The social science of generational divide is contentious. The supposed characteristics or values of a generation don’t apply to every single individual within that generation. People don’t like to be pigeon-holed into traits they don’t identify with. But also, and more recently, there’s been a growing distaste for generational labels because too often, a generation’s characteristics are leveraged against them to devalue their opinions and goals.
Millennials are such snowflakes.
Okay, Boomer.
I’m a Millennial. (Could you tell?) My generation has been gaslit across every sector of society. I’ve personally seen it in mainstream media and in conversation with acquaintances, colleagues, relatives, etc.
We get so wrapped up in putting down generational traits or in fighting back against the generation that put us down that we forget there are actually generationalstrengths.
I want to take a little space to talk about one particular strength of Millennials.
I’m calling it: Reveling in the Ridiculous.
Millennials have been through events that have seen the America we thought we knew rewrite itself around us. 9/11 and “the War on Terror” are perhaps the most salient examples from our childhoods.
We’ve seen wild technological innovation. We made the transition from no internet, to internet; from corded handhelds bolted to the wall, to smart phones with bluetooth.
We’ve been through some extremely difficult economic situations. The housing crisis of the late ’00s (which seems to be ongoing) set us back, just as we were young adults, trying to establish ourselves in the working world. Many of us lost or weren’t able to find jobs, so we went on to upper-level education, and now, we are overeducated and still underemployed.
We’ve realized capitalism isn’t necessarily set up for health, happiness, or a satisfying life.
As experienced adults, we watched an unhinged political administration do a ton of damage, here and internationally.
We watched the world be devastated by a pandemic that (again) changed how the world worked.
We watched the birth of a new Civil Rights movement erupt in protests across the nation.
We watched the only attack on our Capitol since 1814.
There comes a point when a Millennial can’t take one more natural disaster, one more oil spill, one more piece of bad news.
Millennials invented the internet meme. We cut our teeth on I Can Haz Cheezburger and I Don’t Always…, But When I Do… But now, to deal with the layers of instability, disappointment, and trauma, our sense of humor has evolved into a coping skill.
We deal with the absurdity of this post-post modern, post-capitalistic, pandemic-devastated dystopia by Reveling in the Ridiculous.
Austin Archer’s content is what inspired this essay. Here is an obviously talented musician, composer, and artist, working in multiple media, who is using his skill and intelligence to create well-written, well-mixed, songs that revel in the ridiculousness of social and political situations.
Isn’t this song kind of…mean, though? Petty? What’s the point of calling out Tucker Carlson like this?
The answer lies in the sheer powerlessness Millennials have felt over extremely important situations (fear mongering, misinformation, overtly hostile pictures of their generation painted in the media, wars, etc.).
What is an underemployed, overeducated Millennial supposed to do when they’ve stored up a lifetime of disillusionment, and then they hear one…more…stupid…thing…
Where does that energy go? I mean, we can’t all be as lucky (or bold) as that guy in Montana.
For Austin Archer, and for many other Millennial internet users and content creators, they cope by Reveling in the Ridiculous. By making something to laugh at. Because laughing at something is still safer than attempting to burn it to the ground.
At least for now.
5 Easy Steps to Practice Reveling in the Ridiculous
Notice that bubbling feeling of “it’s all too much-ness.” It’s usually characterized by anxiety, anger, helplessness, the desire to drop-kick your phone/tablet/laptop into the sun, and experienced after hearing bad news of some kind.
Dissociate from your emotions. Don’t engage in destruction. Subvert it. Ninja-dodge it.
Tap into a deeply ironic sense of humor. Don’t look on the Bright Side. Look on the Dark Side. Specifically, how could this be worse (ex., Godzilla reincarnated, asteroid strike, robot apocalypse)? The more specific the details, the better. What’s the most childish response you can think of? Lean into it. Push it even farther.
Make something. Record your Ridiculous Revel by drawing, writing, photographing, composing, etc. Use an existing meme structure or create a new meme.
Share it to your socials. Because you have a responsibility to your Fellow Millennial to help them Get Through This. After all (cues High School Musical soundtrack), “WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.”
I wasn’t required to buy it for any reason. And no, it wasn’t a college textbook. (That’d be a steal!)
It was a book I was very much interested in reading, that was not available through my library, and that was out of print. So I paid more for it than a brand new hardback, waited the two-week shipping (for which I paid extra), received, read, and deeply enjoyed the book.
I saw a screenshot meme online about book pricing that resonated with this experience. I can’t find it, unfortunately. It’s lost somewhere in the gaping, infinite maw of the internet. But the basic gist was a juxtapositioning. People are willing to pay $5 (sometimes more) for a latte that a barista made in 10-15 minutes, while complaining that paying $4.99 for an e-book, which took years and countless hours of work and effort and thought, is “too much.”
During the pandemic, my local libraries closed. Delivery was slow and unreliable. And, besides, we were nervous to order things or interact with delivery people. Maybe the virus could ride in on packages, we knew so little about how it worked. I found myself stuck with the books I already had on my shelves. Over the last year, I have re-read most of them. And I am rediscovering the unending value of a well-written book.
