this comes from social pressure. fitting in gets you pretty damn far through life. but once you stop fitting in and you stick out as part of a minority, you dont have that life raft of being able to just fit in. you cant "be normal" to function anymore, people are pre-dispositioned to fucking hate you.
i guess thats what i've been struggling with for the past year or so. trying to keep up the whole "normal" thing to function as my ability to fit in slips away from me at a glacial pace. at this point it simply wont work anymore. i have to navigate myself now in order to figure out how i function.
autism is unfortunately and miraculously a spectrum. my own troubles are unique to me, and i already have a hard time looking into myself to find those troubles. its even harder for me to figure out how to accomodate or work with these troubles to get shit done.
at a surface level, i can keep myself alive. thats about as much as i can ask for. anything deeper than that starts to get more and more difficult. society is unfortunately built around being normal, so a lot of things that line up for YOU may not necessarily line up with the doctor's office, the government, the clock, or the damn gregorian calendar. beyond that, you might not even be able to work with the cycle of day and night. at this point though, day and night have less meaning now since a good majority of society no longer has to worry about the dangers that come with the moon. the danger is not being able to get enough sleep before your next 3 hour round-trip commute tomorrow to be paid barely enough money to ignore the abusive work practices you are wrung dry for and come back to do grueling labor.
miraculously though, autism IS a unique experience. in every person it comes with, it creates a completely unique set of thoughts and feelings. a new experience through life that can be translated in only the way you can manage. because deep down there is that primal urge to let loose of the "normal" stage play, even just for a second, and do what it is you do in only the way you do that do.
autism, especially in my case, can obfuscate who it is that you even are beyond fitting in. its not just social pressure from outside sources that cause the desire to fit in, but its internal too. being alone sucks. fitting in and "being normal" can be alienating without you even knowing it, but for some, the solution to that could be to just act even more "normal."
2022 was the year that opened up my eyes. 2023 was learning how to walk again and catching back up with memories of myself. this year, in 2024, im figuring out who i really am. once that's done, i might be able to figure out how to be functional again.
i like women
i like pizza
i like snuggles and cuddles
and i like being autistic
but the relationship i have with my autism is a very hard love-hate ordeal
ultimately though, if i wasn't stuck with autism, then i wouldn't be Lemin
and i like being me
