3:56pm June 23, 2014

➸ Things I wish my parents and teachers would have known

karalianne:

lichgem:

walkingsaladshooterfromheaven:

walkingsaladshooterfromheaven:

lichgem:

walkingsaladshooterfromheaven:

You cannot train people with impaired executive functioning to have normal executive functioning.

What we need is to be given the time, space, and tools to learn how to function *without* the executive…

Yes. This is why I have to live on my own, even though I’m barely scraping by, because every time I lived with people they would do that kind of shit to me and they would have so many issues with the way I did things and criticize me and cause me to have meltdowns and totally rob me of any ability to function as an adult.

I’m sorry. :c That’s been my experience, too. I don’t know why there is such a specific cultural code that makes people automatically react to me this way, but the last place I lived, the room and board, people IMMEDIATELY zeroed in on me and held me to way stricter standards than anyone else, under the conviction if they didn’t, I would just laze around and not do what I was supposed to. It’s happened everywhere I’ve been.

And then sometimes you’re living with a friend and they express “concern” that you’re doing something so much when that thing is the only thing really keeping you going (for me it was internet, particularly ASA on usenet, which had basically gotten me through my last suicidal spell and was a place I felt I belonged). And tell you that you don’t do the things you manage correctly when you clean, when you’re doing well to have realized the thing needed cleaning and made the cleaning happen.

I think it’s that roommate that makes me really reactive to criticisms of my housekeeping skills and how I spend my time, even though I know myself that I am doing my best and I’m so, so proud of what I’m accomplishing even though it’s not as much as someone else might get done.

Because I know it’s not due to something my parents said or did; my room was always a disaster and I was never, ever yelled at for it or shamed or made to feel horrible about my lack of ability to maintain a clean room.

Oh, I hate that. My family constantly tried to take the internet away from me, as though if I didn’t have it, I’d magically start doing other, more socially acceptable things. When in reality without it I’d just be more alone and have less to do. Without the internet I just end up staying in bed all day. It’s better for me to have something to do, even if it looks like ‘goofing off’ to other people, than to have nothing and just end up staring at the wall and sleeping all day. That’s not laziness, that’s ‘I literally cannot do anything else and you took away the only thing I could reliably do.’

I have triggers about this stuff too… I get really wary people are going to try to take away anything I enjoy.

I get really triggered when I read things online where people complain about roommates who “don’t do anything to give back” and “just spend time on the Internet all day” because that could be me. I could totally be those people. And they portray them as lazy ingrates who don’t deserve the help of being given a place to stay, and stuff like that… it makes me feel like hell, to read stuff like that, and I read stuff like that all the time. This goes double if the person is known to be disabled or autistic or something along those lines.

And I’ve had my own horrible roommate experiences myself.

I can’t stand when people think I’m not trying.

I can’t stand when people… sometimes I’ve had people try to teach me things. And I always go like “Seriously better people than you have tried this already, what makes you think you’re so good at this that you’ll conquer fucking autistic catatonia?”

But I wish I’d known.

I wish I’d known as a kid.

I wish my education had not gone towards trying to make me into something I wasn’t, but rather teaching me to do the best with what I was.

But that’s too much to ask, and it will forever be lost to me, I will never have had that experience.

Notes: