Why Bullying isn’t Healthy for ANYONE, a post intended for Karen Kabaki Sisto (Trigger warning for everyone else also I cussed a bit))

I know I have not posted in some time but the surgery I had and slew of failgivers and bad agency issues took my writing spoons for survival. I am just getting settled with my new carer from a new agency and this article has come out that I cannot even finish. This post like most of what I write has a trigger warning for a reason.  Here is the article by the person I am chewing out below.

Dear Karen-

I am calling you out. The initial title of this post? You better run bitch. Why? The internet is coming for you. You see you did something stupid. You wrote an article that promotes bullying. The idea that bullying is acceptable for anyone is already disproven. Children die daily because they cannot endure bullying and the pain it is caused. These are not just autistic children but children across the human spectrum, some of whom fall into the category of normal. People of all ages are bullied for skin color, eye color, hair color, weight, ability, and so many things I cannot list it all. Bullying is always arbitrary and boils down to psychological trauma that sometimes never heals. It shatters confidence.

The article, as far as I could read sounded like my mother. I deserved to be bullied because it would make me stronger. I was weak because I couldn’t take the pain. That is bullshit. I am not weak. Medically, I admit I am, but mentally I have dealt with things people should never be able to imagine coping with, and I am still alive. I have spent my life aware of death itself because of my body and more so my family. My family of monsters. I am angry this was written because there will be people who do not think before they act, and will traumatize already fragile people. Autistics get bullied all the time, this simply removes potential resources. Of course this is also from the people who created the ABA system of abuse. They call it therapy but I mean mother fucking abuse.

In the end I cannot stand by and be silent on this. Bullying caused me to cut myself. With my medical conditions this could be fatal. I thought between my parents and the other children I deserved pain. I thought that if I cut myself maybe they would stop. If I hurt just a little more I would be purified by that pain and worthy. Some of this is through the lense of absurd religion but not all of it is. I am crying as I write this because I know out there people are dying a slow death from bullying and this article will cost them dearly. I am crying because I cannot protect them if I am silent. So I am roaring.

Here are ten effects of bullying regardless of autism.

1. PTSD- Post Traumatic stress is not a choice there is no pushing through it and it can forever undermine self confidence. Avoiding triggers is the treatment, and like avoiding allergens to not die or spontaneously combust into hives and anaphalaxis this is not really effective because its impossible. Anything around at the trauma from a scent, lighting, touch, voice, words, or even clothing can become a trigger and you will not know until you find out the hard way.

2. Lowered Confidence- Confident people succeed. We do. I had to rebuild myself and am lucky I could but not everyone is able to do that with or without help.

3. Depression- This too can feed lowered confidence and can get you bullied. Don’t feel u p to anything because you hurt so much and are sad? People WILL bully you for that. Depression is hard to live with and bullying is a cause. Depression is also painful and often causes people to kill themselves.

4. Lower grades- You do notlearn when afraid, you learn less when stressed. There must be a safe place for people to go to learn. Living without one creates a priority of survival not education. You can’t focus on algebra because you are focused on not sitting wrongly, or the physical threats that bullying can entail. Sometimes people even drop out.

5. Social Isolation- Bullying makes it harder to make friends. Cliques aka human herds are social. While not every autistic is social many are, and this deprives them of the opportunity to make friends, to learn because a bully takes out your friends too. No one wants to endanger themselves for a stranger. Sometimes not for people they know. Bullies are dangerous, predators even.

6. Health issues- Bullied for weight? Well you may just end up anorexic. Bullied with physical violence? You could end up with serious physical trauma that disables you. It can also be BOTH THINGS. Bullying can even cause sexual dysfunction, increase the trauma of having puberty, and living in stress is also just bad for you. Hypertension, heart issues, bad diet, inability to sleep just to name a few.

7. Violent Retaliation- I have written about it before, but I nearly blew up my high school to kill everyone so allthe pain stopped. I also realized this was not healthy and stopped myself. Not everyone has that ability and sometimes these victims make more victims in a violence chain reaction. School shootings, the shooters are often bullied. This isn’t once or twice. Its not “Just Columbine”. Its also not always so clear cut. I became so afraid of bullies and had no safe home and ended up hurting the only friend I made before I was an adult because I didn’t have the ability to think past the fear and she touched my food. Yes I was also abused at home but a lot of bullied kids are, not just the bullies and sometimes those bullies have healthy home lives despite what the Film Industry/TV Industry tropes are.

8. Alchohol and Drug Abuse- Oddly bullies tend to be more prone to drug and alchohol abuse in some studies than their victims but compared to non bullies/bullied people both parties are much more likely to drink. Bullying is not just bad for the victim but creates bad mental hygiene for a life time.

9. Criminal Records- I can vote because my mistake of assaulting my friend came at the right age but not everyone is so lucky to get help and both violent responders to bullying and bullies still have to live with the consequences of their actions and reactions for life. I can’t forget, even with two brain injuries, the realization that I nearly killed my friend. I have to live with that feeling forever. Any time I think of her, it is there. A reformed bully joins me there but often they continue to escalate into other criminal behaviors, as bullying is another word for assault in MANY areas.

10. Missed Opportunities- Bullies and their victims both miss opportunities. Later in life the victim may be successful, needing to hire someone. The bully applies and… I would not hire them if I was in HR. This applies to non work things too. I have forgone games and social outings because an abuser/bully was there. Sometimes I tell the bully/abuser to fuck off, but I am an adult and aware of my power. I am the rare person who despite all of the crap they endured is able to do so. Its not common.

I am I think the sort of person who inspired this false and illogical article. I am strong. I am tough. I kick asses and take names. I push myself and sometimes I can’t get past the bullying. It still hurts me. That isn’t stronger. Stronger would be less of that. If I had not been bullied at school I would have had a refuge. Not having that? I tried to kill myself a few times and failed. I didn’t get found or helped, I just didn’t do it right. I am glad of that but telling me that I am stronger because of this is an insult to my intelligence, common sense, and every autist on the planet. I understand the writer wants to justify their being a bully, but I hope ANYONE with children near them runs, because this isn’t a red flag. This is a sign that reads: I am an abuser. I will hurt you. I will hurt the ones you love. I will forever scar the minds of innocents. I am also not qualified for anything. Not even McDonalds.

No one should be bullied. Autistic children are much more vulnerable, as we still cannot even be guaranteed education, access or care. We are discriminated against at all levels. I have been denied access to medications because of autism, endangering my life. I have been denied access to necessary law enforcement. Autistics are already trained to obey everyone, by ABA which the author supports. We can ill afford more of the same. It is much arder to stand up and say no. A lot of the reason Autistics struggle with these things swings back to being bullied. Bullying is abuse. Calling abuse healthy is assinine. A lot of this post was edited to remove the word fuck and many other unfriendly epithets to the originator of that piece of shit article. I am still cursing in it because frankly, that fucking piece of trash article deserves to be called exactly what it is.

Karen Kabaki Sisto M.S. CCC-SLP I hope you read this. I hope you understand that this paragraph was originally cursing and I hope you learn something. Bullying doesn’t give any perks. Putting the burden of the victim on making it about team work, autism awareness every month, claiming we learn verbal skills when we are terrified of being harmed, grow stronger, gain friends, and a better well being shows me you have NOT looked at the effects of bullying at all and are either high or stupid. Self Esteem is often low in autistic children because of bullying. Please, quit your job. This is not said lightly but quit your job. You don’t belong near vulnerable people.

