Woman with glasses and stars antenna reading a book

Aug.11 - Blaugust Day 11 - Eleventy fun, more AuDHD updates, letting myself fidget

Turns out I did find an Eleventy bug of sorts

What I talked about at the top of the page here turns out to actually be a bug. Thanks to Aubrey and Robb and Evan for helping me figure that out! Evan put an issue in, and also created a solution!

In the end, instead of using the solution I just decided to change the file structure of the blog from:

blog/2025/08/01

to be:

blog/2025/08-01

I chose to do it this way because I move the files into the right Neocities online folder by hand, and it's easier to do that move with fewer nested folders to click through. Now I can just drop stuff into the 2025 folder instead of 2025/08. That's a small bit of friction removed.

Today's autism/AuDHD updates

I love the connections I'm making

I start writing these posts around 9-10pm, and then try to get them done by midnight, for Blaugust. Then I collapse into bed because we have family visiting and I am flipping beat every night.

I gotta say, I've been so touched by the fact that every single morning I wake up and someone, in the night or early morning, has sent me a private message that's either bonding over shared experience, or expressing support for what I'm writing. It's so kind, and so cool, and it's slowly banishing the aloneness I have felt about this stuff, for so very long. Thanks to everyone who has written me. 💜

I let myself fidget at the eye doctor

Walking into the optometrist's office today, I felt...something. I often don't know what I'm feeling, and for years (most especially the ones immediately following my son's traumatic birth in 2002) I didn't even know that I was feeling, until my nervous system would get so fed up with me it would create a huge panic attack. And then mostly all I felt was the urgent need to visit the emergency room. But now I understand that my system was like, "Hey, thinking you're about to die totally beats having to emotionally deal with the stuff we don't think you can handle."

These days, after a lot of good mental health work, it knows I can usually handle things, and so it will kind of bump me and mumble something like, "We might be having a feeling." It still isn't super direct. I rarely get words, but then I don't think I have a strong internal voice anyway. I think in pictures, images, feelings, and colors; though I'm not a synethsete (but my youngest kid is). So I have to literally stop and look inward, and direct a message (I say "message" rather than speaking or talking, because like I said, it's not words) to that sense, asking what's happening.

The response, when it comes, is nearly always an image. I routinely ignore the initial images. Like a silent person holding up photos or art to a second person, and the second person just going, "No, not that one. No, not that one either. These suck. Not that one either. Keep going." I keep doing that until the inner...whatever....finally shows me an image I think will work. One that won't end in abandonment.

This is how I deal with my inner world. I know, it's CRACKED, right? Who does this? You want to know who does this? Picture a very small child, who is literally trying to sort out what the world is like every single hour of every single day because that's what tiny beings do, learning through daily experience that if they don't display the right expression or tone of voice, that love goes away. I was that child. Modifying a kid's behavior through rescindment of affection is extremely effective. It's the South on the compass. It works so well because love is everything to a wee one; it's their actual life-or-death survival.

Treating them this way teaches a very small human that the last person they can trust is themselves. They learn that their own interpretation of what they're feeling could very well get them in trouble. Except now we're in a whole new ballgame. Everything is changing. The new skill I'm working on is catching that first image my system sends me, and interpreting it. Teaching my body that I'm listening, that I won't make it edit anymore.

So I'm standing a few feet from the reception desk and I'm registering some distress, and I message inward, and the image that come back is one of my wooden fidget toys.

And then I had this micro conversation, in a couple seconds, with myself that went something like this:


Me: But I just collect them, I don't use them

me: Yes I know and have we considered why have eleven of these things?

Me: Letting myself hold something in my hand while I'm socializing is one of those things I wish I did but don't do because I'm afraid I'll look weird. Except for knitting. This is why we knit. Why don't we have knitting?

me: Knitting during an eye exam?

Me: I mean...

me: You're anxious about the toy because you only bring out a fidget object when you're already in a full blown panic attack, right?

Me: Yeah and I feel so vulnerable then, I only do it as a last resort! If I do it as a regular thing, I'll look weird

me: Okay well does Jupiter look weird when they fidget or stim?

Me: NO and if anyone SAYS THEY DO I will BRING OUT THE SWORD because FUCK THOSE GUYS

me: That's great mama bear, but also, this means you can also just be yourself and hold the comforting things

Me:

me: No seriously that's what it means. The sword is for the kids, and also for you

Me: This is amazing

me: I know, now get the wood


Reference to "the wood" here refers to this collection I have of small wooden fidget pieces made by a guy named Chris at our Saturday Market.

Here's a few of my favorites:

The darkest round one if my favorite, and lives in my daily carry. I love that thing. I love it so much that my latest tattoo uses it as the base:

So I pulled it out of my bag and I held it. And it was sooooo nice. I felt more regulated. Which startled me. I feel dysregulated all of the time. And the magic part here, wasn't the wood itself, it was letting myself have it. That was the healing aspect of this moment, and this little internal exchange. It was seeing a bit of distress, asking myself what might help, and then letting myself try the thing it thought might work, without comment or judgement (after a few seconds of orienting).

And how did it go? Fine. No one seemed to notice or care that I held it in my hand, and flipped it around and around.

And if they had? Well, the sword. And by that I just mean, there now lives inside me a small sapling of internal conviction (hopefully one day a great tree) that my own gentle, benign self-comforting measures are absolutely are ones I have every right to practice, and that isn't up for debate.

I also practiced looking away more when I was talking. Risking their ill opinion. Deciding that the good opinion of a stranger I saw twice a year wasn't worth my insides turning into goo as I stared into their faces. No one noticed or cared about this, either.

And then this happened again at the restaurant

Our visiting family took us all out to dinner, at a local place that we chose for good covid parameters but is also very loud. I was having all kinds of distress as we walked in, but Greg had said beforehand, "You can paint!" And that was the bomb diggety, yes, yes, I could PAINT, no one minds when I paint. So I sat in the corner and I got out my little art bag, and I started drawing, and no one noticed or cared.

I also put in my earplugs. No one noticed or cared.

And then I proceeded to just be quiet. This was also a difficult thing as a kid. Masking meant displaying the right face and expression. If I were just quiet, lost in my own thoughts or present and quietly listening, that was perilous. There be dragons. Tonight I decided to risk it. Someone DID notice - Greg. He kept turning in his chair, going from talking to the person on his right to me on his left, glancing at me, and turning back. I finally said, "Are you okay?" He leaned in and whispered in my ear, "I was making sure you were okay!" I laughed and said I was fine except that his constant checking was giving me a slight complex, and he laughed too and said okay, he'd stop. And he did.

Yet another bonus

I feel closer to my peeps. I have never felt more myself. There is a synergistic joy that happens when you are absolutely just yourself in the best way, when you care truly and compassionately about your own self, and you are also around people who feel that way about you and for whom you also feel that way - this sentence is yoga but you get where I'm going. It's beautiful, this feeling. The connection that happens is so genuine and such a delight. We laughed so much, and that's saying something since we laugh a lot, anyway.

Okay I got eight minutes to turn in my homework

I have to figure out how much more I can take of Stephen King's The Stand. Have you read this? Should I read it? It's one of those famous ones that EVERYONE HAS READ, and I haven't read, and I generally like horror, but so far I hate most of the characters (Frannie is okay) and I don't know if I can get through this. Feedback welcome.