I swear I learned my comedic timing from you as a young lad back in... What the hell was it? 2007, 2009? Back in the youth of RU-vid. Absolutely fabulous. You know, I used to just be entertained by your antics, but now that I'm older and my lungs have absorbed a good bit of the dust from jogging along behind the stampede of society, I feel like I can understand the finer points of your elucidations. You've made it this far, so here's to another couple decades! Cheers.
I've been following your 'journey' for decades and think you're awesome. I guess that means I'm also on the periphery of normalcy and thank fuk for that. Stay true.
❤ thank you for saying this. I struggle so much with talking to people. I tend to just listen. Everyone compliments me on what an excellent listener I am, and it makes me laugh because if they could hear inside my head, they would understand that I probably hear less than the person barely paying attention, because I’m too focused on reading all of the nuances from nonverbal and vocal cues. Each conversation becomes a performance where I decide if I believe the other person or not.
I've found this is a really common thing. The only reason I was eventually diagnosed a having autism as a child is because my mother noticed I had some weird things in common with some of the incredibly disabled children she worked with; things like being able to understand written words better than vocalized words, and having pretty obvious styms. At least one psychiatrist diagnosed me as having major schizophrenic disorder at the age of 9. I'm to understand he'd lose his liscense for doing that today. But yeah. Hope you can work through your feelings without tearing yourself up too much.
There's a saying among those who live on the spectrum - If you've met one Autistic person, you've met one Autistic person. There are so many unique characteristics expressed among the thousands of neurodivergent in our communities, the combinations and differing intensities of those possible characteristics makes for the very unique people we are. Picture a 1000 channel Equaliser, with a thousand frequencies on each channel. That's what we're talking about here. The difficulties and obstacles that this world imposes are profound. The longer one lives without the benefit of knowing they are experiencing the world in a way unique to them alone, the more profound the consequences. I was diagnosed in my early 50's. I had a lifetime to review, every thing, every person, every attempt, every withdrawal, every incident, every decision, every sacrifice... EVERYTHING, now seen through the clarified lens of awareness, with a massive amount of learning to enable even a basic understanding of what I was looking at, let alone what I needed to do for myself. It took me a solid year of tears, a desperate search for tools and strategies, learning to identify subtle signals indicating the various fluid state of my brain, my thoughts and feelings, and develop early deployment of those various tools, and learning to be kind to myself, and allow those many, many fuck-ups to just be, even owning them, refusing to drown in regrets, losses, failures. And practicing, embracing truth, and knowledge. Truth is, the fuck ups lay with the misunderstandings, those being my own about myself, compounded by those of other individuals, the broader community, health agencies, welfare agencies, criminal agencies... I spent 52 years baffled by myself, the world and those I encountered in it. It's been about 2 years since the life I thought i knew disintegrated before my eyes, It's been the hardest, most painful and confronting I've ever been through, and I've been through plenty aside from all this shit. But I''ve learnt fucking tons, and I still am. I'm burnt out. That "burn out" was an important part of what lead to my diagnosis. As torturous as this process is and continues to be, it is also liberating, empowering, nurturing, healing, and loving... if you choose it to be. There are enough resources generated by the Autistic / ADHD community to provide the insight and support you need to put yourself back together. The fact that you got to where you are without anything at all is, in truth, astonishing, remember that Sean. Now you can arm yourself with the things YOU need to be the person YOU want to be, and that is gold. Some say "welcome to the tribe". I think that's limited (and sometimes clicky - watch out for that). I say we are, each and every one of us, a uniquely shining force unto our own. Here's to those cosmic spectrum surfers riding their own waves around the planet. This world would not have been the many brilliant things it is without us.
Here’s a stupid question that I’m sure I could just Google but I’d rather hear from you. Are autistic people capable of feeling the same emotions and depth of emotions as so-called “normal people” feel?