I will be blogging extensively about your article and I hope you get this on your “other folder.” I also hope you read my article. As an autistic adult I am more qualified than you are to deal with autism and you have proven to be the least qualified hack  since Jenny McCarthy. For your education here is a link from me to you, about the risks associated with bullying. I didn’t consult it, because I know them by living them.

Voices Rising from Silence (PTSD Trigger Warning)

As an advocate for myself and when I can other people I run into a question a lot. “How do you do this?” This question most often comes from my fellow autistics. As someone diagnosed as an adult I find a lot of my experiences without diagnosis mirror the “medical treatments” others on spectrum who were diagnosed have. Child abuse in disguise as therapy in order to teach control reigns the autistic childhood, we learn silence. We learn stillness. We are erased with in our own bodies as much as possible. We are punished for existing. The best autistic parents even do parts of this because there is no voice that they hear, yet, from the autistic community. Our song has just begun.

The autistic culture is one of enforced shame, it is one where we deal with a lot of hate just for being. This is in part due to a lot of hate organisations like Autism Speaks, who sink their budget not into helping people but into quackery, negative ad campaigns and convincing newly minted parents of autistic children that their children are a burden. That their children will never live on their own, get married, have a “real job”, or anything that is valued as productivity. These parents are convinced that there is only pain in the life of the autist. So they create more of that pain, feeding it. I do not deny that a lot of things with autism really suck but I LOVE who I am.

How does one learn to speak? I think this how to might apply to survivors from many types of abuse. It is about regaining the voice. This process is not universal and is a general guideline to what I answer the most often when people ask me how I blog, how I advocate, and how I risk going out of my house being so far from the norm. I think I hide less and less of my abnormality. I celebrate it now, but it is an on going process and journey.  I wish there was a universal answer but here is what I worked out as far as what I do subconsciously and consciously that I can put to words.

1. When I want to be silent out of fear, I speak up and risk the consequences. This to me is the basis of self advocacy. Oppression is born in a culture of fear, so I must not obey the fear that tells me to be quiet. “If you are good and quiet nothing bad will ever happen.” If that was true I would be a far different person, because being “good and quiet” only lead to pain. It leads to secrets. Good and quiet would mean still being with my exhusband, it would mean watching my father murder my step brother with a frying pan, and it would mean condoning every act of rape, malpractice and other harms brought to me by people who tried to take advantage of my selective mutism, of my physical fragility and of my silence. Sometimes it is a small noise, other times it is a roar. Sometimes it is actually words. Sometimes a song. I am not silent. Not anymore.

2. When I am threatened, I do not revert to silence. Making noise leads to punishment. It leads to the threats that come in a variety of forms. I had a medical professional threaten and then withhold my pain medications on more than one occassion, because she did not believe I was not addicted. I suffered. I was then told if I kept speaking up to her boss about these threats and punishments she would have me black listed. I took that threat to her boss and switched doctors. I have a doctor now in the same facility. I wanted to be silent. She is no longer my doctor but treats others, thus I also am in the process of number 3.

3. Do not let the threat harm others. This is a mixed bag. The threatening person may be someone you cannot stop. This protection must never come at a cost you cannot live with. This means do not chase the axe wielding halloween monster, go for more qualified help. It means talking to someone’s boss, documenting issues. This is often what gets me to perform step 1. If the doctor was allowed to bully me with medications I needed and threaten my life that way, she would be allowed to do that to other people who may not be able to endure it, be able to adapt and if someone else spoke up without documentation I had, then I was harming that person. Thus i went to her boss in step two. As you can see these steps are not in order because they are more a mobius strip how to guide for living.

4. Document the threat. Little notes from my exhusband, recording the doctor without her knowledge as it is legal to do in my state, pictures of bruises. Those parents who send their autistic kids to school with hidden cameras and find out that not so shocking to any of us, abusers aer out there ready to harm your vulnerable chiild for being who they are.

The same process applies to why I write. I cannot put on a super hero cape, race about the world and fix it. I must slowly advocate for myself and then when I can on bigger projects.  I cannot advocate for others if I do not come first. i think back to my first few tries at blogging. I threw on a secret identity, I tried to hide who I was. Yes, there were other blogs before Textual Fury caught fire. I stumbled, I struggled with my words out of fear. Then I realized that was what i was trained to do and the rebel that lives in the core of my being took over and I wrote the first post here. As I wrote more and more the tone of my blog changed and I let out the “monster” i feared. It turned out that person is pretty darned cool and I began to push further and further out in the world as myself. I never hide anymore.

So how does someone conditioned their entire life to a culture of silence learn to speak? By doing. The posts I never share, those still happen, the poetry saved on my hard drive instead of published, facebook and talking to friends, gathering with other autistic people. Knowing what I know now those are just little things. It has to be something you want, so you have to stop hiding from the desire to write, to sing, to speak, to shout to be. The thing is? Just wanting to IS enough. When people ask me for help it makes me proud, not of me but of them. I am proud of every single person who takes on the difficult journey of learning to speak for themselves. This is not a challenge exclusive to autistic folks, though the culture of silence caused by shaming and abuse seems to be so prevalent among my people that there are no autists I know without PTSD or that they know. There are no autists without pain, suffering and a knowledge of abuse that is intimate and too close, that I know of… except perhaps those children being born right now. So we are learning to speak so that they do not face the battle of a life where our words are forced back down our throats until we choke on them. That is why I wrote this out. The how to on blogging is the same as other things. Baby steps, do what you can and try to do a little more each time. Cry, laugh, feel happy, feel good, struggle with it. Live.

I think of the others who came before me, for I was hardly the first blogger with autism out there. My brain does not want to write names but I can see faces, words piled up before me that create a beautiful sky and world. I remember the first moment I read something by autism speaks and it broke my heart and filled me with fear. Was I seen as such a monster? Did i deserve the abuse? I was a baby back then, not yet a woman and lost in a world of flying diagnosis where everything seemed to stick. Then I decided to find adults on spectrum too. Now I have loving friends who hold me close, even if it is just as text. Better as text since I can enjoy that. The diagnosis that stuck saved me so I could find out that no, those descriptions of horror are wrong. Even if I had never been able to live on my own, they are wrong. There  should be no shame in having a need. There should be no shame. So i am writing this for the people who inspired this post by speaking,by learning to speak, by asking, and by being.

Will I… (Trigger Warning)

 

I have been trying to hold back my level of suffering from the world. The various support groups for autism, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, PTSD… every single one this is a reoccuring theme. I know why. Not only is being in this level of pain dangerous but it makes you vulnerable and often this is when people abandon you, attack you, or they cannot comprehend what you are trying to tell them. I do not as a rule cry when I feel so much pain but I silently sit and try to find the cause to fix it or I just learn that this is my new life. I must always be prepared for the permanence of my agony. There are people who are lucky enough that this is not the case.  I cannot stop hiding this, even when I try sometimes. There is the element of fear. If everyone knows that I can barely breathe for pain, then even the predators know. (Oh hello predators. Yes I will tazer you even when I hurt.)

