why do i stay up late?

I just had a brilliant thought.

It went along the lines of this:

"I could chop all my fingers off."

Just, you know, a random suggestion that popped into my head as a solution... to what I  don't know.

So I ask again. Why do I stay up late?

6 hours left til I have to wake up but not only am I not sleepy, I plan on watching just one more episode of Grey's Anatomy before I try...

This is my prediction; me tomorrow. Somewhere, out of nowhere, there is going to be a wave and it's going to hit me face on and knock me off my feet.

A metaphorical, work related wave no doubt, not an actual wave like this one, but you get the picture.

{and I get the feeling it'll be a little worse than saying "lime" instead of "life", or writing "donut" instead of "doubt"...}

You knew what I was like when you met me

You knew what I was like when you met me,
because I never hid who I was.
I have never really known who you are,
because I can't see below the surface as well as you,
because I never thought to think you would lie.
You gave people-pleaser answers,
you said everything a girl would want you to say.
You made me fall in love with you
but now I think it was all a game.

At six months, you didn't break my heart.
You shattered it.
And that hurt,
even though we "got back together",
that hurt lasted six months.
At least.

Since then you have been remaking me
changing me into who you want me to be.
Or trying to at least.
And if I look at the past with unbiased eyes,
you were doing it long before then.
The only difference is,
before you were doing it with your pretty people-pleasing lies,
and now you do it with hard cold eyes
and one hand holding tight to the leash my love has made around my neck.

You are the only person whose opinion matters,
you are the only person who I care if you think I look good or not.
Well I'm trying to change that
I tell myself,
I tell others,
that my opinion about my body is the only one that matters.
But when I say that I'm lying.

I've done things I said I would never do,
I thought I never could do,
all to please you.
Because no matter how much you've changed,
I always remember you as you were.

Always remember when you said you loved me.

Always wish that things hadn't changed.

Preparation

So this post was brought on by a specific situation, but it is a problem in general for me.

I like to be prepared: I like to know "when" and "where". I do not think that this is an Aspie issue, but something that most people will recognise.

I also like to know "why", "for how long", "how" and many other things. This bit seems to be just me, although I could be wrong.

Specific situation that made me think up this blog post?

Work related - of course. I get the feeling that all the things that are new or anxiety inducing - and therefore blog-worthy - in the near future, well the majority of them are going to be work related.

In two days, the people in my training group are going to start going on the phones. We aren't going to be fully "Live" (work's jargon for being on the phone and fully trained, able to answer any type of call, and whenever I think the word, I think it with a capital 'L') so I have decided to call what we are when we're on the phones during training "Zombie Live".

Why is going Zombie Live on the phones an issue for me? Because I don't feel prepared.

There is no specific script - just general stuff that we either have to say or can say, stuff we're not allowed to say and stuff we shouldn't say. And most of the things in those categories are generalities not specifics.

I do like me some specifics.

We are learning the stuff necessary to be allowed to answer peoples calls. Like code of conduct, privacy laws, and the basics of the computer system we'll be in. And when I say basics, I mean bare-bones basics. That doesn't bother me too much.I mean, what I know isn't the problem.

What I don't know is.

I always struggle with that interview question: "Can you tell us about a time where you have failed/made a mistake, and what you did to make sure it never happened again?"

And I struggle because I avoid doing things until I know without a doubt that I can do them - in a situation where I feel like I can be judged on my ability.

I mean, if a simple conversation can be both misunderstood and reported back to our teacher so that I get told off for being prejudiced {I will have to get into that more in depth in another post because I really should be getting to sleep soon} then we really are being judged on everything and that is just so much pressure!

Tell us exactly how to do what it is that you want us to do! I just can't help stressing about it!!!

The New Job Dramas

Wow, it has been ages since I posted.

I guess the first thing I should cover is: My previous job (desk job with no customer interaction) has ended, I had a lovely week long stint of unemployment dog sitting for my grandparents and now I have a new job (currently in training but eventually phone/customer service job dealing constantly with customers eight hours a day).

There are a couple of things I need to cover in my post, and they're in no specific order of importance, so I guess I'll just get stuck into it.

