cybermule | Recent Entries

Some good things have happened with people. I should note that - it was before Christmas, and I forgot and got distracted and just didn't.

I've said before that I've started taking on cleaning jobs, and I managed to land one with a weird but pleasant geeky friend of a friend. They're a highly strung person, but in a lovely way really. We talked a good deal about this and that, and I basked in someone actually asking questions about me and taking an interest. I forgot that was how kind people interact. We get on well, we share interests, there may be more work in it that would satisfy my newly revived geeky creativity. And it was just nice. They were nice. I hope we become good friends, as well as it being a source of new income.

And I had a coffee date with someone who I'd promised one ages ago before all this shit happened. And we had lovely chats. That's going to be the limit of it, but again the feeling that I could expand and talk freely. Be enthusiastic rather than scared and second guess-y. I think I'm selling Cyberpunk 2077 to marginal gamers, and I should really get a commission. And that was it really, to feel like I could speak about something I really love and it be considered important and interesting.

I have started a short co-counselling group thing too. Part of it is a couple of sessions of personal coaching, and we discussed the marble jar theory of relationships. I covered it in another post - both people need to put a fairly equal number of marbles into a jar for a relationship to work. I've also labelled it myself as try to give just over 50% so that there's always something in the bank when the relationship hits bumps. The reasons that I put more than my share of marbles in the jar are complex, and I agreed they were therapy issues rather than coaching issues. But my commitment to my coach was to start a marble jar, run it for new relationships and for my relationship with myself. And use that as a good way of nipping issues in the bud before I'm exhausted into smashing the jar and walking off.

I like it :)

Book by Pete Walker, who was the first proponent of the Fawn Response (I think). Just notes before I take it back late to the library.

Right brain dissociation (commonly associated with the Freeze Response). Disconnect from abandonment pain, protect from risky social interaction. Dissociate into long bouts of sleep, shopping, gaming. May have or appear to have ADD. Project their imperfections onto others.

Left brain dissociation leans towards obsessing and ruminating.

The Look - in most cases is the facial expression that typically accompanies contempt. For me this is often someone doing passive aggressive shit. Eye rolling and sighing and stuff. Or there's this little expression I've labelled "posh pissy" where they just compress their face up to look down their nose. I think my mum probably did the first of those. I think people aren't conscious of it most of the time - very few people set out to be an arsehole. But it's always got them subconscious results so they keep using it. Noted as a common trigger of emotional flashbacks.

"For many survivors, self-medication is a matter of degree".

That's it. I'll probably either re-borrow the book or get my own copy. Which is the point of libraries.

8 days sober and I wander forward. It's not so bad.

I had to leave the situation to staunch the trauma. And now I've ripped off the pad that was holding it all in. I sleep badly, with shitty dreams about my ex. Over and over. Exhaustion makes wet tissues of my muscles and crystals of my bones.

My therapist is helping me explore PTSD treatment options.

I took the chemical brakes off my brain and the result is both good and bad. I have a ceaseless stream of creativity - the ideas flow again. But I lie down to terror, and stand up again to pace away the nights.

And to fix that I needed to stop self medicating the symptoms of the trauma I needed to get away from to fix. And then the years of self neglect that got me there. I think I trembled on the cusp of addiction. I hear all the addicts I've known say it's not proper unless you are in pain / go to rehab / hit rock bottom. And I am glad they had the luxury to do all that. I didn't, and here we are.

I no longer think there are nice addicts and nasty addicts, like I don't think there are nice narcissists and nasty ones. The two conditions are often correlated, actually. And I can see that the eternal avoidance of discomfort of each would feed and enhance the other. There are just overt ones, that do what they like and don't give a tiny shit. And there are covert ones, that neg and slide the responsibility away from them across the table.

They are sorry, and talk of excessive self blame. And how awful they are. But they never actual take responsibility for that. They have a wonderful insight for all their nasty little issues, but it stops there and when you push they dissolve into a puddle of poor me.

Which I have done, but again... don't have the luxury of living there. I can see the cusp of addiction and narcissism is when you think you're special and you're behaviour is magical. Someone else always made you do it. You didn't drink at a funeral / snort coke at your gran's birthday / smoke weed at the playground gate. So what you do is a bit of an exception that makes it ok.

It's not. Addiction is just cheating you and your loved ones of yourself.

We're well into New Year now, I'm back at work and the kid is back at school tomorrow. I fell off the wagon before Christmas - it was looming anyway as I don't think I really got the hang of going back to work in a sane and safe fashion after by chunk of sick leave. But triggers happened and I think I just finally proved a point to myself.

Things twisted a little on their axis way back at Samhain though. I remember going out and enjoying myself. People said I looked nice, laughed at my jokes, acted like I was interesting to be around. So I started to think that maybe I was. Good to be around. It was nice after a long diet of weak insincere compliments and chilly scoffing looks.

So, January detox it is. In the not putting shit in my body and drinking lots of water sense. That's honestly punishing enough for now. Surprisingly the water drinking is the biggest pain. We'll see how getting back to work goes. This is about getting back to work while maintaining my serenity :)

Christmas and New Year were pleasant enough, with a side serving of annoying triggered. But I am enjoying these few quiet days before the whirligig of school and work restart.