This song is from rent, it is called Will I… thus the title of the post. I could die from the on going issues I have at any time. My heart could fall to pieces, a literal broken heart. I could have a heart attack from my stress and high cholesterol. I am bleeding internally somewhere, I could run out of blood. I could kill myself. That is why I am writing this post. You see, that is the whisper in the depths of what might be my soul. If I die it is over. I do not live out of some doubt about an afterlife. I do wonder but that is not a consideration in any of my choices. I do not stay alive for other people or the cats. I love many people deeply, so deeply there is an ache of joy. I guess a mental pressure sore from all the goodness. I stay alive because I want to.

I am afraid of dying and missing people. I am afraid of lingering in pain without dignity. I am terrified of being tormented by doctors as Ihave been lately. The nightmare is not the diseases or the pain. In fact some of that is better. I officially no longer am diagnosed with epilepsy but still have a seizure disorder of some sort. The some sort is not defined by science. Yet NOT having epilepsy is a miraculous thing.  It is a wonder to me.

I spend a lot of time advocating, and passionately burning for the world. Now I am just burning. The pain is in every nerve, even though some of them should not be communicating with the brain. My blood pressure is up, my heart is racing, and this is omnipresent. I have had to fight around government shut downs for my needs, but I did this. Yet all I want is to have someone hold me. Something no one can do at all. Maybe ever again. I just want to be held in a soft space of beautiful harmonics without actual sensory input. This dark space has no reality. I often find this song in the undercurrent of my psyche because it holds most of those things. Yet I do not have to wonder. No, my life will never get better. I will always have some agonizing wrong. Yes people care. I have never known how much people care, I think I do then it seems to grow. Maybe I grow. Maybe not.

I am terrified. I feel the race of time, not just because bleeding internally is very bad but I need this resolved for my mental health before november. My PTSD is at a peak height and I am not sure what I will be enduring medically but I know I will survive it if I can. Will I be allowed dignity is the true question. I am afraid to die and leave people I love, this is new to me. I never cared before. I always lived for things like spite, revenge. My revenge has been to build my life up into something I was told I could never have. I look around this space I live in and every corner has a marker of love. Every doll I own someone else gifted me, the Gothmas tree that needs its decorations and makes Sylvani happy, the pile of scarves I know will be useful and necessary that are clean, the myriad of tiny touches. My life has been a life of grief and loss. Now that I have things I want to hold on to I am afraid I cannot survive this. It is not a lack of will to live, it is a lack of trust in my doctors. I have no faith in even the best of them. Why should I with the ineptitude I have fought against for so long?

So I am left to wonder. Yes, I am in pain. No I do not know if I can survive this. I will try.

One more thing: The man who wrote Rent? He died from a condition similar to EDS called Marfan. That runs in my family too but I lack the features that mark it. That is LUCKY for me. I sometimes wonder if the pain he felt and held too close contributed to his dying, if that is why Rent hits the notes I sometimes NEED. Just a little tidbit for people who may not have known.  I do not reach for the anthems of survival that are broad and direct, they ring hollow. “I will survive” does not match my spirit. Even when that is indeed the attitude that I display as I emulate the bronco and buck for my life.

 

I am jagged glass

shattered now

pick me up

fear the cuts

I do not intend

Yet I broke

can you lift me up?

Will you laeve

I am broken

Never repaired

yet I was beautiful

I am beautiful

Shattered glass

so many sharp edges

yet it is true

I am beautiful

The Right to Remain Silent (Trigger Warning)

I have so much going on that I have been silent, because writing hurts. Typing sends sheets of agony down my spine.  My belly is swollen and lopsided and no one knows why. I might have a brain tumor or a billion other things making my testosterone levels skyrocket. (Meaning if you think testosterone makes you a man I am more man than you, if you are indeed a dude.) I have been fighting for access to the same care a non disabled woman would have gynecologically, while being torn for a pap by the speculum because the doctor decided that I did not have the right to a less painful exam. THAT has never happened to me before medical fragility or not.I have been struggling. I have also seen every day in the news a murder, maiming, medically questionable treatment usually reserved for animals., continued institution and many other horrible things being done to autistics.  This is true of other disabilities but not to the degree that autistic children and adults have been deprived of the empathy that their victimization should have.  Here is where I should link you to a few brilliant pieces I read but I cannot handle the triggers to read the truths again.

Two nights ago before bed, due to a technical glitch I had a talk with another autistic advocate and we both acknowledged that as children we were taught to be compliant, pliable and to NEVER say no. We were taught that certain abuses, things taught to even children with good parents who are taking the advice that is being given in the form of ABA and other wretched training methods that use violence and pain as therapy, have been used to silence us. Every autistic advocate I know has PTSD from treatment, abuse, and some of that abuse was preventable if they had known that NO was an option. I am not always the most vocal advocate, especially when things are as bad as they are medically, I focus more on staying alive since that is very helpful with the whole fighting for your rights thing. So I am always relieved when I know that other advocates ARE out there. They are persistent, present and even if one of us takes a small step back for our own needs others are there to help with the event horizon of advocacy. Autistics are not seen by most people as people. We are not seen to have pain, rights, or needs. We are seen as a burden, an imposition and a chore.

This shouting anthem should be read with as much loud punk music as your brain can conjure.  It is as close to stating how I feel about all of this as I can manage. My words skim the surface like a waterbug. I want to scream. I want people to HEAR it. To feel it. Take the punch in the gut, take the flag, rise up and listen. No one knows more about autism than we, the autistics. Not the parents of autistics, even the ones who DO listen to us. No one can speak for me. No one. Now if people just listened when I do speak we’d be golden.

The Right To Remain Silent

You have the right to remain silent
That is what they say to the criminals anyway
but being born with an autistic brain
doesn’t make you a bad person
Not unless you maybe rob a bank.
So I am writing this out in the hopes
That you will hear the song behind the words
Flap your hands, look away from their eyes
Defy their toxic works.

You have the right to shout
You have the right to rock
you have the right to sing
you have the right to be
You have the right to no
You have the right to live
You have the right to no
You have the right to remain…

Don’t take their word for what you are
You have value even if they can’t see
Our words are taken through violence every day
but being born autistic doesn’t mean it has to be that way
Trained from birth to take abuse
We are people
Gonna rise and shout
Scream it
Say it
flap it
rock it
paint it
feel it
breath it
SHOUT IT OUT

All the people we see and hear
don’t seem to think we should speak and say
I am not a doll
I am not a toy
I am not a dog
I am a human
I am a human

Raised to say anything but what I really feel
Taught that my words cannot be valued
Do they rape me?
Do they break me?
Do they beat me?
It’s just therapy
Do they drug me?
Make it hard to think?
Make me want to scream?
Do they cause me pain?
It’s just therapy
Silent hands
quiet hands
eye contact
scrubbed skin
Get used to it
Cause it’s just therapy
Don’t say no
Don’t say pain
Don’t say truth
It scares them
Less than them
That’s a lie
Its the lie
Fed to us

So shout it out
tell the truth
Since when does the abuser get to say
What is right
For their victims
We’re the survivors and we’re going to stand to say

I am not a doll
I am not a toy
I am not a dog
I am human
Where’s my equal rights?
Fuck the ADA
I’ll take the social equality the hard way.
I may not stand
I may not speak
I may just breath
I may sing out
I may write out
I may say it too
I have the right to expression
I have the right to truth
I have the right to bodily autonomy
I have the right to … everything you do.

The first chorus has risen, the second chorus too
Remember that you don’t have to be silent
They threaten to cage us
They threaten to maim us
Sometimes that is where our lives begin

I am not a doll
I am not a toy
I am not a subhuman
I am not a monster
I am not a freak
I am probably a geek
I decide my identity

Say No
Scream NO
Live NO
Fight
Fight
FIght
Advocacy
Freedom
Equal rights

You have the right to not remain silent
You have the right to bodily autonomy
You have the right to medical care without fear of being

silenced.
You have the rights everyone else does
We are people
We have thoughts
We have feelings
Fuck you’re empathy excuses for infringing on our CIVIL

RIGHTS

Don’t tell me to be silent
That isn’t very civil
Don’t tell me to keep my hands still
That is an act of aggression
Don’t tell me my anger is invalid because it isn’t yours.
Who fails to see
The human in me?
You are the nightmare monster underneath the bed
The shadows in the closets in every autistic child’s fears
You are the screams without answer when we have no words
You are abuser. You are wrong.

So listen, hear this. Read it. See it. Tactile paintings were

just not enough. I am going to keep shouting because it is ME

who I love. Selfish? fuck yes! Survival! I did it.

Say No
Scream No
Shout No
Live No
Fight
Fight
Fight
Advocacy
Freedom
Equal Rights
This is LIFE

 

Advocacy: Lets Help Amanda Baggs

Long ago when I first started this blog I received comments from several people. It startled me. THe idea people would read this blog. Then I had to put it away and found out people didn’t quit following. So with that in mind I am writing the first advocacy post in two years. A great deal of what I learned about advocacy I learned from Amanda Baggs. She was kind enough to email with me for a short period when I had just survived my exhusband and I found comfort in her words. I was able to keep going because I did not feel alone. I didn’t feel trapped by all the things in my mind or the way I see and think anymore. Amanda is one of the most powerful advocates I have met, not in the sense others see power but in her effect that I can see.

These links are PTSD trigger alerts. Simply put, Amanda has been tortured by the hospital that should have helped her and is being bullied into a dangerous and potentially deadly situation. Here are the links and they do include how you can help. Sharing this post or these links will also help.

http://paulacdurbinwestbyautisticblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/no-anesthesia-for-disabled-woman.html

http://webmuskie.tumblr.com/ This tumblr has an entire series of documentation posts about the event. This is the first hand source of the info.

Please do what you can to help Amanda get her needs met and not be punished for the malpractice of her medical team. I am going to go curse into a corner and figure out how to make the calls around my brain tomorrow.

Update: I redid the links to the blogs, they should both be working now. I am not sure why they weren’t since the links are the exact same. If issues persist please let me know.

 

An Open Letter to the Current Administration:

Dear President Obama, Republicans, Democrats:

You have made me cry. This takes a lot of doing, over the years I have become quit the tough chick. I have endured years of abuse at the hands of my father, a veteran of the failed Vietnam Occupation. I have endured abuse at the hands of a medical establishment that seems to forget, just because my body is not strong as your body, I am still a person. I fought for an education that I am now too sickly to use, and I fought for housing and shelter. I fought and fought and yet, you reduce me to tears.

It is not the fault of the poor in this country that the US is in debt. This is your inept leadership. Past President Bush also is guilty, but the fact is not a one of you is poor. I was born in a condemned building, at home. I was born with health issues that went ignored and untreated over money.

You fight over medical care, yet other countries have full medical coverage and their people have far less disability and sickness. This is no cure all, because disability is actually something everyone, even the richest of the rich should expect. Disability has no preference for rich, poor, already abled, slightly sickly, a brilliant mind, or a below average one. Anyone can be disabled.

You waste money, while cutting spending to programs such as Medicaid, on wars that make more disabled persons. You cut education and have carved out the marrow of the United States of America. I read tonight that further cuts are expected for SSI, Medicaid, and now the Pell Grant. Just because your spoiled little children; and they are spoiled by the right of not hungering, not being homeless, and having an education beyond the mediocre and substandard versus the average world levels schooling in this country, do not have to fear over their college education does not mean this is the truth for MOST Americans.

There are no jobs. You sent them overseas. I did not go to school until I was an adult. I am self educated. Even I know the basics of supply, demand, and economic return. You took out ECONOMIC RETURN. We buy, we spend, and the money goes to China, Russia, Japan.

You borrow more. You cut funding to housing, You do not create MORE jobs.

Stop punishing the poor because you inept elitists cannot fathom what it is to hunger. It is not OUR fault YOU made this debt. You should all resign, at once. There may be chaos but perhaps some of the down trodden will finally get a chance to lead.

Yes, I am saying that I, a disabled, autistic, undereducated person with severe brain damage could do a better job than you.

Yours,

Kateryna AE Fury

I AM More Important Than Your History

Random thoughts as I woke up this morning, and began my daily motions crept into my head. I have been thinking about the acecssibility of my city, or the lack there of. The excuse I am given in new buildings is that the sticker on the door should be enough. Some places obviously tried and usually it shows in grand ways. Other places give the excuse that to put a ramp in, or wide enough doors would be destroying the historical importance of the building that their business sits in. I am more important than the history of the world. All people are.

I know that this makes me appear to hate history, yet this is the opposite of truth. My first passion in life was history and I have always loved taking part in reenactments. I am for preservation but not when the preservation includes the history of excluding others based on arbitrary things such as skin color or ability. I suspect that the place I live is far from the only one guilty of such crimes, yet I look at the excuses and they no longer work.

The first time I approached a historical building and there was no ramp, the excuse worked, because then I did not know my rights under the Americans with Disabilities act. The second time I was told this, the excuse did not work but I had no power. Since then I have regularly avoided the section of town that is considered somehow worthy of preservation. Even going along the side walks outside is difficult as the inclines on the “accessible” places are so steep my power chair cannot make it, and coming down the other side of these inclines would likely be an act of suicide. Old Town is lovely, and often has events that are free and meant to gather the entire community. These events only count if you are willing to burn out your chair engine, sink into grass, or sit on the only part of the side walk that you can get to that is safe. The excuse is history.

None of these buildings retains their original purpose. They are all shops selling the same tourist crap. There are a few restaurants but they too are selling the tourist crap. People claim native ancestry and sit out on the side walks, because this is apparently historical too and barricade the way. I have had people get angry at me for asking them to move so I can go past. Then there is the staring. For some reason people react more strongly to my presence in this section of town. The idea that a disabled person may be near these expensive shops, may want to see some old time gun battling, or in general may want to be on the side walk that has curb cuts at BOTH ends (an extreme rarity in this town no matter the section) boggles their minds.

I have found my response finally, for why they need to have access for me and others who are disabled. I am more important than your history. It is not my history if I am prevented from learning about it. It is not a history I can embrace when a store that is selling the same tourist thing as the one next door can have stairs and no entry and their excuse is history. I realized this morning that the lie does not work for a very simple reason.

All of these buildings have restrooms. Every single one has a place to go when your bladder is full, when the tourist trap food gives you a stomach ache, or when you need to check your make up. Every single one. All of these buildings were built without restrooms. Every single one. They were built with out houses in the back, all of which are torn down. If access is less important than poop, you are obviously not thinking straight. If you prize history over poeple, you lose vital lessons about people that history contains. Yes, the stories here are amusing, amazing, and important. So are the people who want to hear them and might not be able to.

