This was a research paper that I got to write for my doctorate program!

Cognition, emotion, and motivation in gender diversity
 
Lisa R. Macafee
California Southern University
PSY 8724 Cognition, Emotion and Motivation
Dr. Debra Pearce
August 15, 2021
 
Cognition, emotion, and motivation in gender diversity
This paper discusses how cognition, emotion, and motivation affect the construction of gender.  This paper will discuss the personal, environmental, and sociocultural components involved with gender diversity.  Gender diversity includes any gender identity outside of cisgender (identifying as the gender assigned at birth).  Transgender identities, often called “trans” for short, include anyone who does not identify 100% with the gender assigned at birth and can include trans men, trans women, non-binary, gender fluid, 3rd gender, agender, gender non-conforming, and pangender identities.  Approximately 0.6% of adults and 2.7% of adolescents in the United States identify under the transgender umbrella, with younger individuals coming forward and an increasing number of non-binary individuals (Bowman, Casey, McAloon, Wootton, 2021).  Trans and gender diverse are used interchangeably in this paper.  I am writing about gender diversity because I identify as non-binary and work with the LGBTQIA+ population to provide supports for the community.

Cognition around gender
Thankfully, people are broadening their understandings of gender and are beginning to see sex and gender more broadly and less on the binary.  Cisgender heterosexual individuals have the least cognitive understanding of gender and sex as fluid or complex and tend to define more based on biological terms, while transgender and gender diverse individuals understand gender in more complex terms in sociocultural context.  Younger individuals perceive gender more as a spectrum when compared to older individuals who think more in binary terms that are explicitly tied to the sexual parts an individual possesses.  The more power and privilege a group has, the more likely they are to hold in place discriminatory systems that benefit them.  For example, White people and men are both more likely to hold essentialist beliefs about sex and gender and are more likely to attribute gendered traits to genetics.  Groups who have been disenfranchised are more likely to question the same hierarchies and critically engage with them, leading to a more nuanced understanding of the hierarchies of gender and sex.  Minoritized people are more likely to think about sex and gender in inclusive terms, such as: sex and gender may not match, gender assigned at birth may be different from gender identity, individuals may move between genders, be somewhere in between, or be no gender.  Thinking more inclusively better ensures that others are not harmed by the individual’s definitions and excluded from their conceptions and resists biological essentialism (Schudson, Beischel, van Anders, 2019).

There are many gendered expectations for those who are gender diverse that can be confusing at times.  For myself, I remember clearly being told in high school that I was a “dude with ovaries” and that I should just admit that I was a lesbian, because clearly a person assigned female at birth (AFAB) who was gender non-conforming must be gay.  The conflation of gender and sexuality is rampant both within queer communities and cisgender-straight communities.  People often see atypical gender presentations such as a feminine man or masculine woman and assume they are gay.  This assumption is sometimes accurate, but often it is not.  Gender and sexuality are not tied together, but our socialization tells us it is.  Trans individuals are expected to be straight and hyper-gendered.  Being trans and gay confuses people who do not experience the gender dysphoria present in many trans individuals pre-transition.  Many trans individuals continue to experience gender dysphoria during and after transition.  These individuals may have adopted the idea that they need to transition all the way to the opposite binary gender assigned at birth and that an in-between gender identity is somehow unintelligible.  There is pressure that to be truly trans, one must conform to society’s expectations of “male” and “female”.  To avoid criticism, individuals must adopt a cisgender mask to be palatable and not confuse others.  For trans folk, “passing” is a privilege and difficulty.  Dealing with microaggressions and aggression causes gender diverse folk to constantly question themselves; ‘Should I try to pass more to avoid harassment?’;  ‘Should I live “out” more to advocate for trans rights?’;  ‘Is it my responsibility to educate every person who misgenders me or tries to convince me I’d be happier as a cisgender person?’  Existence is an act of rebellion for many of us gender benders, and it is exhausting. (Jones, 2021).

Many trans and non-binary individuals experience some degree of gender dysphoria.  Gender dysphoria is experienced when there is an incongruence between the gender assigned at birth and the gender identity an individual holds that causes them distress.  Individuals experiencing gender dysphoria may feel uncertainty, stigma, guilt, and body dissatisfaction on their journey to living more authentically as their authentic gender instead of performing as the gender they were raised to be.  The feeling that the experience of gender a person has is wrong is often accompanied by increased levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicidality.  Many individuals are able to resolve the gender incongruence that causes distress by gender-affirming practices such as social transition, hormone blockers for adolescents, hormone therapy, and surgery.  Others may also need therapy to resolve the internalized gender issues.  When a person has been raised from infancy to be a certain gender with certain gendered personality traits and they do not feel that is an authentic way of being for them, it is often not simply a light switch to be turned on and off from one gender presentation to the other, it requires a great deal of processing to be able to exist in a  new presentation to the world from the previous indoctrinated presentation.  I have been in my gender journey for only a few years as before that I simply attempted to be what I was told I should be.  I have always known I was different from others, and a “tomboy”, but didn’t have the vocabulary to process what that might mean for me until recently (Bowman, Casey, McAloon, Wootton, 2021).

Emotion and gender
One of the emotional factors that most people who are not gender diverse don’t understand is the constant presence of fear.  Fear of being discovered, fear of sharing one’s identity with someone and being rejected for it, fear of persecution, fear of the unknown fear of oneself.  One of the most harmful fears is the fear of getting effective and appropriate medical and psychological care.  Many trans individuals navigate shame and social rejection just for living as who they are.  Seeking out mental health support often results in a gender dysphoria diagnosis and pathologisation leading to pressure to live as the gender assigned at birth or 100% the opposite gender assigned at birth instead of mental health support for the depression and anxiety that is often the result of being different.  Not enough therapists are adequately trained to work with gender diverse clients (Jones, 2021).

Many people, both gender diverse and cisgender, have a great deal of internalized cis-sexism; the unconscious belief that being cisgender is superior to being transgender.  Leading to this outcome are the heightened levels of physical, verbal, and sexual assault that transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) individuals experience compared to their cisgender peers.  TGNC folks also experience higher levels of mental and physical health problems and higher levels of substance abuse as a coping methos compared to their cisgender peers.  This is understandable considering the amount of minority stress and cis-normative frameworks that TGNC people experience.  When TGNC people attempt to educate those around them who microaggress against them by imposing cis-normative expectations, this often leaves the TGNC individual exhausted and anxious after being vulnerable with people who often have hostile and negative responses.  I have experienced this so many times now that instead of calling someone out in the moment, I have begun offering LGBTQIA+ Foundations trainings to faculty, staff, and students at my campuses so those who do want to be better can.  It is my intention by speaking up loudly and clearly and getting administrative and mainstream support across campus that the culture of the institutions that I work in will change enough to better support TGNC students and staff and suppress anti-trans hostility (Ehlinger, Folger, Cronce, 2021). 

Non-binary individuals often feel pressure from the LGBTQIA+ and straight communities to try to “pass” as male or female, being neither often makes people uncomfortable.  I identify as non-binary and the experience of having my very existence making people uncomfortable makes me feel anxious and pressure to conform, it is difficult not to internalize that making people uncomfortable is problematic on my part, and not their responsibility to accept more diverse people.  I am left with a sense of “otherness” that I am unable to shake, a feeling that I will never be part of any group, because I do not fit into their molds.  I realize that as a White person, I experience a greater privilege than TGNC people of color.  It becomes clear that TGNC people of color are some of the most disproportionately impacted people in the Unites States because they face cis-sexism in their cultural communities and racism in the queer communities.  The feelings of alienation and otherness from most communities leaves TGNC individuals at high risk for substance abuse and self-harm, increasingly so with added marginalized statuses such as race, ethnicity, immigration status, socio-economic status, (dis)ability, and sexual minority status (Ehlinger, Folger, Cronce, 2021).

Motivation and gender diversity
For some to get gender treatment, they must conform to binary gender stereotypes and be transgender to qualify for physical and mental health services.  This pressure to fit into a false binary existence to get care causes motivation to be hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine, which can cause its own gender dysphoria (Jones, 2021).  For individuals who are delayed in their gender and sexuality exploration and identity formation, they often experience negative mental health impacts (Hawke, Hayes, Darnay, Henderson, 2021). I am 39 years old and only started to think about my own gender four years ago when I attended a presentation that discussed a term I had not heard before, transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC).  This identity label changed my life.  I had lived with a baseline level of anxiety and depression and lack of belonging my entire life, and this term just explained why.  While I do not identify as a female, as I was assigned at birth, neither do I identify as male.  I identify as outside of those repressive roles and cannot fathom how others truly feel safe in those identity boxes.  

The moment I decided it was okay to be atypical in my gender presentation approximately two years ago was when my confidence started to scale upwards, and my motivation increased.  I collected others involved in gender justice, organized groups, gave trainings, and started multiple services at the colleges I work at for students like me (and those not like me, but struggling with similar fears and anxieties).  I recognize the suffering in others and am more able to take action to lessen such suffering now that I have accepted myself.  It’s only been four years since I started to think about how the gender role expectations that I had tried to live inside of for my adult life were stifling and depressing.  In those four years my career has blossomed as others see drive and confidence instead of fear and nervousness.

Personal Factors
Many gender diverse individuals end up losing their positionality in their family of origin as certain members are too rigid in their beliefs or strict in whom they accept to allow a non-binary family member a proverbial seat at the table.  Gender diverse individuals often lose financial supports, familial supports, and socio-emotional supports if they dare to express themselves as who they are.  The real or perceived fear of losing these supports may cause gender diverse individuals to attempt to conform to cisgender expectations to avoid losing social and financial assets (Jones, 2021). 

There has been talk in conservative media outlets claiming that 80% of gender expansive children will grow up to be cisgender in adulthood.  The flawed research studies that promote this idea warn parents of trans children not to provide life-saving gender-affirming treatments to youth because their experience of being transgender is a phase.  There are many personal factors that account for individuals who did receive gender-affirming treatments and regret it such as a realization that they are non-binary instead of trans-binary, the cost of living out and trans was too much for the individual to bear, and discrimination, among only a few of the reasons people de-transition that are not “a phase”.  However, more recent research suggests that 96% of all trans youth continue to identify as gender diverse into adulthood.  Gender-affirming social transition such as name and pronoun change, clothing, hair, and demeanor, have shown to save lives and increase general well-being for gender diverse individuals.  Those who socially or medically transition are more likely to have personal factors of family and peer support, be White, and have a high socio-economic status (Ashley, 2021).

An additional personal factor that influences an individual’s desire to present as gender non-conforming for those assigned female at birth (AFAB) is internalized sexism.  Many AFAB individuals have internalized so much negativity and associations of weakness about femininity that they cannot stand to associate with it.  For some, to be female is to be vulnerable, more emotional, less successful, more domestic, and associated with being a caring nurturer instead of an independent provider.  These individuals may present as “butch” lesbians, trans men, or other identities.  They can bring a high degree of sexism to the queer community and discriminate against feminine lesbians, trans women, feminine gay men, and others, often their own partners (Ivey, 2017).

Environmental Influences
Environmentally speaking, there is a serious safety concern when out in society as a gender diverse person.  When someone doesn’t fit into the expected binary categories, people who are uncomfortable with non-binary genders often react with hostility.  This can range from micro-aggressions to physical assault.  I was harassed and called names daily because I did not conform to gender expectations and took to carrying a knife with me to school because I did not feel safe.  Some trans folk are told they make others uncomfortable and are barred from working with vulnerable populations such as foster youth and domestic violence survivors.  This is especially unfortunate because a high percentage of foster youth are gender non-conforming, which is often why they are in foster care in the first place (Jones, 2021). 

There is an upsetting amount of cissexism and racism in queer and trans places that further marginalizes gender diverse people of color.  Queer communities were mostly built around the work of White gay men, and many queer spaces are not as welcoming to gender minorities as they are to sexual minorities.  The racialization of trans individuals of color impacts their experiences and differentiates them from their White trans peers, often making it difficult to find communities where they feel they belong.  Being a trans individual is marginalizing and being a trans individual of color is exponentially marginalizing due to the increase in factors that may bring discrimination from different groups.  Trans people of color are some of the most marginalized people in the United States and benefit from being in environments that are actively anti-racist along with anti-cissexism and White allies that do their homework to learn about the disproportionate impacts on queer people of color (Simms, Nicolazzo, Jones, 2021).

For individuals whose gender does not conform to what they were assigned at birth, typically referred to under the transgender umbrella, the rates of PTSD are significantly higher than the general population with trans rates of PTSD between 17.5%- 45% compared to 5%-10% for the general population.  This heightened rate of PTSD is likely due to the increased risk of victimization and trauma that trans people experience living in a hostile social environment of discrimination, rejection, harassment, non-affirmation, internalized transphobia, expected rejection, and concealment.  When someone lives outside their gender expectations and they experience anti-transgender bias and non-affirmation, this is traumatizing to the individual who is not only feeling rejected and as though they don’t have a right to exist, but also because the more negativity around their gender they experience, the more they are likely to internalize transphobia and negative feelings around their gender themselves.  The more the individual has internalized transphobia, the less regulatory functions their brain is able to use to protect their self from the effects of trauma and the more severe their PTSD symptoms tend to be.  It is crucially important that trans individuals find environments that validate and celebrate their gender identity for them to reduce their internalized transphobia (Barr, Snyder, Adelson, Budge, 2021).

Sociocultural Components
Being gender diverse in a culture that only approves of the cisgender narrative creates mental stress.  The two typically accepted cultural spaces for gender diverse individuals are to put on a cisgender mask and bury their authentic gender diverse self or transition to the opposite binary gender and be accepted in some queer communities but live in a marginalized and dangerous space.  For people choosing a binary trans experience, they are often exposed to the word by their physical characteristics as transgender.  For those trans folks who are “passing” (viewed as cisgender the gender they present as), when people learn of their transgender identities, some individuals may feel as though they have been lied to, which produces agitation and resentment.  Few spaces allow for identities in between the binary gender expectations (Jones, 2021). 
​
Many queer activists believe that trans folk should be “out” to the world as trans to propel the cultural acceptance of trans identities, but living publicly as a gender diverse individual brings safety risks and discrimination, exponentially so if the trans individual lives in intersecting identities of racial, socioeconomic, or (dis)ability status.  Many gender diverse individuals feel pressure to represent transgender identities in the world while at the same time negotiating their physical safety (Jones, 2021). 

Conclusion
I am completing my PsyD to provide gender-affirming therapy services to trans and gender diverse individuals.  I know from experience how frustrating it was when I asked my therapist about non-binary and she blew me off.  I know how discouraging it was when I asked my health care provider about being intersex and having her tell me that “if you were a hermaphrodite, you’d have a penis”.  Please note the two very different words used of “intersex” and “hermaphrodite” (an offensive and dated term).  The mental and physical health communities are grossly undereducated about queer issues and uncomfortable providers often come off hostile to individuals who are just trying to survive.  I know that when people feel supported and validated in their intersecting identities, they have higher senses of well-being, are more successful, and exhibit less mental health struggles.  I want to be part of the solution.

References:
Ashley, F. (2021). The clinical irrelevance of “desistance” research for transgender and gender creative youth. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. https://doi-org.csu.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/sgd0000504

Barr, S. M., Snyder, K. E., Adelson, J. L., & Budge, S. L. (2021). Posttraumatic stress in the trans community: The roles of anti-transgender bias, non-affirmation, and internalized transphobia. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. https://doi-org.csu.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/sgd0000500.supp (Supplemental)

Bowman, S. J., Casey, L. J., McAloon, J., & Wootton, B. M. (2021). Assessing gender dysphoria: A systematic review of patient-reported outcome measures. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. https://doi-org.csu.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/sgd0000486

Ehlinger, P. P., Folger, A., & Cronce, J. M. (2021). A qualitative analysis of transgender and gender nonconforming college students’ experiences of gender-based discrimination and intersections with alcohol use. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. https://doi-org.csu.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/adb0000752

Hawke, L. D., Hayes, E., Darnay, K., & Henderson, J. (2021). Mental health among transgender and gender diverse youth: An exploration of effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 8(2), 180–187. https://doi-org.csu.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/sgd0000467
Ivey, G. (2017). Gender mobility in the countertransference: An autoethnographic investigation. Counselling & Psychotherapy Research, 17(1), 42–52. https://doi-org.csu.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/capr.12101

Jones, D. B. (2021). De-colonising My Trans Body: Fanon and the masks I have worn. Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, 32(2), 322–332.
Schudson, Z. C., Beischel, W. J., & van Anders, S. M. (2019). Individual variation in gender/sex category definitions. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 6(4), 448–460. https://doi-org.csu.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/sgd0000346

Simms, S., Nicolazzo, Z., & Jones, A. (2021). Don’t say sorry, do better: Trans students of color, disidentification, and internet futures. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. https://doi-org.csu.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/dhe0000337

​Autistic burnout
By Lisa Macafee
 
What does autistic burnout feel like for me?  It’s different for every autistic person, so I won’t pretend mine is typical. 
 
Today is Wednesday.  I started a new job last week and now work two part-time jobs for a total of 40 hours split between them. 
 
I have been navigating new procedure (in person!), new people, have been trying to be approachable and bond with new co-workers, and perform my other job responsibilities well, be a good mom, a loving wife, a competent student, and keep the house in order.
 
This Monday, I had Locke in the car ready to take him to daycare as Ryan left with Rowan… and my car wouldn’t start.  The panic rose in my chest as I did everything I could to start the car.  Eventually, I was able to get it going, but it kept having the issue, so I called on my way to work on Tuesday to arrange to drop if off after work.
 
I dropped off the car after work Tuesday, pulled a car seat out and hauled it over to the rental agency, rented a car, put the car seat in, picked up Locke, and got home around 5pm.  Today, I took Locke to daycare, drove to work, worked (and had some delightful but intense conversations with co-workers), went home to pick up the recalled charger, took the car seat out, took the rental back, picked up my car after being fixed, but was told they forgot to order the replacement part for the recalled charger and could I stop by tomorrow to get it.  This was the third time I brought my car in for the same recall, and they are telling me to come back again. 
 
This is the moment.  Too many new things.  Too much management of feelings.  Too many physical tasks. 
 
I immediately wanted to cry, which I felt the need to furiously repress, because I have internalized that I can’t show weakness.  Without an ability to vent the frustration, I get hot with anger, which I also repress, because I’ve internalized that angry women are hysterical and not to be taken seriously.
 
My brain just skids out like the tires losing traction on the road.  My speech drops to monosyllabic responses, my affect goes flat, and my body gets shaky and uncoordinated.  It feels like there are a swarm of bees in my head that I can’t hear through or think around.  I often feel unsafe to drive in these situations.  I get a plummeting sadness. 
 
Then I go pick up Rowan and put on my “mom” face.  Put the car seat back in.  Be happy, kind, loving.  Then Locke is having his own autistic burnout because he has been in daycare longer than normal and his routines are out of whack and he is screaming, kicking, and crying at us.  I get it, kid, I get it.
 
It takes everything I have to be calm.  To not react with anger.  To hold him in his anger and let him express it so he can feel better. 
 
Put the kids to bed.  Be so mentally and physically exhausted that all I can do is this and then sleep.  When I get to this place, I do not feel able to speak about anything, but I feel a compelling need to write it out.  So here we are. 
 
As Nicholas Cage said, “OH, NO, NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAHHHHH!”

​Things have become a little weird this summer.  I’ve had a fibromyalgia flare since mid-June that has gotten better and worse, but has generally made itself part of my life.  I’m trying to be chill and accept what life throws at me with good temper, but (not gonna lie), it’s been hard to be gracious.
 
