[“When We Are Able To Access Our “body Memories” Through The Felt Sense, Then We Can Begin To Discharge

We never really talked about it but The Ugly Ducking that grew up to be a beautiful swan was still probably pretty fugly from a duck’s perspective

If I had a nickel for each time I've been told to stop "overthinking" this type of hypothetical or categorical question, I'd have...a lot of nickels.

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

so at my new job there’s been a lot of confusion over my gender (which as an enby is great) but somehow in the confusion my coworkers came to assume I’m a trans man and even though I’m AMAB I’ve used the confusion as leverage to get them to put tampons/pads in the men’s room and add a gender neutral bathroom for any transmascs/enbies down the line and I kept thinking “this is like the ‘my gender is whatever makes the joke funnier’ thing but the opposite??” and anyway tldr here is my “My gender is” alignment chart

Oh this is amazing so many of these are a mood

"Genesis", Oil on canvas by Matthew Cornell

I slow blink at people all the time. My roommate's dog has come to understand what it means and now sometimes does it back to me. So I guess I accidentally taught a dog how to speak cat, or one word of it anyway.

I haven't meowed at anyone, but I have reflexively hissed at people. Also, during the years when I was living with just my cat, and not getting a huge amount of interaction with other humans, I would occasionally slow blink at people instead of smiling 😻

I still slow blink at people to indicate friendliness and I no longer have an excuse.

It’s never been negatively received but on some occasions cat savvy people have paused before demanding, “Did you just slow blink at me??”

reblog if you have skilled writer friends and you're damn proud of them

Ralph Fleck (German, 1951), Stapel 27/VII [Stack 27/VII], 2013. Oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm.