“Oh Crap, It’s Real” Moments

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
photo of common kingfisher flying above river

Ever had an “oh crap, it’s real” moment? As a person on the autism spectrum, I have a somewhat fragile biology. Small things can entirely wreck my equilibrium. A sudden siren or fork caught in a blender can cause me immense pain, even driving me to tears.

Fork. Blender. Tears.

That literally happened, by the way. I was eating at a newer, slightly upscale restaurant when a utensil of some kind got caught in an industrial blender back in the kitchen. It made a horrible racket: an excruciating experience spanning several octaves. I would compare it to a chord made entirely of people running their nails down a chalkboard, but that’s far too simplistic. The reality was much, much worse. Everyone at the table (all family: my mom, brother, and sister-in-law) made a face and covered their ears. But only I curled up into my seat and started weeping from the pain.

Moments like that teach you, by stark contrast, that you are very much not like everyone else. I can only hope the family I was with also learned that… but since they’ve never mentioned it and I’ve never asked, I’ve no idea.

The lesson, for anyone caring to observe that incident, was that “yes, sound sensitivity is real.” My brain did not sufficiently tamp down on the extraneous and unpleasant noise of a fork in a blender. Most brains, and the brains of everyone else at the table, did, and so those people were shielded from some of the Sound. Because I was not shielded, I was driven to tears in an instant.

Accidental Food Challenge

There have been other such moments. Once upon a time, I didn’t eat dairy (milk, cheese, ice cream, etc) for a week or so. Then I drank some milk, and within the hour I was weak, shaky, ill, and most of all, angry. For no apparent reason. Everything else in my life was neutral-to-positive. Except the milk. Oh crap, it’s real.

I’d accidentally performed what’s called a food challenge. You remove the questionable food from your diet for a couple weeks, then introduce a small amount and see what happens. If nothing happens, great! The food is probably not an issue. If you get a reaction, though, that’s probably why.

The nice thing about doing this challenge accidentally is that it’s entirely free of confirmation bias. (That’s the tendency to interpret things the way you think they should be, rather than objectively assessing the way things truly are.) I can’t say, for most of my life, I’ve gotten so lucky and been able to say, so confidently, that it was definitely the milk or whatever other cause.

Calmer… aaaand now I have a headache.

The reason I’m writing this post today (besides that I got out of work after 4 hours, which means I had extra time for once!), is because I just had another of those moments.

My doctor knows of a lot of factors that can affect sensitive people like me. One of those is dirty electricity and electro-magnetic fields. It’s not a lot of people, but a certain small percentage of humanity does poorly in big cities and apartment buildings, constantly being pelted with dozens of wifi networks. This can manifest as anxiety, depression, and even poor sleep. The question was, “am I one of those affected people?”

My hope with that question is always “no.” With dairy, it would have been nice to continue eating ice cream and cheese to my heart’s content. But it’s real and makes me depressed and angry, so I’ve found alternatives. So Delicious makes a good coconut based ice cream, and Follow Your Heart makes some very good deli slices that taste and feel like cheese in a jiffy. I particularly like the Smoked Gouda flavor.

There’s a website that sells shielding clothing, meters, and other items. On a whim last year, I bought a plain black baseball cap. I put it on when it arrived, and did feel somewhat calmer. But I wasn’t sure… though in retrospect it maybe speaks volumes that I wear it to work every day now.

Recently, since I’ve been working such long hours without a choice, I’ve devoted some of my extra money to buying extra things. One of those was a shielding hoodie. Today it arrived. I put it on. It’s comfortable, if a bit thin. It was when I put up the hood that I had the “oh crap, it’s real” moment.

Because the moment I did, it was like pressure had been removed from my skull. I felt calmer even as I felt surprise and then anxiety about the realization. In less than a second, I also noticed I had a very mild headache at the back of my head. Oh crap, it’s real.

What Now?

Moments like these pepper my life. There are always new things to try, new ideas to look into. Because my doctor is so on top of the research, I’m aware of a lot more avenues to explore than most people.

Mostly I fall into these “oh crap it’s real” moments by accident. I didn’t really have a clear picture of what would happen when I put on the shielding hoodie. Just that it might be good to try it. I had no idea whether there would be a reaction, let alone such a strong one.

I have the rest of the afternoon to figure out what to do… but I think a nap is probably the first order of business.

The website I got the hoodie from also has shielding bedding and even a cloth faraday cage for all bed sizes… so that might be my next step. I’m clearly not so sensitive that I need to be wearing shielding clothes everywhere- I’m still sleeping 8 hours, managing my depression/anxiety, and being kind to people around me. And yet, it’s clearly a factor, or I wouldn’t have experienced the “ahh, calmer… wait, why do I have a headache?” sensation.

In the meantime, I guess the hoodie is my new best friend for wearing around the house.

It’s been a rough end/beginning of the year

Posted on by Realistic Autistic

Hey y’all. It’s another update instead of a proper autism-centric post. I have a couple ideas for blog posts, but the fact is, I’m working 70 hours a week on average. Down from 80-ish in December, but still too much for me to manage and have this updating.

I miss being myself outside of work. Literally, I don’t have hobbies or time for my vocation, and haven’t for over two months.

And I’m struggling hard at work, in part due to the long hours literally just breaking my body down. And in part because the working conditions really aren’t great. It’s that way for a lot of reasons I have zero control over. But because of how things are for me right now, I still need to stay there or find a comparable job elsewhere.

I’m really tired.

As of tomorrow (or possibly several days ago, it’s unclear), I’ve reached my 90 days and have union protection. So my job is pretty secure. But the security came at a terrible cost to my body and mind, and I’m going to see about leveraging that security to recuperate.

Once I’ve done so and gotten some of that fabled R&R (or at least caught up on my sleep somewhat), I’ll be able to work on this blog more, and/or begin the autism book I always wanted to write.

I hope y’all are well, or as well as can be expected in such a trying year, with the pandemic still going. Wishing you all the best from my little corner of the world.

Merry Christmas

Posted on by Realistic Autistic

Hey y’all. Wanted to wish you all a merry Christmas or happy whatever holiday you celebrate. It’s been an eventful year. Here’s hoping 2022 is a more boring (in a good way) year. XD

I’m hopefully nearing the end of my 84 hour work weeks(that’s 12 hour days, 7 days a week, every week, for the whole bloody month) extravaganza. Blog posts should begin to happen more frequently again once that’s over and I have flex time again, but I don’t have a firm date on when that’ll be.

I still intend to tell y’all why I’ve been so quiet this latter half of the year, but there’s a good deal of rawness and some unresolved stuff yet. Going public about it too soon would not be kind to anyone. Not even me.

Regardless, I wish you all well. Warm, happy holidays if you celebrate them. Family, blood or found, around you. Peace, patience, faith, joy, and most especially love.

~Sarah (The Realistic Autistic)

Healthy Snacks

Posted on by Realistic Autistic

As I was bumping around at home recently, I realized my dinner table had been taken over by snacks. The job I’m currently working frequently has mandatory overtime, up to 12 hours. In fact, quite soon it will be 12 hour days almost exclusively, seven days a week.

Now, I always pack a lunch: a hearty sandwich, greens, and a fruit of my choice. But that only lasts so long. So I’ve taken to looking (read: pestering my therapist/nutritionist, mostly) for whole foods snacks that carry nicely. I’ve talked about why good food is so stunningly important to wellbeing. It pretty much has to be lived to be believed, but you can read my guide and story about it here.

In an ideal world, you would start with fresh veggies and a healthy dip. And I do that at home, with fresh green beans, sugar snap peas, or snow peas. But at work I only have so much space, and the work refrigerator has Rules I don’t want to try managing. So instead I’m opting for mostly shelf-stable convenience foods and hand fruits, like apples, clementines, and grapes.

As I was clearing the table of my snack selections, I realized it might be helpful to I share what I’ve found. These are whole foods snacks a busy parent might also include in their kids’ lunches or household snacks with a clear conscience. Or snacks an overwhelmed autistic adult, like myself, might keep around the house instead of candy, cookies, and pastries.

Snacks Criteria

I have a relatively strict diet these days. The criteria, then, for these snacks I’ve welcomed into my home:

  • must provide nutrition
  • low sugar, keto, or at least minimal added sugar
  • whole foods as much as possible- you can typically look at the item and see what it’s made of easily
  • minimal or no added artificial colors, artificial preservatives, extra chemicals
  • dairy-free, humane treatment and slaughter if it’s meat

Without further ado: the winners:

I’ll handle these healthy snacks by food type for everyone’s convenience.

Seeds and Nuts Clusters

We’ll start on the left side. On the top left is my new most favorite snack in existence: innofoods Dark Chocolate Keto Nuggets.

