and barely contained emotionsSydney. Lost in time and space.Registered Userregular
edited April 2018
I suppose I’ll throw this in here. Fuck it. I know I’ll be analysed and be judged and I’ll probably self-flagellate myself for it later. Or I’ll delete it. I simultaneously care too much and am too numb to care. So consider this a scream into the void. I need to vomit this all up somewhere because it’s festered away. No. I’m not ok. I’m not asking for advice, or sympathy cos I don’t believe I deserve it. And no. I’m not asking for attention, if that’s what you see this as. Perhaps it’s a pointless exercise. Again, I just don’t know any more.
Before anyone asks. Yes. I’m seeing someone.
I’m damaged goods, more so than people expect. I’m a walking contradiction. And these aspects of me don’t sit nicely. Relatively intelligent but no drive and on minimum wage. Autistic Spectrum but wordy and illogical, stupidly overly emotional and relatively outgoing. Bisexual and Christian. Privileged background and on government handouts. Big heart who will forgive and give freely to others but will reserve none for herself who’s also a lone wolf. It’s hard work. It’s exhausting. I put in a lot of effort to keep up my facade of “normal” but it’s never enough. And it tears me down. And I burn out. And one demon that likes to gather and play in these ashes is my depression. And it’s having a fucking field day.
“But now the looking-glass caused more unhappiness than ever, for some of the fragments were not so large as a grain of sand, and they flew about the world into every country. When one of these tiny atoms flew into a person’s eye, it stuck there unknown to him, and from that moment he saw everything through a distorted medium, or could see only the worst side of what he looked at, for even the smallest fragment retained the same power which had belonged to the whole mirror. Some few persons even got a fragment of the looking-glass in their hearts, and this was very terrible, for their hearts became cold like a lump of ice.” (Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Queen)
Depression pervades everything and taints everything it touches. It saps you dry. It turns you into a cynical selfish husk of your former self. It compounds things. Part of my countless many challenges is that I misread everything. I have to translate everything in my head. Tone, intent, context, and especially the person saying it. I’ve lost loved ones by not understanding that they actually meant well. And mistakes with all this happened at work and my manager screamed at me. And depression compounds this. Compliments ring hollow. Criticism of any nature is a personal attack. And I can’t break out of that mindset. And all this hurts. It really hurts. And it’s not fun when your brain dangles thoughts of: “You know she doesn’t care one bit about you anymore right? You’re nothing to her, save for contempt. She’ll never forgive you.” and such gems as “save for the family, who would actually, honestly, look for you if you went, really. Who would miss you” (Now that I’ve said that, don’t all say in unison that you would. It’s only that i’ve vocalised it that you’d notice) and “He’s wrong to love you.”
It’s the autistic stuffups that hit me hardest and it’s hard because I should innately knowthis stuff. I should know how to read. I do know how to read! My goodreads is full! But reading people is entirely different from reading words on a page, and hell, the two are at times one and the same. People fob it off as “everyone learns these lessons.” “Everyone makes mistakes” and “We’re all still learning!” But... they’re not. They have all this social stuff down pat. They’re professional corporate business people who network and know how to detect tone and can master written passive aggression and me? I should be able to do that, right? I shouldn’t still be living with my parents at 26. There’s a couple here on the forums I’m deliberately not naming. I’ve admired them for years. They do such great things, and while one of them has publicly stated their autism diagnosis, and while I know they’ve dealt with a lot, they have their shit more or less together. They have the life I wish I could have. I should be more like them. But they, like others, are people I’ve done wrong. And nothing I do will ever change that. I wish I wasn’t me. I wish it all didn’t hurt so much. I wish I had the ability not to care and to like myself. But I don’t. I truly don’t.
Am I ok? No. Am I safe? No. But am I going to be safe? As much as I possibly can be, even if it kills me.
Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
I can’t speak to a lot of that, but I can for a couple points
not good at words, will keep it to points
- reading people is really hard, especially for those of us on the spectrum. There’s no good trick I can put forward to help, just that it gets better if you take every opportunity you can to observe how others do it. This sounds obvious to me, and it probably is, but this is a lot of how I’ve managed, so far. I’m still not great at reading people or the room, but certainly better than I used to be.
- There’s no shame in living with your parents. I’m 38, and I live with mine.
