May 18, 2025
- once again, i find how different i am—or seem to be. the feeling people try to avoid [emptiness/nothingness][at least their description of emptiness] is the feeling i think i seek. the emotions they describe missing, like feeling very happy or very sad—particularly in a biographical sense—feel annoying to me on a day-to-day basis because they tug at a sense of self or a narrative of self that i find irritating to inhabit. i like the moments when i'm not a self, when i'm not an "i." i don't know if that makes sense.
the feelings i most enjoy are curiosity, quietness, presence, and engagement. biographical feelings often get in the way of this for me. i don't think i particularly enjoy them, or i don't think i do in long stretches. even feelings like achievement, disappointment, shame, pride—they’re all tied to a social, biographical sense of self [it feels like to me]. for me, it almost feels like an intrusion into something else when i feel that way, like there’s a boundary being imposed on something, or a shape being made of something. this is not eloquent or coherent. ok bye.
- my grandmother used to find Atul terrifying. The wilderness. It was very lush, very thick forests, and thick vegetation tends to block out light. So even during the day, even on a very hot, very sunny day, it's diffused light. And at night, it's truly dark because there isn't light pollution. You can't really hear the sound of human beings. You can maybe hear crickets and insect sounds and the rustling of leaves, but that's about it. And she used to find that absolutely terrifying. She refused to be in the house alone ever.
i still seek that feeling out. i find it so comforting. i find it interesting— for her, safety is when there are other people around. and i think for me it's the exact opposite—that if i know for a fact there isn’t a human being around for miles, i’d feel very safe.
One of her favorite activities to calm herself was to go to the railway station and watch people come and go. During covid, she used to sit at a window and try to see if anybody was on the road so she could feel the presence of other people.
3.i can't remember this week. i think one of the reasons that writing week notes is such an activity for me is i don't have a very strong biographical memory. i have to really try to think about every single day and what i did during the day. i also don't have a very strong sense of time. It does feel like pulling something really sticky apart and trying to arrange it in some way where it doesn't coalesce back together. i generally don't know what i did this week. i did things, but i don't quite remmeber what they were. i have had a weird week in terms of sleep.
4.i am obviously not in favor of any of the current regimes, anything. But i do remember during COVID when they announced that thing where everybody had to come to the balcony and clank vessels together to celebrate and sort of to honor first responders- my grandmother was really into it. She couldn't walk, she could barely get out of bed, but she was really adamant about doing that. It made her feel useful i think. She spent her whole life being useful. And here was this giganetic historical thing and she felt useless and that was even worse than to her than any of the other things she was feeling [like weak or in pain]. She has a notebook, like a little flipbook, where she used to write down the number of casualties from the TV announcement every single day. As a sort of personal record to see if they've come down. She still has that book.
5.One of the questions on my autism assessment test - she asked my mother how i used to respond to the question, what did you do today? When I came back from school, would i tell her about my day? And she was like, yeah, i don't think she ever really responded to that question. i don't think she ever volunteered any information either. A
This is me even now. The act of trying to biographically recall my day or my week- i find it actively annoying. And i also find it really fascinating that i have a lot of adult friends who, when they talk to me, tell me about everything that they did during a day, like i did this, and then i went there, and then i did this. i've learned that it's some kind of processing mechanism that they have- previously, i used to be quite confused by this action. It's not necessarily like an act of communication to me as much as it is them kind of feeling seen or being heard or something? And i don't mind it. i now think of it like a like the recap of a TV show or something where i don't necessarily need context to everything or relevance to anything. It's kind of like when kids do a thing and they want someone to see- look ma no hands!*
*unrelated- A&T, i retract all previous apologies for observers. UNAPOLOGIZE MAX.
kbye.