Hello, reader. I’m obsessed with time. In a way, I don’t understand it at all, but I’m very tied into it as a way of trying to stay safe. Also considering my path of self-discovery, intersectionality, and how I relate to people who have ADHD and AuDHD.
Thinking about autism these days…my own, and in culture at large. I’m writing here less as my autism feels looped in with all my other differences and identities.
crazy
I use “crazy” in an affectionate way to describe myself and reclaim the term. My mental health journey with overwhelming anxiety and a “schizoaffective disorder bipolar type” diagnosis is a lot to navigate. I experience that having autism plus crazy such as hearing voices, changes what kinds of treatment work!
I learn nothing about this from Big Medicine. So like many aspects of disability, I have to DIY it or talk among friends who endure similar.
You probably know I’m a zinester. I wrote a zine a few years ago called Autism Plus Crazy Is a Whole Other Thing which is about how treatment that actually works can be hard to find, when the situation is complexified.
I’m glad I have radical mental health in my life– glad I’m not reliant on mainstream medicine for help, because it wasn’t much help. The over-sedation actually did a lot of harm.
AuDHD
Thinking about autism these days, I realize that people who have struggles with time– in a way I associate with ADHD and AuDHD– need to do so much, to get by in a neurotypical world. My friends who have ADHD and AuDHD struggle in ways I can barely understand. My heart goes out to you.
I try to explain my own relationship with time by saying… rather than having time blindness or time elasticity, I’m obsessed with time, rigid with time, and I memorize train schedules on accident. I thought these abilities mean I have no problem with time.
Then recently I realized that being rigid can come with its own struggles. Like many aspects of neurodivergence, we are not in the middle. My rigidity means I freak out about changes in scheduling, sometimes misunderstanding changes as emotional and social danger.
My hyper-awareness of time can become a problem in and of itself. Time rigidity can make it hard to be close to people who are loose with time and less perceptive of time. I used to take lateness and changes in scheduling so personally that I had trouble functioning socially.
Slowly I learn how to emotionally regulate around time, and how to trust people in relationship, that lateness and changes in scheduling don’t mean danger like abandonment.
identity
These days I’m less precise, but when I was younger, I had a clock inside me and could tell my spouse the time without looking at the clock. There must be a name for that. It feels like a parlor trick, but being that time-obsessed is a difference. In some ways a gift, but it also makes life harder.
Please comment if you want to, about your experiences with time, and how your intersecting identities affect how you manage your differences.
My queerness, transness, fatness, chronic pain, hypermobility, digestive issues, autism, and other differences all mix together into an intersectional mess that is life. I’m happy to be here. Thank you for going on the journey with me.
Image description: The picture shows a fat, smiling nonbinary person who is me. I wear a black tank top. I have a lit candle and holiday food like gluten-free matzoh on the table before me. I’m holding Bunny, who is a soft personal deity and stuffie family member who helps me feel safer. Bunny gives me tactile / emotional comfort and more stability to survive in a jarring, confusing, violent world.
Thank you, Strawberry. This is interesting and helpful. You invited our reflections on time. I hold conversations with people across the country and in some other parts of the world, so am always aware that time for them is different than time for me, and I always need to pay attention to where they are “in time.” Also, living in the desert Southwest, I am more in tuned with the ancient ones than I have been living elsewhere. I see their drawings on rock, visit their stone dwellings. I lift their pottery pieces and say hello. Time for me spans not hours, but centuries. I include them when I walk. This all leads to a much smaller sense of my own life in larger space and time than has been true for me before. I can be more solitary because the unseen community around me is much larger. I hope that makes sense.
that’s really beautiful, Canyon. I love hearing how time feels for you. I relate to you about the unseen community. I love imagining you lifting the pottery to say hello. I feel like I’m there with you.