It's the first proper peace I think I've had for years. Someone has always been bothering me for stuff. I mean, my kid still bothers me for stuff but we have a quiet routine of doing stuff on our own, getting together for some sort of project or adventure, regular box set consumption, and exchanging a string of memes on Facebook Messenger.

Despite being an old fart, I have reasonably good meme game.

I loved homeschooling, even though it was also fucking horrific. But now I really love her going back to school and being happy, and me being able to pace myself and my spoons around that. I finally have the space to sit and listen to what's actually going on in the hectic frantic cloud machine of my head.

What do I want to do? What do I need to do?

I think I'm sliding into a low pressure kind of work hard play hard thing. And I need a lot of my own space of my own choosing with my own silence. I have a couple of nights away booked next weekend, on my own. I feel nervous at what that might uncover in me, but also thirsty for the break.

The next week will be trying to keep this internal peace while adding extra spinning plates.

Well that year was shit, and it nearly killed me. But I am aware now, at least, of how precious I am to myself.

I am more ill, and at least temporarily less kind. Yet you have to roll on forward.

I have thought a lot about many things. The work I have to do on myself.

My chaotic attachment. That I can heal by just not dating any more dickheads. I can commit to that.

My CPTSD. That's the big one now. Being trapped in an emotionally scary situation has ripped it to the surface, and I doubt if it was that easy that the trauma had really gone away. I can commit to keeping myself safe from here on.

My autism. The missing piece that meant however much "work I did on myself" to please myself and others...well, it was never going to fix as much as it should. I can't change my neurodivergence, but I can learn to tame it and keep myself as much as I am able in calm waters.

So those are what I will treat myself to from here on.

And this is still a spectacular album:

https://youtu.be/kttUwMLLS8k

I've been meaning to post about B for a while now. I've been reflecting on our journey together, which seems to somehow miraculously and against the odds come right. She is finally settled in school and she got a stunning end of term report. Aced science, basketball and Construction and Design.

I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin. It's actually a really good portrayal of motherhood. I identified so strongly with the horror of babies. The crying and panic. I did not know what the fuck I was doing, and I suspect in retrospect I was suffering from an anxious flavour of post natal depression and a lil PTSD. My husband was a Great Dad who worked long hours, did long trips abroad, and did many gigs at the weekend.

I do keep getting involved with addicts. That's a thing that needs unpacking.

And it was a difficult thing again when he left the night before she started school. It was a fucking disaster. She'd had a lovely toddlerhood and was eventually diagnosed with multiple things that just aren't school friendly. I blamed myself and gritted my teeth on it and leaped into blind faith. Three schools, two special needs. I was often exhausted, and there was 18 months of home learning before she finally got back into somewhere she likes.

She's turned into an absolutely fantastic 14 year old. I am proud of her, and proud of myself. And starting to gently tease the idea of a life where I'm not so much of a chronic mum. She'll still need me for odd scary things, but I will have to find something else to do with myself :)

It's hard to get used to the freedom after a decade of really difficult traumatic stuff for the pair of us. Like, I can go for a swim now. Visit friends. If I wasn't so fucking terrified of most of the world now, I could go on dates. That's another thing I really need to untangle.

But I do have a plan now. I'll probably dump out the work stuff another day, but in a couple of years I want to be in the position where I've retrained to do something lucrative. I need a few years hoovering up money and getting our shit together as two adults. I think I can do it? I nailed the Lean Management Qualification. I just keep doing things like that and piling them onto a CV.

And then I want to just do less and less work until I shuffle off the hill. And be happy. Too little of my life has been happy, and I want to redress the balance.

Last nigh was post covid booster rough. Every vaccine has been progressively worse and yesterday after about 90 minutes I was starting to trip balls. The edges of my vision were wriggling and I was starting to sweat. I was luck to have my daughter around who is now just about conscious enough to fetch drinks and be nice. The night was, to be honest, awful. All my major joints felt like they'd been bashed with a lump hammer and even after a heavy dose of codeine and single malt, every time I dropped off I'd jump back awake with the pain. Even when I propped bits of me up on pillows, I would wake up burning or freezing every 40 minutes or so. I drank 6 pints of water and two half pints of orange juice. Although those last two ended up smeared up the stairs as I was juddering too hard to keep the juice in the glass. I would like to thank my cat, Ziggy, for being good company all through the wee hours. She gives cuddles, she plays in duvet tunnels, she acts cute for dreamies.

I feel marginally better today, but not great. I got the Gold Marathon award off Audible for 8 hours of continuous listening. I can recommend Alan Moore's Jerusalem because it's already crazy psychedelic and the structure loops and loops anyway.

This has been a dark timeline, the past 30 months. Taking my child out of school. One difficult relationship ending and another horrific one beginning. There is little lonelier than dating an addict. Covid, mental health collapses, physical health. It feels so lonely. But then I've been in relationships where I felt lonelier to be honest.

Now at least it is peaceful.

