lenyberry:

fierceawakening:

candidlyautistic:

adult-female-with-aspergers:

I was complaining to my mom (yes I still do that at 32) how it seems like therapist want me to change for the sake of other people and how I hate that.  How I don’t think I’m the one who needs to change because it’s other people who are the problem with misinterpreting me. She said ‘yeah, but you’re the one who has to  face the negative consequences.’ I didn’t think of it like that. I go about thinking that if people are uncomfortable with me then that’s their problem, I shouldn’t have to change for their comfort. But I’m suffering for it. People are the worst.

I think this is one of the hardest things we have to have come to terms with as autistic adults.

Other people should be the ones changing. Other people should be the ones that stop putting words in mouth and adding emotions to our words that we didn’t put in there ourselves.

Other people should be responsible for at least meeting us halfway when it comes to communication.

The reality is very few of them actually care enough to make the effort, and we are the ones that struggle because of it.

So here we are, having to decide – do we say screw this, I’m going to be myself and damn the consequences or do we say fine I’m going to force myself to be a different person than I really am even if it harms me every day.

And gosh that’s not fair at all. You shouldn’t have to make the decision. No one should have to make that decision.

But in the end, we’re the one that always has to make it. Whatever you choose in the end, I hope it goes well for you – or at least as well as it can go.

The thing is, you can’t control anyone but yourself. It’s much easier to notice the stupid or hurtful things someone else is doing than to convince them to cut it out.

I had this blowup at my boyfriend a while back, because like most people he didn’t get it, and I was having a crap time of things in general, and I was like “it would be REALLY NICE if JUST ONCE someone would make the effort to meet me halfway instead of expecting me to do ALL the work of bridging this neurological communication gap when all I gain for the effort is a chance at being treated the same as a “normal” person”

…and I had kinda tried to bring it up before, being… less blunt and angry about it. But the time I got bitchy and went ‘fuck this’ and pointed out how shitty it is for me to have to always be the one doing all the work while getting no credit, because if I succeed no one even notices I’m trying and if I fail I get all the blame, and yes you do this too and I hate it… when I said it bluntly and upfront – that’s when he Got It. 

And since then he’s actually started making the effort to do some of the work himself instead of making me do it all and blaming me when I don’t Communicate Like A Neurotypical and it causes miscommunications. And it’s such a huge relief having even one person on my side like that. 

So what I’m getting at is, of course you can’t expect everyone else to change, but if someone really cares about you and you can point the problem out in a way they’ll understand and get them to see that they’re doing you no favors by pushing you to ‘work harder at it’ or ‘act normal so other people don’t treat you so badly’ – because fuck, we know that but it’s fucking hard – and that they could help more by giving you a respite from that work when you’re around them… if they both really care about you and understand the problem, they’ll make the effort. 

(understanding the problem is also key because people who do genuinely care sometimes do things they THINK are for your benefit when it’s actually not, if they don’t understand what you’re dealing with, and the catch-22 of the whole situation is communication barrier causes lack of understanding and the lack of understanding keeps the other person from having any idea how to effectively work on resolving the communication barrier)

*points at the above for the sake of what few followers I have, knowing it’s not the intended reading but whatever it dovetails nicely and today I am The Dysphoric*

So uhm. That’s essentially the Trans Experience in a nutshell, friends. You struggle and scream and do everything in your power to pass pre-HRT/surgery and no one fucking notices and calls you things that you aren’t… and if you don’t, well it’s your fault for not being “X” enough. So do you change and go into debt and scrape up all your everything in order to pass, or do you just drift along in a puddle of disgust and distaste for your own meatsuit doing what little you can to survive in the meantime until you might, potentially, be able to Do The Thing? 

We’re not “normal” in the sense that we don’t have to THINK about our gender.
We’re not “normal” in the sense that we get to just tweak our bodies through exercise, diet, and hopefully decent genetics that didn’t fuck us over.
We’re not “normal” in that we can change people’s perception with a haircut, clothing, etc…. or at least, not the way we want to, with consistency.

So…. fuck, what do?