A coffee is great. Especially a well-made coffee. But it lasts an hour. Maybe a morning. A day if you count the caffeine effects. The next day, you need another coffee. It’s ephemeral.
Know what’s not ephemeral? Written language. Preserved thoughts, poems, and stories. A human person (and if it’s traditionally published, many human people) labored to make sure those words were put down in exactly that order.
Even if that roomful of monkeys did finally produce Hamlet, that would be a fucking miracle, wouldn’t it? I’d pay more than a latte for a miracle.
Books are precious resources. The value we derive from a book is infinite. It can be consumed over and over. It can be passed from hand to hand. It can be gifted to our children and grandchildren. And all of this without diminishing. There is never less than when we began. In fact, now there is more: shared experiences, new conversations to be had, strengthened human connections.
Their creators should be respected with what passes as a value indicator in a capitalist society. Money.
How much money is enough for something miraculous as a book?
Probably more than whatever you paid for your morning coffee.
One of the most difficult parts in processing my late autism identification and diagnosis (at 30 years old) is dealing with a constantly shifting perspective, specifically in comparing how I function in the world and how non-autistic people function in it.
I spent my whole life assuming my way of being was “normal” or neurotypical, but, as it turns out, neurotypical people exist in the world VERY DIFFERENTLY than I do. Every time I identify, process, and peel back a difference, I find a new one beneath. It’s extremely disorienting.
Here’s the latest paradigm shift I’ve been working through.
In my last post (Where Do Novels Go When No Agent Wants Them?), I wrote about my experience querying my novel ECHOES OF THE OLD WORLD and a couple of potential reasons why no agent made me an offer of representation. After publishing that post, a couple of threads on Twitter popped up that helped me realize I have more to say on this topic. Like, a lot more.
When I wrote and queried my novel, I had no idea I was neurodiverse (autistic, ADHD, HSP). I had no idea that the ways I interact with and perceive the world and read books and watch movies are fundamentally different than the majority of the population. I had never heard the terms neurodiverse/neurodivergent and would not have applied them to myself if I had.
I wrote ECHOES in a first-person point of view. In a lot of ways, my protagonist was a version of myself. We have our differences, but as I wrote her story, I put myself inside her head and looked through her eyes while she was simultaneously in my head…looking through my eyes… So a Russian doll kind of situation.
I knew I was putting myself into her. I didn’t know that meant I was imbuing her with autistic qualities. I didn’t know those qualities were autistic. I didn’t know that neurotypical people didn’t have those qualities or might have trouble relating to them.
Then, I self-identified as autistic, underwent assessment, and received a confirmation diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. My basic perceptions are fundamentally autistic. Most other people’s basic perceptions are fundamentally not autistic. I’ve lived 30 years without knowing about that difference.
It’s a huge mind fuck.
For example, I recently realized that I don’t think I read fiction the same way a neurotypical person does. This, because I read Madeleine Ryan’s gorgeous book A Room Called Earth, which is written in first-person stream of consciousness from the point of view of an autistic woman. I related to that character. Like, intensely. Like, to the point that I was shocked and emotional at how many times I related to her on each page. (HIGHLY recommend it. Here’s a review of A Room Called Earth I wrote for The Bookends Review.)
Ryan’s book prompted me to ask myself a new series of questions. Do neurotypical people relate to protagonists in fiction as intensely as I related to this autistic character? Have I been not relating to neurotypical fiction in that way? Have I been observing the characters in neurotypical fiction in the same way that I observe neurotypical people in real life? Is there a difference between observing and analyzing someone and understanding and relating to them?
For better or worse, I think the answer to all of these questions is, Yes.
When I queried ECHOES OF THE OLD WORLD, I received a fair amount of responses along the lines of, “didn’t connect to your character/prose as much as I’d hoped” or, “didn’t find myself relating to your protagonist/voice.” I assumed these were form rejection letters. I think for the most part they were. But as soon as I realized I was autistic and remembered these responses, I got worried. Was my fiction fundamentally incomprehensible or inaccessible to neurotypical (the majority of) readers.
Then, I saw a couple of threads on Twitter that confirmed for me that, yes, the neurotypical gatekeepers of traditionally published fiction misunderstand and reject autistic fiction all the time. Readers critique autistic elements within a novel as “not believable” or “not relatable.”
One hypothesis I take away from this is that neurotypical readers need to feel connected with their characters in a way that I, as an autistic reader, don’t.
Don’t get me wrong; relating to the autistic protagonist of A Room Called Earth was a POWERFUL experience. But I don’t have to relate to all characters to that degree to find them interesting enough to follow.
I study people. It’s a survival mechanism. My whole life, my brain has been asking how I need to act to blend in within any given situation. I absolutely do not need to relate to someone to understand them or their motivations. I do not need to feel I would have the exact same emotional reaction as a character in order to understand why they might be reacting that way.
This might be another fundamental difference between autistic and non-autistic readers: autistic readers are far more empathetic and able to analyze and understand characters within narratives. We’ve been practicing empathetic character/person reading our entire lives. We also tend to be more empathetic in general, and can empathize, even with characters with whom we have nothing in common.
I may not have the same needs in terms of character-relatability that neurotypical readers do, because in general, I don’t relate to the majority of the population. I’m used to that. It’s my normal.
So, if that’s true, the question becomes, do I as a neurodiverse writer need to account for that difference in neurotypical reader perception? How would I account for it? Especially if it’s something I can’t really see or identify? I don’t have answers to those questions, only the beginnings of thought processes that may or may not be valuable.
Another realization I’ve had through all of this is that the querying process is harder for me than for my neurotypical peers. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the querying process is traumatic to neurodiverse people. We tend to be hypersensitive to rejection. We’ve been avoiding it assiduously, consciously or subconsciously, our entire lives. I’ve always known there was something different about me, and because I’ve been consistently misunderstood, I’m sensitive to that. Rejection—especially with the reason of lack of relatability or connection—reads as a misunderstanding and a rejection of my perspective, and even me as a person.
If agents are really using this lack of relatability as a form response, I’d suggest that, in order to make the process less traumatic to neurodiverse people, they use another phrase. A simple no thanks is plenty, if the rejection is going to be a form one anyway.
As I begin to query my second novel, I’ve been experiencing a ton of anxiety. I know going in that my perspective and voice as a neurodiverse writer may not be understood, appreciated, or even wanted. I love this book, and I feel so strongly that it’s enjoyable, valuable, and well written, but going through the querying process feels like the mental equivalent of forcing myself to sit on a chair made of pins. The additional self-revelations that keep happening (will they ever stop??) just add to the emotional difficulty of the process.
This post isn’t a white flag, by any means. Writing is my lifestyle, calling, and passion. I won’t ever stop. But the querying process is starting to feel like an insurmountable obstacle. Just one more of many gates that will never be open to me.
Which is a real shame, because I and so many other neurodiverse writers out there are really, really good at what we do. The publishing industry would benefit from our voices, our dedication, our expertise, our skill, and our stories.
I can’t help but wonder if traditional publishing, and the numerous gatekeepers that maintain it, will ever be ready for us.
I wish I had a happier note to end on, fam, but this is where I’m at today. Take care of yourselves. You and your experiences are of infinite value, no matter who says otherwise.
***
Here are a few links you might use as starting points for further research on the neurodiverse experience and perspective. I didn’t create any of the below content, nor am I being compensated to promote it. I found it useful for myself and so am including it here.
These are my own opinions and reflections. I know others may and do feel differently and at no point do I judge, belittle, or put down anyone for how they deal with or think about the subject of this post. I may also feel differently in the future. This is all a learning process.
I was diagnosed with autism and inattentive ADHD in November 2020.
Almost immediately after I found this out, I realized I hated saying that sentence, especially the “diagnosed with” part. I am still getting used to, “I am autistic,” but through those words, I feel a sense of pride and relief: they help me know myself more fully. “Diagnosed with” never sat well, and as time goes on, it’s sitting worse and worse and worse.
Why?
Let’s deal first with the word diagnose. What does it imply? Disease. Ill health. Failing organs. Shortened lifespan. And, sometimes, an accompanying cure.
I know this word has been important in the history of autism and our understanding of it. Pathologizing neurodiversity as a disease has been historically necessary in order to get autistic children legal access to any form of education, let alone accommodation once actually in the classroom, and to get autistic adults accommodations in the workplace. But it’s wildly stigmatizing.
Pathologizing neurodiversity has pathologized entire ways of being. For many neurodiverse (ND) people, this has led to damaging and traumatic experiences, as neurotypical (NT) people around them sought to cure them out of behaviors, traits, and tendencies that did not fit within arbitrarily and culturally defined categories of what they deemed “socially acceptable.”
What NDs need is not diagnosis and cure, but empathy and acceptance from their NT peers. The anxiety and depression most NDs (including me) struggle with is in large part due to our attempts to interact with a society that does not understand us or our brains, and seems to have no use for us or interest in us.
Societal education is needed, across the board, in workplaces and schools and religious institutions and grocery stores and banks and in public transit… This should be simple. But there is no switch to flip for a better society. And, unfortunately, there are NT people out there (like the musician Sia) who are willing to benefit financially from perpetuating stereotypical and harmful interpretations of autism for mainstream audiences, many of whom may not have other interactions with autism.
But, as the wonderfully empathetic Mr. Rogers once said, there are always helpers. There are many amazing advocates and ND people hard at work right now with the goal of societal education in mind, some of whom have been working since before I was born. As a writer, choosing my language is one way to contribute, a way to fight back against pathologization, and to fight for a more enlightened, caring, and openly diverse population.
Now for the word with.
With is a preposition, a part of speech that expresses relation between a noun and something else in the clause. As I tell the students I tutor, prepositions are hard. I’d also add that they’re important.