Friends/Groups
So, on day one (today being the last day of week one) we sort of fell into a couple of groups - by the way, I'm in a training group so all of us are new all at once, nobody knew anyone else beforehand. At that stage it was a blend of boys versus girls, and this side of the room versus that side of the room, the natural dividing lines for peer groupings in a situation like this (stated not as fact, but my opinion or general observation)

At that stage, I felt like I was at the same stage as everyone else. Mingling (and yes I am an attempted mingler even though I am Aspie - I'm one of the ones who wants to feel included but doesn't know how) and trying to find my place in the group. But still, part of a group.

By now, day five, some of the groups (one in particular) seem well defined. The one that I originally felt a part of, I now feel like an outlier - I'm there and they'll talk to me, but there's something slightly awkward between me and them. Even worse, the group I originally attached to seems to be two orbiting groups which often but not always intertwine - Sub-Group Alpha and Sub-Group Beta I'm going to call them (for the hell of it). I am more Sub-Group Alpha, say, and there are five of us. Two of them have a mutual friend and seem to have bonded over that, and the other two seem to have bonded just over the fact that they sit together - which isn't fair because I sit on the other side of them so why did they bond and I didn't?

But anyway, of my sub group I'm the odd one out, which just pushes me further to the side in the actual group, but the other groups are more firmly formed than ours to the point where they look at me like I'm a space alien if I try to sit with them rather than my group.

So I'm feeling more and more like an outsider.

And I don't know if it's real or imagined.

I Have Forgotten The Other Stuff I wanted To Talk About
Sorry for that. Got stuck on one rant and I'm not yet back into the swing of things as far as blogging goes.

More's the pity.

This is actually the first writing of any kind I've done in ages...

Well I'd better run :)

Emotional Crap.

It is so unbearably hard to pretend I’m fine when really I’m not. Insanely hard. Smile cracked and wavering, eyes stinging, blinking away tears that won’t quite come. My throat is like sandpaper, but it’s been like that for a while so I don’t think the two are related. Often I’ll stare into nothing for five, ten minutes, doing nothing but stare. In those times I’m not even conscious of thinking. Sometimes. And those are the best times. But then I’ll shake myself and blink and I’ll be back here, feeling this pain.

I realised the other day that I only seem to remember the bad things. And small things can devastate me. Like, it is insane how much tiny, tiny things can set me back. I actually tried to make myself disassociate {and yes, both ‘disassociate’ and ‘dissociate’ are valid spellings, even my spell check tells me that. One is the American spelling and the other is the right spelling J } the other night to make me forget something. I just didn’t want to have that sadness in my head or in my heart.

Is it bad that, now that I know I do it, I’m trying to use it to my advantage? Maybe, I will concede that. But I think I’m allowed. I remember EVERYTHING and I don’t want to have to. So if I have this tool in my arsenal, this magic wand to take away the bad, I will try and use it. At least I’m not getting oblivion drunk to get rid of the memories. At least I’m not hurting myself physically. That has to count for something, right?

I don’t know.

Anyway, this post is about emotions. Why do I feel them so strongly? Why does every tiny little thing hurt like it’s the end of the world? Maybe because it is. I wasn’t taught how to deal with my emotions when I was younger, maybe because nobody knew the extent to which I was different, mentally and emotionally. Maybe because I never started feeling things this strongly until I was 18 or 19 years old. That’s when I had my first anxiety attack, my first 3 month long bout of depression, my first love…

It’s true, all my emotions and the divide between positive emotions and negative ones grew exponentially stronger when I hit 18/19. I do not know why. There is a very black and white division between my emotions, and the physical memory thing sticks for emotions as well. Just as I cannot remember what my little finger looked like before I had this scar on it, and I cannot remember what I looked like 6 months ago, as far as I’m concerned I always looked like this and always will; when I am sad I cannot remember ever being happy and I cannot imagine ever feeling happy again.

I wish it was like that when I’m happy but honestly, I have no idea what it’s like when I’m happy.

When I am sad (like I am right now) I can still laugh, I can still be amused, I can still be excited or smile. But the underlying emotion is sadness and that bugger won’t go away. No matter how hard I try.

People have tried telling me things, all sorts of things “just pretend you’re happy and it will go away” “cheer up” “just forget about it” “let it go, it’s in the past”…

Ad infinitum.

Doesn’t work like that. And considering some of the people telling me this claim to have had anxiety or depression, you think they’d understand that.

Stupid brain.

Lessons - Patience

If there’s one thing that fishing (one of my avid hobbies) has taught me, it’s to be patient. Gardening as well. That whole “good things come in time” saying? Well it’s doubly true for either of those hobbies.