I am very lucky that I have amazing people in my life who make this not as bad as it could be.  My husband, Ryan, has been THE BEST.  He’s encouraged me to use a wheelchair when I’m too weak to use the walker or when using the walker would wipe me out, and happily pushes me around.  A bonus is that one kid almost always sits in my lap when I’m in the wheelchair, and that takes the sting out of it.
 
I don’t like it though. 
 
I don’t like that I’m physically used up for the day after taking a shower and making breakfast. 
 
The really annoying part is that I can do more, but if I do, I’m borrowing spoons from the future.  If you haven’t read The Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino, she does a great job of describing what it’s like to have a limited amount of actionable items (spoons) to be able to do each day and how we need to make choices that others would never think about because they have more spoons than they typically need in a day.
 
We are all on Summer break (I’m the only one working part-time), and if I want to participate in activities with my kids, I need to take a walker or wheelchair.  If I don’t take a mobility aid, the amount of standing and walking required for even a small outing takes the energy out of me and I’ll need to spend the next day laying in bed.  Which I’ve done a lot of, because I keep thinking it will be fine and doing more than I should.
 
The silver lining is that I’ve been reading a lot of novels and I’m way ahead in my PsyD class, so that when I start my new job (!) at Santa Ana College in one more week, I have some grace time for my assignments in school.  Being able to work on my PsyD at my own pace (while sitting) makes me feel competent.  I have a hard time not being productive, depression tends to kick in, so my PsyD program and working remotely have been good for me.
 
Fibromyalgia flares are exacerbated by stress.  Basically, something happened that put our fight or flight response into overdrive and we can’t shut it off, and our bodies run themselves down.  Too much hypervigilance = bone weary fatigue, muscle pain, headaches, and other (not) funs.
 
I’ve been coordinating the development of LGBTQIA+ stuff at Fullerton College and just navigating that emotionally charged workplace (remotely) has left me wiped out for days. 
 
Physical, emotional, or intellectual stress takes me down.
 
Did I mention that I’m starting a new job?  On campus?  In a week, I’ll be working for Fullerton College remotely for half the week and Santa Ana College (SAC) on campus as their career center coordinator for half the week. 
 
I’ll be working a full-time schedule again and my job at SAC will be something I’ve never done before… like last semester, the semester before that, and the semester before that. 
 
I like learning new things, but I’m not sure I can handle the stress of driving to SAC (about 45 minutes each way), walking across campus, and facing a whole new group of people and job responsibilities.
 
I want to be a good parent to my babies.  I want to be a good partner to my spouse.  I want to enrich myself with the PsyD, and be competent, and do good things at the colleges I work for. 
 
I want to be independent and I worry at how my mobility aids will be perceived by people at work.  I know that it’s illegal to discriminate against people for having a disability, but that doesn’t mean people don’t do it.  I don’t know what this means for me, and I guess the bottom line is that I find this scary.
 
Let’s keep on keeping on.

Happy Autistic Pride Day!
By Lisa Macafee
 
You might be wondering what there is to be proud about in being autistic and I would have wondered the same thing before I fell into an autism research pit a few years ago.  Today, I can legit say that I’m proud to be autistic.
 
I have found that my compulsion to tell the truth is shared by many of my neurodiverse fam.  I *can* lie, but I will be really upset about it and almost always tell the truth.  I do not understand the functional purpose of lying and dislike it when others lie.
 
Autistic folk will rarely say one thing and do another (unless we forgot).  We are typically open and what you see is what you get.  You don’t have to worry about our hidden inner narratives about you or two-facedness, because typically we don’t do that.  
 
We can hyper-focus on the things that interest us to the point where we work non-stop and might forget to eat, drink, or use the bathroom!  We get shit done!  At least when it’s related to our interests.  Our special interests lend towards our becoming experts on the things we are passionate about. 
 
Granted, being an expert in sub-tropical fruit trees for Southern California isn’t a skill that a lot of people care about, but I’m proud of my sustainable agriculture skills!  My passions for equity are a little more marketable, lol.
 
Many of us see patterns.  Instead of seeing loose unrelated data points, I weave the data into a story and find causal factors for the inequities around me.  This is useful in my work for LGBTQIA+ support!
 
Speaking of queer stuff, it’s fitting that Autistic Pride Day is June 18th, right in the middle of LGBTQIA+ Pride month!  Autistics are much more likely than neurotypical folks to be queer.  The numbers vary based on what research you read, but we’re three to seven times more likely to be queer (especially on the gender side)!
 
Autism is strange in the way it affects my ability to understand myself, I teach about gender and sexuality, but don’t understand my own.  I thought everyone had this internal blindness until I started talking more with other queer folk who have clear ideas of their gender and the bodies they are attracted to.  Who knew? 
 
I identify as autigender (someone whose autism heavily affects the way they view their own gender), non-binary (someone who doesn’t feel completely masculine or feminine), and demisexual (someone who is attracted to personality, not body types).
 
Every autistic person experiences their reality a bit differently, but we tend to be more openminded about differences and less likely to judge.  If you tell us about your struggles (key point – don’t assume we’ll pick up on it – you have to tell us), many of us are very empathetic.  We understand stigmatization, othering, and suffering and often want to help others who experience these negative feelings.
 
We think differently because our brains are different.  We approach problems differently and often come up with creative solutions to problems.
 
We often have sensory sensitivities that can help us create visual and sensory pleasing environments for others because we pay attention to the little things (because they can drive us crazy) that others don’t notice but make a subtle difference in mood.
 
Some people call us blunt or rude (which can be true!), but I appreciate the lack of bullshit you typically find with autistic folk.  We will often speak up when we feel something is wrong and will often defend others against abusive authority or bullies.  We question norms and traditions that don’t serve people’s best interests because “the way things are done” has never been a compelling reason to do thing for most of us.  I need logic and data to convince me something is right.
 
Our own struggles have often made it harder for us to function in the typical life, so we have learned to be tenacious.  We have learned determination because we had to.
 
If you have an autistic friend, co-worker, or family member, we tend to be truthful, loyal, and committed to the things we believe in (including you).
 
Autistic folk are awesome.
 
Happy Autistic Pride Day.

Privilege and the Lack Thereof
By Lisa Macafee
 
I am reading an amazing book, So you want to talk about race, by Ijeoma Olou.  In it, the author talks about microaggressions and privilege.  She asks us to think about the ways in which we have privilege and not to highlight the ways we don’t.  A better understanding comes from first acknowledging our own comparative advantages.
 