What they are: chocolate covered coconut, quinoa, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds. My God that chocolate is delicious. They talk about it on the back of the bag and I really don’t know how much is marketing and how much is true, but. BUT. That chocolate is delicious. I can and absolutely would consume a whole 16 oz. bag in one sitting if I wasn’t paying attention. I know this because I wasn’t paying attention with the first bag and I absolutely ate half the bag before I noticed. Then I noticed and had to make myself stop eating because I didn’t want to stop.

Like its orange sibling next to it (pecans, almonds, pumpkin seeds, and coconut- still good but c’mon, chocolate!), it’s a crunchy snack. If you like crunchy snacks, tree nuts, or seeds, innofoods seems to have cleverly balanced their sweet and salty to make a snack you really do want to just keep eating. (This is also why Pringles can be hard to stop eating, fyi.) However, the sweetener is a mix of erythritol and cane sugar. So it’s still keto-friendly in small doses. Just, y’know, don’t eat half a bag in one sitting.

I found these bags at Costco. You may want to check with your specific Costco to see whether they have these, though. The two bags are from two different Costcos. The closer one has the chocolate, and the other had the orange sibling. Innofoods also has a website.

Trail Mix

Moving on (reluctantly!), we have more typical loose trail mix. Loose trail mix is vaguely annoying to me because you need a container for it. But I do have some, so I still keep this around. There are two kinds of trail mix, which I typically just throw together like a madman. Also because they’re pretty good that way.

The first is a mix of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds. It is notably not keto, but in small amounts it’s quite good. The issue with dried fruit is that it’s often laced with sugar. It’s already fairly sweet as is, and then they throw more in to make it addictive and/or cover up poor quality fruit. Really, any trail mix will do. Just avoid the ones with candy and added sugar.

The second trail mix does claim to be keto, but includes dark chocolate nubbins as well as macademia nuts. I’m not a big tree nut buff, but they are high quality protein and staying power in a pinch. The dark chocolate nubbins are mainly why I mix the two mixes together. The fruit is sweeter than the nubbins, but chocolate is delicious.

Both of these trail mixes can be found at Costco. But really, any trail mix works as long as you avoid added sugar, artificial colors, and outright candy.

Protein/Convenience Bars

Onto the wrapped bars. These are terribly convenient.

Health Warrior seed bars are first up. Health Warrior was the only brand at my grocery store that was made of whole foods without a hefty helping of sugar. They have a website, and they do both pumpkin seed bars and chia seed bars. It’s all been good. These fit the typical granola bar niche, and they’re nourishing to boot.

Target’s Good and Gather protein bars are pictured, but they’re kind of the crappier, mainstream, cheaper version of the Health Warrior options. They’re not truly low-sugar, but they were one of the first things I found that fit the bill for what I was looking for. they are, at least, whole foods. And available in much of the US. I eat these sparingly, as treats.

No Cow Protein bars are probably the best proper protein bar option. They’re a bit more processed than the other listed bars, but nourishing and low sugar as well as completely dairy, gluten, and GMO free. Also, you can cover 99 cents’ worth of shipping and have three bars sent to you free, which is pretty much the best way to try stuff like this. I personally tried that free trial, then bought the variety pack you see above, and now have settled on four flavors I like best. They’re filling and stick with you, and for that reason, they’re the last thing I typically eat in a shift. Sort of a sweet yet satisfying ultralight dinner.

Meat Sticks

Chomps meat sticks are my current go-to for humane, whole foods animal protein snacks. These are the clean food versions of beef snack sticks. They’re available at several of my local stores, but you can also buy them online. Of the listed flavors, I’ve tried Original Beef, Jalapeno Beef, Salt & Pepper Venison, Sea Salt Beef, and Italian Style Beef. I’m not a huge spice fan, so I’m not bothering with the Jalapeno again (it wasn’t that spicy, mind). The Italian Style Beef tastes like pepperoni or summer sausage, which I’ll do sometimes but not every day. And the remaining three I enjoy greatly.

Paleovalley meat sticks (not pictured) are also a thing. I have yet to try these because I can’t find them in local stores, but my nutritionist swears by them and feeds them to her kids. The site has a whole blurb about why their meat sticks are superior to the typical kind, which would include Chomps. I have no doubt these will be fantastic when I finally get to try them.

