hashtagknitting poetry

Posted this in March on twitter, here for not-losing

things fall apart / the center cannot hold / you need to weave in the ends / s e c u r e l y

things fall apart; the center cannot hold; it's a center-pull ball you donuthead what did you THINK would happen~~~

(no subject)

[O]bjects carry a very strong significance for Autistic people, so tidying our living spaces up and throwing things away can be very difficult. Many of us identify with the items we love, and even feel a degree of empathy for them, as if they were alive. Psychologists call this phenomenon object personification, and Autistics exhibit it at an elevated rate compared to the neurotypical population. We also tend to connect emotionally with animals more readily than people, which can also influence how our home environments should be arranged.

Autistic people frequently rely on beloved objects to provide consistency, familiarity, and emotional grounding. Cleaning and getting rid of unnecessary things causes decision fatigue for many of us, because we have to think really effortfully about why we might want to hold on to something, and game out every possible scenario where it might come in handy. We also have to battle against social programming in the process: do I really want to throw out my action figure collection, or do I just think doing so will make me seem more adult? Do I never wear these boots because they are loud and impractical, or because they’re buried under a pile of t-shirts and I forget they exist?

Ok I have a lot to unpack here >_>

This last week, ugh

Content note: medical stuff, not too graphic. Also part of the entry mentions food intake, and references to a previous medical recommendation re calories, but there will be a cut for that.


Sunday evening I crashed right after going to bed, which I thought was just a worse than usual version of the mini-crashes I figured out were Probably Autism, but those I usually perk up from, and this ... not so much. By Monday it had rolled into headache plus nausea plus fatigue plus brain fog plus chills plus light/noise sensitivity. I did a COVID test (negative) and then just tried to survive the day.

...which turned into week...

Tuesday I took my last imitrex but it was out of date. By afternoon the nausea was worse to the point of throwing up multiple times, and then after I went to bed the chills shifted to epic sweating (soaking pillows and sheets within 3 hours). Also I'm pretty sure I hallucinated a smell at one point? Spicy sausage gravy, when no one was cooking? ...anyway. Since then things have been slowly getting better but my appetite has been off, my capacity to eat/drink has been off, temperature self-regulation has been wonky, energy low, and still the sensitivity to light and sound and still headache -- though oddly intermittent and pretty low-key, thank fuck. (I have brain fog but not the pain so strong it's overwhelming.)

I have looped my doctor in, yes. Not until today but I kept hoping it would just go away. I also seem to have ingrained a "feeling shitty is just something you endure" thing where I don't want to bother my doctor (and things like medication don't occur) that I need to poke at sometime.

Here's where I start talking about food, and calories are not specifically counted but I add snark about a previous doctor recommendation that suggests it. Feel free to skip. If you are on the entry page where there's no cut, skim for bold text.

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I think/hope I'm trending upward at this point. Don't really know though.