Not only do you have to be patient, but you also have to do the groundwork for a good result. You can’t stand by a patch of dirt and expect a plant to grow – you have to plant a seed and nurture it, water it, shelter it, make sure the soil is rich in minerals and stuff. You can’t just throw a hook in the water, empty, and expect a fish to jump on for a ride – you have to bait the hook, maybe add something sparkly or smelly to get the fishes attention, put burley into the water so they know there’s food around, park up in a place that has the right conditions for the species you’re targeting.

So many factors (those and then some) go into just the groundwork for those two things. Then there’s still the waiting. It’s all worth it, in the end, for the time you spend enjoying the results of your time and effort. With fishing, if you’re in the right mood, it’s worth it just for the experience – sitting out there on the sea, the excitement and anticipation…

Yeah… these are the random thoughts that come to mind.

I Think I'm Disassociating

I've been feeling funny since about four this afternoon (so 3 hours roughly).

I told The Aspie Bestie just now, how I feel, and her first suggestion was disassociation {yeah, I just linked to a Wiki page... how terrible of me!}.

Although how I feel right now (and it's something I've felt before on multiple occasions) is not what I associated with disassociation - Merm disassociates and I've been with her in in situations that she says she disassociates -  I read that, then gave myself a mini test, running through the "sample disassociative experiences scale".

Yes... yes... no.... sometimes... yes...

Okay not only am I likely disassociating right now but I do it more often than I realised!

{I suppose I should stress that I am only possibly disassociating... Self diagnosed disassociation?}

Time feels fuzzy and out of reach, like it's slipping by too fast. I could blink and it'll be midnight before I've remembered to eat. I'm going from not feeling temperature, to being cold with shivers, staying in one position for so long I go numb, my nose and face feel kind of tingly. There's other stuff too but the main thing is feeling like I'm having problems with reality; time and space.

I can't explain it.

If it is disassociation, I have an idea of why. A maybe reason.

See, I have this insane optimism when it comes to applying for jobs. I latch onto the idea of getting the job I'm applying for (although usually the optimism comes when I have the first interview, not right at the point of application), I fall in love with the job... And then, invariably, my hopes are dashed as I don't get the job. One particular job I applied for last year, I couldn't leave my bed for two days after the second interview out of nervous excitement, and then I got the call saying I hadn't got the job and I couldn't leave the bed for two days out of utter despondent depression.

Well, I applied for a job today, because my current contract is fast running out. It took me an hour to complete the forms, but I started at around 4pm. And just because of how ideal the timing of this job seems, and it's a semi-good fit, I've been feeling kind of excited, kind of positive about this job.

So I think maybe my mind has decided to play baby-sitter. Disassociate me, distance me from the excitement {it's not really working that well, the disassociating is giving it a weird added excitement} so that I can't be hurt.

I'm not sure, maybe I'm wrong.

All I know is my wrist looks weird, not-mine even though it's attached to my hand as I'm typing. My skin feels weird and my finders seem to be not a part of my body... And oh crap this is making me think of other things, other times where I at least partially disassociate and I'm starting to get worried... I can think of an excuse for this time but I have no idea about the others! I can't wait until next week, when I have what I can only call "auditions" with two different counsellors, so I can find one that's the right fit. I feel more and more like I need a counsellor...

Sometimes the random-est pictures, taken for the hell of it, find a way of having so much meaning... This picture sums up how I feel... Out at sea, parts of me barely a part of reality and just little bits of me so real...

Psychic Dreaming

I now feel quite confident in saying that last night I had a prophetic dream.

Basically, without saying anything that I’m unsure if I can say, in my dream last night I demanded that my team leader give me training in a specific area of work, because I needed to know it. This was – other than having the randomness of dreaming – part I’m sure because I have wanted to at least learn this specific area of work since I saw the different screen they have.

But anyway, just now our team leader announced to our group that, rather than doing the area of work we thought we would be moving on to after this one, we will be going to the area of work that I just dreamed about last night.

Can this be coincidence? Well, maybe. But I preferto believe I’m a little bit psychic. Yay me!

My Lists {And A Rant About Conversational Skills/Things}

Every day, at the start of or during the day, I write myself a To-Do list of things I want to get done after work. But before I write today’s To-Do list, I go through and cross out everything on yesterday’s To-Do list. A tick for everything I did do, a cross for everything I didn’t do.

More often than not, there are more crosses than ticks. And everything that’s crossed gets either carried on to the next day’s list, or (eventually) wiped off completely. And then, forgotten about until it becomes urgent.

That’s just the way my mind goes.

And it seems that today’s post is going to involve general ranting rather than just focusing on one topic {for now… we’ll see how this goes. Sometimes a general rant grows into something more deep that needs its own post}. That is, after all, the joy of being me. Things that need writing get written and one topic bleeds into the next until we’re taking over the world!!!

Yeah.

There’s a girl away today. Her desk (which is in the central ‘hub’ area of our section in the cube farm, where the main group of socialising people) is empty. I was tempted to ask if I could sit there today. Just to have a bit of human interaction.

I didn’t ask in the end though {not that one hour into the working day is too late to ask… or is it?}. I might like the socialising, actually having people to talk to, or I might hate it. Too many people talking when I’m trying to work. Or the other problem, the usual problem. They’d ignore me, or talk over me, or invalidate me.

That always happens.

I don’t know what it is about me but… People are always talking over top of me (I hate that), interrupting me (I hate that too), just acting like I never said anything (yup, hate that too) or  making my words wrong so it sounds like I’m being a bitch or insensitive or… There are so many aspects of verbal communication that I hate. Mostly because of the way I’m treated when I talk.

I had a great – granted, not earth-shattering, but viable at the very least – idea at work that would have saved time and helped increase initial accuracy thus decreasing the time spent doing what my team is doing right now. However it took me too long to iron out the details in my mind, so I presented it a day too late and didn’t verbalise myself well enough, and I possibly didn’t tell the right person. So it was shot down as being a waste of time before it could even get past lower management.

 {I can, however, still use this as an example in future job interviews, I think, if I give it the right spin. After all, it is still an example of “When did you see a way that things could be changed at work, did you tell anyone and what was the reaction?” which is a fairly commonly asked interview question. This is something (preparing myself for the necessity of future job interviews, and refining myself) that I need to seriously think about, as my contract nears its end. And with this being my first office role, it’s doubly important… I might have to add “prepare job interview answers” to my To-Do list this week.}

Yeah, I got distracted. Majorly distracted. But that’s my flow. From why I hate talking to people, to prepping for a job interview in two easy paragraphs.

Now back to why I hate talking to people:

Well, there are really many reasons. The aforementioned are the main ones though. People misunderstand my intentions. I speak to fast or too quietly and people don’t understand what I’m saying. I use the wrong words and again I get misunderstood.

I learnt early on that to get my words heard I needed to speak louder, but my fear of not being heard (coupled with my trouble regulating the volume of my words) means that I often end up shouting. I get accused of trying to intimidate people, or ‘stand over’ them. I get told that I’m not listening to what people say which is wrong, I’m just trying to also get my words heard. When I get frustrated, I swear, which also isn’t looked favourably upon, but if I consciously try not to swear then I can’t get any words out, I stammer more, and I eventually end up crying.

Since getting this job (and maybe it’s just coincidental that this coincided with me getting my official diagnosis) I have been noticing my problems with speech more and more. At times, rather than say something that I know I’m going to have to repeat, I write down the main points and just hand that over to my team leader. It is, after all, all about knowing your weak points and having ways to overcome them… Actually I don’t know if that’s the best idea or not {is doing things like that just invalidating me as a person in the end? Stressing me out by making me try to function on an NT level when I’m not NT? Or is it a good thing, finding alternate ways of communicating when my way is inefficient? I really do not know…}

Conversational timing is a bit of an issue for me. Not just knowing when to speak, but the fact that I am polite and I will let people finish what they’re saying before I take my turn (because I had it, not literally, hammered into me at a young age that it’s incredibly rude to interrupt people). This is a problem mostly because by the time they’ve finished blathering on about whatever annoying thing they’re saying, they’ve either taken our conversation away from the direction where my statement would be appropriate, made it so my opinion wouldn’t contribute anything (thus invalidating my statement), or I’ve clear forgotten what it was I wanted to say.

The forgetting happens more and more frequently. At the moment, I’m thinking about blaming this on the build-up of pressure caused by trying to function on an NT level socially. Either that or just an increased level of social interaction which means that there’s an increased incidence but statistically it would remain the same (one forgetting in ten conversations is ten forgettings in a hundred conversations and a hundred in one thousand conversations, but they all have the same incidence of occurring).