Fruit Leather and Squeezable Snacks

Mamma Chia squeezes are maybe the closest thing I’ve got to typical squeeze fruit snack type things. I’ve seen applesauce packaged like this as well as other fruit-like products. Anyway, this is basically a fruit puree with chia seeds. I’ve found it at many of my grocery stores, and they also have a website. The chia seeds are a superfood, and they also add some texture to an otherwise basic smooth puree. I’ve had every flavor they offer except mango coconut. They’re all good. My favorite is Cherry Love (tangy!), with Wild Raspberry as a close second.

That’s it. fruit bars are the last item in the picture. I have the mini bars, which are at Costco, but they sell larger ones for a heartier snack as well. Their big selling point here is that the bars are literally just what it says they are. I have the apple/mango and apple/strawberry varieties, which are respectively 1 apple + 1 mango, or 1 apple and 12 strawberries processed into a fruit leather bar-shaped thing and sealed in a wrapper. They’re sweet and good, but not laced with colors, preservatives, or sweeteners. Also, at the time of this writing, all but two flavors are sold out, so I guess consider that a resounding vote of “yes, these are excellent.”

Bonus: Drink Mix

I’ve mostly covered food here, but there’s one thing that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention. I mainly drink water all day, every day. It’s tasty water, so I’m not bothered. But sometimes you really just want to have extra flavor and maybe some sweet in your drink. So, meet TruLemon.

TruLemon drink mixes are a fairly simple idea: low sugar, but not zero sugar, lemonades and drink mixes. I can speak for the original lemonade, raspberry lemonade, peach lemonade, and black cherry limeade flavors. They are all very good. Sweet but not overwhelmingly so. Not enough sugar to rot your teeth. Strong flavor. I’m mostly quite happy with water, but when I want to liven up my drink, this is what I reach for. Target and several other grocery stores carry these, and they have a website with a ton more options.

Book Review: On the Spectrum

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
blue green and red abstract illustration

On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, & the Gifts of Neurodiversity, by Daniel Bowman Jr. is a series of essays and interviews around the titular topics. The author is an autistic adult, which is a nice change from people talking about autistic people over our heads. The book is Christian-centric, reflecting the author’s beliefs.

Unlike a lot of books written by autistic authors, this one contains very little “this is what happened to me and why I am the way I am!” explanatory story. The author talks a little about his childhood, but it’s not really the focus of the book. Far more than most books I’ve read by autistic adults, this is a topical piece rather than an autobiographical one.

On the Spectrum is also very definitely a work of philosophy and art, rather than a set of self-help or concrete recommendations. My grandmother on my dad’s side would sometimes say of her husband, “He is not of this earth,” referring to his remarkably brilliant but sometimes impractical tendencies. It seems to me that she might describe Mr. Bowman the same way.

I’m not going to try to summarize the philosophy and essays. They’re not exactly disparate, but it’s certainly not a cohesive narrative. On the Spectrum is a book you can read in chunks, an essay here, one there, and not get slowed down by needing to remember what happened before. It is also kind of a feat to marathon, which was my mistake when reading it myself. I only have so much time with which to do things, and most of it is eaten by managing my life. But hey, you know better now, so don’t repeat my mistake.

Notable Points

The book opens with a lot of pain… which is a theme that often plagues many autistic lives. Rarely is it expressed so emotionally… and so I wasn’t surprised to learn Bowman is a poet. It was a bit shocking to me, though, and hence the warning here. His situation does improve, and so the painful tones mostly abate.

I also found similarities to the author in our love of stories. He specifically calls out that they grant you insight into people and stories, as well as predictability. I’m not certain that’s all of why I loved books growing up, but I can’t deny he’s right. Especially in fiction, stories tend to follow certain rules. I effectively carried a book around as a comfort object when I was younger. I’ve now graduated to a tablet, which carries thousands of books. Also the Internet.

The last thing I appreciated was the description of neurodiversity and ableism. Despite being a college professor, Bowman has managed to state these ideas without being pedantic. I feel like some of his thoughts would have been better illustrated with the typical autistic adult autobiography/memoirs format. Despite their lack of scientific validity, anecdotes are spectacular ways to make a point. But I still appreciate that he took the time to say things like “please don’t kill us (also please get help)” and “it gets better.”

He’s probably the most shy autistic adult I’ve read, in terms of sharing his life. We’re all typically so open and honest and “please understand me!” about it that it really surprised me that he wasn’t. That said, nobody is owed another’s story. Even if they’re autistic. Even if that story could potentially change lives or make things better. A person’s life and perspective are theirs. Nobody has the right to demand it be shared.

