Skip to main content

Dear Unnamed Friend


Dear unnamed friend,
I carefully hoarded enough spoons to do the activity you suggested at the time you suggested. I went to bed super early and planned NOTHING for tomorrow to be able to do it.
I just got discharged from psych this week, and the meds still aren’t all the way in my system, so I’m foggy-minded and emotional.

I also woke up every 90 minutes last night for 30-45 minutes due to nightmares about the hospital that joined my normal nightmares.
I told you I’d let you know around 9am today, when my alarm was set to sound, whether I could come to the 1pm event today, and I texted you that yes, I could come, but I needed to sleep until 10 to regain spoons.

You texted me 4-5 times between 9:15 and 10, effectively cancelling any change I had to sleep, since it takes me at least 2 hours to wake all the way up.

You tried to change the plans to pick me up around 10:15am, and I understand why. You were already in the area for something and didn’t want to drive all the way back out again. You didn’t understand several things, though:
1)      A sudden change in plans will immediately sap all the spoons my autistic, spoonie ass has managed to gather together since leaving the hospital
2)      No sleep will render me hysterical, and you’re waking me up
3)      By the time I adjust to the idea of a change in plans, it will be too late to tell you “yes”
4)      It takes me 2 hours to get ready. Period. A lot of that is just mentally preparing for a transition to avoid a meltdown/shutdown and also trying to have the executive functioning skills to get me and the dog both together without an aide, which is really hard. If you want me to not be freaking out and missing all my stuff, I need 2 hours to get ready.
Now, you’re also inviting me to Skype in, but I don’t think I can think clearly enough to get logged into Skype. This is one of those days where I type the name of the person I want to email into the address bar and can’t process how to actually get to my email and email them.

Comments

  1. So, I actually made it to the event. The friend came back at the scheduled time, which wasn't super convenient for him, and I pulled myself together. We had a lot of fun.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Autism and Teaching English

In many ways, autism makes me a good teacher. I explain things clearly and systematically. I keep detailed notes on each student because I have to do so to remember. I have formulas for everything and provide data-based feedback on student progress after every lesson. It also makes me a good English as a Second Language teacher. I pinpoint specific, recurring issues in students' speaking (accent, pronunciation, and oral fluency) and take a structured approach to addressing these issues. I do the same with academic writing (structure, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, coherence and cohesion). However, it makes me a lousy literature teacher. I'm good at poetry, but stories are not my thing. I take them at face value. It's hard for me to see symbolism behind the words. A story about talking rabbits ( Watership Down ) is, to me, just about the talking rabbits, and I'm totally into the narrative of those rabbits. I also cannot empathize with character emotions unless I...

I Jiggle When I Dance: A Poem

TW: Fat (reclaimed), eating disorder recovery mention, obesity mention, body image issues mention  I've been posting a lot of poetry lately because that's the content my brain has been able to produce, but I'm going to try to get some regular content to you soon. In the meantime, there is far to little fat positivity on this blog, as I grapple with my own eating disorder recovery, obesity, and body image issues. In that vein, I bring you my new fat positivity poem, "I Jiggle When I Dance". I Jiggle When I Dance When I dance My stomach wiggles side to side Even after I stop moving   The movement of my breasts Is really obvious And I’m learning Not to try to hide it   My feet on the floor Would make creaks and thumps Except   If I move my lower half My joints scream in pain And I have to stop dancing   So I dance with the top of me Jiggles and all And I’m learning to be free   To love myself more freely To live ...

Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills Part 1

All posts in this series reflect working through  DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition . All quotes come from this book unless otherwise noted.  Deciding to Study Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills: According to the book, the reason for practicing interpersonal effectiveness skills is to "be skillful in getting what you want and need from others", "build relationships and end destructive ones", and "walk the middle path". There are some factors that can get in the way of interpersonal effectiveness: lacking the skills you need, not knowing what you want, being too emotional to be skillful, forgetting long-term goals because of what you want right now, "other people... getting in the way", and having thoughts and beliefs that get in the way. The thoughts and beliefs that were getting in the way of me practicing interpersonal effectiveness skills were: "If I ask for something or say no, I can't stand if so...