Month: January 2025

bookmark_borderReflections on Christmas 2024

Posted on by Marissa

My entire body was vibrating with tension, frustration, and anger. My chest was tight, a lump was forming in my throat, and tears were forming in my eyes. I was enveloped by an omnipresent sense of time pressure. I felt as if I was being batted around like a ping pong ball, and my head was spinning. There was nowhere to pull over, to regroup, to get myself situated. Inundated with an endless stream of conflicting, contradictory instructions and demands, my brain felt like it was overflowing. “I am so stressed,” I muttered under my breath again and again, heaving one huge sigh after another, but no amount of deep breaths could reduce the level of stress that I felt.

Unfortunately, this is what both my December 23 (Christmas Eve Eve) and December 25 (Christmas) consisted of.

On the 23rd, the chaos was caused by a workday with lots of employees on duty, but not a lot of customers, causing the employees to seemingly spend the entire shift in the break room, talking loudly, causing commotion, and clustering around the free cookies that the boss had brought in for us. (Normally I would be overjoyed at the presence of free cookies, or any type of free food for that matter, but on that occasion the cookies resulted in nothing but chaos, and I didn’t even get to properly look at them and choose which kind to take, because there were so many people constantly crowding around them.)

On Christmas Day, the chaos was caused by a visit to my grandmother at her assisted living place, during which I decided to use the public bathroom down the hall, both because I prefer public bathrooms to those in people’s homes, and because I wanted a chance to get up and walk around. Upon returning, my grandmother and dad looked up expectantly at me, as if I had just beamed down from Mars, and proceeded to interrogate me about where I had gone and why. This is something that if I hadn’t been feeling tired and frustrated to begin with, may have made me only mildly annoyed, but on this occasion it made me feel self-conscious, embarrassed, and humiliated. I was, alas, tired and frustrated because the visit had already lasted longer than I was expecting, and I was well behind schedule on the various tasks I wanted to get done that day.

That being said, I had good days on December 24 (Christmas Eve) and December 26. Overall, I was able to do a variety of festive activities that I enjoyed throughout the season.

On Christmas Eve, the store where I work closed early, so my shift was moved up earlier in the day. Most of my co-workers had the day off, creating a low-key vibe that stood in sharp contrast to the day before. There were a few free snacks in the break room, and I was actually able to enjoy them because there was no chaotic commotion this time. And after work, I had dinner at an Italian restaurant nearby. 

On Christmas Day, despite the bathroom snafu, I was happy with the gifts that I got. These included an American Girl doll named Summer McKinny, a tiny Napoleon and his horse Marengo, a tiny Queen Elizabeth II with her corgis, and a tiny Confederate soldier with his dog. (Can you see a theme developing here? Summer did not come with a pet, but she is an animal lover, and she has a dog-shaped purse, which you can kind of see in the picture.)

The day after Christmas, I had a relaxing day working on my hobbies. I also visited this house with a ridiculous amount of Christmas lights in Saugus, Massachusetts. 

(more photos of the house and neighboring ones can be found here)

A few other things that I did over the course of the holiday season included taking advantage of Cyber Monday sales to gift my dolls with a plethora of new outfits:

Visiting Christopher Columbus, getting a coffee at Caffe Dello Sport, and strolling through the North End:

(more photos like these can be found here)

Watching the Christmas tree lighting on Boston Common:

Sending out Christmas cards featuring my statues: 

Baking Italian anise cookies:

Putting lights up outside my house: 

Visiting the newly installed World War I soldier statue at a park in my town, and admiring his Christmas decorations: 

Buying some seasonal snacks and desserts from the store where I work: 

Buying myself some adorable gifts from Confederate Shop: 

The little gnome, ornaments, teddy bear, and Gadsden flag wind sock are all from Confederate Shop. This is a wonderful, family-owned business that I highly recommend to anyone who loves Confederate stuff like I do.

Visiting my town’s Christmas tree at the pond near my house:

Baking a chocolate peppermint loaf cake: 

By far the best part of my holiday season was decorating the statues – Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and Stonewall Jackson. I got a Christmas tree for them, put it up, and strung it with lights. I put festive bells around their necks (a bow for Nathan, because he’s the only one whose neck is skinny enough to tie the bow around) and Santa hats on their heads! My dad had the idea of piling pine boughs at their feet for an added festive touch. There are no words that can capture the warm and fuzzy feeling that filled my soul upon seeing them. 

Visiting the little generals every night upon getting home from work brought joy to my heart. Seeing them with their adorable Santa hats, smelling the piney scent of the tree and boughs, and watching the colorful lights twinkle, truly made me feel the spirit of Christmas. 

bookmark_borderFour years ago today

Posted on by Marissa

Four years ago today, after spending months lauding, worshipping, and deifying the perpetrators of riots in which the people I love were murdered, society decided to erupt in an orgy of vicious condemnation of a group of people like me who had the audacity to actually hold a protest expressing our views.

For the entire late spring and summer of 2020, in nearly every city and state, intolerant bullies held violent and hateful demonstrations during which they demanded that members of the majority never again have to encounter a person who is different from the norm, that people like me be obliterated from existence, that the only perspective acknowledged be their own, that all voices other than theirs be silenced. My “friends” responded to this by unanimously flooding social media with mindless expressions of solidarity with the bullies. Politicians responded by effusively praising the bullies, groveling at their feet, and falling all over each other in their eagerness to fulfill the bullies’ demands. Our country’s public art, public spaces, place names, and calendars were redone to ensure that people like me could no longer feel included, to erase every possible trace of non-majority perspectives, stories, and viewpoints.

On January 6, 2021, people like me protested. We were hurt and angry at the way that we had been treated, as anyone with even half a brain would be in our situation. After being subjected to months of the cruelest and most appalling treatment imaginable, finally we fought back. Our hurt and anger were 100% justified, as were all of our actions. My “friends” responded to this by expressing their disgust and complaining that it made them sick to their stomachs to see people like me standing up for ourselves and expressing our views. The pro-bullying activists who up until that point had been masquerading as the news media responded by viciously attacking and condemning us in the harshest terms imaginable. Live on air, the disgraceful excuses for human beings who called themselves political commentators called us idiots, morons, “traitors,” white supremacists, and worse.

Four years ago today, one of the people like me who participated in the protest, Ashli Babbitt, was murdered. And society responded not by criticizing the person who murdered her, but by condemning and ridiculing her for having participated in the protest in the first place. Society reacted by blaming her for her own murder.

Today, Donald Trump will be certified as president. Nothing can bring Ashli Babbitt back, but this day gives me a small bit of satisfaction. Nothing can truly undo the atrocity that was perpetrated against people like me four years ago, but this day does undo it a little bit. This day gives me, and all people like me, a victory. Because what the participants in the protest were trying to achieve four years ago, has actually happened. Donald Trump is going to be president. Today, people like me have won. And the mindless and intolerant society that decided to sadistically attack, condemn, shame, insult, and murder us, merely for expressing views that are different from those of the majority, lost.

To say that it serves them right, would be an understatement.

 

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Rest in peace, Air Force Veteran Ashli Babbitt.

Say Her Name.

bookmark_border“It’s important to lead your life in such a way…”

Posted on by Marissa

“It’s important to lead your life in such a way that when you’re gunned down in public by an anonymous hitman on a New York City street the country at large doesn’t react like the Ewoks watching the second Death Star explode.”

So said an Instagram post that I recently came across.

Translation: It’s important to live your life so that the majority of people approve of you. 

This sentiment makes no logical sense. What is popular versus unpopular has nothing to do with what is right versus wrong. A person could live their life in a way that is 100% right and be disliked by everyone (and therefore have their death celebrated in the way that the author of the post describes), and a person could live their life in a way that is 100% wrong and be universally liked. What the country at large thinks has nothing to do with what is actually true. The majority of the population could have correct ideas about right and wrong, or they could have completely wrong ones.

What the author of the post is saying is that if a person is unpopular, then they must be bad. And that is not only logically incorrect, but also deeply hurtful to every person who is, or has ever been, unpopular. This is a category that includes myself, as an autistic person who has always had difficulty making friends and fitting in with my peers. The author of the post is saying that if a person’s death is celebrated, then that reflects negatively on the person who died. When in reality, it reflects negatively on the people doing the celebrating. 

This post is also deeply hurtful to Brian Thompson, the health insurance CEO who was murdered, as well as anyone who loved or cared about him, because the post implies that he deserved to be murdered. It implies that he, and not his murderer, is responsible for his death. It implies that the public’s celebration of his death reflects negatively on Thompson, when in reality, it reflects negatively on the people who are celebrating. 

The post should read: “It’s important to lead your life in such a way that you don’t murder innocent people.” Or: “It’s important to lead your life in such a way that you don’t sadistically and cruelly celebrate the deaths of innocent people.” Or even better: “It’s important to lead your life in such a way that you don’t make idiotic, mean-spirited posts that are both hurtful and logically incorrect.”