Ijeoma speaks to microaggressions and the responsibility to apologize if something you’ve said has harmed someone, even if you don’t understand why.  Reading this book has got me thinking about all sorts of things.  We all have relative advantages and disadvantages.  The work I’m doing in LGBTQIA+ organizing draws particular attention to how hard it is to be LGBTQIA+ AND a person of color.  My heart aches thinking on the struggles some of my students have told me over the years.
 
I try to extend my circle of compassion to incorporate folks from different walks from my own and I try to understand the struggles people face that are different from my own.  I am flawed.  I know I make mistakes.  I’m thinking on the people who told me I hurt them in the past and wondering about a better way I can handle situations in the future.

The situation: I had a Black co-worker remove me from her social media because I talked about some of the gang members I worked with.  She said I made problematic assumptions but wouldn’t elaborate.
 
I think she thought I was assuming that they were in gangs because of their clothing.  She said that she had never encountered any gang members at the school we both taught at.
 
This is an example or where privilege and race gets tricky. 
 
We worked with mostly Chicanx students who were poor.  She was a middle-class Black woman and presented as such.  I am a white lady.  When comparing the two of us on paper, I would assume that our most troubled students would go to another person of color who might better be able to understand the challenges that they face.  They didn’t.  Honors students and other college-bound students often went to her.  Some students with significant barriers related to poverty and abuse came to me.
 
I think this is why.
 
I openly shared with my students my father’s sexual abuse and neglect as a child and subsequent alcoholism.  I told them about the challenges I faced because of my dad’s difficulties - not having a lot of money, dumpster-diving for food as a kid, working full-time while attending college, struggling with teenage drinking and drug use myself.  Because I talked about these things with my students, many who struggled in similar ways would come to me.
 
I didn’t assume my students were in gangs.  One nice thing about being autistic is that we don’t tend to assume much of anything.  We also don’t tend to judge or huff at people the way many neurotypicals do ("A GANG, oh my"!). 
 
One of my favorite students – highly intelligent, great sense of humor, Asian, good looking, outgoing, and friendly – was in a gang.  How do I know this?  Because he told me.  He told me that the first time he saw it as a real problem was when there was a drive-by at his high school graduation party and his neighbor was shot in the leg.  I asked him why he joined.  He said it was because his parents worked a lot, his mother was a gambler and never home, and he wanted someone to love him.  He could articulate that to me.  That he just wanted someone to love him, and the gang offered him that.
 
Another awesome student told me (in a substance abuse group that I ran after school outside my work duty) that a third student had shot at him in their neighborhood at least four times.  I gave statements for a fourth student’s trial.  It didn’t seem to help – he was put away for life for gang-related murder.  He was the sweetest boy - so quiet and very smart.  I have a fifth student, nicest guy, who was also put away for gang related charges, but I don’t think he was in a gang, he just looked like the shooter.  I taught with a gang member who got permission from his gang to help the community via teaching.
 
These students reverberate in my soul to this day.  They shaped who I am and my commitment to serving marginalized and historically disadvantaged populations.  I love these students.
 
To be accused of making their status up or assuming they were in gangs because they were Brown horrified me.  I am not a victim, just horrified and sad.  I can only imagine what assumptions about race that teacher was subjected to.  How many microaggressions about her performance in school.  How many expressions of shocked delight that she was going to college.  How many comments about her being an exception instead of a typical Black student.
 
But.
 
Assuming that all people of color are like her is also damaging (I mean really, we shouldn’t be assuming anything).  Assuming success doesn’t allow student who need help to get help because then they’re validating stereotypes.  Assuming competence doesn’t give students who aren’t feeling it a window to ask for help.
 
My solution to this was to always be vulnerable.  Show students the ways that I struggled and leave that window open.  If they are presented with only the successes of the adults in their lives, then they are left to assume that they’re the only ones who live the way they do.  That their parent is the only one to struggle, and it’s shameful, and they shouldn’t talk about it.  They assume childhood abuse is rare and it must have happened to them because they did something to deserve it.
 
I never saw anybody like me until 10th grade when I had a weirdo English teacher.  That was the first moment I started to believe that I might survive into adulthood.  Before that, I just assumed I was a goner because there were no adults like me.  This teacher gave me the hope I needed to picture myself as a weirdo adult out there somewhere, like she was.
 
Representation is so needed and so much harder for students of color with intersecting identities.  It’s so much easier for me to find representation for myself as a weird white person that a weird person of color.  You might see a weirdo or a person of color, but it’s that much harder to find someone LIKE YOU to see as a role model when you’ve got multiple things going on.
 
I was close to suicide from age 13 through 28.  Really the only thing that stopped me was that my mom had enough challenges in her life and I didn’t want to give her one more thing to be sad about.
 
I’m 39.  I’m just now developing self-esteem.  At 36, I decided that I could do more with my life than serve others, that I might be able to do what I want AND help others.  Getting diagnosed autistic and finding autistic community has been an important part of that.  Now I know that my differences aren’t just me being BAD, they’re just different and there are other people like me and strategies I can use to help with the challenges I have due to being autistic.  There are coping mechanisms to be learned, woo-hoo!
 
I have so much work to do.  Both autism and LGBTQIA+ groups are underrepresented by people of color.  Does this mean that people of color magically dodge these identities?  Probably not.  It means that instead of diagnosing kids of color as autistic, teachers and staff assume they are bad kids and engage the school-to-prison pipeline.  Are people of color less queer than white folks?  Probably not, but it likely means that navigating these two historically discriminated groups at the same time is too much of a cluster and many folks of color navigate as a person of color in the world and stuff their queerness down for safer climates.
 
Being a person is so hard.  Being a person with intersecting marginalized identities is challenging beyond what my brain can comprehend.  I want better for us all.
 
To my once friend, I’m sorry that my comments hurt you.  I hope our hearts are big enough for more than one identity.  I hope we can, as educational systems, accept and support people of color who have struggles (like poverty, gangs, autism, and LGBTQIA+) without being afraid of stereotype validation.
 
I will keep trying.  I will keep failing.  And that’s okay as long as I try harder the next time.

Anxiety and Theory of Mind
By Lisa Macafee

My nephew is deciding where to attend high school.  They are debating between a school very close to their house and a school a ways away. 
 
This elicited waves of intrusive thoughts and memories from high school and I worry-exploded all over my sister-in-law (sorry, my friend!). 
 
One of the problems I had in high school was that I struggled (still do) with theory of mind. 
 
Theory of mind is the ability to easily take others’ perspectives in mind.  Of course, if I am thinking about it directly, I will be able to think about how ____ might make ____ person feel, but what I miss are the subtleties. 
 
For example, I never told anyone how terrified I was every day of school because at any moment I could fall into the chasm or despair that fissured all around me because I assumed everyone knew.  Or that everyone felt that way.  Or that people who loved me knew because how could they not?!  I see now as an adult how absurd that is.  How could anyone know my innermost world if I didn’t share it with them? 

We autistic folk struggle with this.
 
I was so miserable in high school that I got up one day from the very nice group of girls I had sat with all through middle school and walked away.  They very not my people.  They were nice, but so normal.  I couldn’t relate to the things they were saying anymore, and trying to was exhausting.  We call this masking.  Masking wears us out. 
 
For a week or so I just walked around the school alone.  The chasm of despair threatened.  Eventually, I sought out other kids sitting alone and sort of collected them together for social warmth.  If all the loners were together, we wouldn’t be loners anymore.  Brilliant. 
 
I had made a pact with myself.  The deal was that I wouldn’t have to kill myself if I could be useful to someone else.  I felt like such a burden to others around me and so immensely lonely that this was the best I could do for myself.
 
What I think is shocking in retrospect is that I never thought to ask for help.  I just assumed that if I should have had help, someone would have given it to me. 
 
Because no one saw my private hell, I assumed I deserved it.
 
My friends dubbed the group of misfits I collected “Lisa projects”.  In a way, they were right.  The project was saving myself, and they were helping me do it. 
 
My anxiety for my nephew is real because my fear was so tangible in high school.  I carried a knife on me every day.  A knife!  I can see now that if I had pulled a knife in a fight and the other person also had a knife that one of us may have died, but in my 16 year old mind, having a knife meant I was super scary and the other person would just back off.
 
I had reason to fear for my safety.  The group of friends I collected were misfits and got picked on.  I would periodically have fits of rage where it was as if I was having an out-of-body experience. 
 
Once, some skinheads had picked on and threatened a Jewish friend of mine.  I can’t believe this was me, looking back, but I went over to their group alone.  I sat sown in the middle of their little group and calmly said that I had heard that they wanted to beat up my friend because he was Jewish.  I said that if they needed to beat someone up to feel good about themselves, I came to offer myself.  That I was a girl and couldn’t possibly put up much of a fight, so if that’s what they needed, then they should go for it!  If not, then stop threatening my friends.
 
Who was that girl?!  I would never have done that if I had thought about it, but there was no thought.  I was just there.  It was like I was watching myself from above.  Damn, girl!  So yeah, I carried a knife.
 
I didn’t know this kind of life was unusual.  I thought everyone had similar issues.  My father was the survivor of all sorts of abuse and lived in an orphanage for part of his life, so in comparison to that, my life was a cake walk.  Having taught high school for 11 years and counseled in community college for four years, I know now that my experience was not typical.  My experience was a bit of a shit show, really.
 
I lived with this bargain – believing myself so unworthy of life that I needed to earn my existence through service to others – well into my 30s. 
 
The ever-present gloom and suicidal ideation only went away when I had Rowan, my daughter.  She is six today.  I am 39.  Something seemed to change in my hormonal make-up when I got pregnant with her that helped me.  I am very grateful.
 
The fear and anxiety for others doesn’t go away.  I see a lot of myself in my nephew.  I pray to the endlessness that their experience is not like mine.  I encourage them to tell me if they want to talk.  I don’t’ want to assume that they need help like I did, but I don’t want them to suffer in silence like I did.  I want a better life for them than what I had. 
 
If I had known I was autistic and had words for non-binary then, I wouldn’t have felt so alone.  I wouldn’t have felt like a freak all the time.  I would have been able to identify as different, not bad. 
 
I still want to live a life of service.  The younger generations need us to make their lives filled with less pain than ours were.
 
Solidarity.

​How Abusive Relationships Start
By Lisa Macafee

Besides the alarming statistics below showing that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men experience this, 57% report it difficult to identify dating violence.  Autistics are particularly vulnerable to abusive relationships because we don't pick out the early warning signs.

I started writing this piece in December of 2020 and thought that if I could just get it out of my brain and onto paper, then I could stop thinking about it.
 
No such luck.  Let’s talk perseveration.  This is the tendency of autistic folk to think about something non-stop and be unable to change our focus.  I try.  I keep myself busy so my waking thoughts HAVE to be on something else.  I started a doctorate program so I’d always have something to work on.  I have two kids to focus on. 
 
But it’s the dark moments before sleep or in the shower when I can’t focus on something that get me.  I haven’t been able to so to sleep well for many nights because as soon as my brain is not focused on something specifically, it defaults back to the issue.

Sometimes perseveration is fun, like on electric cars or sustainable agriculture.  Sometimes it's not, like on politics or people.
 
In November 2020, I posted in social media about the warning signs of abusive relationships and removed my post because someone didn't like my pointing out abusive behavior they were engaging in and verbally came after me.  I am perseverating on abuse and re-living the abusive relationship I was in because of that individual's actions.  This is called being triggered, although I dislike that phrase.
 
I cannot sleep well.  I can’t engage with my kids purely.  All I can think about sometimes is how scary people can be and how unwittingly one can stumble into a relationship that destroys them inside. 
 
This is PTSD compounded by autistic perseveration, which is being triggered for me because I can see it happening and I have logical solutions that are unwelcome.  I keep spinning my wheels by problem solving all sorts of solutions that the person doesn't want.  I go through diagnostic steps - paranoia, stalking of ex, delusions of persecution, isolating behavior.  Not good, friends.  Not good.  No one wants to hear it, but I can't stop my brain.
 
Let me share how it started for me.  I can’t speak for anyone else. 
 
I’ll call him “C”.  We were each other’s first love.  We were young.  Neither of us had healthy role models to draw from of what loving relationships looked like and neither of us had been taught about healthy relationships.  All they teach in sex education in school is how babies are made, not how to be emotionally and physically healthy in sexual relationships.
 
Abuse starts small.  It starts with things not worth making a big deal over.  A little discomfort, and when addressed, C would say; “please, don’t you love me?” and continue.  He wanted me to spend all my time with him because he loved me so terribly much and “couldn’t bear to be apart from me”.  He didn’t like being with my friends, because they didn’t like how affectionate (physically controlling) he was.  He effectively talked me into cutting out my friends and family from my life without ever stating it that way. 

Below are the early warning signs of abusive relationships: 

​Let’s be clear, abusers are never up front about this stuff.  They’re not going to say “hey, I’d like to isolate you from your friends and family, cool?”  They’re not even doing it intentionally.  That’s the kicker.  There’s no ‘How to be abusive 101’ class these people are all taking. 
 
It’s human nature that you love someone and you want them all to yourself.  The abusive part is not caring that it’s not healthy for your partner.  Not caring that they benefit from their family and friends.  That’s why these folks can walk the abusive path.  They hurt you and know it, but don’t care because they’re selfish.  Then the trick is to get you to stay.
 