As far as interacting with people; The truth is, autistic people aren't incapable of picking up on social cues or body language. Yes, there is a lot we don't naturally pick up, but those things we don't pick up on work both ways, relatively speaking.
Autistic folks suck at picking up on cues from allistic people. But the reverse is also true. The problem, in my opinion, isn't that autistic people don't pick up on these things. If you take two folks on the spectrum, they're going ot have much less trouble understanding and reading each other. The problem is that we're not very good at ALLISTIC social cues. It's effectively a different language.
Unfortunately, allistic people are the vast majority. So, in order to be able to meaningfully interact with allistic people, you have to become bilingual. So to speak. If allistic people were the minority, they'd be the ones having to adapt to how we do things.
As for me, I learned how to be around allistic people through trial and error. I was pretty terrible at interacting with people, 10 years ago or more. I just asked for input, and did my best to be aware of myself as much as I could manage without being too stressed out. It's a slow and tedious learning process, and it's never really over with. But after years of working at it, I actually started to develop some reliable instincts for this stuff and became a lot more confident. It was took a whole lot of baby steps to get there.
Beyond that, HB, I will say this; it's okay to be flawed. You don't owe anyone an apology for having mental problems or being less capable than someone else.
That's just yet another instance of depression twisting your self image around on you.
It's one of a lot of things that I began to see more clearly after I started taking anti-depressants. They're not a cure (there is no cure for depression) but it helps you to see yourself more objectively and be less hard on yourself all the time.
Also, I'm 35 and living with my Mom. Living with family is extremely common for folks on the spectrum.
As is not learning to drive, apparently. Neither me or Amara have a licence, nor do a lot of adults I've met who are on the spectrum.
In general, folks on the spectrum tend to be more comfortable not taking the lead and hanging back more. That's probably why I'm very comfortable playing the healer in online games.
Also, my anxiety goes off on the DUMBEST FUCKING THINGS.
The topic that Dubh brought up with that tweet had my heartrate up and got me scared as hell. Just because it made me realize that I might have to change how I approach various topics relating to inequality. I was, without hyperbole, on the verge of an anxiety attack over this subject.
Unexpected change scares the living shit out of me. lol
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
I’m getting so tired of genderthoughts. I don’t know what did it but they’ve been stronger than ever for the last two weeks or so.
I know what I should do but it’s scary and difficult for me to buy female coded clothing and accessories. I have friends but, like, I’m afraid of asking them for help. It’s a tough step to take.
Erin The RedThe Name's Erin! Woman, Podcaster, Dungeon Master, IT nerd, Parent, Trans. AMABaton Rouge, LARegistered Userregular
Gonna hit you up on Twitter, but yeah. I don't know those struggles, and I don't know the intimate details of your pains. But there are people here who give a crap about you, and people who would notice and who would be upset if you were gone.
I’m getting so tired of genderthoughts. I don’t know what did it but they’ve been stronger than ever for the last two weeks or so.
I know what I should do but it’s scary and difficult for me to buy female coded clothing and accessories. I have friends but, like, I’m afraid of asking them for help. It’s a tough step to take.
And, like, what happens next is also terrifying.
I know what to do but it’s scary.
I definitely ordered stuff online long before I had the courage to buy it in person. And don't feel bad about ordering something you're not sure will fit (I felt guilty about that at first) - it's just part of the reality of women's clothing for everyone.
I’m getting so tired of genderthoughts. I don’t know what did it but they’ve been stronger than ever for the last two weeks or so.
I know what I should do but it’s scary and difficult for me to buy female coded clothing and accessories. I have friends but, like, I’m afraid of asking them for help. It’s a tough step to take.
And, like, what happens next is also terrifying.
I know what to do but it’s scary.
I definitely ordered stuff online long before I had the courage to buy it in person. And don't feel bad about ordering something you're not sure will fit (I felt guilty about that at first) - it's just part of the reality of women's clothing for everyone.
This x like 10 years. Find the required and do the needful. Most stuff comes in plain packaging.
I’m getting so tired of genderthoughts. I don’t know what did it but they’ve been stronger than ever for the last two weeks or so.
I know what I should do but it’s scary and difficult for me to buy female coded clothing and accessories. I have friends but, like, I’m afraid of asking them for help. It’s a tough step to take.
And, like, what happens next is also terrifying.
