Under/Overstimulated

It's March, 2020, and it seems like the entire planet is stuck inside. I've been in the house with my family for about a week now, and I keep oscillating between being bored out of my mind and completely overwhelmed. My anxieties are through the roof, we can't go to any stores or even public…

A Time Capsule for Hindsight: The Value of Voice

If I could time-travel, but only use it once to go to a different time and once to go back, I would go back to August 31st, 1994, to a couple spending the first full day with their daughter. I would bring with me printed pages from this blog, along with everything I've ever written…

The Drive to Drive: A Brief Discussion

Last week, just a month short of 24, I got my driver's license. It's an exciting time for me. In the past few days I've been getting used to familiar routes from a new perspective; I can buy groceries without having to wait for my parents to be ready, I can make distances I usually…

The Other (other) A Word

I will go off-road for a moment to say that I normally do not advocate usage of terms like "high-functioning" and "low-functioning" for people. They oversimplify symptoms and difficulties that come with them, and attempt to sort people into boxes that almost no Autistic person can perfectly fit. But tonight I will use one, simply…

The Independent Experience 2

Camp, part 2: I attended Camp Akeela for three years, which is a large amount of time to compress into so many words. So for part 2, I wanted to write a sort of “Greatest Hits” summary – my favorite parts about being at camp, but also the parts that helped me grow in ways…

The Independent Experience: Part 1

So for the next few posts, I'm doing something a little different. Instead of covering my experiences in a general Autism-related topic, I'm going to be revisiting some old memories of mine and reflect on them from the perspective of an Autistic adult looking back on her childhood. I'm calling it the Independent Experience, because…

Everything Happens So Much

I'm going to try and make this article a little more serious, and attempt to explain something that's been on my mind for a while. My parents have told me that, while raising me, they would have loved to have had the insight of a person with my diagnosis. They would have wanted my voice.…

The Fidget Spinner Thing

Let's start off with the obvious question: I don't own one. Fidget spinners distract me rather than help me, as they do for a lot of people. Fidget toys only really work for people with specific issues regarding energy and staying focused, and they're ones I don't have. That being said, using a fidget spinner…

“Stimulating” isn’t Always a Good Thing

This post isn't going to be about stimming or fidget cubes, that's a topic for another day. I want to talk about something that's a little less mainstream but, in my opinion, more important. Parents, friends, compatriots, I need you to understand that being overstimulated is absolute hell. Overstimulation manifests in a lot of ways…

Why Seams on Socks are the Work of Evil

Listen, I'm a grown woman, and I'd like to believe I'm an intelligent one. I understand physics enough to have a rudimentary understanding of how socks are made, and why the seam is right along the toes. That does not mean I have to like it. I have been wearing socks on and off (as I should…