C lavished me with affection and let me into his innermost world.  We were in love.  He adored me, and I him. 

Below are common forms of abuse and examples for each: 

The physical discomfort turned to pain.  During this time, he would make public demonstrations of love and affection and when we were alone would be mostly sweet and just occasionally would say something that was demeaning, belittling, or a personal attack and then would say, “but I love you so much anyway!”
 
As he increased the ways he hurt me physically, he increased the ways he debased me mentally.  He insulted me and made fun of the things most core to my being.  Then he would hurt me.  Then he would say how much he loved me and wanted to be with me forever and cuddle with me for the rest of the night. 
 
It’s a mind-fuck, y’all.  That’s why people don’t just leave.  It’s confusing as hell.

I'm hoping that publishing this lets me sleep better and shower without being preoccupied by abuse.  Maybe it will, and maybe it won't.  The world is big and scary and there's not a lot I can do about it but write.

Below are the stages of the cycle of abuse:

Socialism, Let's Do It, Please?
by Lisa Macafee

I have a problem with perspective taking.  It’s an autistic thing.
 
For example.  I assume that everyone who passingly knows me, knows that I have a deep-seated conviction for socialist ideals and social justice.  It’s not like I have it tattooed on my forehead, so many people don’t know this.  
 
You could say that socialism is a special interest of mine.  I cannot fathom how people don’t see this as the objectively superior economic system with which to distribute wealth. 
 
For anyone who doesn’t know how socialism works, it gives to each according to what they need.  40% taxes on most and those who make over $200,00 are taxed almost everything in surplus of that.
 
This pays for free medical care for all, reduced housing costs, free public transportation, free college and university. 
 
There are still wealthy and less wealthy folk, but it’s a difference of one nice house, a timeshare, and three nice cars instead of 16 nice houses and 34 nice cars. 
 
At the point of wealth inequality that the United States experiences, I’m tempted to root for a French Revolution style change!  No one deserves, needs, or should have so much when children go without food or heat in the winter.  No one deserves such excess when children suffer.  Everyone should have a nice place to live, and I have no problem redistributing wealth.  Yes, I would lose some of my wealth.  No, that does not bother me.
 
100% worth it.  Because.  Crime is dramatically reduced when people aren’t struggling to make ends meet and failing.  When people have opportunities to go to school to get a career they enjoy and not be forced into indentured servitude to do so.  When the edge of desperation is removed from people’s lives who choose between dinner and heat tonight.  Things… are better.  Teen pregnancies decrease.  The state pays for rehabilitation instead of prison (which reduced recidivism and increases productivity). 

Poverty. Does. Not. Exist.  
 
I remember my mother being angry and sad that my brother had turned on the air conditioning in summer.  It would cost almost $20, she said, aghast after having worked until 2am the night previous.
 
I remember my father drinking himself into a stupor every night because he couldn’t provide for his family in the way he had been indoctrinated that he should.
 
I remember my mother taking me school shopping for the new year and spending $100 for clothes and I could see how proud she was to be able to do this.
 
I remember my mother teaching us how to collect food from the dumpster in back of Long’s Drugs that wasn’t “bad”, it just wasn’t “best by” anymore.
 
I remember learning to sew so that I could make my own clothes.
 
I remember getting a job at 15 and working full-time at 17 to be less of a burden.
 
I remember when my first friend committed suicide because they couldn’t get a job that made them feel competent.  I remember when the second friend died of a heroin overdose.  The third friend died in a dangerous job accident he had because he was a felon.  The friend who was blinded in a drug-related accident.
 
I remember too much pain and suffering from being poor.
 
I remember thinking that everyone knew all this.  I still think everyone knows all this.  Of course, they didn’t and don’t.  Perspective taking.
 
Then I discovered socialism and that there were countries that didn’t allow their people to live with such pain.  HOW COULD WE NEGLECT OUR OWN?!  I didn’t understand how there could be a way to avert the suffering of children, and we just choose not to do it.
 
Selfish.  Mean.  Cruel.
 
In college, I chose to study abroad in Sweden (paid for with student loans – best choice ever!) so that I could live in a socialist country and see if it really worked.  I fell in love.  If it wasn’t sub-zero for much of the year, I would probably have moved there.  Socialism worked.  I took the free bus everywhere - most people did.  It was clean and safe and no one understood why Americans felt the need to drive their own car places.  I asked people about their taxes and housing costs.  I asked about poverty, to which they wrinkled their noses, as if I’d asked them about public executions (they don’t have poverty like we do). 
 
There is a better way.  We can take care of one another.  Please, let’s do.  Children haven’t done anything to deserve the horrors our society inflicts on them.  Let’s be better and do better. 

​The poorest have less than nothing while the wealthy have more than they anyone could ever need.

​When viewed in fifths, you can see how people below 80% would be largely unaffected by the increased taxation of socialism, and how the last 1% has almost 40% of the nation's wealth.

I am adjusting to having fibromyalgia.
By Lisa Macafee
 
Fibromyalgia occurs most often in autistic women survivors of sexual violence.  If someone tells you they have fibro, there’s a chance they are also telling you those things.
 
Doctors still can’t really define fibromyalgia, but basically our brains, under too much stress for too long, mis-wire sensory signals as pain signals, so things that normally are not painful, are.
 
In 2020 I started seeing all kinds of doctors to try to help me get my life back.  I was getting migraines 3-5 times per week and had pain and fatigue that made it difficult to do anything and was only able to sleep 5-6 hours per night before waking up in pain, usually also with a migraine. 
 
For those who don’t experience migraines, they are an increasing headache and mental sluggishness that rises eventually into chronic vomiting.  Basically it feels as though my skull in in a vice that slowly compresses until my cognitive ability declines into mumbles and madness.  Without a Sumatriptan prescription, I would be on disability, unable to work.  Thank you modern medicine!
 
When my father died in May, I thought I had covid (I did not), because I was so fatigued and in pain that I couldn’t even sit in a chair for more than an hour or two – I had to lie down for the majority of the day.  It turns out that fibromyalgia “flare-ups” are an awful lot like the flu with body aches, pain, and weakness.  Flare ups are most often brought on by stress, ha ha, as if the life stress is not enough, your body shuts down.
 
For me, the weird fibromyalgia things that cause migraines (in addition to typical triggers) are wearing clothing on my upper back and having too much hair.  Yup.  Sounds like a lunatic talking right there, but here we are.
 
So, progress.
 
I have re-arranged my entire wardrobe.  I’ve bought super low-neck shirts and wear them backwards or cut the backs out of my shirts.  Every so often I decide that this has got to be unreal and try a “normal” shirt and get a migraine within two hours of wearing it.
 