For example:
There is nothing wrong with me.
But there is something different about me.
About me is identity. “Let me tell you about her,” implies that the speaker is going to describe the person in question. With me is in addition to, alongside, accompanying. Autism, ADHD–neurodiversity–is not accompanying me, as cancer cells do someone with Leukemia. Neurodiversity is me. It doesn’t impede my functionality; it describes it.
In the right setting, my neurodiversity is an asset. In the wrong setting, it’s not.
Which brings up another, darker layer to all of this though, involving internalized ableism.
For those who might not have come across the term, Merriam-Webster defines ableism as “discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities.” It’s essentially the incorrect concept that people with disabilities are lesser.
When ableism is internalized, just like when racism is internalized, ableist thought becomes part of the structure of our minds. We can act in ableist ways without realizing what we’re doing. Even if that means we’re being ableist toward ourselves.
There is a possibility that I may have an aversion to the phrase “diagnosed with” because I have unresolved internalized ableism, which I am experiencing here as resistance to applying that phrase to myself.
But I also don’t feel totally comfortable with the term “disabled.” Again, this could be internalized ableism telling me “disabilities = bad” and so I try to distance myself. The facts of the matter are: I have to approach tasks and situations differently than NT people might. I have difficulties with social interactions and in relationships. I have a low energy level and I have trouble regulating my emotions. I struggle with anxiety and depression as a result of being in a culture that doesn’t seem to understand or value me, or what I need to thrive. The very reason I sought assessment in the first place was because I was feeling disabled.
I clearly still have a lot of thinking and processing and learning and growing to do around all of this. But I wanted to write this essay anyway, to capture the evolution of my thoughts, to be transparent, to show what it looks like to realize you’re autistic in an anti-autistic society, and, selfishly, to help myself process by writing and thinking about all of this.
Words matter. The way we talk about our differences matters.
For now, this is how I’m choosing to talk about mine. Rather than saying, “I was diagnosed with autism,” I say,
I’m neurodiverse. For me, that means I’m autistic, ADHD, and HSP.
And, I suppose, if anyone expresses surprise or doubt, I can pull out the old, “I was evaluated and met assessment criteria for” card, but I’d like to do as much as possible to de-stigmatize and de-pathologize a way of being, even if I have to do it one word at a time.
If you have thoughts on this topic, please share in the comments! I’d love to have dialogue with you all about this, whether this is all brand new to you, or if this is something you’ve thought about already. I’m completely open to learning and growing and changing my mind.
Before my first appointment with the clinical psychotherapist who assessed me, I knew I was autistic.
As I talked about in a previous blog post, the education, mental health, and health care systems did not identify me as autistic; I discovered it on my own at age 30, like so many other women whose neurodiverse traits don’t match the stereotypical male presentations.
So if I knew I was autistic, why did I bother to go through all the stress, expense, and time to get an official assessment of Autism Spectrum Disorder in a pdf? (Especially now that I’m 30 and ancient of days?)
Great question.
1. Things weren’t going so great.
There’s a mentality among some that if I’ve made it this far in life without an official recognition of my neurodiversity, that everything must be fine. This is far from the truth.
Yes, I was an “A” student. Yes, I graduated from a master’s program with a 4.0 GPA. Yes, I am employed.
But my life post-structured school environment was at loose ends. The world around me seemed to be getting more and more intrusive as I felt more and more sensitive to all sensory input (the seams of my clothes, ambient noises, foods, interruptions, smells). I had several part-time jobs, but couldn’t afford rent on my own. I had trouble keeping all but a small handful of friends. I was anxious. Periods of depression were coming more often and lasting longer. I wasn’t happy. Everything felt harder for me than it seemed to feel for my peers. I had started to feel disabled.
When I found out about how autism looks in women, I knew I had a potential answer. And I knew I needed help with that answer and all its implications.
If things aren’t going great, it’s always a good idea to seek help. Partly because I’m autistic, though, I prefer to do things on my own, including research. I wanted to go in to a professional for help, with a strong, clear idea of why I needed help.
2. Self validation.
I needed to prove to myself that my assessment of myself was accurate. Self doubt and the need for external validation is a problem for me, probably from years of anxiously and unsuccessfully navigating social and health care systems. I am also extremely empathetic, and it can be difficult for me to tell whether emotions or experiences I’m learning about are mine, or if I’m taking on the emotions and experiences of others. I’m also a bit of a hypochondriac. I was 90% sure I was autistic, but I needed an official’s opinion for the last 10%.
This might not be necessary for everyone. If you’re super confident in your own understanding of yourself, all the better for you! I am more than a little jealous of your self-confidence.
3. Social validation.
I wanted backup if family and friends didn’t believe me. I was very afraid of telling people about my discoveries and hearing, “You don’t seem autistic,” or, “You can’t be autistic because of X.”
Those closest to us can hold a lot of power over us. The denial of autism is a knee-jerk reaction, I think in part because of internalized ableism and the ways autism has been wrongfully stigmatized. But it’s a lot harder for those closest to us to try to explain away our experiences if we have a third party (who also happens to be a licensed professional) backing us up.
