Thread by @erikaheidewald

bro i have been dissociating all day and straight up NOT having a good time and i started being mean to ableists online and i feel so much better. my brain fog has lifted for the first time all fucking day

i don’t know how to explain this but my brain literally cannot function if i don’t say what i think. if i try to be polite to people who don’t deserve it, if i stay quiet when people are shitty, it breaks my motherfucking brain. i dissociate, have panic attacks, & meltdowns

the thousands of incessant tiny misogynistic and ableist swipes people make at me online fuck with my brain subconsciously even when consciously i’m not upset about them. it interferes with my ability to think and my ability to think is the thing that makes me feel like myself

the thing is i am really good at not taking my feelings out on the wrong people. i am not going to be mean to you bc someone else was mean to me. but i MUST respond honestly to them. the expectations of politeness put on me are not survivable. i can’t do them.

i guess it’s just the cognitive overwhelm of masking and that’s the area where my brain simply cannot take it. i can’t let people be rude to me, can’t let them take their trauma out on me, can’t let ableists feel good about themselves wrapped up in their little cocoon of bullshit

most people are nonconfrontational so they can’t understand this about me. many, many times i’ve been in public and there’s a guy harassing women and i want to go kick him out and people keep telling me it’s ok,
i don’t have to. but i have to. i have to yell at him or i will die

ok i won’t die, but it fucking feels like it. i can’t be a normal person until i do it. i can’t talk, hang out, be polite, have fun, not until that problem is fixed. i just want people to not be scared or think of me as a monster so i need them to let me go fix it

people gotta stop being mad at me all the time for talking how i talk and stop trying to change me and make me more palatable. i can’t do that. the only thing you can do is not be around me, which is super easy! mute or block me! if you need that, it’s your responsibility to do!

now of course, i know. people aren’t going to stop being shitty to me just bc it traumatizes me. so i guess this is just my final announcement and warning. if you’re shitty to me, i will be mean to you, and i can be so much meaner than you can be. you don’t want to find out.

i can’t handle people taking everything i say personally & being shitty to me about it bc their feelings got hurt by their own damn minds. i know you’re sensitive and traumatized but i am not the bearer of your feelings. you have one hurt feeling. this is every moment of my life

i think in theory and systems. it’s all i really care to think and talk about most of the time. i don’t like to think or talk about individual people except to figure out the ideas and systems they run on and are part of (unless they’re people i love)

when people take what i say personally or think i have something against them personally i honestly don’t even get it. i don’t know you. why would i have personal animosity towards you? all i know is what you said and what pattern it fits into.

when someone’s personal experience doesn’t fit into a theory or system i’m talking about, sometimes they’ll tell me i am invalidating their lived experience. this is annoying, bc that phrase has a meaning and a purpose, and that isn’t it. social constructs =/= lived experience

i don’t understand when i became some supernatural deity with the power to invalidate people’s lived experiences. i can’t do that. i don’t have that power over you & i don’t want it. your lived experience is yours. no generalization will apply to everyone, life is too complicated

when people take things i say that they don’t immediately see themselves reflected in and start going on a spiral of “i’m worthless and everything about me is wrong” - whoa dude. i did not do that to you. you cannot take that out on me. it’s not ok. that is yours to work on.

i know most people aren’t like me and i don’t need or want them to be. but god damn everyone wants to force me to be like them and it’s been genuinely harming my brain so i’m not going to be polite about it anymore. i am the person i am. i’m an adult. i like myself. that’s it.