I know what to do but it’s scary.
Is it the purchasing or the wearing that's difficult.
Because as someone with very recent experience in this, online clothes shopping is a godsend for experimentation. If Amazon's available where you're at, they're the most inconspicuous packaging imagineable and you can find incredibly cheap stuff (which is also good when you're unsure of preferences and style). If Amazon's not an option for you, most online boutiques have mens, womens and gender neutral stuff so the packaging still isn't gonna be super conspicuous.
If wearing stuff is an issue (privacy issues or whatever), that's a bit tougher and might be worth biting the bullet on finding a local friend to confide in.
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ha ha ha like I can cause a confrontation right now I will just wait until he leaves and ensure he is never invited back
http://glumshoe.tumblr.com/post/173081158644
Oh absolutely handle it how you feel best doing it. I suck at confrontation a BUNCH so I wouldn't be able to talk the talk on that one. I had to kick ONE person out before because he was being a shit nozzle and put his hands on my sister in law in a way I took as threatening and he HAD to go. But it helps that I am/was married to my roommate and we were on the same page there.
http://petitetimidgay.tumblr.com/post/173091153787/
Granted, I don't recognize most of the names.
If he was causing a problem or talking to me it would be different. Dude came over for a game night at the behest of my roomie, causing a scene would be way worse and lead to potentially shitty consequences.
I just hid in my room and eventually fell asleep. Panicking for three hours straight before falling asleep later than I wanted and waking up at 5 AM means I'm not in the best state this morning
I did imagine you double dropkicking a dude as soon as the door opened
it's a pretty funny mental image, if that helps
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Fuck I wish. He came in while I was gaming in the living room, I heard his laugh, froze up, had to deal with my roomie introducing us(I responded with the iciest "oh, we've met" ever,) finished my game, scooped up Rinzler, and hid in my bedroom.
Not a great night.
I don't even know who this guy is and I hope he gets hit by a fucking car
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This thread Keith is great and precious. Sorry for anyone who may have been confused!
Gonna spoiler things but winding aromantic asexual thoughts ahead.
That's the closest analogue to feeling love for someone else I have, and even then that's a platonic love. It's not a romantic, intimate love for which I have nothing even close to comparable. It's not an emotion I've felt or had symptoms I can think on and conclude that it must be love. Not even so much as a crush or infatuation. I care for some people, might lay down my life for them if need be, but that's again platonic.
Even the reason why I think about the question makes it evident that I'll likely never actually understand what love feels like. I don't think about it because I want to feel it for myself, I'm perfectly happy being aromantic and wouldn't change that, but because I want to be able to write it into my characters in a way that makes it believable for the reader. I may be an aromantic asexual but not all of the characters in my writing are. They feel love, they have crushes, they have healthy and intimate relationships with others, some of them even, I daresay, have sex with each other. In theory anyway. I can mimic to an extent by making use of other emotions. I understand loyalty, I understand sorrow, I understand protectiveness, etc. I've felt these emotions and can infuse them into my writing to approximate "love," but it feels hollow and insincere. Mechanical, not fluid, a show of puppets instead of the living, breathing characters I keep trying to strive for. A pale imitation of something that has been described as the reason for living, the source of happiness, the most powerful force in existence that can drive extreme benevolence and absolute evil, a healing salve that can draw someone back from the brink and a terrible spear that can utterly destroy a person's desire to live, etc.
There's really no easy answer to the question of what love is for me. I'll keep thinking about it, keep questioning it, keep turning it around and around in my hands like a particularly intriguing interlocking puzzle. But I doubt I'll ever solve it. Maybe the answer is to accept that, to cut the strings of those puppets and stop trying to mimic something that has never and will never come naturally. To not write about love, to have stories that are either completely platonic or where the romance is behind a curtain where it's talked about but never seen. It might make my voice more pronounced, focusing on where I'm strong rather than deliberately presenting where I'm weak for the sole purpose of following the same path "everyone" has walked. These are options. I'll likely have to pick one if I want to actually advance my writing eventually.
In the meanwhile I'll keep mulling over the question, if only to satisfy that academic curiosity of wanting to know the answer for the sake of the knowledge itself, regardless of its applications. Apologies if this isn't quite what the thread is for.
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It's hard to define the way it feels. I'm sure it varies a lot, depending on how strong a person feels that way towards someone.