That’s something at least one person in my church doesn’t seem to understand, to my irritation. You wouldn’t just walk up to someone on the street and demand they share their life story. They’d quite rightly tell you to bugger off.

Read This Book If

You’re interested in a work of prose and philosophy around the title’s subjects. On the Spectrum is not a typical autistic adult memoir, it’s a series of essays and interviews on those topics. Church leaders and staff would probably benefit most from reading this book, as well as church members with an interest in these things. It’s written well, and approachably. It’s markedly different from pretty much every other book by autistic adults I’ve read. I’d read it again when I have time, so I could digest it better.

RtR: Managing Anxiety with Movement

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
beach during sunset

Welcome back to Reading the Research! I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects to share with you. Along the way I discuss the findings with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today’s article is confirmation of what my doctor has been telling me all along: managing anxiety can be a physical problem, not a brain problem.

Our typical understanding of depression and anxiety is that it’s a brain issue. One you treat with drugs, and maybe with therapy. The thing is, in the US we live in a profoundly unhealthy culture. We sit all day instead of doing active things on our feet. We eat large amounts of things that have little or no nutrition. In our homes and offices, we breathe air polluted with car exhaust, printer particles, and mold.

If all these factors weren’t in the picture, yeah, anything still occurring would be a brain issue. But that’s not how it is. So we have studies like this, showing that you can manage anxiety with exercise. This was a larger study, almost 300 people, which helps establish its credibility for showing a pattern. Like me, the participants typically had chronic anxiety and had suffered from it for at least a decade.

I’ve talked about the importance of movement for living your best life in the past. This is actually why, when I went job hunting earlier this year, I opted for physical jobs. I started out throwing boxes for UPS, which is excellent exercise. Now I’m doing a bit lighter of work processing envelopes. But I’m still feeling and doing far better than before. Managing my anxiety has never been easier.

It’s like the exercise burns off the energy I’d use for worrying and stressing about stuff. I’m just calmer and happier every day because I have that movement in my life.

Having movement in your job isn’t the only way to manage anxiety, mind. Some jobs, like administrative ones, simply don’t allow for that. So instead you can go for walks, do hobbies that get you moving and outdoors, or even opt for things as simple as standing desks. All without needing medication and having to manage the side effects that come with it.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter! There are links and comments on studies that were interesting, but didn’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Article Spotlight: Neurotypical Misunderstanding

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
frozen wave against sunlight

A couple days ago, Mad in America published a good summary piece on the problem of communication between autistics and allistics (neurotypicals). Briefly: there can be significant communication differences between the way neurotypical people communicate and the way autistic people communicate. While autistic people are constantly critiqued and criticized, neurotypical people are assumed to be perfectly fine and left alone. No training is deemed necessary for the majority to learn to get along better with minorities.

There’s an obvious bias there, which the article doesn’t go into much. But it does point out the innate unfairness in explaining the Double Empathy Problem and the Privilege Problem. These ideas suggest that autistic communication difficulties aren’t just “we don’t communicate the way others expect.” There is also, “others don’t make efforts to understand us the way they should.”

To quote a particularly good paragraph:

While autistic people are forced to understand and predict neurotypical behavior, allistics are remarkably bad at empathizing with autistic people. Inability to empathize can translate to a lack of compassion towards autistics and contribute to the pathologization of autistic traits. This pathologization has leadto interventions that focus solely on surpressing behaviors that are considered odd or abberant by neurotypicals. In fact, some commonly used autism interventions, such as Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) have been found to be both ineffective and abusive, inflicting trauma on those subjected to them.

Personal Experience

ABA is staggeringly common. I thankfully missed out on this particular kind of systemic cruelty. But the feedback from the autistic community is pretty clear.

And to be honest, I didn’t need ABA to tell me that my existence was wrong. The rest of the world accomplished that just fine. My life has always included overtones of “what a weird person,” and subtle forms of rejection and alienation. I was bullied for years, starting in elementary school. I was the favorite target. Because of that, I spent most of middle school alone, because that was safer.

It’s a minor miracle other (undiagnosed) autistic people found me in high school. But it took them bodily shoving me across a gymnasium floor and demanding I sign up for a school club to even start the process of reaching out. There is zero exaggeration in that last sentence. That literally happened, heels skidding as they each pushed on a shoulder. It wasn’t a mean action. It was a “this is your for your own good,” action. Typically I don’t take well to those, since it’s rare that others actually understand me better than I do. But they were right. And it was the first community that accepted me in a meaningful way.