I think humans are great at adjusting, and that is both good and bad. We're infinitely flexible, but that means we can accidentally boil ourselves alive. I was owning Booster Day yesterday, right up until the final moment. I realised I was stood in some cold conference venue hastily repurposed as a hospital, all of us masked and nervy. Barages of questions, coloured cards, roped up queues. So dark and dystopian. And triggering. Wobbly head and tears starting to flood. Luckily I got stabbed pretty much instantly and just curled on a chair and dissociated for a bit. But this is not how I imagined life would be.

It's so very strange. But that could be the mRNA talking.

I don't know how to structure this post. One thing I am enjoying about getting back to my writing is not knowing how to do the thing I want in a technical sense. Many things have become so routine that I hate them, and where there's change or challenge it's generally an uncontrollable crisis.

So this stuff? It's something I hold in my head like loosely spooled string for a kite. And I play it out until it either tangles or I reach the end. I'll do a tangle count.

I think the start of the thoughts was my friend telling me how well I'd parented my child through extremely difficult times. Which was lovely - H is going through similar with her kid, and it is excruciating to do. And she said that she admired that I never gave up, or went under, or seemed at a loss as to what to do. An aside to this is her being appalled at how much the last relationship took out of me, and broke me, because...well...that's just not very cybermule.

I do give myself all the credit I should for getting through those years. But I also have really good game face, and recompiling the scraps is what I do. That last one is probably pathological in extremis. I just get the bits, juggle them around, and try again. And that can kill you in certain circumstances. I think it was something I *had* to do with two alcoholic parents. There is no point having a plan, or an opinion, or needing something around an alcoholic because they will fuck it up for you. So just unravel, reknit, unravel, reknit.

Autistics are supposed to be inflexible. Women present "atypically" (i.e. not in the proper man way) anyway, but this is one of the two weird masking level-ups I think my parents inadvertently gave me. So this, the first, is the ability to recompile and keep moving. Because as a child in a dangerous situation, you will come to harm if you don't. The second also keeps you alive - be hypervigilant in reading the room. So being terrified probably raised me above normal intuition levels for an autist - I'm great right up until I'm not because after all, I learned from a faulty primer.

And there were times I absolutely despaired when I was raising her. Once to the point where I was having grave doubts about moving her to a new school, her dad used it to be nasty, and my partner slid me off for whatever reason. And I looked at the train track across the road and seriously considered making my life easier for B by lying down on it, because then she wouldn't be a "naughty child". She'd be that poor kid whose Mum had died, and I would stop being a corrupting influence on her.

Obviously stupid, but that's where your brain gets you sometimes. The only other similar point I have ever been in was February this year at the pit of my relationship. My ex basically just lied in my face and told me that it had always been so. And my brain broke. Clean snapped at the thought that my perception of reality was that incorrect, because why would someone who allegedly loved me lie, or even just refuse to concede any possibility of being wrong.

So against a vague background hum of preferring the idea of not being round quite a lot of days, those are the only two times I've really seriously considered not being here. My friend unknowingly pulled me out from the first one, and I crawled my way out of the second one by literally hanging on timed minute by timed minute until dawn came.

And I think that this is something I keep reeling into my life. Partners who can't consider the possibility that they might have misheard or misremembered - it always has to be me. Partners who are cold about my emotions and bullying with theirs. Partners who don't own their shit.

And I did actually manage to weave all that without a tangle :)

This has been sat on my kitchen table awaiting return to the library for about a week now. I can't remember how I got it, but it was a good book and I got a lot out of it. It's about risk taking and shame. Actually, I do remember how I stumbled on it - my ex pronounced the failure of the relationship because we were neither of us vulnerable, and that caught on me as not necessarily true. I'm sure I have work to do, but I'm also quite good at being vulnerable. In fact, my painful memories in relationships are generally moments of my own vulnerability where I got emotionally trashed.

There's a section in the book on this - these are labelled "sliding door moments", where you notice a loved one has something going on and you either choose to engage with it or carry on with your own absorbing stuff. It's something I've noticed and found hard as a parent - the need to rise above whatever you'd rather be doing and engage with the person in front of you. And it's often very hard if that person is being difficult, or there's something happening that pushes your own buttons. I think I'm imperfect, obviously, but also very aware of the finite opportunities in relationships (especially parenting) and the relative ability to delay other things. I think there's a tightrope to walk between my stuff/your stuff, and I would do good to mind my own stuff a little more. But also be aware that trust is built in moments of attending to other people's things.

There's also something in there for me about ask vs guess culture. As an autistic woman, I think I have become adept at guessing but would prefer asking. Passive aggressive stuff really fucks with my ability to human. Tuts, eye rolls, irritability. I think guessing is good for wants and asking is probably better for needs. But I've had poor experiences with asking, where I've asked if I've done or said something wrong and it's considered offensive that I can't work that out myself.

Something to keep an eye on.

There's also an analogy in the book of trust being like a marble jar that you both fill so that there's something to take back out in times of stress. Which I agree with - in relationships you both need to try and give slightly more than 50% so something gets banked. Going back to my last post, this is why relationships with addicts fail so often. You put all the marbles in the jar, and the addict takes them out. Even when they stop their addiction, the marbles are pretty low and the non-addict tends to have a depleted marble purse.

