Neuro-divergent and mental health labels serve two purposes: helping you find your people, and helping you find the right professional to aid you in building coping skills and/or healing from trauma and/or prescribing you medication.

So if you don't need to find your people, build your coping skills, heal from trauma, or take medication for your brain function, then there is no need for the label. But if you do need one of those things, finding the right label or set of labels is really important, and is often something a very self-examining person can do better than anyone else. Coping skills can mask symptoms and prevent correct diagnosis.

I have had medical professionals doubt whether or not I had ADHD because I made A's in school. It had to get so bad that I was distractedly driving through stop signs before they would medicate me, because my coping skills resulted in an outward expression of normalcy (grades). Never mind that my mental health and physical health was suffering terribly due to me using stress hormones generated by panic and not eating to help me focus.

I support people self-diagnosing, and will continue to do so as long as the psychology community continues to treat external markers of capitalist success as one of the most important diagnostic criteria. I will continue to do so as long as it is expensive and soul-crushingly difficult to find a therapist who isn't incompetent or abusive.

Sunday night was the first night I got to be home since Serenity (housemate) finished moving out and cleaning up behind themselves and it was WORLDS quieter. Not of physical noise, but of mental/emotional noise. The quiet felt almost shocking, like when the power goes out. I felt like I was in a hotel, or like I was sleeping in an empty house without even furniture. My house felt clean, open, and full of space -- despite the fact that my living room is still a clutterbomb from my returned things after Topaz' move.

I was subconsciously worried that I didn't actually need to live alone for a while, or that it wouldn't be a significant difference because Serenity did try hard to be unobtrusive. I was worried that maybe I was making it up, maybe I was just being uselessly picky. Now I feel validated, and happy that I knew this would be good for me even though I had no proof. I'm delightedly anticipating a decrease in my overall cognitive and emotional strain, from the sense of rest I can get now from going home.

Weirdly I have heard the ghost moving around again, and Kanika has started breaking into the room where it stays again. They didn't do that for almost the entire 2 years that Serenity was here -- at least not when I was home. The door to that bedroom stayed shut. Now I keep shutting it and finding it open again, and last night the light was inexplicably on (I never turn it on) -- most likely Serenity turned it on and I just didn't notice the first 3 times I passed it, but I would have thought I'd notice since it was dark and there is a large gap between the door and the floor. It creeped me out a little but I dismissed it. If it is a ghost, it's got no ill intention, or Kanika wouldn't be friends with it.

I've been helping Topaz with various cleaning projects and they offered to come help me clean and tidy my living room this week which will be SUCH a relief as tackling it alone is just something I haven't motivated to do, at all. Once I have it tidy I can do an allergy clean regularly and hopefully host hearts and crafts sometimes. I've only just been able to start doing big cleaning and tidying projects, having stored up enough spoons. So many days when I get home I am just so wiped from work that feeding myself dinner and occasionally soaking my feet is about all I can manage. But having a tidy space that is all mine and all tidy is going to help so much.

I don't remember if I posted about it, but I organized my closet (the clothes at least) and put some things in canvas boxes on a wire cube shelf outside the closet, and I have done a lot better about putting away clean clothes and planning out work outfits since then. It's so good to for me to plan ahead with outfits because otherwise I end up slapping together something in the morning and it's not something that feels like self-decorating. If I have to wear clothes I want to be thoughtful and creative about it. Side note: I need so many more clothes now that I have to wear a different outfit every damn day, which I usually sweat in while walking to the bus. Luckily my thrifting magic has kept that from being too dreary.

I have become more assertive again since getting on the right meds for my anxiety (starting last October I think). I wasn't expecting this but it really highlights how much my reaction to danger is to become meek and obedient. I had mourned the loss of my assertiveness without ever being able to put that into words. I just felt like I had become a coward, when being scared had never stopped me before. It's not that I consciously made different choices (except that I couldn't get myself to initiate social stuff) but that things I would have done literally stopped occurring to me as possibilities.


I first noticed this a few weeks ago when I met up with a stranger from OKC. First, when I made a mistake and showed up at the wrong place, I accepted their offer to come to me and didn't worry further about it. I didn't compulsively offer things that I didn't have the energy to do. Then when I reached my limit of the social I could manage for the day, I asked for the check, then paid, said goodbye and left despite the fact that they seemed disappointed. I didn't even apologize or offer a long explanation, didn't feel guilty or try to manage their feelings; I just did what felt right.

Another example is week before last, when Topaz decided to take an impromptu vacation trip last week and wanted me to come along for at least part of the time. I said no because trips like that take a lot of work for me, mentally, and I need time to prepare before and recover after, and I have been stressed out for 2 solid months and need down time. I don't find trips relaxing in general and it would have drained me more than it nourished me -- BUT I could have done it. I know my boss would have let me go even though it was last minute, and I have the vacation days saved up. Even though I could have shelved my needs and gone, I didn't.