It wasn’t a purposeful peer support or mentoring program. No one instructed them to reach out to the obviously alienated weirdo I seemed to be. As a society, we didn’t really understand autism that well then, especially not in people raised female. Their kindness just happened, messily, the way life does. But it helped. I would be a very different, far less compassionate and happy person without it. Even now, part of me still insists I’m obviously defective. But most of me knows better.

Looking Forward

The article is correct that acceptance builds confidence. Properly supported, autistic people can lead happy, healthy lives. Once I had that accepting community in the anime club, I began to reach out and accept alternative philosophies to life that weren’t, “Emotions are stupid, people suck, and I want nothing to do with either one.”

I hope you find this article as helpful as I did. It’s a medium length read. But it does a good job summarizing where things currently stand in communication between allistic and neurodiverse humans. And it includes links to relevant, recent research all throughout, in case you want to follow up on a particular subject. Check it out!

Life Update: Work

Posted on by Realistic Autistic

There’s a triad of things that’ve been going on lately, which have severely impacted how much time I can give to this blog. I don’t like it, but it’s how it is. I explained my health situation last time. Today I’ll talk about my job situation. There will be some context removed, because the major part of the triad of changes is still too painful and difficult for me to talk about.

My financial situation changed in June of this year. I needed to take on a greater share of the costs for the house and food and such.

For context, I hadn’t had a 9-5 job in years at this point. In fact, I was actually in despair about it. Every 9-5 job I had, felt like I’d failed at for one reason or another.

Tries at Employment

Major

For example, I went to college to study Psychology. That was good and interesting, but when it came time to consider grad school, I was pretty much just done with being in school. So I didn’t do that, and that meant I couldn’t become a therapist or do much besides manage people or counsel high schoolers (yeah, figure that one out). Neither of those things really appealed to me, because I hated high school and kind of hated people. So managing them for a living seemed stupid at best.

Minor

Instead, I attempted to make a living in my minor, Information Systems. That’s more or less what you get when you cross a Business Degree with a Computer Science degree. I got an internship job coding a new RFID system for city’s public library. I liked the job and the people. But the internship was never meant to last, and there was no job available for me to move on to in the city proper. I tried to get a job at a local company doing more or less the same thing, and it wasn’t a good fit. They fired me after a while.

I Can Organize Stuff?

After that, I started to really despair. I got a job as a secretary (administrative assistant) at a local special needs service provider. Specifically, an autism clinic. Which was mostly fine, but eventually the bad parts of the job started to get to me. For instance, hauling stinky bags of diapers every day was really revolting. And being on the phone with insurances sparked misanthropy as well as self-hate.

Autism Education

So eventually I left, and did not pick up another full time or even part time job. By that point Chris had found work, and he made enough by himself that it wasn’t necessary to have paying work. So I began to focus on my vocation, which is autism education.

Blog

I’d been doing this blog for a few years at this point, and so I decided to develop that work and share what I’d been learning. Not just to share my thoughts, but also share the best of the education I was giving myself.

Autism, you see, is a very complicated subject. I’d hoped, at one point, to find or make a definition of autism that people could use and rely on. I figured it out a few years later: that is not possible in the current state of things. Autism runs the gamut from people like me, who seem almost normal (but we’re not and have just learned to hide our differences), to people who may never be toilet-trained and probably won’t ever live on their own or go to college.

Autism’s cause is unknown. You cannot point to one thing, like genetics, environmental factors, food allergies, or parenting techniques, and say “yes, this is what causes autism.” The truth is that a lot of things factor into whether someone’s going to meet the diagnostic criteria. And to the average person trying to care for their kid or themselves, what exactly makes them autistic is irrelevant. They need services and support and good information to help with immediate issues, not lengthy scientific explanations that pretty much have to end with, “we think, but we don’t know for sure. Maybe do more research?”

Not a Career (yet?)

In looking back over this blog, I feel I did some valuable work. I read and reviewed over a hundred books, and tried various products to see how they’d work and if they’d be helpful to the community. I summarized and shared a ton of research related to autism and co-occurring conditions. My perspective is valuable, I think, in part because I try to see many perspectives and stay open-minded, but arrive at a single, accurate conclusion.