4. Recognition and respect from the mental health field.
My experience with the medical and mental health care fields is that, unless there’s an actual, scientific diagnosis, my descriptions of my situation tend to be mislabeled as anxiety and dismissed. A doctor, counselor, or therapist would respect the official documentation of my assessment far more readily than my claim to be autistic without any “proof.” Having a third-party recognition of autism, ADHD, etc., will also help to make the most of future therapist-client interactions.
5. Accommodations.
Just because I’m out of school with no plans to go back (if I EVER write about wanting to get a Ph.D. or another master’s, STOP ME) doesn’t mean there’s no reason to seek assessment. Telling an employer that I need to be accommodated because I think I’m autistic carries less (or maybe no) legal weight than if I have an official stamp from a clinical psychologist.
Neurodiversities can and should be welcomed in school and the work place. That means that individual needs should be met wherever possible so that we can thrive alongside our more neurotypical peers. Advocating for yourself will likely go better overall if an official assessment shows neurodiversity.
6. Bonus knowledge.
My assessment revealed that I also met criteria for Inattentive ADHD. This was a total surprise. I never would have found this out or suspected this on my own–or at least, it would have taken me a while longer. The ways my autistic traits interact with my ADHD traits is a whole thing, and probably, a whole different blog post…
Assessment may reveal things about yourself that you had no idea about, things you weren’t necessarily looking for, but which could help in day-to-day functioning and in deepening self-knowledge.
But in the end…
All of this refers to me and my experience. It is not a recommendation or a suggestion. If you’re on the fence about assessment, there are definitely pros and cons, and you should absolutely do your own research and make the decision that’s best for you. I was lucky enough to have the time to invest, the money to afford it, and connection with an assessor who was aware of the most recent research emerging on women on the spectrum, and, who was kind. Not everyone is so lucky.
This whole journey can be completely overwhelming, and I wish I’d had someone to talk to about it. So, even if we’re total strangers, I am 100% available to listen or to talk you through any part of it. Feel free to reach out to me, either in the comments or by message, even if you’re reading this five years after it’s posted!
The most important takeaway of this entire post is:
Do what you need to do to live the happiest, most fulfilled life possible.
This is the fourth consecutive year I’ve written a “year in books” blog post, and 2020 is the weirdest of them all. This year (ugh, this year) has been wild, devastating, excruciating, depressing, anxiety-inducing, heartbreaking…
We’ve all lost so much.
Where I live, the library was closed–CLOSED–for a long period of time. So if I wanted to read something (and I always do) I had to turn to my own bookshelf. This was fine: I am comforted by books I’ve already read. There was a very crucial sense of stability there, too: in a world that had ceased to be predictable in any sense of the word, I knew how the plots of my favorite books would go. I knew what would happen next.
But my minimalist tendencies had kept the number of books I own relatively low. During those days when a trip to the library was an impossible luxury, I sorely regretted that decision to keep few books. I don’t have the resources to buy every book I want to read. So, for emotional, logistical, and financial reasons, I re-read a record number of books this year.
I have no regrets.
Apart from not having enough books.
Thanks, 2020, for showing me the importance of owning books, and giving me permission to invest in something so important to me.
As a general caveat, I am not totally sure this reading list is complete. I have the sneaking suspicion that there are books I read that I totally forgot about in the brain fog of global trauma. There are also several books toward the end of the list that are in progress, and will have to be finished in 2021. Something else I have gotten better at in 2020 is: knowing when to concede that I am at the end of my mental, physical, and emotional resources. I didn’t meet the reading goals I set at the beginning of the year. And that’s fine.
F = fiction, SFF = sci-fi/fantasy, YA = young adult, MG = children’s, NF = nonfiction, P = poetry
Italicized books are re-reads.
Salvation Day, Kali Wallace (SFF)
Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami (F)
Severance, Ling Ma (SFF)
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami (SFF)
La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust, #1), Philip Pullman (SFF)
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino (SFF)
City of Hate, Timothy S. Miller (F)
The Spinning Place, Chelsea Wagenaar (P)
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen (F)
Anthem, Ayn Rand (SFF)
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (SFF)
Dance Dance Dance, Haruki Murakami (SFF)
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm (SFF)
Exhalation, Ted Chiang (SFF)
Recursion, Blake Crouch (SFF)
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake (SFF)
Alpha Bots, Ava Lock (SFF)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami (F)
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodges Burnett (MG)
Refusal: Poems, Jenny Molberg (P)
Velocity Weapon (The Protectorate #1), Megan E. O’Keefe (SFF)
The Big Book of Exit Strategies, Jamaal May (P)
Hum, Jamaal May (P)
Mossflower, Brian Jacques (MG/SFF)
Pearls of Lutra, Brian Jacques (MG/SFF)
When Darkness Falls, A. E. Faulkner (SFF)
Circe, Madeline Miller (SFF)
The Queens of Innis Lear, Tessa Gratton (SFF)
Empire of Sand (The Books of Ambha #1), Tasha Suri (SFF)
Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel #1), Josiah Bancroft (SFF)
Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, Jón Árnason, May Hallmundsson, Hallberg Hallmundsson (SFF)
What I Didn’t See and Other Stories, Karen Joy Fowler (F)
Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Japan, edited by Virginia Haviland (SFF/MG)
Basho: The Complete Haiku (P)
The Language of Thorns, Leigh Bardugo (SFF)
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (SFF)
Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch off the East in Russian Fairy Tales, translated by Sibelan E.S. Forrester (SFF)
The Heroine’s Journey, Maureen Murdock (NF)
Fierce Fairytales, Nikita Gill (SFF/P)
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (SFF)
Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You, Jenara Nerenberg (NF)
The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2), Philip Pullman (SFF)
The Arm of the Sphinx (The Books of Babel #2), Josiah Bancroft (SFF)
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C. G. Jung (NF)
The Hod King (The Books of Babel #3), Josiah Bancroft (SFF)
The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel (F)
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (SFF)
Tales from the Perilous Realm, J. R. R. Tolkien (SFF/P)
Books in Progress:
A Room Called Earth, Madeleine Ryan (F)
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, Steve Silberman (NF)
The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life, John Daido Loori (NF)
As always, I have strong opinions about all of these titles, so feel free to drop me a comment about any of them. 🙂
Here’s to 2021, and all we hope to gain, and all the reading we’ll do.
Even after hitting “Publish” on this post, I still don’t know how I feel about the title statement. How it’s worded, I mean. The ideas it represents are absolutely true.
On November 9, 2020, I was assessed as having met criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In other words (and maybe words that I prefer), I’m neurodivergent.
I know this may feel out of the blue to some people. It is to me too, in a way, but in another way, it’s an “of course” lightbulb moment, a flashpoint, where all the experiences of my life have come together to make sense.
So I wanted to have a record of what led to this point in my life to share with you all. I am far more articulate in writing than I am in person, and with the ongoing COVID-19 risk to social gatherings (and my own inclination to spend most of my time alone), I thought this would be the most efficient way to let you all know what’s been going on in my life related to my own neurodivergence.
The Highly Sensitive Person / Sensory Processing Sensitivity
Back in the winter of 2018, I stumbled across a term I hadn’t heard before, but that explained a great deal about the way I experience life: Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). This is a term coined by Dr. Elain Aron, a psychologist, scientist, and researcher, who noticed in herself and subsequently in her studies a natural inclination for about 20% of the population to exhibit heightened sensitivities to sensory stimulation. HSPs have more sensitive central nervous systems, are more easily overwhelmed by sensory input, and tend to take longer to process new information. They have a tell-tale tendency to “stop and check” before entering new situations. Another term for HSP is Sensory-Processing Sensitivity.
Here’s a screenshot from Dr. Aron’s HSP website’s homepage.
I read her book, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, and marveled about how all of the areas I struggled with as a child, and continued to struggle with as an adult, could be fit under this one umbrella term. (I could go into a great deal of detail here about what in particular about my life experience matches an HSP one, but for now, I’m going to stick to chronicling the general timeline leading up to the official recognition of my neurodivergence.)
I began examining my behavior, my experiences of the world, and my past through an HSP lens. A lot of things were making more sense to me, and to an extent, I was able to modify my interactions with the world and other people to be more in line with my comfort zone, which I had been blatantly ignoring or feeling guilty about not ignoring my whole life.
But after a while, I realized something didn’t feel…right. Dr. Aron talked about HSPs as having great gifts and the HSP trait as an advantage. On paper, I agreed, but being an HSP didn’t feel like an advantage to me. It felt like, well, a disability.
This isn’t a word I use lightly. I wrestled with it mentally for a long time, but the more I wrestled the more I felt that, yes, I feel dis-abled (see this fabulous TEDTalk by Autist Jac den Houting in which she says, “I am not disabled by my Autism; I’m disabled by my environment.”) by these traits that (according to Dr. Aron) are supposed to be strengths.
I strongly believe I never would have gotten to this point of understanding if I hadn’t deconstructed the conservative, fundamentalist religious influence, mindset, and worldview I grew up practicing. Some people I know might not like this, might feel off-put, might shut me out because of it, but it’s true, and it’s important. Since about 2016, I’ve been engaged in a long, arduous process of re-examining things I took for granted as truths for my entire life. Part of that has involved learning how to trust my instincts and my lived and inhabited body knowledge. That they aren’t sinful urges to be ignored or temptations to be gutted through. After spending over 20 years ignoring intuition, pushing past my own limitations daily, it’s daunting, trying to reclaim boundaries, self-knowledge, and self-trust. But I was trying. And my lived experience was telling me that HSP wasn’t it. Not all of it. I wasn’t through learning about myself. There was more work to do.
In March 2020, I reached out to a couple of local therapists who claimed specialization in–or at least knowledge of–HSP. I figured maybe I just wasn’t understanding how to work with my HSP traits, that maybe this feeling of dis-ablement could be mitigated by picking up some tips and tricks. Then the pandemic shutdown happened, and I never reconnected with them. There were more important and distracting things going on the in world.
In the summer months, I started to pick up where I had left off. I hadn’t felt comfortable with either of the therapists I’d talked to in March, so I did more googling. I stumbled across this article, which posited that HSP traits in females could really be female Autism. Following that rabbit trail, I found other sources like this YouTube channel run by a British woman who is Autistic. Like me, Sam was diagnosed with Celiac disease, identified as HSP, and finally, sought an assessment for Autism, and found she met the DSM standards to be considered on the spectrum. I found videos like this one in which Autism expert Tony Attwood talks about the characteristics of females with “high-functioning” Autism (commonly known as Asperger’s Syndrome before the update to the DSM-5 removed this label, confusing many and robbing many of an identity they’d come to claim with pride) and of the crises unidentified female Autists go through, including anxiety and depression.
I found this unofficial list of female Autistic traits. I was shocked. I identified with something like 98% of the traits compiled.
I took online quizzes (here and here). With the consistent result: high possibility of neurodivergence and/or Autism.
“You don’t seem Autistic.”
Until August 2020, I would have wholeheartedly agreed. Turns out, the reason I don’t “seem Autistic” has less to do with Autism and my own neurodivergence and more to do with false stereotypes of Autism that are deeply rooted in decades (if not centuries) of sexism and gender discrimination that have affected the very development of the fields of medical science, psychology, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) itself, the bible of psychological “disorders” used to “diagnose” the mental “disorders” we see in the Western world.
There are fundamental differences in how individuals on the Autism spectrum may behave, but until very recently, they have not been recognized. This is due in part to the fact that, when conducting trial studies and tests, psychologists have consistently chosen cis-male subjects. For more on the history of this, and info on neurodivergence in women, I highly recommend Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World that Wasn’t Designed for You by Jenara Nerenberg. This book literally was published in 2020, and would not have been available to me if I had started this research ONE YEAR AGO.
After an intake appointment in which my assessor agreed there was sufficient evidence to proceed, waiting four weeks for my appointment, four hours of testing, two weeks of waiting for my assessor to analyze the data, I learned in a video call that I met criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder, Level 1 (the lowest level of assistance needed; the DSM-5 goes through Level 3), what would previously have been known as Asperger’s Syndrome, and in a surprise 2-for-1, I also learned I met criteria for ADHD, inattentive type.
Here’s a distinction that’s important: I was not identified as Autistic, ADHD, or neurodivergent by the experts. At age 30, I identified myself, and then sought an expert to officially reinforce what I already knew to be true.
The medical, psychological, and social systems in my life failed me.
This is especially depressing, because as a female, the world had already failed me in so many ways. I was socialized to fly under the radar. I was socialized to “get by” without accommodation, to put others’ needs before my own, and I was smart enough that I could manage. Barely. But the resulting depression and anxiety for constantly struggling to fit into a world where everyone else seemed to fit in easily made life miserable.
I would like to note that my assessor was a lovely person. She was knowledgeable about ASD in women, and delivered the results in a kind, considerate way. At one point, she told me, “There’s nothing wrong with you.” I believe this is true. But I also believe that I am not in the category of what is considered “normal.” She expressed her desire for the day when neurodivergences are understood as a spectrum, rather than disabilities, and I wholeheartedly agree.
ADHD?
I still don’t fully understand the implications of this piece. I haven’t done nearly as much research here. But I do think ASD and ADHD together may explain things that look contradictory, like why I thrive on a schedule, but also have trouble sticking to schedules.
What Now?
As I once again reframe my life experiences through these new lenses, I am heartbroken for the little girl I was, and for the ways my life might have been easier, better, happier. I am also viciously proud of myself for accomplishing things that were desperately hard for me. Singing the lead in a musical. Singing the lead in an opera. Traveling internationally. Graduating with my master’s degree. I didn’t know other people didn’t struggle this much or in the ways I struggled.
My hope is, with this new understanding of how I perceive and interact with the world, I can build a life that allows me to thrive, that makes me happy more often than sad, and that enables me to reach my highest potential.
I also hope I can bring empathy and understanding around the issue of neurodiversity and dis-ability. The experts and Autists I found online were overwhelmingly not-American, and I believe my country is behind on this issue. If you want to talk more with me about this, please reach out. The world is a big, scary, and unsure place. Caring for each other is what makes it beautiful.
*Minutes before publishing this post, I wonder if I’m making the right decision, sharing this information so soon after receiving it myself. I am convinced, though, that staying hidden, masked, and under the radar–the way I’ve been living for my whole life as a neurodivergent person–will not help me or anyone else, and that if I don’t act on the information I’ve received, I might as well not have sought clinical affirmation at all. And, I remind myself, if this makes me feel socially awkward or uncomfortable, that is nothing new. 😉
* This post was edited on January 3, 2021 to remove and reword language including the word and variations of the word “diagnose.” I no longer use the word “diagnose” in relation to my neurodiversity, as it implies an illness or medical condition. Neurodiversity is not an illness. I am not sick.
