I really want to start communicating through text more often, except it wouldn’t make me more comfortable since I can barely stand reading things I’ve written. It gives me the same feeling i get when I listen to my voice on a tape recorder.
Also I’ve…
Yeah I mean. ASL would be nice and helpful, but not necessarily any more helpful than AAC. It’s…
Okay to be perfectly honest? Part of it is I don’t feel like I deserve it but most of it is not even that I’m afraid to use it but I am petrified of using it and then someone who saw me use it hearing me talk with Birdie or someone I’m comfortable talking with at the time and judging me for it.
Which is stupid because it’s not just for completely 100% 24/7 nonverbal people and I know that, and usually I couldn’t give a rats ass what some random person would think, but I’m honestly kind of afraid some off-their-gourd allistic is gonna start something when I’m least capable of handling it.
At least with ASL I can just say that I’m hard of hearing and it’s easier in louder spaces to sign sometimes. (Which would both be and not be a lie).
And that is a compromise and it’s OKAY to compromise and do what’s most likely to cause you the minimum of stress which INCLUDES avoiding stupid questions by random strangers. Okay, this probably doesn’t connect (in my head, it does, but that doesn’t always translate), but here goes. I use the word lesbian to refer to myself. It encompasses the fact that I’m in a long-term,committed monogamous relationship with a woman. People sort of get it. It’s shorthand. But honestly? I don’t consider myself a lesbian. I’m ambivalent about the word bisexual, though that’s closer to the mark. Queer probably comes closest, because it’s a general term. The reality is ‘I fall in love with people’ tends to result in a hell of a lot of blank looks, confusion, and demands for clarification, even in the queer community. If I added ‘sometimes I like sex, sometimes I just want cuddles and scritches and petting, and sometimes I really don’t want to be touched at all’, there would be even more confusion. So I use lesbian even though I don’t really click with it because it gives people a label they can understand (even if they’re homophobic, they know what a lesbian is), and they’re happy that they’ve categorised me and can move on.
The point I’m making is this – people, even people who work with autistic people, even some autistic people themselves, JUST DON’T GET that sometimes, some autistic people can’t use verbal language all the time, or at times, it’s so stressful and hard it’s exhausting, or leads us into a meltdown. And to explain all that, when you’re on the edge of a meltdown or exhaustion, is TOO MUCH. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to be too exhausted to be the perfect information resource/soapbox advocate. You’re allowed to think of your autistic manifestations as being disabling. That doesn’t make you a bad autistic person. And if using ASL, or home sign, or signed english means you can use the excuse, “I’m Deaf/HoH, and it’s easier to sign in this situation/when I’m tired/when I’m having trouble keeping up”, then that’s fine, even if the real reason you’re signing isn’t completely to do with the fact that you’re Deaf/HoH. YOU DON’T HAVE TO JUSTIFY YOURSELF HONESTLY AND COMPLETELY. You are under no obligation to. And if the short explanation you give isn’t enough for them to accept and leave you alone, then they’re a rude asshole anyway.
knitting in the dark 