However. My work did not end up leading to a career (yet?). That’s probably because I didn’t do enough networking. The paradox of a career in autism education is that autistic people struggle with socialization, but it’s mandatory to make the connections needed to find work.

I felt sufficiently overwhelmed by everything that I didn’t reach out enough. And so, while I had occasional jobs, they didn’t make a living.

Making Do

Now my financial situation has changed, and I can’t afford to just do the blog for work. In the months since June, I’ve held four jobs.

I picked up two part time jobs at once, one at UPS, and one at a local church that wanted to hire a sound technician. I have about a decade of experience running sound for a different church, so the second was easy enough.

The UPS job was both good and bad. The hiring process was stunningly fast. I applied and had a start date within an hour. No interview. Just some time spent at the computer. Then there was a week of training, and then I was throwing boxes onto conveyer belts. It was hard work, and my body started to fail after a while.

The bigger problem, though, was that I couldn’t make enough money between those two jobs to make ends meet. It’s not wise to be losing money every month. So I went looking for another job. I found work at a local food factory that mostly does baking mixes. It would make ends meet, at $16/hour for 40 hours a week. There’s a post about that job and why it didn’t work out. Mainly, it didn’t work out because joy goes to die at places like that, and I wasn’t allowed to listen to music or podcasts.

Trial By Inferno

Which leads me to my present job, at the post office. It’s not a career position, it’s a job that can lead to a career position. The work isn’t very hard, or even that physically taxing (besides having to stand for pretty much the entire shift). However, the schedule is volatile, and they may schedule me for up to 84 hours a week. (That’s 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, by the way.)

It will definitely make ends meet. I can even make extra payments on the house and probably buy an entire new wardrobe of clothes if I wanted to. I just have absolutely no idea if I can survive 84 hour weeks.

I’m calling it Trial By Inferno, and hoping I can make it work. If I can, I can get a career position in various parts of the mail system. Including working at my local post office, about 5 minutes away from home.

Wish me luck. I’m going to need it.

Dear Mystery Gift-Giver

Posted on by Realistic Autistic

Hey y’all, this will be a bit unrelated to autism. This is the second time in as many years I’ve received a gift with zero identifying marks. Last year it was an Escala CD I’d really wanted, imported from the UK. I made efforts to track down who it was, but nobody took credit…

This year I’ve received a pair of bluetooth headphones, colored blue (which means somebody probably knows my favorite color). It’s a very kind gift, and will be helpful for my present job.

So hey, whoever you are? Thank you! I’d love to say thank you in person or directly in some other form, so I’ll be asking folks a bit and keeping an ear out. But if this year ends up like last year, I just wanted to make it known that A) I received this kind gift, and B) I appreciate your thoughtfulness! So I’m putting out this post in hopes that whoever it is will see it.

Thank you!

Life Update: Vaccine Side Effect

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
man climbing on rock mountain

Hey y’all. I’m transitioning to a new job (again). And that means precious little time to serve my vocation of educating and learning about autism. There’s a lot of stuff going on in my life, and I thought I’d share some of it as I’m able.

However, the writing of the bigger, more difficult things has been intensely painful and difficult. So I’ve defaulted, this week, to something somewhat smaller: a medical development in my life.

The short version is that after I got the vaccine, my internal organs decided to have a relatively polite hissy fit. Specifically, my female internal organs.

If the idea of monthly periods is disturbing to you, this is your chance to find something else to read. Okay?

Before

Cool. I’m more or less used to bleeding every month, though I definitely resent it. I don’t recall asking to be born female and don’t particularly like much of what comes with it. Mostly I just tolerate it.

For most of my life, my periods were exceptionally heavy and extremely painful. Not “curl up into a miserable ball and wish myself dead” painful, which is the kind that suggests endometriosis. But painful enough that moving around was misery. A menstrual cup and heavy-duty pads were essential. I referred to the first day or so of my period as Hell Day, which was not an unreasonable designation.

This is likely due to some kind of hormonal imbalance. It’s unclear what kind, but at one point I had sufficiently unusual periods that a doctor prescribed me birth control to even things out. I never bothered with it, which turns out to have been a very fortuitous decision for my mental health.

And then…

This all changed when I got the Pfizer vaccine. I got both shots, of course. But the first one was enough to mess up my cycle. The second drove it home, though.

I stopped having predictable periods. And they stopped being heavy. In fact, they barely hurt at all after the vaccine. Which was actually pretty amazing, save that I nearly ruined a pair of underwear due to not noticing I was going on my period. Pretty shortly thereafter, my spouse and I started having pretty significant issues… which distracted me pretty well from my weirdo biology. At least for a while.