There's also a distinction drawn between shame and guilt. I've thought about that in my own life, particularly parenting, as a difference between taking responsibility and taking the blame for something. Blame and shame are about the person being bad, and don't lead to good things. If I take responsibility for my actions it can be painful, but I can work upon what has happened. I know B's Dad is very blame orientated, and blame and shame often lead to lashing out and projection. Trying to get someone else to carry the can of bad feelings. Once you realise that carrying the can isn't about you being a bad person, it gets easier. Shame is also linked with addiction in a broad sense of numbing your feelings, and right now I can identify with that. My work here is not feeling like an inadequate person, and the work of that is finding out how to shrug off other people's shame.

It's hard to open yourself up to responsibility for your own actions. I am so very aware of that. But it is somehow...cleaner? And that's the best analogy I can think of - to open the wound and clean it is responsible, to try and hide it or make it someone else's fault will just cause it to fester.

One friend posted a meme on FB about people coming out as autistic and it rang home with me. Neurotypicals = you're not like X autistic that I know. Neurodivergents = yeah, we knew already.

And then I had lunch with another dear friend, who was also not surprised. I'm at the Imposter Syndrome stage, whereas the people who know me well are, yeah...makes sense, love.

Lunch friend also asked where I was with it all. I'm at imposter syndrome, yes that all makes sense, and massive fucking anger thank you for asking. Anger because I have always just thought I should try harder. That I was not good enough and beating myself into the ground would make it better.

It was never helped by the men I was in relationships with. I could always try harder, do more work on myself, get into extra therapy. Therapy was just throwing water into the Sahara without this missing piece of the puzzle. With only one exception, the men I have dated have been cis hettish middle class white blokes. they're basic attitude seems to be that Bitches Be Crazy and maybe I should just do more work on myself.

I actually came up with what I think is a very good analogy for when an queer autistic woman gets told that she should do more work to handle emotional stuff. Mebbe make a more therapy sammich or something. I've no idea whether anyone will read this, or get any benefit from it. The blokes cited above are also very fond of telling me (a) what good writers they are and, (b) how shit LJ/DW are. But here we go...

Being told that I should do "some more work" to manage the emotional stuff of a relationship with you is like some cunt shining a floodlight into my eyes, asking me to translate The Aeneid, and scoffing at me when I can't do that because my fucking eyes hurt.

Given space, time, and the right tools, I can make a good stab at translating the Aeneid. I have good Classics skills. Hell, I hate to be big headed, but I probably have better Classics skills than you. I did Latin and Old English translation at graduate level. But right now you are shining your stupid emotional floodlight straight into my eyes so I can't read the text.

You are shining your manbaby emotional floodlight into my eyes and screaming at me because I should do more work so I can do your Latin homework for you.

*mic drop*

I started a new job today. A cleaning job. So that's a cleaner and a PA along with a web support officer. It's not how I wanted to spend the years before my 50th, but this is how the dice roll. Those things need to be done, and if you pay other people to do them for you you are not one to judge my choices. I can't help noticing that every time I break up a nesting partnership the men get +1 socioeconomic class and I get a downgraded.

I also observe that the upper classes juggle their share options, the middle classes juggle their debt and credit cards, adn the working classes juggle their loyalty points. LIDL and Morrisons, thanks for asking.

I prepped for cleaning, and it reminded me of MAID on Netflix. I need some good gloves, some old clothes, and I don't need to shower in the morning. I love the crazy limestone townhouse, it'll get me fit, and an extra 20 quid a month ain't to be sniffed at before Xmas when I'm owing money to my ex. The woman I clean for is proper mad. She was talking anout her bipolar dad and son and I'm not sure it missed a generation. But her house gives me a warm Harkings feeling.

MAID was kind of triggering. Here's a good article on parentification trauma / abuse:

https://themighty.com/2021/11/relating-to-the-abusive-mother-daughter-relationship-in-netflix-maid/

G and D both had massive mummy issues and parentified me, then hated me for it. Get fucking therapy. A did a bit but wasn't a nice cis hettish middle clash manboy, so I can forgive that.

Also triggering for abuse. Not sure if my ex abused me. I don't think so - I just think he was very used to shuffling his loved ones around to make him feel better. And not owning his shit. That's the actual worst of people. Be an arsehole by all means, but just own it.

Anyway, I did not think I would be scrubbing toilets at 48 but needs must. I need a plan for my half century. But I am not ashamed of my life - I'm actually just starting it all over again.

I was microwaving a frozen pie just now, so I could cook it in the oven and crisp it up and totally neglect the defrost time on the packet. It reminded me of my job in my late teens working in the chippy in Nailsworth. Even when I was tripping my tits off, I managed to not quite burn the pies.

I have worked since...forever? Not including 9 months maternity leave when I was still employed and about 8 months here and there of in between jobs. Partly as a young adult because I fucking had to. My parents were never going to bail me out, and my partner was low income. And the benefits system was brutal back then. Less so than now. As a teen, it got me out of the fucking house. Legitimately, I could point my parents to the rota and say I was busy, and they had to respect it. Plus I got a lot of cash in hand. And I felt good about myself at times when everything seemed to point towards me being a failure.