So there it is, my reply has been cemented finally. Whenever someone plays the history card in this never ending game of poker for bigots, I have my answer. If you can put in an outhouse, you can put in a ramp. I am more important than your history.

Pumpkin Pie (Trigger Warning)

Not how thanksgiving looks inside my head

Pumpkin pie, soft, creamy, and since mine is crustless just a wad of soothing and cold chewiness. The scent trickles into my mouth to tease at me, and is the only Thanksgiving day food I can eat without becoming ill. Mashed potatoes are also fine but must be different than the recipes from my family dinners. No gravy, cheese, and almost always something in the food. Turkey, I can barely type the word. I can barely say the word. I will not eat it. I have been forced to by people using that vulnerability against me and I react to it with a mental allergic response. It is not somatic but the PTSD triggers hard and fast.

This is what I expect of Thanksgiving.

Yesterday I remembered something that has given me a sense of relief. Today as I continue to process the revelations I am left staring down the barrel of gender identity issues. I have had gender identity challenges my entire life. They base in my being autistic and as many other autistic women face challenges of being accused of decidedly unfeminine behavior so have I. There is a root with in the numerous and enduring sexual abuse that has dominated my life and was the end all be all of my childhood. From being prostituted to ministers and the supposed holiest people I know at the age of three and raped by my father to the rape at gun point by a high school boy who didn’t seem to understand this was why I stabbed him with a fork at school when he put his hand on my shoulder. I once tried to cut off my breasts to become a boy, and I have never really appreciated my femininity.I am aware there is more to this, including the fact that I am intersexed physically. I have testicles AND ovaries. Maybe if my mother had eaten, I would have been a male child. Maybe not. I do not consider myself to be of one gender in a sense but I am either feeling male or female.

I have spent years keeping this a secret, and in public I might still. Yet I am thinking this doesn’t matter. My carer knows. My best friend knows. My sister of choice knows. I know. To me this is who matters. I dress according to the way I feel, and even my male side is prone to wearing dark red lipstick. It feels sexy. I have fought and clawed my way through life trying to exist, and I have been told repeatedly that girls just don’t fight back. It is a fiction in a bad life time movie that women can ever do damage, we are eternal victims.

It wasn’t JUST the media that sent me this message. Nor was it subtle. It is my nature to fight back when I am in danger. I have very good survival skills. I am fully capable of killing you if you try to kill me. I won’t murder you but I won’t let you murder me. This has been unequivocally a part of who I am and I have wondered if when I was raped for the entirety of Thanksgiving weekend, so Wednesday night on through a Sunday night, when I was beaten and when the fragmented memories didn’t match the normal abuse patterns… did I even try to fight back?

Therapists told me no. If I had tried to fight back then he would have killed me. Except he thought he did and I have very real memories of meeting Osiris the god of the dead in Egyptian Mythology and having him put me back in my body and ordering me to live. I have marks on my chest that match where his hands were. My father wanted me to be dead, and did not try CPR. He thought I was dead. I don’t know about pulse checking and I am very aware that this could be a response to the very serious trauma to my brain from being bludgeoned with a gun, but I was left for dead.

My mother, who a child loves and believes on pretty much anything until Mother proves to be a person. No matter the health of relationship good or bad, Mothers do happen to be humans and thus the teenager occurs. Yes, my mother spent my entire life telling me that we don’t fight back in my family. The men are the abusers and the women in my family are there to be hit. She has said less of this to my baby sister but the message still is there. Women don’t fight back.

I have had mental hospital doctors torture me over my fighting back, I fought them and yet I was not allowed to have fought back against my father when I was alone. My agency was denied as children don’t fight back unless they are penis bearers. My father made it clear that if we fought back we would die but there are other memories of me fighting back. My siblings sometimes declared their hatred of me because my morals got us into a world of literal hurt. Then again they also wanted me to lie and I am still very bad at that.

When I was somewhere between 11-13 and was raped by someone else and I did fight back the police told me they wouldn’t let the boy press charges. I took a bit of rebar to his head, his father’s car, his house and let his dog go (never came back). I was willing to kill him for what he did to me and yet again, the police told me that women just aren’t allowed.

The media does this too. In movies it is extremely rare for a woman to fight back unless she was already a victim with years of self defense, hiding in terror and her abuser finds her and then she either kills him, takes him back and tricks him, or is rescued by the new romance in her life. Not just life time folks but block buster films. It is never with in the intial attack that a woman fights back. In horror movies, the attacks come in waves and it is finally after a breaking point, or the loss of all of the human shields that the female fights back and often still dies. Running away is good, as happens in horror movies with the cliched fall so the bad man can still get you. This is an acceptable reaction and is something I approve of, just don’t trip.

It is the female who is unfeminine in movies that is the villain. Either a caricature of a woman with sexual appetites such as Famke Jansen’s role in a James Bond movie or a woman who is something ugly, othered or is somehow defective. These are our female villains. Any villainous who is beautiful tends to not be acting under her own charms or supposedly it is more scary for a waifish beauty to be bad. Again, by being beautiful she is supposed to subvert the norms of who is acceptable with in a violent situation.

Women become their traumas. This is the other message I have struggled with my entire life. I was reduced not to a bad childhood but this single moment in a trauma filled life. None of my traumas are my identity even if they chipped some of the facets of my personality or left scars on me that changed the outcome of my personal growth to this point. The good moments in my life had just as much impact and I am the result of everything I have thought, read, heard, and learned. Every person I met, every person I did not meet. Every bit of media I have heard. It is not my trauma that makes me who I am. The Brave One, the entire premise of the film, which I linked above for my example, is that the woman is just her trauma.

This is a perception that removes the humanity from She Who Fights Back. You are no longer human but you are Rape. You are not actually a Woman, therefore it’s okay once more for you to be violent. There must be something wrong with you if you are a woman who fights back, this is the pervasive message I have been living with. There have been years I nearly killed myself over the simple fact that I did not fight back. I could not live with the idea that I did not, even as a small child, try to get away.

I remember when I first began to wonder why I didn’t fight back, it was after I was told by a therapist I would be lying if I claimed I had. I sat there quietly for the rest of our session, I was in a mental hospital at the time. The first time. I watched her face and I wondered if she had ever been hurt too, and if she had fought back. She had long plastic nails that she was tapping on her clipboard. I felt like she was angry at me, and my more experienced interpretation of her expression still reads anger. She went from someone I could talk with to a cold wall of rage when I asked about trying to get away or maybe hitting him back. This was just a few months after and I still had pain in my shoulders that radiated from the underside of the joint, and my hands were still swollen. In fact my hands have never fully recovered from the kick of the gun and my shoulder dislocations started then. We had fired guns before as a family, that wasn’t my first time but I never liked it because of the pain and the loudness.

Even as I am writing this I am playing in my mind the moment I picked up the gun. There was no hesitation. Something again that movies show. Women always hesitate with weapons. Men sometimes do, but they have the option of not. I pointed it at him. I remember his face. His eyes betrayed his shock, surprise, and then anger. I pulled the trigger. He didn’t get to mock me first, he didn’t get any lines out like the cliche, “You won’t do it.” He had lunged for me and I fired the gun until the bullets ran out. I have another new fragment but it is like a single frame of video. I see him in it with a police officer, but everything is hazy, I am just aware he is convincing them that nothing is wrong. This is new too, but I had never expected if the police came that they would rescue me. I learned that well before 1992. I just realized it couldn’t be 93, because my brother wasn’t born until AFTER this incident, I was off by a year.