For me it's a sort of light warmth, like a really pleasant euphoria. A really intense feeling of happiness, I suppose.
YOOOOOO
He's still pretty active, just not in this thread very much.
I lurk the comics threads and see him there a lot.
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Yeah. Just stay on Facebook and argue with everybody like me.
I've started prioritizing certain types of people when it comes to having arguments online.
I had to do this after coming to the conclusion that no amount of effort or intellect will be enough for someone who is completely unwilling or unable to be reasonable. Dealing with unreasonable people is literally a trigger for me. so I can't put up with it for very long before I start to feel physically awful, and potentially ruin my mood for hours.
Love? Love hurts. It the sweetest, most painful drug, and it hurts. Attraction is infectious, like a drug. That person invades your very thoughts, and leaves their mark in golden shiny handprints all over your interior spaces. These handprints don’t leave, by the way. Your senses change. Colours are brighter. Smells and tastes are different. You want to realign yourself with that person, and you want, nay, crave, for that person to feel the same for you. It is absolute blissful agony.
Love is a reduced, less intense, more realistic version of attraction. It manifests as knowing the other well, all their flaws, and that still being quite alright with you. Like when your cat sticks it’s butt in your face or your dog follows you into the loo. a knowing smirk of “yeah that would be right” when they’re tired and grumpy from mixing demos all night and have forgotten to eat. Love is being worried that they’ll get home safe because the trains don’t run after 12:30. Not because you’re jealous they’re sleeping with someone else, rather that you know it’s not fun for them and you want them to be ok. Love is willing to be there and clean up their puke when they have food poisoning. Love is not leaving when it gets tough.
Broken hearts are also love. Love with no-where to go. It bubbles up as an aching hollow in your chest, a headache that just won’t go away, a clouding of your senses. It bubbles up as 2am tears and numbing yourself because it hurts like nothing else. They’re gone. The centre, your root, your anchor has gone.
Love hurts.
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hey, so I didn't know the factoid presented by the person tweeting this
and, also, this meme illustrates a topic of discussion from before
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that doesn't mean you should equivocate those things, either
I learned this only today and this bit of history makes a LOT of sense
and we have plenty of examples of people using more "generalized" arguments of queerness, womanhood, etc. to speak over people of color
there's damn good reason to use different terms for different kinds of things
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Before anyone asks. Yes. I’m seeing someone.
I’m damaged goods, more so than people expect. I’m a walking contradiction. And these aspects of me don’t sit nicely. Relatively intelligent but no drive and on minimum wage. Autistic Spectrum but wordy and illogical, stupidly overly emotional and relatively outgoing. Bisexual and Christian. Privileged background and on government handouts. Big heart who will forgive and give freely to others but will reserve none for herself who’s also a lone wolf. It’s hard work. It’s exhausting. I put in a lot of effort to keep up my facade of “normal” but it’s never enough. And it tears me down. And I burn out. And one demon that likes to gather and play in these ashes is my depression. And it’s having a fucking field day.
Depression pervades everything and taints everything it touches. It saps you dry. It turns you into a cynical selfish husk of your former self. It compounds things. Part of my countless many challenges is that I misread everything. I have to translate everything in my head. Tone, intent, context, and especially the person saying it. I’ve lost loved ones by not understanding that they actually meant well. And mistakes with all this happened at work and my manager screamed at me. And depression compounds this. Compliments ring hollow. Criticism of any nature is a personal attack. And I can’t break out of that mindset. And all this hurts. It really hurts. And it’s not fun when your brain dangles thoughts of: “You know she doesn’t care one bit about you anymore right? You’re nothing to her, save for contempt. She’ll never forgive you.” and such gems as “save for the family, who would actually, honestly, look for you if you went, really. Who would miss you” (Now that I’ve said that, don’t all say in unison that you would. It’s only that i’ve vocalised it that you’d notice) and “He’s wrong to love you.”