{And Wow! I keep remembering something that’s totally relevant to this train of thought, but by the time I’ve finished what I’m writing, even if it’s only seven words, I forget what it was that I wanted to add, only remembering the fact that it’s something I’ve thought about adding before and forgotten. I think that is a hint that this blog post at the very least, has reached its finishing point.}

About Things Ya Don't Like Doing

At work, as with life, there are always things that I like doing, things I don’t like doing, things I don’t mind, and things I’d do anything to get out of.

Unfortunately, at work (and generally with life as well) all of these things need doing. Maybe they don’t need doing now. Maybe I can avoid doing them – for now. But in the end, to get through to the next stage (at work or in life, I guess), they all need doing.

~*~Apparently, not wanting to do a task at work (that I am, none the less, doing) has made me feel very philosophical. ~*~

In life, at the moment, the tasks I don’t want to do are:

Ø  The dishes

Ø  The tidying in general

Those are things that I really, really do not want to do.  My perfectionist nature makes me think I should want to do them, but my perfectionish nature also says “Oh my god, what is the point? It will just get messy again! You and The Crazy Flatmate are terrible at keeping anything neat!” I don’t like the idea that I will put all that effort in, only to have one or the both of us ruin things. Also, as I said in my previous blog post today, when I get home from work, I am tired and irritable and don’t want to do anything.

These things, however, are not things that will really stop me from growing as a person or moving on to the next stage in my life. Unless you count the whole “growing up/being mature/if I can’t look after a flat, how can I be expected to look after a house I own?” aspect of things.

{To be honest, I started this post at least two weeks ago and, while I want to keep it, i have no idea where I was going with it! So I'm just going to post it, unfinished...}

My Current Novel Problem

{First of all, yes I know that this is fast turning into my authors notes. This blog is a magical creature, everything I need it to be, when I need it. It just so happens that, at the moment, my novel-to-be is a mini-obsession, thinking about it and thinking about it but never actually putting pen to paper other than that attempted intro.}

At the moment my big dilemma is all about indecision. I just cannot decide how separate I am going to make this story. I mean, I don’t know how different I want to make Canter’s story (the aspergirl/vampire romance) from Emjay’s story (the original obsession, re-written more than 80 times, vampire romance which I now realise looking back was always an aspergrl/vampire romance).

In the world of Emjay’s story, and I know this from a long time writing this story, the simple act of changing the names changes almost everything. Only Emjay is Emjay. And I truly do not know how much of the story I actually want to change.

Mostly because I do not know how to do so much of what I want to do while changing the story, I do not know how to do some of what I want to do if I leave too much the same, and I do not know where the story is going other than it’s paranormal romance with two possible romantic interests. How do people meet? And more importantly, how can I have her meeting the two romantic leads separately, but they know each other, aren’t romantically involved (one of them is male and the other female and I don’t want it to be or seem like a couple seeking a unicorn because that’s so not what it is) and don’t seem to have an issue with each other romancing the same person?

I have thought up a way but I don’t know how well it will work. I can’t say too much because I haven’t started writing it yet so it’s kind of ambiguous in my own mind and…  

Well I guess that’s a significant amount of ranting about my story. No doubt this week will be a second (or is it third) week of having “start writing story” on my to-do list every day, never done. Who knows, I may finally be able to jump in the deep end!

Wish me luck

~*~ Note from after writing this: I have just been informed that this month is Camp Nano which means it's a smaller sub-variant of National Novel Writing Month. This, considering today is the first of the month, could be a bit of a kick starter for me. Setting goals for word count, giving me the kick in the pants I need... I'll look into it when I get home.

Novel Intro - Rough Copy

We walk among you, but you barely notice us. We look like you; if we want to, we can sound and act like you do. As far as you’re concerned, we don’t exist.

Except we do. And no matter what games of pretend we play, we’re not like you.

We barely even live in the same world as you do. Not the way you see it, anyway.

We’re all different, just so you know. I’m not going to generalise and say we all have the same superpowers, or even that we all have superpowers.  Each of us lives in our own world, with our own limitations, our own greatnesses. And two worlds can be similar, but we really are the unique snowflakes that you aren’t.

No, that’s cruel. You guys are individuals too, but… the same. You all live in the same world, this world that we can see and interact with but aren’t really a part of. I shouldn’t generalise you anymore than I should generalise us. After all, I’ve only pretended to be one of you, thought I was one of you. I never actually was one of you.