But it's not that high a priority in my life. I have to do it because that's what pays my bills and feeds me. And I try to be ethical - first do no harm. But what I want is a job that does both of those things but otherwise keeps out from under my feet. I don't think my ego is particularly tied up in it and I'm not that materialistically needy. People often ask me how I manage on what I get - I just do. And my child thinks we earn below average income but we spend it well and have a good life - that's pretty accurate.

I've just had an unprecedented amount of sick leave due to what is basically a nervous breakdown. I had a week off for my dad dying and 10 days for my mum. And that's not being all tough and die hard about it really. It's not a brag. I could probably have done with longer, but I managed. The time since losing them is hard, but it's been ok. But this time I just noped out. It's taught me a lot about personal responsibility and being more fucking humble. I would always have said that if you let people fuck up your life it was just poor boundaries on your part, but I take that back. Some people just wear you down.

I do need to change something about the way I earn money, but that's a journey. I've got about 5 years to work it out. Two of the most sinister relationships I had were ones where I was encouraged to solve my work issues by giving it up and becoming financially dependent. Could have worked out, might have been mostly well meaning, but my spidey senses tingled in both cases.

And now I'm filling out my back to work wellness plan and I just can't. They keep asking what I need to move forwards and my experience of that is shit. Regular date night? Nope cos previous experience. Watching more films or playing more games? It's good how it is. Every ask was either drowned or grudgingly met and I just gave up.

This is how you give up your you-ness - your asks are met with eye rolls and grudging heeldragging. So you just stop, be polite, be nice. And try not to get too much trauma from being told you don't trust.

The wheel of the year has clicked round a notch and we are in the new year. This is a liminal space until Yule where we tighten our belts. And the weather is beautiful and the shadows and light have changed. Everything is holding its breath.

I've finished half term and I am back to work after a period of sick leave. I didn't think of my mum this year on the anniversary of her death. I haven't had a nightmare about my ex for a while. These are both good things that may or may not be linked. I spent half term with the people I love, or doing things that I love in places I love. I laughed. I dressed up and was pretty and I danced. And people looked at me and loved me. They gave me compliments, laughed at my jokes. I wasn't tapped for emotional and domestic labour. I wasn't judged. reciprocity flowed freely.

Every time I moved away from these things, I felt a deep sadness. I think this is something I have to lean into so I can heal. I am so disintegrated in myself - well done, that man. I have come to the point where I realise that someone can break your heart and someone can suck and those two things don't have to be related, although often are. Definitely were. And I do not have to be ok with it.

I write here because it works for my brain. Dumping works for my brain. I have to befriend my brain now and get what I can out of it, and it's like learning myself all over again. So I write to do that too.

Getting validation for it is another way to lean into my healing. Also, people owning their shit. I appreciate that. I think now that the best thing to learn about being a human is that we are all fallible. Being alive is to accept that while you think you may be doing a great job, you might actually be really fucking it up. Being alive is immensely subjective, and we should be humble in the face of that.

I have no idea what is so difficult about today. The longer I go on with sobriety, the more it hurts. I see why people keep drinking. I see why accepting what you have done, and what you didn't do, is so hard. I've always said that for my parents to have given up drinking and faced their lives would be more than most humans can bear.

If facing up to my feelings is this grim, when I have done so little wrong? Maybe I can give grace to people who just don't.

A lot of what I'm doing now is accepting the things in me that contributed to the fuck ups in my life. I am a bit of an arsehole. Autism plus abandonment issues make a dirty couple and there are times where I just cant shut up. I see that in my daughter too. But I also suck my teeth a little at the expectation that as women we are supposed to just, do things a certain way? A man's lovable tactlessness is our failure to perform as expected as a woman.

I've just finished a book called "Burnout - solve your stress cycle" by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. In my eternal loop of self reflection, there are a few points that hit home with me.

The first is that they highlighted two types of people - Human Beings and Human Givers, and that is a gender divide for the most part. I think as a woman, and one that has recently discovered her autism, this really validated a feeling that I have always nursed. That as a man you can be a quirky renegade, but that is not a thing you can do as a woman without being entirely ostracised. And that is a price you pay. Over and over the men in my life have been proudly difficult, and quite cross with me being difficult in my turn. My last partner was proud of being an arsehole, and constantly pushed my boundaries. And I see that in A and D, other notable exes. And when I snapped I was difficult, unstable, and possibly abusive.

I don't think I'm an abusive person. I think I'm a twat when pushed into a corner. I have no idea what to do when that happens - you either have to accept the fall of your boundaries or leave.

The other thing that prodded a nerve was one of the case studies in the book. A woman who burned out because she always had to manage her husband's feelings, and again this resonated as a thing I end up doing. The woman ended up ill and her husband finally stepped up, and she said she felt like it was like having a wife.

What a feeling that must be, eh? To have a wife.