So I have been fighting this for longer than I thought. I have found the most painful idea in my life was that I would just let him hurt me. This is of course not what happened, and no victim EVER lets their abuser hurt them. Even if you cannot or do not fight back, you did not give him permission. My personal battle was learning this. Fighting back is pivotal in my mind as something important. Even if you don’t win, you must try.

I know as an adult fighting back entails more than shooting or stabbing someone. It can be the moment you open the door and smell someone’s pumpkin pie and think “I am free”. Even if that is not true that little moment can give you a hint of the truth for years. The shifted association of foods during Thanksgiving from being all disgusting and triggering based on being raped, force-fed and torn apart with food as the supposed reason I deserved to be raped and beaten even pumpkin pie has confused me. Why was that pie safe? I still can’t eat my mother’s version of mashed potatoes. My father didn’t like green beans so those were safe until the allergies happened but the pie has been as much of a mystery to me as my wondering who I used to be.

I was not reborn in that moment after all, the idea was just a way of coping with the blatant lies I was told about who I was allowed to be. It is amazing to me how many people, in the name of supposed survival, reject the idea that women can be strong at all ages. This has effected my writing, my game play and what I could do. This is not trivial in any way shape or form. The core of who I was did not break, and that is important. My spirit never broke, and who I am is essentially the same on the base level as who I was before. This means perhaps I did not really lose my innocence but instead it was hidden away, so I could survive.

I do not cry much but I am crying now. How can I not cry for I know there are other little girls, women, people in between the male and female who wonder if they fought back. Who are told every day that this is an impossibility. Children do not have the knowledge yet to think critically about if people are lying, this is a skill we learn as we grow. A facet of being nuerodiverse in this world, and everyone fits in there somewhere, is that people learn these skills at different rates. The ability to critically assess a situation or the media is something that must be taught or it must be learned. Not everyone is capable of this and children have to learn from somewhere.

I am left questioning the validity of mental health for women, children, and anyone with chronic pain or PTSD. How can so many therapists male and female believe that women just don’t think of fighting back? Making self defense a taboo or something that is only allowed after a violation is incredibly dangerous. This is a part of the forbidden dialogue of rape itself. We are warned to not talk about rape as survivors. Victims may be unable to do so and a part of this is, even at the age of eight it was hinted that I deserved to be raped. Was eight year old me just so sexy she deserved it? That’s what I have been told. I also came forward with in the statute of limitations and because my father raped me I was told that my case just wasn’t worth the District Attourney’s time. They beleived me. They just didn’t care because I was a little girl. I have never forgotten being told I am not enough of a person, that wasn’t the first time but that was the moment I lost faith in the world itself and knew I stand alone.

Except I do not stand alone. Of all the lies that came out of this worst trauma it was the lie that I was somehow the worst female in the world, worst at femininity, worst at self defense, worst at being loved and that I was alone and no one else would know what it was to want to die, to suffer, or to fear. I was defective. I do not want to kill myself today, and this is the first thanksgiving in a very long time.

I am afraid for the children of this world. The messages that are being taught, the things that even adult women fetishize such as Twilight with its codependant pedophilic necrophiliac abusive manipulative beastiality domestic violence women stay in the kitchen marry for sex and all the other crap that Twilight is REALLY about underneath the sparkling vampires… these messages are the normal for our children not the exception.

The Good The Bad and the Medical Drama

(This is the third time, my internet ate this twice now)
ahhahahaaa Woh woh woh… (theme to the Good the Bad and the Ugly)

Woh woh woh woh….

For those of you who have either never heard this before or just want to hear this while reading here is a video. For the hearing impaired the them is pretty much what I wrote above.

Today I saw the gynecologist about the font of blood issue and the discussion was as I expected. Though to get there I had to nagivate the world and I woke up feeling a bit fired up. I was going to make them see me even if they tried to screw up. I was prepared. So I donned my hat, today’s selection is my black riverboat gambler hat (the bad guy’s hats in every western or gambling movie) I put on make up so I could try and feel at least a little okay, a barrier between all the crap and myself, and went out. I had to take the sunshade off because the transport vans are too short for it, so I was hiding under the hat and sleeves. The ride was okay but the driver was obnoxious, though I enjoyed making him squirm with my honest answers to his invasive questions including, “Oh crap was that rude of me?” I also explained the ADA to him in detail and by the end of the half an hour journey he was very quiet and thanked me for not being mean about his questions. I shouldn’t have enjoyed that as much as I did but I was being straight forward and honest. He did ask me if I thought all technology exists because of disability and I said at least most of the things he takes for granted such as automatic doors and some things on his computer do.

I went into the hospital and popped into the elevator, went up and was immediately surprised that they had renovated the floor plan. So, I turn around and there’s a receptionist waiting to answer my questions. She is here as her first day and doesn’t know where I am going but goes to ask, returns and leads me as far as she can, I read the sign on the door about an alarm and go to back track but a tech saw me and was surprised I didn’t ignore the sign and make loud sounds. I pointed out there is a sign on the door and she said “Well in the two years since they installed that alarm you are the first person to read it.” The last time I came this door was pinned open. I am sure other people read it but they didn’t care about how it would effect other people. I sign in, noting that in this room there are children and pregnant women. One of the little girls is scared, and I am instantly triggered because there is really only one reason I know of for a five year old to be in that office. Heart broken I scribble my information, my eyes letting me read paper today.

I sit and turn my music on loudly, drowning out all but the barest sounds of the room. I don’t want to hear the joys of the pregnant women, nor do I want to hear the sorrows of this child or the frustration of the teenager who doesn’t understand why just because she had sex she has to go in. I did anyway but I tried to be respectful of them because my brain would leap and bound and I will never forget their secrets. Ever. I will try but I know that next time I see a little girl of similar appearance I will think of that girl who looked so much like I did. I think that was what startled me the most. No one, as usual, could tell that something was wrong. That’s what I want. I want people to not be aware that my brain has me in a tail spin where I suddenly connect the new changes in my dreams of demons because of a child’s words in pain, pain she should not feel.

I am pulled out of the dark thoughts by a little boy, I didn’t hear the door and that’s the point of the headphones. Doors make me jumpy and I had parked with my back towards it because that was the best spot for me. I needed to point away from people so I could focus. “What’s that mommy?” “It’s not nice to stare, that’s a wheelchair.” A few moments passed and he was there beside me, “Are you a cowboy?” Not the question I expected. I look up and I can tell his mother is tense, her body is tight and she seems upset. I may have misread this but I instead told her son, “Nope, are you?” He shook his head and rattled of historical details, I could match him and we had a geek fest in the corner. His mother,who I am still watching comes over and asks me why I am willing to talk to him, as if there is something wrong with her son. “Well he started it.” She seems confused by my answer and asks him why he was willing to talk to me. He shrugs, “She’s nice.” His mother now seems worried and tells me he is Autistic, I tell her that’s why he is willing to talk. I am too. I doubt she got why he could talk to me. She seemed stuck on his idea that I am nice and safe when he doesn’t know me. All black head to toe is threatening to the Nuerotypicals, and heavy eyeliner? Crazy goth wheelchair lady appearance doesn’t get nice from them.