Some of us have superior hearing, eyesight, sense of smell – all to the point of distraction because how can you focus on one conversation in a room where you can hear fifty, or look at one person when you can see the air currents swirling around them? Some of us have amazing memories – but just because you can store all that data doesn’t mean you can find the file it’s hidden in. For each of our strengths we have a weakness or three. And for each of us it’s a different mix.

You accuse us – when you even recognise us at all – of being robotic, inhuman. But that is far from the truth. We feel things so intensely that we try not to feel them at all – because this is your world and not really ours, we weren’t taught how to cope with emotions in a way that we understand.

We’re not so inhuman, we’re just different…

We’re autistic.

Sensitive Scents Of Smell - Allergies

Other than having a sensitive nose, I am also allergic to a certain type of fragrance.  It is merely one of up to {or over} a hundred components that make up the ingredient “fragrance” listed on products. But I am violently allergic to it. Headaches and nausea upon smelling fragranced products including this one ingredient at any more than a tiny dilution, discoid eczema upon contact. I can’t use toilet paper that states it has been fragranced because I learned the hard way; it includes the component I am allergic to. All of them. Basically, if fragrance or perfume is in the top three ingredients, and the company can’t provide me with a list of ingredients in their “fragrance” (and none of them will, as it is a secret) then I have to avoid the product.

Hoppy loves this, I can never complain about him being smelly because if he uses products it makes me sick. Alternatively, he loves this because if he doesn’t want me bugging him, all he has to do is spray some on {sob}.

Why am I bringing this up? I work in a place with 100+ other people. In close proximity (we get probably a metre and a half to ourselves, but scents don’t stay restricted to each person’s personal space). And someone nearby is wearing a disgusting amount of something that I can tell within five seconds that I am allergic to. I can’t open the window, because everyone freaks out about the cold (despite the fact that I and a small minority of women whom I assume are going through menopause are constantly too hot).

So what can I do? There’s no point in complaining, what’s done can’t be undone {especially considering it is just a smell}. Without windows to open we can’t air the place out and make it habitable for me. Do I just sit here in silence and suffer? {Well, silence apart from my blog rants.}

Guess so. Be like the pebble and all that. I suppose I could go and sit in the hallway for a while, but the fragrance would still be lingering when I got back.

I take anti-histamines for my hayfever {never got that before moving to Wellington, and now I’m practically allergic to animal hair, with year round hayfever} but that does nothing for the fragrance allergy. Not to mention I currently have to triple up on hayfever medication for it to do anything. I try going for patches without using any, just to reduce my chance of getting addicted, getting bleeding noses, and to increase my chance of it working better when I do take it.

Well, I’d better stop ranting and figure out something I can do about it. No ideas at current that would be of any help. {Sigh}

Driving and Me

I just read The Aspie Bestie's blog post here (fingers crossed the link worked, I've never done one before!) and I was tempted to write a short post about my own experiences with driving. Considering I know that it can be (one of the) topics of great discussion where I fall on the "different" side of the stick - and boy does it feel strange to still feel different and weird even while I'm finding people like me and feeling like I almost belong.

Yes, I can drive.

I got my learners at 18 (later than most people I knew) at my grandmother's urging. One driving lesson with gran who immediately said "never again!"

Then that was it for two years. Then, three lessons with an Asian driving instructor (and I'll admit to succumbing to racial stereotype and being a little afraid to learning to drive from an Asian. At the end of the third lesson, he announced (with a glint of greed in his eyes) "She will need at least thirty more lessons to be good enough to pass the restricted test."

So that was it for two years. Every now and then Hoppy would give me a "lesson" in his car and I would struggle away, freaking out if there was anyone behind me or in front of me and going 60 on the open road (speed limit is 100), and afterwards he would tell me off for being useless and I would vow never to try again.

At one point, the "all the things at once" issue nearly had me driving into a lamp post. After all: indicate, turn wheel, clutch, break, gear change, accelerate, look, mirror check... All those things were too much to do at once. I. Was. Terrified.

Eventually I gave up on being scared. I had to jump in the deep end. I booked lessons with an instructor who had automatic cars. On the second lesson, he started talking to me, having a conversation while I continually froze up. He started talking, of all things, about religion. He was SDA - which in my opinion is another crazy cult, but I am not a religious person and they all amuse me to some degree - and we just talked. And after a while I realised I had driven through the hour, we were back at home, and I hadn't panicked.