The closest I came to trying to articulate that was in couple's therapy when I hesitantly suggested that I'd flipped out because I was literally doing everything for a messy ungrateful shitwizard. And I honestly tried to express that tactfully. And was told that it would not have happened if I had only *asked for help*. That was such a shit session with a man who constantly pleaded maybe autism and a therapist who said autism was her speciality. Here is an article on autistic burnout:

https://autisticscienceperson.com/2021/09/26/autistic-burnout-is-more-than-burnout/

And that's why I felt sold out and fucked over. We all agreed to differ.

I dunno. I may be an arsehole, but at least I am prepared to examine that. Or maybe all this is just me not being prepared to examine it? Or maybe this is just layer upon layer of fucking gaslighting bullshit? I suspect my ex feels equally hard done by. I spoke to their ex and it seemed to just be same shit, different tits. I know that I tried hard in all the right ways, yet still failed. I suspect that I just ceased to be useful.

I'm going to have to find a way to move on from it all, and I think that is just being with loved ones who see me as I am and still want me in their lives. And that is probably just the it of it all.

Yesterday I swam nearly half a mile. I think swimming is going to be my new thing. I want to swim half a mile a couple of times a week. Not hold onto the idea too hard. Avoid the gym like the plague. I need a healthier relationship with my body - for the first time in my life, I hate myself. My self esteem has crashed through the floor. I have no concept of being remotely attractive any more, but I'm slowly working on it.

I've reorganised my wardrobe. Chucked out all the stuff that doesn't fit, and this is roughly how I'd like my wardrobe to look anyway. Less is more. It's also my "fat wardrobe" and I'm owning that. There's a dress with cobwebs on that I don't like but everyone says looks great, so I'm going to figure out how to work that one. And a Hell Bunny dress that I have really mixed feelings about. Firstly, sugar skulls. Eww. Secondly I think I probably bought it to look like the sort of fat girl my ex found attractive. Rockabilly in the streets, lingerie model in the sheets.

So I think some of my crashed body image is that. I was "quite pretty". Other women were beautiful or stylish or amazing. Plus, menopause and poor self care.

There is a type of fat girl that can be considered hot. The rockabilly lingerie model that is always perky, cheeky, up for it. I can't think of any positive role models for sexy heavy cynical women who think too much and don't smile or giggle enough. And that sucks. It never actually mattered to me right up until it very much did.

But anyway, size aside, I don't want to feel old and weak and fragile. I'm always scared of slipping and hurting myself again, so I totter along and that just makes more aches and pains. So that is what I am going to focus on fixing for now.

Tuesday I did yoga. I used to be good at yoga, but this session was punishing. So I suspect the mature thing to do would be more yoga. Swimming yesterday was less of a chore, so I think adding that and yoga to my plan for reclaiming my body would both be good. And just those for now. Let's not overdo it.

After swimming yesterday, I did chores in the town where I live. I had a nice chat with a chap on a bench while I was doing Pokemon stuff. I got plant food from the local hardware store and planted out my pansies when I got home. I bought a perfect handbag from a charity shop. I filled my tank and went for a peaceful lunch with a friend in a similar mental health boat. I've found I've had to withdraw from Facebook and drama, which I hate. I want to help everyone, but it's oxygen mask time. I watched the new Bond film with my kid and cried at the majesty of the Matrix trailer on the big screen.

It's the sort of day that looks boring as fuck when you write it down, but is the sort of day I need. It was peaceful. It was also about staying sober.

I've always had a fairly pragmatic attitude to mental health issues, which has caused me flak at times. I know exactly how awful depression and addiction are, but I don't need to express that about my own issues. Which to some people means I don't suffer *properly* the way they do. Which is bollocks, but there you go. I've watched addicts all my life and for them, like myself, it's basically a case of wrestling your inner terrorist toddler. It's as simple as not doing the wrong thing, first and foremost, and trying to do the right things. So where the summer was about not smoking a cigarette, now is about not having a drink.

I say it's simple, but it's simultaneously the most difficult thing ever. You have to do a boring thing that leaves you feeling uncomfortable. And you have to do it over and over. Not smoking a cigarette REPEATEDLY. Not buying booze REPEATEDLY. Exercising REPEATEDLY. The hard bit is finding the piece of you that can keep doing that thing. For some people that's rehab, but that is a privilege really. Shouldn't be, but that's capitalism. For others it's AA. My dad took up carpentry and crosswords. But every day at every opportunity you have to not do the bad thing and suck up the fact that it will make you emotionally uncomfortable in the moment.

I remember talking to a friend about giving up smoking, and deciding that it's a weird one. Smoking doesn't change your behaviour as a person. Not significantly anyway, but in thinking on it I realised that all addictions have one thing in common - they steal bits of your life. And they steal bits of the lives of your loved ones. One of the most important parts of the Twelve Steps (in my opinion) is the cataloguing of your sins and the atonement to those you sinned against. The Twelve Steps can be kind of religious and preachy to be honest - hence the use of "sins" and "atonement" - but they work for people whose minds can engage with that. But if you take away the language of religion, you are left with what I think is the crucial core of recovery:

How did your addiction thieve the lives of you and your loved ones? And how do you make up for that?