It’s the autistic stuffups that hit me hardest and it’s hard because I should innately knowthis stuff. I should know how to read. I do know how to read! My goodreads is full! But reading people is entirely different from reading words on a page, and hell, the two are at times one and the same. People fob it off as “everyone learns these lessons.” “Everyone makes mistakes” and “We’re all still learning!” But... they’re not. They have all this social stuff down pat. They’re professional corporate business people who network and know how to detect tone and can master written passive aggression and me? I should be able to do that, right? I shouldn’t still be living with my parents at 26. There’s a couple here on the forums I’m deliberately not naming. I’ve admired them for years. They do such great things, and while one of them has publicly stated their autism diagnosis, and while I know they’ve dealt with a lot, they have their shit more or less together. They have the life I wish I could have. I should be more like them. But they, like others, are people I’ve done wrong. And nothing I do will ever change that. I wish I wasn’t me. I wish it all didn’t hurt so much. I wish I had the ability not to care and to like myself. But I don’t. I truly don’t.
Am I ok? No. Am I safe? No. But am I going to be safe? As much as I possibly can be, even if it kills me.
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- reading people is really hard, especially for those of us on the spectrum. There’s no good trick I can put forward to help, just that it gets better if you take every opportunity you can to observe how others do it. This sounds obvious to me, and it probably is, but this is a lot of how I’ve managed, so far. I’m still not great at reading people or the room, but certainly better than I used to be.
- There’s no shame in living with your parents. I’m 38, and I live with mine.
Please take care of yourself
Autistic folks suck at picking up on cues from allistic people. But the reverse is also true. The problem, in my opinion, isn't that autistic people don't pick up on these things. If you take two folks on the spectrum, they're going ot have much less trouble understanding and reading each other. The problem is that we're not very good at ALLISTIC social cues. It's effectively a different language.
Unfortunately, allistic people are the vast majority. So, in order to be able to meaningfully interact with allistic people, you have to become bilingual. So to speak. If allistic people were the minority, they'd be the ones having to adapt to how we do things.
As for me, I learned how to be around allistic people through trial and error. I was pretty terrible at interacting with people, 10 years ago or more. I just asked for input, and did my best to be aware of myself as much as I could manage without being too stressed out. It's a slow and tedious learning process, and it's never really over with. But after years of working at it, I actually started to develop some reliable instincts for this stuff and became a lot more confident. It was took a whole lot of baby steps to get there.
Beyond that, HB, I will say this; it's okay to be flawed. You don't owe anyone an apology for having mental problems or being less capable than someone else.
That's just yet another instance of depression twisting your self image around on you.
It's one of a lot of things that I began to see more clearly after I started taking anti-depressants. They're not a cure (there is no cure for depression) but it helps you to see yourself more objectively and be less hard on yourself all the time.
Also, I'm 35 and living with my Mom. Living with family is extremely common for folks on the spectrum.
As is not learning to drive, apparently. Neither me or Amara have a licence, nor do a lot of adults I've met who are on the spectrum.
In general, folks on the spectrum tend to be more comfortable not taking the lead and hanging back more. That's probably why I'm very comfortable playing the healer in online games.
Also, my anxiety goes off on the DUMBEST FUCKING THINGS.
The topic that Dubh brought up with that tweet had my heartrate up and got me scared as hell. Just because it made me realize that I might have to change how I approach various topics relating to inequality. I was, without hyperbole, on the verge of an anxiety attack over this subject.
Unexpected change scares the living shit out of me. lol
I know what I should do but it’s scary and difficult for me to buy female coded clothing and accessories. I have friends but, like, I’m afraid of asking them for help. It’s a tough step to take.
And, like, what happens next is also terrifying.
I know what to do but it’s scary.
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I know because I am one.
Let me know if I can help. At all
But I'm sure your friends would be happy to help. That's what friends are for!
I definitely ordered stuff online long before I had the courage to buy it in person. And don't feel bad about ordering something you're not sure will fit (I felt guilty about that at first) - it's just part of the reality of women's clothing for everyone.
This x like 10 years. Find the required and do the needful. Most stuff comes in plain packaging.
Is it the purchasing or the wearing that's difficult.
Because as someone with very recent experience in this, online clothes shopping is a godsend for experimentation. If Amazon's available where you're at, they're the most inconspicuous packaging imagineable and you can find incredibly cheap stuff (which is also good when you're unsure of preferences and style). If Amazon's not an option for you, most online boutiques have mens, womens and gender neutral stuff so the packaging still isn't gonna be super conspicuous.
If wearing stuff is an issue (privacy issues or whatever), that's a bit tougher and might be worth biting the bullet on finding a local friend to confide in.