We are halfway through the year, and nothing has gone the way we thought it would. In an effort to process all that has happened in the past months, I collected and recorded what I’m calling Mantras for 2020. These are sayings that reflect the times as well as provide encouragement. I am more aware than ever how my perception of reality and my internal monologues affect my wellbeing, and wellbeing is hard to come by in 2020.
Some of these I wrote, some I picked up from current events, and some I collected from my colleagues and friends on Twitter. If a mantra is credited, you can find that contributor by clicking the hyperlink or searching the given handle on Twitter.
“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” Dune, by Frank Herbert @ItsJohnDulak
Something is better than nothing. Make the best of what’s available and do the best we can while we’re able. @DOMoore9
“Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.” Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. @SciFiSherwood
I love a good artist’s statement. Hearing from others about why they pursue their craft is inspirational and thought-provoking. It also helps me clarify and understand my own motivation. I feel a connection with the artist in question, and usually hit the keyboard with a great deal more energy.
I’m currently reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, which is a collection of Japanese haiku master Matsuo Bashō’s travel journals. In them, Bashō writes in haibun style, which means prose reflections and poetry stand side by side. At the beginning of “The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel,” Bashō includes what seems to be his own artist’s statement.
In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over the others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another. At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry. The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more or less blindly.
Matsuo Bashō, from The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel (translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)
I love Bashō’s romantic, and perhaps somewhat humorous, description of his own soul, and his view of it as something with its own agency. In another poem, he writes:
On to a bridge Suspended over a precipice Clings an ivy vine, Body and soul together.
Matsuo Bashō, from A Visit to Sarashina Village (translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)
His description of his own journey as an artist dedicating himself to his craft is very valuable. The fact that one of Japan’s most accomplished haiku poets struggled with the same push and pull I and many other artists describe is encouraging: there is nothing wrong with me/us; we simply need to forge ahead.
These words of Matsuo Bashō are fascinating in themselves, but also totally fascinating is the fact that they were written down in 1687, almost four hundred years ago. Yet the connection I feel when reading Bashō is immediate. There is no time lag, no misunderstanding. Words written down and preserved are extremely powerful.
Bashō’s soul clings to the letters of a language he never spoke, never heard, and now, to this screen, to this technology he would never have imagined, like ivy to a bridge.
I love dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories. Sure, they might be based on pretty awful events (nuclear war, absolute dictatorships, inhuman scientific advancements, etc.) played out to an extreme, but for me, that’s where the interest lies. We’re 99.999% sure we’ll never have to try to survive a zombie apocalypse, so it’s fascinating as hell to watch other humans try.
Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction is a kind of nihilist, negative escapism in which the reader gets to imagine how the world works at its worst.
But where do these genres stand when the external world starts to look more dystopian and post-apocalyptic than the stories themselves?
This question has been whirring around in my head since early March, when COVID-19 hit my country. Schools shut down. People lost their jobs. Isolation became the new “normal.” The internet (which we already relied on heavily) became many people’s source of income, socialization, and entertainment–their world.
I love reading dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories. I don’t love living in them. None of us do. So it’s not a huge leap to imagine that we’d turn away from these genres.
However, I firmly believe that a real-life apocalypse, a real-life dystopia, will have no negative effect on the need readers have for this literature. If anything, their need will become greater.
Here’s why.
1. Catharsis
Trying to survive day to day, to find work, to stretch a dollar, homeschool, or cook with the five-odd ingredients left in the pantry… We don’t have time to truly process the collective trauma we’re experiencing. But the themes of loss that show up over and over in dystopia and post-apocalyptica allow us to access our grief, and give us space to process our own emotions.
2. Hope
I’d argue that, despite the dark clothes these stories wear, that they’re actually some of the most hopeful stories in genre fiction. The entire premise of them is that there IS life after apocalypse, and that life CAN flourish in a world where everything seems wrong. In the worst circumstances imaginable, characters fight to survive, to protect those they love, and they succeed. Modern society ends–but human life goes on. As we contemplate the apparent fragility of the lifestyles and structures we took for granted and mourn an old way of living, these stories can give us hope for a future.
3. History
As a writer of post-apocalyptic fiction, I admit, I might be a little biased. But I’m not making this up. History’s got my back. The world that lived through the real-life apocalypse and dystopia of World War II wrote about it and read about it. In fact, we’re still writing and reading about it, and that time period makes up a massive portion of the historical fiction genre.
4. Meaning-making
Writing and reading–creating and participating in art–are attempts at understanding the human experience. So now, as we attempt to understand this new apocalyptic, dystopian reality, these genres are going to be more crucial than ever.
If you aren’t ready for them in this exact moment, that’s fine. They and their creators will be there, waiting, when you are.
Allison Wall 