I think I had six lessons with him. Then that was it for 6 months. No-one I know has an automatic car so I couldn't practice.

Then I went "screw it." Booked my driving test, rented an automatic car, and passed with flying colours. Only issue was I hesitated too long at roundabouts.

Shortly after that, I brought myself a car. And... once I had my own car, I had no issues with driving.

I mean, I learned the hard way that I can't play music loudly and stay on my side of the road. It took me 3 years to be able to do that. A friend had to help me "learn" how to drive after dark, or in the rain. Initially I was too scared to do that. And I still refuse to drive in what I call "Traffic" (in other words, rush hour traffic or anything similar). I don't like cars in front of me, or behind me, but I got over the thought of "I can't go faster than 60, ScreamingMetalDeathTrap!"

I zone out and get to places without remembering passing certain "markers" along the way. I have to hold the steering wheel with my left hand or I can't control the wheel. I tap and fiddle and stim when I'm driving.

That's my story.

Also, I'm convinced that other things would work the same way as driving. Once I have my own house, I'll be able to look after it better. I hope. {i really really want to own my own home... one day...}

Trying To Start Novelling

I have a couple of ideas on how I’m going to start my Aspergian/vampire romance story, and because the two starters are at odds and I don’t think I can use both – but I like both equally {okay, I like one a little more but that’s only because I don’t know if the other one would be found offensive by people with aspergers or if they’d find it cool like I do} – I think that may be why I have held off on starting writing.

 {I am just going to do a basic sum up of the idea behind each start, I don’t want to give away too much or ruin the start of a story that I may eventually end up posting online for people to read… or more J (hopes and dreams of being published, as always) but hopefully this will give all y’all enough of an idea that you can say yay or nay to the ideas.}

Start One:

 The main character is in a job interview.  This chapter and this chapter alone will be formatted different, first person perspective (as will the rest of the story) but almost like a script. What the interviewer asks, and what the main character responds with in her head – what she says reveals her quirks – and what she actually responds with out loud. As well as this, there will be her fidgeting, nervous stimming, and other things, written in. But this chapter will almost (even though it is set in the present) be done as a “looking back” type thing.
Oh… it’s hard to describe and basically I can’t do it justice without writing it out! But that is the basic‑est of basic overviews of start one.

Start Two:

This is going to be a… um… I can’t think of the word. Sort of like an “unexpected twist” start, based off the start to some vampire novels I read when I was younger (The Night World, by L.J Smith, for example, has a similar start or premise but without my twist).
“They live among us, they look just like us, they could be us. But they’re not.  Each of them is different in their own way, unique. Each of them lives in a different world from us. Some of them are really cats {hey, I like the cat thing… although that line probably won’t stay}…”
Basically, a build-up, leading the reader to believe I’m talking about vampires. But, surprise twist: I’m talking about Aspergians.

Well folks, those are my ideas. Again, they are in their most basic form. Can people please let me know any opinions, do they like one idea better than the other, etc? Pretty pretty please?

Sleep and Overtiredness

I slept last night. Like, I went to sleep at 8:30 and slept through the entire night. That might not sound like a big thing, but it is. Normally I can’t get to sleep until 11, midnight, 1am… which isn’t good considering I have to be up at 5:10am at the latest in order to get myself ready for work.

I must have really needed the sleep. I get like that. I stay up late and later and later every night, then I get overtired which makes me more likely to have a massive and at least semi-public meltdown – and we are talking yell at Hoppy for breathing too aggressively, freak out because I can’t find that pen I wanted to use more than the one I’m holding, get highly confused because I’m doing one thing and I’ve been asked to do another and everybody knows you can’t do two things at once and I can’t possibly figure out that I could complete task one before dealing with task two {and on that particular occasion, I learnt that it’s better to try and reign in the anger of confusion, because I severed the tendon in my little finger by accident}.

Those examples are all of the extreme variety. As in, I’m not only deprived of sleep but I’ve also been doing things that are deceptively physical. Diving, for example, has never felt like it is hard physical work to me, but it is – the bruises and exhaustion that kick in two days later are signs of that. But there are other things too, that I don’t class as “hard work” or “hard exercise” or whatever, because I don’t see them that way – either because they’re fun or I’m too distracted while doing them to notice I’m getting a work out.