To be fair, in both cases they were very respectful and literally zero pressure, but for a long time even if the other person was perfect I would feel a need to sacrifice my needs for their wants. With Topaz I would hold back telling them my desires so that I could just accommodate their desires without considering mine. Two years ago and maybe even a year ago, I would have felt too guilty to say no, because it wouldn't actually damage me to do it and for a really long time I couldn't draw a boundary unless it was literally for survival. I couldn't assert my needs and would just hope that the other person took my mild expressions of discomfort as a firm no. I don't think that is part of my personality at all but purely a reaction to abuses I endured and the constant pressure from society in general to be other than I am.


But this time, not only did I say no, I hardly felt any discomfort doing so. I feel like I have reclaimed a very important part of myself. This also impacts my romantic/sexual self in that I am more confident in asking for what I want, and I don't get overwhelmed with fear and self-doubt when faced with rejection. More importantly, being rejected doesn't carry over and color the next chance, and this is true both for individual moments and for people in general.

I feel less likely to fall for anyone who doesn't treat me as the incredible person that I am. I look back a year ago and see myself trying to convince Evelyn that I was worth their time, and I feel sad for past-me that I was so lost that I could feel like it was okay for me to be in a relationship that made me feel like I had no magic and no appeal. I'm not going to do that again. If someone doesn't make it very clear that they are really fucking into me, and tell me why, I'm not spending time on them in the hopes that eventually they will acknowledge my worth. And my true, assertive self is quite confident in saying that "I'm not worthy of you" does NOT acknowledge someone else's worth at ALL. It just passive aggressively pushes them to validate yours. I won't allow people to say that shit to me any more.


I think a big part of the reason I have been able to reclaim my assertiveness is that about a year ago, Topaz realized that trying to get me to act a certain way around their family was keeping me from being able to connect with their family, and they stopped trying to do that and told me to be myself. I've been slowly reclaiming myself around their family and that has been healing for my relationship with myself.

My coworkers have also been affirming me as my unique self since I have been working there, to a steadily increasing degree. Last July I came out to them as non-binary and they responded kindly for the most part (some just didn't really react). Since then they have been pretty good about using gender-neutral pronouns and being more inclusive in their language (i.e. not saying "ladies and gentlemen"). I feel respected and to some degree even understood.


I'm having less anxiety about talking to strangers. This is huge, since this is always the thing that is hardest for me. I think I am starting to feel like my thoughts and feelings are valid in general, and people can and will want them. I don't know how many years it's been since that was true. I think going through my social justice awakening essentially alone and watching people lose interest in anything about me was really damaging to my social coping skills. And then shortly after that, trying to connect with a group of queers and trans people who just had no interest in knowing me, for some reason I still don't understand. Before that it honestly never even occurred to me that people wouldn't want to connect with me if I wanted to connect with them.

I've been realizing that my ability to not notice what people think of me is a superpower. I had this memory of my dad at my birthday party when I was little - he dropped a popsicle on the floor and picked it up, then told my little 6-year-old friends that they've probably never seen anyone do what he was about to do, and ate it. Looking back I can see that he said that to stave off self-consciousness. I wouldn't have thought about how someone else would react to me doing something like that. I have licked my plate in public, or wiped up sauce with a finger and licked it, without even thinking about how people would see that. I will adjust my underwear in public. I do all manners of odd things in front of people because I really just don't think about it -- and when I do think about it, I don't care (unless my brain chemicals are off).

It is genuinely and significantly damaging for me to be around people who get embarrassed by me. This breaks my superpower and not just in the moment. The more it happens the more it breaks me, because my truest self is always unselfconscious and direct, and when I put on a mask of respectability, I wither. I temporarily lose the ability to even realize my own emotions or know what I want, and it takes time to heal every time I do it.

When I betray my true self by pretending to be a more acceptable version of myself, I lose connection with myself. I must remember this is a grave sacrifice never to be taken lightly, and never to be done often.

So I decided to take a week-long break from facebook and literally less than 10 minutes later I automatically went to load it. I had already completely logged out and told fb to forget my device, so I didn't ruin my intention, but I can already tell that this is going to be both a struggle, and hopefully enlightening.

I don't think my posting to fb makes my life worse in any way, but checking my feed does. I have stripped it down to just good people but it's an ADHD/anxiety trap no matter what -- even when I have JUST scrolled through for an HOUR and then closed it I will open it again without thinking. I just get stuck and I waste my life. Topaz will occasionally get frustrated with me or worried about me because sometimes it's like a compulsion and I have to put my phone in another room to stop looking at fb.

