Yep.

[kaberett]

recessional on appearing high-functioning.

I've got a loosely-organised collection of around 10 people who remind me to do basic self-care, visit me so I have a reason to prepare food when my housemate's out, do the laundry, help make groceries happen, definitely who facilitate sleep, prompt me to do housework that makes me feel better (see yesterday's todo/tada), and so on, and so forth.

All of this is work. I am simultaneously much less and much more independently functional than I look.

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

...Wow, I've just thought of a painfully-obvious but very-useful-to-me thing, in reading this. Which I am for pre-existing reasons too fragile and headachy to articulate, but I wanted to say "hooray!" and "thanks for that" at least.

[kaberett]

<3 I am glad the pointer was helpful.

[shehasathree]

mmmmph.
REasons i am more functional living with Steve than i was living with my parents: not just about escaping emotionally toxic environment.

[kaberett]

Yeeeeep. This is also it is necessary that I live with someone, even though I'm an introverted misanthrope.

[shehasathree]

We spent a lot of time in different rooms of the apartment.

[killing_rose]

And this is why I require someone to live with, preferably with a good grasp of neuroatypical brains and invisible disabilities. (And part of what went so horribly awry two years ago.)

[kaberett]

Yeeeeeeep.

[ex_we935]

Yes, this makes loads of sense, and I think mutualistic relationships can be really helpful for people who struggle with executive dysfunction.

~K.

[kaberett]

YES. (I sometimes struggle to remember that everyone has care needs and that this is not a transaction where I am axiomatically a net drain on resources. But.)

[shehasathree]

yep yep yep.

[jelazakazone]

This makes me wonder if I'm less neurotypical than I think I am. I find living with people to be both crazy-making, but also very grounding. It gives me points (as it were) to focus on.

[kaberett]

idk? Like, this isn't just about autism for me - it's also about my depression (my executive function is markedly worse when my depression flares, as does my motivation). So.

But oh do I hear you on living with people being simultaneously necessary & hard work...

[redbird]

Thanks for this. I don't need as much of it as you do, and I may have mentally automated more of the parts I do need (in the literal decades of living with cattitude), but some of this definitely rings true.

There's also overlap with second wave feminist writings like "Why I want a wife," about the ways the culture teaches men that they will have a lot of this taken care of for them: a shape of traditional marriage in which it is a given that a man will have someone else to make dinner and remind him to eat it, get the groceries and toilet paper and such, be responsible for the home being clean, maybe buy his clothes for him…

And from here, the problem isn't "nobody should be doing that for you," it's the assumption that the category of people who get that done for them should be isomorphic to "men."

[kaberett]

I continue to work on the automation :-)

Also, re "everyone needs a wife" -- oh good call, I'd totally not put that together. Huh. Huh. Thank you!

[shehasathree]

YES.

[silveradept]

This makes sense in all ways, neurotypical or no. Having someone there to help assume or manage the details of life is cogntiviely easing. The best kinds of polymers and other bonds would be ones where everyone manages different details naturally and it all meshes together.

[kaberett]

yep. ♥ Or, you know, ones where task divison plays to people's strengths! Like, I absolutely detest doing laundry - it really fucks me up for reasons I'm completely unclear on (possibly the amount of bending & stretching?) - so... my housemate does laundry, and I deal with washing up by hand, making sure the dishwasher contains enough salt + liquid, and the plumbing. And it works. And we negotiated it, but it... works.

[silveradept]

Yes, those ones are even better. And, I fink, was what I wanted to say, instead of what I did say.

[ex_rising236]

Yes this, so much. It's sometimes why we hate living with our parents, but are at the same time terrified of the idea of moving out on our own, because our ability to be a functional adult without pointers and someone else is sometimes limited. We need someone to bounce off of sometimes, as frustrating as we can be and get and as hateful as we sometimes find anything above the minimal amounts of contact with all but the absolute right people, and. Just. And.

Everything that has been already said, pretty much.