I started cutting my own hair.  I shave the bottom half off and have started cutting the bottom off a ponytail to keep the rest short.  I know when my hair gets too long because I start getting migraines every day, as happened to me this week (I cut my own hair yesterday and feel much better – less weight pulling at me).
 
I started getting a monthly Emgality shot that prevents most migraines except for the weird fibromyalgia ones (shirts and hair).
 
I was prescribed a light muscle relaxer to take every night before bed and it allows me to sleep through the night without waking in pain or migraine, allowing me to get enough rest to feel better and not hurt everywhere the next day.
 
These are huge victories.  I still have one or two migraines per week, but compared to 66% of days previously, it’s awesome! 
 
I am learning to give in to the weirdness of fibromyalgia and have felt a lot better for it, but it’s a lot of extra layers of bullshit and I’m tired.  I will likely be disabled enough in the future that I am unable to work.  ​Chronic illness is for suckers, don't get one, okay?

PTSD Is Annoying
by Lisa Macafee
​
​I have a smidge of PTSD from my first two serious relationships that gets triggered by unexpected things.  It was 20 years ago and I’ve been in almost a decade of therapy and it still pops up an gives me insomnia and angst for a week when activated.
 
One early red flag is one partner trying to separate the other from their family and friends.  It’s not overt or intentional – it’s not like anyone goes down a checklist on how to become abusive.  It seems sweet at first.  Things like “move in with me, I can’t stand sleeping apart from you anymore” or “can’t you cancel just this once so we can spend more time together?” or “I love you so much I don’t want to share you tonight!”. 
 
The thing is though, most people need their family and friends to be healthy.  We cannot fulfill every single role in our partner’s life (lover, friend, confidant, therapist, support, humor, energy, venting, etc) and have that go well.  We need other people because nothing in any relationship is ever perfect and we need outside help when things are amiss. 
 
Otherwise your whole world tilts on its axle and people try to kill themselves when they should have gotten a coffee with a friend and some perspective.  I’ve been in both types of relationships, and let me tell you, the latter is way better. 
 
Abusive relationships often start out good and healthy, but slip into abusive patterns by not stopping the warning signs.  No one wants to be abusive, but if neither party has been in a healthy relationship or had open loving role models, how do you know what healthy looks like?  I dated “C” from age 17-19 and “B” from 20-22.  One right after the other.  None of us knew what healthy communication looked like or how to do it.  Autistic folk are much more likely to be in abusive relationships because we fail to recognize the red flags or emotional cues.
 
“C” in particular was extremely romantic, given to chalk drawings outside my window and scavenger hunts for love notes.  The first year of our relationships was great – we both slowly separated from family and friends because we were “so in love”.  The second year was very painful.  He was dealing with burgeoning mental illness and I knew I could be his rock to see him through.  I gave everything of myself because I thought that’s what you did.  He took it because I gave it and he loved me.  He asked for more and started hurting me.  I was still trying to perform some warped gender role of loving nurturer even as he hurt me. 
 
When he finally left me, it was because I had become so pathetic I was no longer the person he loved, I had designed myself up to be whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it because I thought that’s how love worked.  I have never heard of people setting boundaries in love.  Cinderella and Ariel seemed perfectly content to leave their entire worlds for their men, after all.  Sigh.
 
After being dumped by the “love of my life” and thinking I would never find love again, I rebelled against everything feminine I had pushed myself to be for “C”.  I designed and got a back tattoo inked (“C” said tattoos were white trash, even though I already had two).  I cut all my hair off, dyed it neon orange, and got a facial piercing (“C” said only “whores” did stuff like that).  I reclaimed my body as mine in the only way I knew how – by changing it so he would not recognize or want it anymore.  I made myself as ugly as possible in his eyes so he would never be tempted to take me back.  In this way, I was protected from him.
 
Turns out, some guys like that sort of thing.  Broken, angry, and so, so sad.  I started dating “B” after about a solid month of lying on the floor crying whenever not at work or school (thank god I kept myself attending school and work)!  “B” was also broken, angry, and so, so sad.  We were perfect.  We’d both been with someone who hurt us (hurt being a verb in this sense).  But neither of us knew how to have a healthy relationship. 
 
We had sort of the opposite from my relationship with “C”.  I drew boundaries and kept my sense of self.  He didn’t.  He wrapped his entire world around mine.  I took my work responsibilities seriously.  I managed a comic book store, it was the height of my dreams at 21!  Problematically, he saw me leaving the back office with a man at work and assumed, not that I was conducting interviews in hiring new staff, but of course, that I was conducting an illicit affair with this dude in the back office.  Bruh. 
 
If we had kept our social networks and family ties, he might have called one of them.  They might have talked him down.  Instead, he went home to our apartment and tried to kill himself so I would find his body after work and regret cheating on him. 
 
Joke’s on him because I wasn’t cheating and found him before all the pills and alcohol finished their work.  Although he was impressively foamy and not seeming to be breathing, he was alive when the ambulance brought him to the ER and was sparky enough to tell the doctor when he awoke that I had tried to kill him.  Good times.
 
In retrospect, I am so very lucky because most people in those relationships don’t try to kill themselves, they kill their partner.  I am so lucky.  I am so lucky.  “I am so lucky” becomes the mantra I repeat to myself when not able to sleep and thinking of all the others not so lucky. 
 
I obsess about my loved ones’ relationships and think about all the ways that their relationships seem just a touch unhealthy lately.  I think of all the things I could say but won’t because that’s rude.  I hate that I live in a neurotypical world where there are all these social rules that seem so dumb to me. 
 
Mostly, I lie awake and wonder how two people that love each other can hurt each other.  I wonder that it seems to be in our natures to corrupt good things and that making a relationship work is HARD WORK.  Clear and open communication to keep relationships healthy is tough.  I don’t like having to set boundaries or talk about feelings and respect. 
 
I wonder about “C” and “B” sometimes.  I feel as though if I had only known about healthy communication, I could have saved us all from going down those dark paths.  I wonder if they lie awake at night terrified of falling into old habits from their first relationships, too.
 
It’s been 16 years since the end of my last sick relationship.  The fact that I’m still dealing with the trauma seems insane, but those years were some of the most formative in my life because of the sad intensity.  My relationship with my husband and children suffers.  Ryan will say or do something normal that turns me to stone.
 
I wonder about people who didn’t have such troubling experiences.  How did they learn to communicate?  Did their parents model healthy communication and they just knew how to do it?  People with no trauma are marvels to me.
 
I feel so unlucky.
 
But I am so lucky to be here.