I am called in, I wave goodbye to the future cowboy and go into the back. I am lead down a yellow corridor, I am sure there are pictures but I only see yellow, it’s not a bad shade but it is not a pleasing shade at all. It stabs the eye like sandpaper with it’s shade. I had scheduled a specific room because of my disability, and this was not the room we entered. This room was tiny, the door opened and would hit the patient if said patient were on the table which also doubles as Mount Everest. The nurse is confused by the idea of closing the door behind me since I stopped in the middle and look at her and tell her, “This isn’t the right room. I am supposed to be in the procedure room.” It was supposed to be written down but Dr. Receptionist didn’t do this either. I feel frustration, but I am trying to work with people. She goes to check. I try and find a way to park my chair, visualizing first for safety and no, there is no way this room can fit me and a doctor and I won’t park in the yellow hall. That’s not safe for my equipment which I need for daily living.

The nurse comes back and says that they are waiting on a call in to the patient scheduled in that room in a half an hour but leads me to it, because there is no other way. Which is why I specified when I called in, and asked for the accommodation again. There is no other way even with an army of nurses that room will work and the others are full. The procedure room is used for the disabled and cancer diagnosis. It’s no a pleasant room and it effects the nurse. I can tell this. That’s not good but I noticed this last time. There is trepidation with this room. I don’t understand that, because cancer diagnosis can save a life that is lost without it so it’s good. The cancer is the bad.

I am told I can change, the patient isn’t here yet and said it was fine with her to wait. I am honored by this because waiting to know if you have cancer is tense, scary and I have done that a few times. I trade pants for a sheet and perch on this table, which is a safe distance from the ground so if I bungle this? I am okay. The doctor comes in. I find her oddly short. She is kind and we discuss my symptoms and she agrees with my theory that the lining of my uterus got to be too thick and tore things that shouldn’t tear. So we proceed with the testing.

I hate this part because it’s awkward, I feel self conscious and they poke you with sticks. I don’t know of any procedures for men that include as many sticks as when I see a gynecologist. Q-tips are sticks. The biopsy which they attempted to perform includes more sticks. The tool is a stick that sucks things into itself, which is better than cutting. The biopsy failed because my uterus just wouldn’t let anyone in. I did tell her I was having cramps still, and she warned me they would be worse and even the attempt at the biopsy causes bleeding. Which I knew going in, from the last time. It was unpleasant but instead of a hysterectomy there is one thing to try before we go that route. This is good.

Provera and Metformin are both known to force a period in women with my conditions. I cannot take metformin, so we will try provera when I don’t have a period by January. She says if. I know better. I don’t have a minimum of two periods a year and that is part of the issue. My body will let itself go for years, a part of me is fine with this for obvious reasons but the side effects are bad. If I didn’t eat a diet of meat and meat with a side of meat, I would have needed a blood transfusion in the ER from blood loss and my doctor was upset that they did not run all the tests they should have including an ultrasound. I will be getting one of those for my birthday, as three days before said birthday next month I have the appointment. More unpleasantness but I’ve been there before. The worst part is having to pee while they use more sticks to figure out what your guts look like.

I should have been admitted in the ER, at least for observation but I think that was clear from my symptoms. The doctor asked if I was considering suing, and I did not answer. I know I can and I am going to try working with the hospital first to prevent more bungling idiocies in their future. I don’t know that this is possible. I have to try.

I am still stunned at the differences in level of care, but at least in the last ten years there has been a shot at a treatment. For ten days in January I will take provera, this will trigger a period. IF it fails to do so then I get the scissors treatment. I think I know what will happen, and it ends in snips. However, I could be wrong. That feeling in my bones could just be my frustration and tiredness. I am tired of being tired. I am tired of not being able to eat food. The good news is having a period every six months should reduce my acne, abnormal body hair issues and may stop my voice from dropping anymore. I used to sing soprano and now I am an alto. Even when I speak my voice is lower. The one bonus is also a curse in some ways as I have a “male” sex drive, as in the way I desire sex has altered itself. There isn’t a slow cooking of want and thought, there is instead a visual and then an instant need. We discussed this too, I don’t know that I want the ease of pleasure to go away but cancer is bad. Especially cancer in your body where they would have to cut you wide like a fish. If we do a preventative hysterectomy my chances of healing are better. So that’s the plan, if this drug fails then we cut out my sugar and spice. Well at least the sugar. Spice and everything nice should remain, as will at least a remnant of a puppy dog tail.

I have been preparing over the last six months for surgery. Not a specific one but there are several broken things which the only fix is to either leave it be and suffer which won’t work forever or surgery. I have three potential surgeries. My jaw, my uterus, and my spine. Someday they might want to cut around there. So I am gathering things to keep me going when the time comes. The fact that I have avoided most major surgeries until this point is quite amazing medically speaking, because of how much of my body works “correctly”.

I am even working on a plan for Sprite and Nymph. My fear is Sprite’s needs not being met. My having been away for hours today has her draped over my knee, a white hot sleepy kitty. She needs me. I need her. My doctor having anaphalactic reactions to cats doesn’t help things either. I am not resigned to surgery but would rather that the provera works however that is not what my body tells me. At this point I hope that sense is wrong but it has yet to be wrong. I will know before this time next year if it was right and that is enough for me, at least for now.

I will not miss having a goatee if I don’t shave. I will not miss cramping even after the period is over. Both of those should go away with a “withdrawal period” as the forced period is called. My doctor was shocked and called it malpractice that no one had even tried anything in the last ten years because both of the aforementioned drugs are not that new, sometime with in the last five years they should’ve been brought up. Metformin was tried for a non uterus related ailment. Doctors are so tiresome at times. If all doctors followed their own protocols so much would be better. They are simple little things that are ignored and often make the difference.

I am too tired to be angry but I am very disappointed. There is a sense of betrayal here with in me. I trust these people to protect me from my body but they do not. Yet this is what I expect of them too. I have that sense of wanting to just flee this state again. If I could land safely anywhere I would go right now. I wonder if that urge comes from the growing knowledge of just how broken this state and it’s systems are? I am not sure. I just know that my future isn’t set in stone and I am hoping that no one tries to argue with me about having a kid first. I am sterile anyway, but I was told today that medicaid will pay for me to get my eggs scraped. Since that’s just what medicaid should be covering? I almost cursed.

The doctor as she poked me with sticks, for some reason female medicine is an endless line of sticks, she brought it up. She said she has to make the offer. She didn’t seem shocked at my scoffing at the idea. I don’t understand this however. I also am left trying to imagine medicine for women if we were men. There are similar men’s issues to my problems but they have all sorts of treatments from the physical non surgical to a myriad of drugs. Why is it that my medicine for my body has to be archaic because I have a vagina? This is illogical nonsense. The patriarchy just screwed me vaginally, that was my literal thought when I had that revelation. If in ten years the only thing is another form of BIRTH CONTROL? That’s IT? No one tried some sort of other thing? I have ideas that could help medically I think but I don’t have the science to know if I am right.

Once more they have me wanting to go to school. Once more they have me feeling frustrated. I was triggered and in pain and again had people questioning if I hurt as bad as I say I do because I am not screaming. It is exhausting navigating around these iron poles of nuerotypicality. How do they expect me to react? Does everyone have to scream and cry like a baby?

