Aug.10 - Blaugust Day 10 - A wee post

It's Blaugust so I'm gonna keep up with it and make a post, but we have guests for the next few days and I'm wiped. Probably not a lot of deep reflection tonight. :)

Learning so much. Still. Every day.

Jupes gives me "mini autism info dumps." It's fun.

Greg and Jupes (husband and autistic kiddo) are actively encouraging me to handle our visiting family more natively than I normally would. As in, try not to mask. Am I getting depleted? It's okay to leave the room. No one will mind. I don't usually do this - years of social fears around how every little thing I do might be viewed (a direct result of much early experience where that was indeed a huge problem) has made it so that I keep my Everything Is Fine mask on well past any of my natural limits. So I took care of myself! I got up and walked around when I needed to.

I also noticed when eye contact got too intense, and instead of forcing myself to keep going, my insides slowly melting into goo, I just looked away. Nothing happened. No one cared. I was not cast out. Sometimes I'd have an initial flash of anxiety about this, but then a second later I was filled with a magical (it seems magical, this sense of self-protection I've never felt before) sense that I was absolutely safe being myself. And so I kept trying. And it was pretty great.

Not only did no one care, but every interaction felt more real, more genuine, because I wasn't working so hard behind the scenes. I don't assume it will be that easy with everything. Right now I'm practicing around people who love me. I figure that's a good place to start.

I'm super tired so I'm going to bed. I had the thought, "It'd be nice if I'd have taken any cute photos today, I could share one in the post," and right then Cal read my mind and leapt into my lap, somehow deleting the last two paragraphs in four seconds of making keyboard biscuits. My little orange agent of chaos.