No Pity

I sort of thought about it, and I guess it comes down to a different stable position of "normal". I can look at that one from the ASD perspective: it's "normal" for someone to be able to handle, say, a full day of moving without a complete mental meltdown*. Because it's "normal", normal people plan around it. And we get so fixated on that "normal" that we try to plan around it.

But that normal is not my normal. It is an amazing day when I can move house without needing to go curl up in the corner and stare blankly at the wall (and I am again not exaggerating or over-stating - people hyperbolize a lot about that and I'm really not). And nobody has amazing days all the time; nobody plans assuming they are going to have three months of consecutive amazing days!

. . . .except us. Because our "amazing" and "normal" are in different positions from most abled peoples' "amazing" and "normal." This, this is, if nothing else, really inefficient. Much better to plan for one's own normal (or, if your worst-case is badly removed from your normal, for somewhere nearer to the worst-case), whatever that is.


*I do not mean "without being cranky and bitchy and unhappy with the world" or "without being tired and stressed" or "without wanting to throw the towel in at the whole thing"; I mean mindlessly and helplessly wandering back and forth between two piles of stuff working myself up into tears and hysterics, because I couldn't even force my brain to give up on the task at hand, but literally could not figure out what to do with a box of clothes when I had no dresser - not even to figure out "leave them in the box and do something else." Could. Not.

Needless to say, I have redesigned all my moving days to avoid doing this again.