With smoking, it's more subtle. The times I was nicotine deprived and irritable. The times I disengaged from my kid to smoke a fag. The worry I caused her as she grew older and realised I was being a knob. With hard drugs it becomes quite obvious quite quickly that you're trashing people as well as yourself. Booze is in the middle, probably because it's ubiquitous. Honestly, running chores yesterday was a constant exercise in avoiding the various booze aisles scattered around our capitalist environment. But whereas I am not an alcoholic in the traditional sense, drinking alcohol has made me reckless, incompetent, argumentative, and most importantly incapable of processing my feelings. Which is why I drank it in the first place - to push things to the edge and keep stumbling forward.

Which isn't the worst reason. It's becoming a reason for a lot of women these days, particularly with kids. Emotional failure isn't an option when you're a mum. But it's stolen the quality from my connections with the ones I love, and for that I am truly sorry.

I am simultaneously unpacking stuff and trying to befriend the person who is me. It's really hard. I've been a single mum to a trans autistic kid for a decade that's taken me to nearly 50 with a string of douchey exes and a burgeoning bag of trauma.

Last night I couldn't sleep. I've been working hard on reducing my alcohol intake. I'm cross at myself for increasingly being unable to tolerate my life sober, but there you go. I need to befriend the part of my brain that feels it needs to be protected. And I couldn't sleep last night because too many stimulants without a dampening of wine meant a bouncing fractious brain.

Who knew? There's no point kicking myself in the balls for making right choices, so today had to be a rest day. Which I've mostly managed to achieve.

Still wrangling my autistic brain and its trail of trauma. I'm becoming actually grown up, and I have to do these things.

Last week I took a bad tumble. Partly being distracted by pretty girls and a sore finger. But mostly because my right ankle is fucked - I'm hypermobile, I took a nasty fall a few years ago, and I couldn't rest it so nerve damage and here we are. I basically have a permanent case of drop foot and if I don't concentrate on rough ground I can trip. And the falls really hurt these days.

I need an ankle brace for going out walking. I don't want to give my walking up - I've squashed it down for too long. So I've ordered one of those. And I need to remember to use a stick, even if I think the walk will be easy. I'm getting good mileage out of putting thing like this in my phone diary, even if it seems really fucking obvious. Why keep trying to remember to use my stick when Google can do that for me and earn its fucking keep?

With accepting I need to make reasonable accommodations for my wankle also comes accepting bad and traumatic memories. I remember when I went over on it and it sprained to the size of a fucking canteloupe melon. I couldn't even drive. And I remember asking B's dad to take up her Morrisons as she had some random twitch about the place and it's the nearest shopping place. Just take her up, have an explore, go to the cafe. And he just laughed in my face and walked away.

I don't half pick 'em.

One of my best mates is absolutely soppily besotted. I am really happy for her - she deserves this. Heck - everyone deserves someone to be besotted with them. But I am also a little sad. Envious maybe, slightly? It's highlighted how cheated I felt by my previous relationship.

Just to be clear, I know I am loved. And I know the difference between the heady whirlwindy in-love stuff and the valuable mature sort of love that I have there.

But when you date an addict they're never going to be smitten with you - they already have a much more important lover stealing their attention. When I started dating my ex, they were in love with booze. I think they were probably in love with a whole bunch of other women too, if I'm realistic. I was low down a list of women ranked according to their perceived physical status. It was always clear that booze was the primary relationship, but I became increasingly aware that I just happened to be where the buck had stopped.

Unpleasant. And apparently untrue and dreadfully unfair for me to voice, but in one of our last few conversations the ex said that they had stuck with it mostly because they didn't want to be on their own.

Some ownership of that would have been nice. But then, I don't know why I stuck with it. Probably because I could see they were frightened. Because I'm a mug? Because I think if I try harder, people will treat me better.

When you date an addict, you are always going to have to make yourself smaller to fit around their primary relationship. They don't really listen to you, and if they do it doesn't really stick. I became exasperated and exhausted over and over in the relationship, walked away, and then was persuaded to try again. I persuaded myself, I guess. Permanently throwing good money after bad because I wanted it to work, I didn't want to abandon them. And, brutally, I didn't want them to die.

And this settling and making myself small is a familiar pattern from my childhood. Some people trigger it, some people don't - I'm working on how to tell the difference. I think there has definitely been growth for me in non monogamy, but about a year ago I did have the lightbulb moment of realising that it also allowed myself to make myself small. The poly market is saturated with people in hierarchical primary relationships where it is very easy for someone like me to just erase herself and her needs. And before I know it, I've just nearly drowned in the absence of self and have to kick hard to get away.

Because people who let their needs seep out over everyone else tend to be quite good at pushing that agenda. They see other people as a medication for their own discomfort. And this is just continued addiction really - the pushing away of anything vaguely uncomfortable using someone else's emotional labour. They're generally the people with whom you can never just have a comfortable silence.

Some people I hang around with now are good at holding space for me to talk, to think, to let my needs float up to the surface. The lightbulb moment could have been a turning point for that old relationship, but ended up being drowned out with the ex's immediate worries and unresolved relationship issues. And I made my own aha moment small for that. Now I resolve to pull it out from everyone else's emotional shadow and make myself bigger again.

