My brain eats itself. I trepan my skull to let bloody words pour out until it alleviates the pressure on my brain. Maybe after, I might be able to bear contact with neurotypicals (or at least neurotypical-conforming human behaviours) without having a total raving meltdown. All my social batteries are drained by enforced contact with people who seem to have become illiterate by allowing reading/writing parts of the brain to atrophy whilst overworking the charm/social dominance muscle group. With increasing frantic compulsiveness as age creeps in, and lack of control unsettles the mind, leading to a tightening of the grip on controlling and demanding from others. Really. Seriously. The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. The older and lonelier and more isolated Boomers get, and the less relevant or desired their input, the more controlling and verbally compulsive they seem to me. Maybe just the ones I meet, though. Children learn how to listen before they learn to speak. The elderly forget how to listen before they forget how to speak. Is this a reflection of me that I see? Unheard and disregarded most of my life, being understood by others was never a priority or achievable goal. Nor influencing others through communication. Having lost the sense that communicating with others gets me anything but punishment, invalidation, isolation, hostile attention, loss of basic needs, I talk to myself. Verbally stim, self-soothe. Give myself my wishes in fantasy for someone who understands me, listens to me, lets me speak, cares about what I say. Makes for me as much time as it takes to work through distressingly INTENSE feelings, experiences, memories, thoughts — without judgment. Holding me through the pain, with radical acceptance. Listening to learn, and to add, rather than ‘win,’ dominate, argue, debate, feel justified and correct, validate life choices at the expense of judging and condemning others. I hate hierarchical connection. I hate hierarchical socialising. I hate everything about a system that dehumanises, hurts, and kills people for reasons almost entirely out of their control. Gender. Skin colour. Neurotype. Appearance. Persuasiveness. Class. Background. Ethnicity. History. Religious traditions. Physical ability. Mental ability. Overall health. Conversational style. Personal preferences. Personal interests and passions. Skills. Habits. Pastimes. Weight. Height. Eye colour. Clothing. The things I care about get buried in layers and layers of pretence and demographics that say fuck all about the measure of a soul, how someone behaves in a crisis, whether their unique mind is a podcast worth subscribing to or the auditory equivalent of corrosive chemical fumes to the brain. Life is short, can we skip the act and superficial approval and human equivalent of doggy butt-sniffing? I don’t care where you’re from. I care how you handle being told ‘no.’ I care if you can see me as a separate whole human person, distinct from you, with my own world inside me, unknowable and strange as your own.