Eventually, though, I started realizing I hadn’t stopped bleeding in a while. It still didn’t really hurt, but bleeding for 3-4 weeks straight is… well, unusual. And not really healthy. It was never a lot of blood, but it didn’t stop… and periods are really only supposed to last a week, perhaps a bit more, but sometimes significantly less.

They’re definitely not supposed to last two whole months, which was about the point I finally said, “maybe this is a bad enough problem I should go see my doctor…” So thankfully it was easy to get an appointment with my doctor using a newer online system. I also had to throw together whatever I could to help her figure out what was going on. Which meant reading back through my journal entries to find dates and whatever patterns I could find about my period.

It’s also worth pointing out here that the only reason this didn’t cause serious medical problems is that my daily supplements have a good dose of iron as well as other things essential for building blood. If I wasn’t eating so well and taking my vitamins, I probably would have become faint and collapsed at my job. Bleeding that long is no joke. Your body can only replace lost blood so quickly. I was able to leave the issue alone so long only because my health is very well supported.

Medical tests

My doctor was concerned, suffice it to say. There were a few possibilities. We ruled out pregnancy first, which is how I found myself picking up pregnancy tests after walking out of a hospital (where my doctor works).

Can’t say I’m overfond of peeing on a stick, but at least the stick was obligingly quick to provide results: negative. No kidlet on the way. Which is good. I really can barely manage myself right now. Dragging some poor kid into the mess that is my life would be cruel at best.

So with that ruled out, it was blood test time. I’m actually not sure what we were ruling out with these, but we checked the contents of my blood as well as a few other things. Everything came back normal. I wasn’t even low on red blood cells, which is a mercy given that I’d been bleeding for about two months straight at this point.

I also noticed, by this point, that having an active job, bending at the waist, and singing all made me bleed harder. Which was really depressing. Sing less in church, despite that it’s one of my favorite parts of church. Don’t be so active, despite that movement is key to a happy brain and life. Also, my job required it, so that was not at all optimal.

Finally, when all that came back, my doctor decided it was time to break out the ultrasound. The ultrasound would let us check the physical structure of my parts. It was possible there was a ruptured cyst or some other structural abnormality that was causing problems. This test would show it.

I was able to get a quick appointment in just a couple days. Turns out this kind of ultrasound involves you drinking 24 ounces of water an hour beforehand, and not using the bahtroom until it’s done. That’s so your organs are in the right place, and your bladder is nice and easy to see through with the scan.

Unfortunately, the scan involves the technician digging their scanner into your very full bladder to look at your uterus. This was extremely uncomfortable to say the least. They also did an internal scan for good measure, which I didn’t need a full bladder for, thank God. The results came back at the beginning of the week. Nothing to worry about. So most likely, I am not cancer-ridden or dying of some kind of hideous internal injury.

What’s Left?

So if none of that was it… we’re pretty much left with “hormonal abnormalities.” Most likely, what is happening is that I am constantly on my period for reasons entirely unknown.

There isn’t a lot of data on how the mRNA vaccines affect vagina-havers, since this is a very new technology. And therefore, there isn’t a lot known about how to fix weird side-effects like this. The more common (and thus well-known) period disruptions after these types of vaccines are having worse periods that stabilize and return to normal in a couple months.

It has now been more like 5 months, and my period did kind of the opposite.

So what’s to be done? Well, on the advice of my therapist/nutritionist/main doctor, I’ve begun a supplement called Vitex. There are a number of herbal remedies that support regular monthly cycles and hormone levels for uterus-havers. The chaste tree is one such thing. If I’m very lucky, a couple months of taking it once a day will straighten out my issue and bring me back to only regretting being biologically female for 5 days out of a month.

If I’m not, I may have to try other options. Femmenessnce is a broader-spectrum, far more complex option. I’ve actually tried it once before, and it was helping… but something about it also upset my intestines. Which was mightily disappointing. So I stopped taking it.

Since then my diet has changed to be a lot more healthy, what with the minimizing sugar intake and the eating mainly whole foods. So it’s possible I might have better results if I try it again sometime.

With luck though, I won’t have to.

This is about as resolved as this phenomenon is going to be for a while. Wish me luck in my quest to stop bleeding forever, friends. And rejoice with me, because I don’t have cancer!