Part of my ASD spectrum diagnosis was the strong suggestion that I suffer from Auditory Processing Disorder (ASD). I could get tested for it - it's either an even longer wait than ASD on the NHS, or it's a lot of fucking money privately. My psychologist got a private assessment, but as a therapist it's probably worth doing.

It means I can't process auditory data in a "normal" fashion. Which I knew really, but I assigned to just being a bit crap.

- Listening to people in pubs and clubs is mostly polite nodding over a white noise burble. I'm lucky in that my friend groups are just generally cool, with the book club being accommodating to another person's hearing issues, which is probably why I've bedded in well there.

- Not hearing people the first time, even in a clear noise situation. B and I call this syllable salad - we both do it a bit, but I'm the worst I think. Often she can say something and it makes no sense while also being clear as a bell. It may well make sense about a second after I ask her to repeat it. Linked to:

- Needing to lip read. I mishear B most often when we're in the car and I can't see her face. Which is also where we have the best conversations, to be fair. It needs a *lot* of concentration, and we're working on it. She's accepting of me just flagging up when I'm tuning out - driving and listening simultaneously is too much brain work on occasion. I can't hear people when they're smoking or drinking. Linked to:

- Zoom is fucking hard work. I can manage one to one, but multi person is just nope. Hence the massive couple therapy fail - I couldn't work out who was supposed to answer, and I didn't appreciate being patronised over. Like, if two are you are looking at one person on Zoom, how do you know who they're addressing? Magic skills.

Some of these I can now accommodate in light of my diagnosis - I can ask for interview questions in advance, I can tell the chair of my committee that Zoom meetings are a problem. It does all make a good deal of sense - like I said, I just thought I was stupid because I couldn't listen, process, think and reply in the right level of time and complexity. I won't be doing couple therapy over Zoom again. That was just a pile of shit. Good therapist, crappy situation.

Where things become more grey are in the area of personal relationships. I guess I've already noticed that I'm turned off by people who monologue. I can't remember the beginning of what they said by the time we got to the end, so I dissociate and nod vaguely. I do fine in situations where there's a shorter and more turn based conversation. So the problems are with a minority, and I do ok to thriving within the life I've created for myself.

I need to work out how to interact with the minority. Or whether I do at all, really. It's about accommodation of my needs - I've been told too often that this is the style that works for the other person, and just bowed to it. I think walls of electronic text push the same APD button for some reason - I read them aloud rather than glyph read them like paper. God knows what the deal with that is. But why did I sit down to accepting big walls of text and saying I'd read them on my laptop not my phone? Flinging essays at people on emotional issues isn't that great a method, and it's not necessarily a fault in me not to be able to deal with that.

There is a good deal of talk about female vs male autism with regards to masking and empathy and flexibility of interaction. I need to think about it a lot more, and maybe research. But my hunch is that each privilege variable in your favour means that you have less need to learn how to deal with your neurodivergence. There is the popular autism cliche of the middle class white cis dude who gets shit done, doesn't take prisoners, and doesn't engage in that silly emotional stuff cos autism. And there is so much privilege there that lets them get away with it.

They might be less popular than they desire, but they still earn plenty and can bask in that renegade genius dude trope. Whereas a woman who doesn't read the room and adjust may not only lose friends, but also get the crap beaten out of them or raped. It's much more dangerous to not be normal every time you tick a square on the minority bingo. So adjusting, coping and managing everyone's expectations becomes a life strategy rather than an optional extra.

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cybermule

Cybermule Inc

October 2023

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Page Summary

Fingers in the marble jar
Complex PTSD - from surviving to thriving
Shadows of the morning light. Shadows of the evening sun. Till the shadows and the light were one.
I remember when I used to feel something. Now I'm, now I'm, now I'm just cold inside.
If I lived in Macy's window I'd never be alone
There comes a time when everyone's plans fall like a dog from a truck bed bandstand
We need to talk about parenting
One night I'd sell my soul, to sleep in something that doesn't rock and roll
The width of a circle
Daring Greatly - Brene Brown
I'm not like them, but I can pretend
When life becomes art
All that matters is work
All the souls
Today is the day I shed my tears
Brick by brick
Working out what works.
If I lived in Macy's window, I'd never be alone
Compersional envy
Auditory Processing Issues and WTF is going on here please

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Page generated Jul. 1st, 2025 07:40 pm

the heretic genetic algorithm

Recent Entries

Fingers in the marble jar

Complex PTSD - from surviving to thriving

Shadows of the morning light. Shadows of the evening sun. Till the shadows and the light were one.

I remember when I used to feel something. Now I'm, now I'm, now I'm just cold inside.

If I lived in Macy's window I'd never be alone

There comes a time when everyone's plans fall like a dog from a truck bed bandstand

We need to talk about parenting

One night I'd sell my soul, to sleep in something that doesn't rock and roll

The width of a circle

Daring Greatly - Brene Brown

I'm not like them, but I can pretend

When life becomes art

All that matters is work

All the souls

Today is the day I shed my tears

Brick by brick

Working out what works.

If I lived in Macy's window, I'd never be alone

Compersional envy

Auditory Processing Issues and WTF is going on here please