Oh yes and I had an allergic reaction to betadyne in my cunt. That’s not pleasant but not as bad as latex. Turns out that the ER should have also asked if I am allergic to shellfish, and as I haven’t used betadyne in years and always was sick anyway when doing so I didn’t know. The reaction is minor, just a rash and my doctor was very quick to treat it and change the sterilization stuffs but still. Why wasn’t that question ever asked before? I know that shellfish and eggs now have to go on my allergies list for the short list or I am screwed and rashy.

I am going to cuddle this ball of fur named Sprite, she’s currently in her dreams but her body is adorable and soft. Her paws are hanging off into space, her body is curled against my leg and between the two of them and she looks like she is smiling. She isn’t snoring yet but I am going to hold her for a while. I haven’t been able to do so for the last month due to cramping but she is worth it and I think I need her too. After all she always treats me as a person and loves me, with her I don’t have to be stunned at the rarity of a doctor or nurse who realizes I am competent and independent. Even if that happens only once they realize I got to the table my self, without their help. I changed and did it all because I can do it on my own mostly, and the nurses weren’t willing to assist me so I dealt with it to get on with my day.

A Moment in Meow.

I usually start my writing by setting out the images of what I want to write in the title. Sometimes I go back and change it but not really. I can’t put a title on what just happened. A friend of mine hereto after known as the Shoe Goddess and I have been talking. If she wants her name associated with this that’s cool with me but I always want to offer that respect. She and I talked about PTSD recently, and I explained it to her because she asked. She thinks I should write a book and I have been naysaying in my head, I agreed but I haven’t set out to do it but have shied away. I know why. Before I go into the why I will say, I am going to write the book. During the week I am going to outline what I think needs to be covered, and then I will break it into chapters, the same way that I write for my blog. I am also writing a letter to survivors of rape so between the hospital, my body failing to fail the way I am used to, and the usual crap I come pre triggered.

I watched the Temple Grandin Biopic. At first I was angry at Temple, at least that’s what my brain took the feelings as. I even posted on facebook about finding the movie annoying. After about a half an hour I started to understand what had me so upset, at least another layer of it. The Nuerotypicals making the film made it so noisy that I was in pain. It wasn’t the person or the story that had me upset it was the constant noise over noises that they couldn’t hear. It was painful, and I reacted to that pain with anger. I find I have a lot in common with Miss Grandin, which startled me. It shouldn’t should it? The things in common are all autistic things. I also found myself suddenly burning with anger. I spent a good half an hour having a melt down after the credits rolled. It went like this. Credits roll, pills, go to bed stand beside it and start to scream because I can’t take it anymore and a car just went by with loud music which made Sprite run under the bed.

I tried to just go to bed but then my jaw snapped wrong and I got spit on my pillow. Which lead to more screaming. I hate spit on my pillow, partly because even my own saliva burns me. My tears burn me. My face is very red and sore because I cried. Sprite came to see what was wrong, as she always does when I am not okay and I realized what it is that calms me about her. I had a moment. I also just titled this post. The panic was still there, the pain, the sounds but I could think the instant I buried my hands in her fur and hugged her against me. She wriggled a bit because I was not wearing any clothing and missed the blanket. She dislikes the feeling of flesh. I try to respect that.

I petted her, she purred though because she was not comfortable it wasn’t a lot of purr. Then I clicked, I am stimming when I pet my cat. That’s why when I hurt I want her. When I feel the pain of being, because of all the things I think see and hear? I want her fur. Nymphs fur isn’t the right texture. Sprite is like petting a silken being, her fur is something I have never found a match for. So soft and yet it isn’t so soft it hurts. Sprite is in a word perfect, except for where she is not. She let me cry into her, her fur took the wet away so the burning hurt less.

I feel calm again, I can think again and she is bathing to get rid of the icky tears. I say they are icky, she just says wet. So, the PTSD trigger related to Temple Grandin is love. Love for me, witnessing other people who have things that I want, such as love, can set me off. I haven’t let anyone see me go off for years. I go away instead. Her mother tried. Her aunt tried. She had teachers. She had opportunity. She had education. She was seen as different but equal. I have never had that. That is part of why I am afraid to start writing. There is this moment when I get ready to write even my blog when I see every instance where my writing was destroyed. Even a few moments when I did it to myself because I thought I was bad and undeserving of writing. For me writing is painting a picture but the picture has a thousand little pictures. Each letter and word is a part of the image. When I write I don’t look at my fingers to hunt and peck out the letters but I usually close my eyes and imagine the shapes I want, the sounds, and the sensations.

I look at Sprite, and I look at Nymph who was very frightened but also came and curled up with me. I feel a bit guilty for not noticing her until after the fact though this tends to happen a lot. In the mornings she ends up lost in my blanket because I throw it off and roll thinking she isn’t there but she was tucked up against me all along and was what made the warm spot. I swear, she is warmer than Sprite to the touch and the feel. She weighs at most a pound, and when that pound is not on me completely I don’t pick it up. Then again I have a lot less feeling in my legs since the cramping started.

Medically speaking I am better. The bleeding stopped and the clots are disappearing. I don’t have to wear underwear at least for now. I am not expecting this to last for more than a day but I have blisters from the latex that no one else ever seems to react to in underwear. My skin burns constantly and I am still cramping. There is also a new and constant pain, so I know something is very wrong. This displeases me because I know I am going to have to fight for anyone to take this seriously, well anyone at this facility. I am still waiting on the appointment for the CT scan on my jaw as well. If I cannot lose myself, which does happen without my control, and do so without injury then there is a problem. I spent years mastering how to handle my freak outs. No one had guided me.

So I am jealous of Temple Grandin. It’s a white hot jealousy that is about things we were both born with. Family. I also want education but I cannot get there right now. I don’t learn things in classrooms and the set up for correspondence schooling is all wrong for me. I am going to self educate but suddenly I want a piece of paper. I want to see my name. I want to not have people react with shock when they find out I am not educated. I never liked that, some of these folks immediately presume I failed my way through the educational school brilliantly because I wanted to stun people with my mind. I think those people are a bit stupid and if any read my blog, well I think you are stupid for presuming anyone would want less opportunity just to impress people.

I don’t know if the piece of paper would let me write this book. I only think it is the excuse I am using now because my first thought each time I think on it is, how am I qualified to write about disability and PTSD? How am I qualified? I want to make it clear I know I am qualified and Dr.Not Autistic isn’t. Dr.PTSD is false but I write about it to make life harder isn’t. I know I am probably the most qualified person I know of to sit down and write about these issues, especially because I do so every single day. There are things I don’t publish but if I can write I do. I have given up many things but I will always find a way to get the fluid images into word.

I am still angry that people presume autistics don’t have imagination and that this is a symptom. This was the other thing that overwhelmed me, I connect thoughts in a way that is so similar to the visuals used that I am breathless but I imagine. I imagine constantly. I just don’t imagine like other people. It took imagination for Grandin to see what the cows see. It wasn’t a formulaic thought at all but something special. It takes imagination for me to do anything. I use my different mind to navigate the world. My memory of everything I have ever read, that comes into play when I am advocating.

So no more excuses. I am probably going to have to make Sprite wear a rain coat but even as I am dealing with this latest medical drama, I am going to start this book. A chapter a day, excluding days when I have appointments. Doctor’s appointments screw with my energy and writing does burn it off in the best of ways. There will be another post in a few minutes, I have been procrastinating about a topic as well.