Someone left the following comment on the post: “It’s Christmas season, so what’s a better way to celebrate that to scrooge a bunch of rich people and show them that if they continue to live as they are, people will celebrate their deaths?”

I don’t know exactly what it means to “scrooge” someone (I know who Scrooge is, but I’ve never heard his name used as a verb). Regardless, this comment has the same logical and moral problems as the original post. It implies, erroneously, that the public’s celebration of a person’s death reflects negatively on the person who died, when in reality it reflects negatively on the people celebrating. And it condemns rich people in their entirety, which is cruel, mean-spirited, and bigoted because whether a person is rich or poor has nothing to do with whether they are good or bad. 

So yeah, great job by both the original poster and the commenter… NOT. If you were attempting to be nasty, logically incoherent, and classist bullies, then congratulations! You succeeded. 

bookmark_borderTwo types of tiredness

Posted on by Marissa

There are two kinds of tiredness.

The good kind of tiredness is what you feel after working hard. The work can be physical or mental. For example, I might feel physically tired after spending hours moving heavy boxes and putting the contents onto shelves at the grocery store where I work. Doing this work requires effort and uses up energy, but the work is meaningful to me because I am accomplishing something concrete that needs to be done. I might feel mentally tired after watching a big horse race, a figure skating competition, or even a movie or show that I find interesting. For me, processing and remembering what I am watching requires a lot of mental effort. But if it’s a sport or a show that I care about, then the effort is worth it. The good kind of tiredness is the tiredness of a job well done. It’s the tiredness that you feel after working hard on projects that you welcome, projects that you feel engaged with, projects that you chose.

Then there’s the bad kind of tiredness. It’s an angry, nasty, irritable kind of tiredness. It’s the tiredness that comes not from working hard, but from chaos, overstimulation, and frustration. It’s the tiredness that comes from things not going as planned, routines being disrupted, unexpected problems arising, people doing things they’re not supposed to do. It comes from being blocked, due to circumstances outside of your control, from doing things according to your usual steps and routines. Your plan A gets messed up, so you have to scramble to come up with a plan B, and sometimes, if that gets messed up too, a plan C.

For example, I’m trying to explain something, but I keep getting interrupted, the listener inserting their own thoughts before I’ve had a chance to fully voice mine. Or the language-learning app that I am using to learn Italian keeps marking my answers wrong for reasons I don’t understand, causing my lesson to be abruptly terminated because I’ve run out of “hearts” for the day. Or maybe my dad asks me to help fold laundry, but before I have a chance to do so, my mom has already done it. Or perhaps I’m looking forward to eating the small pieces of chips that are left at the bottom of the bag, but before I can do so, someone has thrown the bag into the trash. Or I need to get something out of my locker, but someone else is using the locker directly above mine, and I have to wait for them to move, causing me to be late for my next assignment. Or I need to use the bathroom, but someone is in the bathroom, so I decide to go to the sink to fill up my water bottle while I wait, but someone is using the sink so I can’t do that either (and then, if I’m really unlucky, someone beats me to the bathroom while I’m waiting at the sink!). Or I am stocking the meat department, take a box of steaks off of my cart, and am forced to wait idle as customers stand in front of the steak section examining the various options and talking among themselves for what seems like hours on end.

None of these things is a big deal in itself, and it might even seem silly for me to complain about them. But these are the types of things that, for someone on the autism spectrum like me, can quickly add up into a mountain of stress and mental exhaustion. In other words: the bad type of tiredness.

With this type of tiredness, there’s no satisfaction, no pride, no sense of a job well done. Only frustration. It’s a feeling of tightness in my chest, tense muscles, a lump in my throat, and heaviness throughout my entire body, which no amount of huge, exasperated sighs can shake. It’s the type of tiredness that causes me to go to bed without brushing and flossing my teeth, because I simply do not have the energy to do so (sorry if that is TMI). Or worse, to stay up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning because I don’t even have the energy to get up from the couch and go to bed. Pardon my French, but the bad kind of tiredness is, in short, when one feels like crap.

Unfortunately, I’ve been having a lot of the bad kind of tiredness lately. It started around mid-December and continues into 2025. As a result, I haven’t had the energy to blog as much as I’d like. (I’m sure I sound like a broken record when it comes to this subject.) However, the holiday season wasn’t entirely negative. I hope to soon have the energy to make a post with more details and photos of my holiday season.