Radio Dada

Remember kids: don’t be a dick.

I dunno. The Aristocrats. Person after person. Hour after hour. Someone, please, use the Force, and hear me.

Isn’t that the theme or entire premise behind this? I’ve invented an imaginary version of the late Oliver Sacks to talk to — a neurologist and social anthropologist of sorts famous for visiting unusual and different people in their contexts to understand them through not only their words but their actions, their interactions with their environments. If it’s imperative with autistics, people with disabilities, and people who are struggling to focus on changing environments rather than put all the onus for change on someone who is already struggling, then meeting someone IN their environment is crucial. An environment is experienced, not described, and some missing stair one has been jumping over all one’s life could easily be detected by someone coming in from outside, assuming that the person is doing all they can, and actually taking action to change the environment rather than making the person responsible for changing an environment that is resistant to change. People, like kids, do well when they can. When we can’t, we may need more external love and support. We may need to be met where we are, literally as well as figuratively, and that means surrendering ego, judgment, and looking for vulnerabilities to poke at and exploit and control. Unsolicited advice is as unhelpful as non-consensual touch. If asking for and getting permission before giving advice harshes one’s buzz, maybe one has been hurting others habitually for a long time. It’s amazing how uncomfortable and unsustainable universally accepted behaviours and practices become when people are given the choice to refuse. Which doesn’t mean using punitive or avoidant measures to avoid people exercising their right to say no but adapting a system that isn’t working. People do well when we can. We improve when we have external sources of love and support, rather than demands and punishment. If people in my life don’t trust me to make informed choices, how am I supposed to trust choices others make without my input? And what is it about me that communicates that it’s okay to treat me differently in ways that dehumanise me, in ways that people with power and influence would not tolerate? Why is objection and resistance a privilege of the rich and powerful, and pathologised as an offence or grounds for denial of service in the underprivileged and oppressed? I want my life to be more manageable. I want other people in my life to manage their needs and feelings so I don’t have to. I want other people to make an effort so it doesn’t all fall on me. How do I even begin to shift toward this, in a way that’s sustainable and doesn’t require even MORE effort from me? This is a non-autistic, ableist world. I need allies. I need friends. I need people who actually meet me where I am. People who listen. People who can let up on the pressure, and who actually want to make an effort so I don’t have to drag them with all my might to the least concessions for even a fraction of my unmet needs, feeling selfish and apologetic all the way. I’m so exhausted. There has to be a better way. There have to be people out there who habitually do better. WHERE ARE THEY?!

…Somehow. My reality seems disconnected from those who’ve never been through certain experiences. I can be right next to someone but as good as in another world entirely for all that, speaking and hearing the same language, we cannot connect. No cell phone plan, no internet, no timing or effort of will on our parts can bridge that distance when intellectual understanding blocks empathy, when you really have to have been there to understand what the world looks and feels like to me. But every once in a while, there will be that moment where I see someone who sees me — a glance, a word, something unspoken but deeply felt, and I’m not a ghost alone anymore. There’s someone else moving in the same transparency layer. Ironically feeling dead most days, I feel just for one spark of a moment that I’m human again, to one person, passing through bag into our separate foggy soups of the days.

Yikes. I long for a world without gossip, with thought before word and especially action, with people who meet their needs for sex and stimulation without pouncing on others. Stim toys and plushies are not that expensive, and there’s no danger of non-consent or misreading body language/cues or rejection sensitive dysphoria, they’re always available, and also no danger of a Lennie situation from ‘Of Mice and Men.’ I don’t understand how people who are completely unable to read the consent/intent of an entire neurotype think that it’s healthy and sexy to charge full speed ahead through life and into others’ space and then expect/demand everyone to ‘stop’ them when their impulsivity and aggression communicate possible violent non-receptiveness to resistance. Like if someone has such hyper focus on their own needs and impulses and so little interest in mine, there’s a non-zero chance that trying to block and fend them off will induce rage and even more poor impulse control. And that’s even more traumatising. I’m so tired. Sometimes hanging with super-social people feels like being at a party where everyone’s on cocaine or seeking cocaine except me. I understand if they’re getting dopamine from social contact how ecstatic that must be, but all I got was a landfill of cortisol and adrenaline and a near-fugue secondary stress response. HALP.

When you tell the truth and no one believes you. Not about the future, about the past, and things that happen when it’s just you and one other person, who denies everything. And ensures the disbelief of poor misguided little you in advance. “You tell yourself these stories…” …about the gas lamp. About the yellow wall-paper. About a room of one’s own. As Doctor Martin walks / from breakfast to madness. Some humans are more equal than others, apparently. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent, and all will be lost. …I’ll never be Jack Kerouac, nor the Bard. I want to be something else. But I can’t get no relief, rest to heal, an understanding ear, a hot bath in the middle of the night when painsomnia is high. I’m too tired to keep fighting to be heard, and I don’t see any future for me but deaf ears and closed minds and filled-up schedules. I’m tired. I’m so tired. I ache in my soul. If no one will listen no matter how I say it then what’s the point of making the effort to even speak? Tillie Olsen’s ‘Silences.’

I ran out of comfort talking aloud before I ran out of words. Knowing someone is outside the windows, being able to overhear them moving around, feels inherently unsafe even if it’s someone who does not listen when I am speaking directly to them. Especially if I know they judge others’ private time to me unfairly and intrusively. Judgment breeds judgment, and being all up in others’ business breeds paranoia, distrust, and low-contact, information-diet tactics. I thought it was a plus that people didn’t appear to listen to me, but it doesn’t mean they’re not eavesdropping. I hate having to monitor everything I do in the privacy of my own home. That doesn’t feel safe. I need non-judgmental people. I don’t like what I’m becoming.

I had to talk my way out of hell again. My problem is I keep having to look back at what’s chasing me whenever I encounter someone new and clueless. Here’s a gift card to ClueMart. Have one on me, but stop wasting my time.

Or maybe a lizard with a ladder. Certainly coffee, at this juncture. Fortunately it’s rather good and local in Hawaii, much like domestic wines in France. Shame about all the walking automated pre-recorded phone system responses taking the shape of humans. I keep hanging up, trying someone else, trying my call again later, and getting variations on ‘lights on, no one home.’ And asking to speak to a machine’s supervisor doesn’t work. Is everyone sleepwalking? WHERE HAVE THE SMART PEOPLE GONE?! Or were they just a dream like unicorns, driven down the roads long long ago into the sea by the COVID bull? Am… am I the last unicorn, trapped painfully in human form? Is that why I yearn to walk into the sea when I’m suffering moron overload? Am burnt out. Scrape me off and feed me to the pigs, I’m tired of the smell of my own abject failure.

Bad kitty. No no no. Go away.