So far (it has been a day and a half) I have realized that I use fb to self-soothe when I am feeling stressed, because it is an effective distraction when there is a lot I haven't seen yet. But it is not at all effective when I have checked it recently, which is most times when I look at it. So I'd say more than half the time I open it and scroll through looking for new content and don't find any but keep looking anyway. It is a really bad first step for coping with stress, because it usually doesn't help yet prevents me from trying something else.

If I can reclaim my time and get more writing done by not reading facebook, then I may restrict myself to only using it when I am at my computer. That way I can still keep up with people occasionally but not get automatically snared. At this point that new rule is looking very likely. The real test will be when I next ride the bus without being able to check facebook.

Describe something positive you took away from a negative situation. Was the gain worth the pain?

The negative situation that comes to mind is investing in a person who I'll refer to as Kwt. Kwt was someone who I was close friends with for about 6 months in 2014, followed by 3 months of awkward half-friendship, and ending with 2 months of conflict. We have not spoken since and unlike most people I stop talking to, I have no intention of ever speaking to Kwt again.

Our friendship started with me feeling desperate for connection and mentioning this publicly. Kwt reached out and invited me to come visit kittens that were at their apartment, and I did. We had some intense, deep conversations about our core values, our needs, and our goals. I was really excited to have found someone else who wanted to grow in similar ways and to also create community. I distinctly remember thinking "wow, this person is actually even more into openness, honesty, and interconnected social-justice-focused community than I am!"

But as time went by, some of Kwt's actions really bothered me, and the first time I asked them to stop an action (whispering to one person when others are around) they withdrew rather than changing (thus began the 3 months of half-friendship). After that I did something that upset them -- told a mutual friend about an action of theirs that scared me -- and after 6 weeks of discussion they finally said "I need to be able to lie to my friends" and I said, essentially, "hard pass." This "need" to lie and need for me to not talk about them was a complete contradiction to everything they had told me they stood for -- total openness and honesty at all times with everyone. I felt baffled and betrayed. They later went on to repeatedly engage in blatant pressuring of others to do all kinds of things that damaged those people for Kwt's benefit. I can't go into all of it because it isn't my story, but I feel strong regret (a rare emotion for me) for having introduced Kwt to my people and encouraged them to invest in this person, because it caused significant harm.

So that was the negative of it. The positive is that this taught me that taking people at their word is not appropriate unless they have proven that they will never intentionally lie to me AND that they are self-aware enough to know if they are telling the truth. I think I felt truth in what Kwt said because they really believed it when they were saying it, but it wasn't actually true. And if I had looked at their actions for confirmation I would have noticed a pattern of coercion and dishonesty and hiding WAY before the eventual blow-up.

I used to be so insistent on letting people be the ones to give meaning to their behavior that I would erase my experience in order to line up with the meaning they provided. This choice I made was cruel to me, dismissive and disrespectful. I can acknowledge that there are things beyond my ability to guess while also stating firmly that, for example, I will not tolerate being made to feel excluded, or being used to make someone else feel excluded. That is at best inconsiderate and quite likely was a manipulation tactic intended to make everyone want to be the one person being whispered to. I'm kinda mad at myself for not stating out loud what it seemed like to me, because stating a manipulation tactic out loud weakens it so much that it is a good deterrent. And if it wasn't the intent, it shows how negatively it comes across which is also a good deterrent. Note to self: describe manipulations out loud when you see an action that may be one.

I think at least this taught me to put a little more faith in my own observations with people in general because most people aren't very self-aware. So they can tell you what they think is the truth, without any intent to deceive you, but that doesn't make it the truth. Alternatively, if I trust everyone to do their best to always tell the truth, I have no protection whatsoever against deliberate manipulation. A much more sensible choice is to make sure, by observation over time, that they are completely opposed to lying to me BEFORE I trust that they are never going to lie to me.

I think that learning this lesson helped me earlier this year when I wanted to invest in someone whose words told me one thing and actions told me another. Eventually I chose to trust myself and that was definitely the right choice: if I had not I would have spent a much longer time pouring out my energy, and eventually I would have gotten the same result. I hope to get quicker about trusting myself, but the necessary first step was learning that sometimes people are wrong about their own selves (intentionally or not) and if their actions do not line up with their words, that may be what is happening.

It is okay and good to trust my observations and protect myself by refusing to believe someone else above myself, if necessary. The first person I have to trust is me, and when someone makes me feel like shit, I need to fucking take that seriously. I wouldn't tolerate it toward someone else and I need to take as good care of me as I would of someone else.