But anyway – when I sleep like I did last night I have to assume it is because I am reaching my limit. Because I honestly do not know my own limits, my own breaking points. I will go and go (I learned to try and set limits when I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia at 22, because I now knew that I wasn’t weak, that I actually had something causing the pain and that maybe it was a good time to stop, but generally I push myself anyway) until I literally can’t go anymore, and then I will try and take two or three more steps before I give up. Because I do not want to be weak.

A lot of me is like that. I don’t want to see myself (let alone have other people see me) as weak, either physically or emotionally. I act bat-sugar crazy (thank you to The Strawberry Kiwi – my first friend in primary school who now lives in America, whom I do not believe I have yet introduced {also my one follower. Yay, follower!} – for that delicious phrase) kind of on purpose and kind of because I reached a certain age and decided that if people couldn’t accept me for my eccentricities then why should they have the awesomeness that is me in their lives? So I’m guessing that I don’t care if people see me as “weak” mentally.

This is why I push myself beyond the point that I think “maybe that’s enough”. And this is why for something like seven years I didn’t cry in public. This is why I lie about some things, even though people with Aspergers supposedly don’t lie – although 99.99% of the time I get caught out in my lies anyway, so I really should give up on the lying.

Let’s just put it this way: I do a lot of things that I probably shouldn’t do, just so I can “keep up” with the NT crowd. And I can’t stop myself from being like this, not easily anyway, because I have had 29 years (28 years and 51 weeks?) of thinking that I was NT too, of thinking “okay, I may be different, but I’m still one of them so I need to keep up”, of thinking… well anything and everything along those lines.

I have only had one month of knowing, knowing 100 percent without a doubt, that I am not one of them. Only six months before that of thinking “maybe I am… but I’m probably just being a hypochondriac.” You know, that’s the time where you start looking at things, but not terribly seriously, you start thinking about ways you could change things or ways you can learn to accept yourself, but not seriously enough at all.

And in this one month of actual knowing, what have I done? Re-read the first two chapters of Aspergirls by Rudy Simone, and written 27 blog posts (two of which are incomplete and in draft form, and that’s not counting this one). I’ve “come out” as aspergian to exactly: one person at work, my mum and grandmother, my current best friend, best friend in primary school and best friend from uni (not best friend from high school or best friend from intermediate/some of primary and high school, because I’m not in touch with those two and one of them is completely invisible as far as online presence goes, so no-one I know from those days knows how to get in touch with her!), my flatmate (and she’s probably “outed” me to her boyfriend/I haven’t kept it a secret around him), and a girl from school last year who I thought was possibly aspergian too.

What I should have been doing: making plans and ways for me to accept my limits. This one is an important one. I need to not only accept, but learn my limits, so I know “this is five steps before my breaking point, I should stop here because I do not want to break.” I need to read up more on this sort of thing, because reading is the way I learn things.

 Blogging is good for me, I’ve been able to get all these thoughts out there and make them tangible, making them more real and being able to make sense of the things that I am thinking. Take this blog post for example. When it started out, I was just writing about how I’d gone to sleep early and how that must have been a sign that I was getting overtired. But the organic flow that my mind takes – rambling and wandering, and fully irritating or confusing in my verbal communication – has lead me down this path to this eventual brilliant revelation. So writing down my thoughts is good.

Um… yeah, that’s all I can think of. Learning more about the actual me, so I know when to say when, and how to stop myself from doing things I really shouldn’t be doing, and keep on blogging. Any ideas or suggestions on good places to start looking? J

Weekend Recap:

Tidying – Done. Involuntary conscription for everyone in the house at the time (The Crazy Flatmate and her boyfriend) into my army meant that the house was at least superficially tidy and smelling clean in under an hour. There is still stuff I need to do, but that just goes back on this weeks’ To-Do list.

Not Complaining – Not so successful. I got drunk (and I do mean drunk) on Saturday night because I haven’t had a drink for 5 weeks, and while I didn’t quite complain, I did do other things similarly annoying so I’m calling it a fail.

Um. I think that was all my “must do’s” for the weekend. I haven’t started the Aspie/Vampire romance story yet, but I have several ideas for it.

Idea for next weekend: Stick to my “3 -4 standard drinks maximum” rule from my diet. Drinking a quarter of a bottle of vodka, a quarter of a bottle of whiskey, and chocolate Canterbury cream is neither good for the diet nor my sanity. Yesterday I felt like I was dying! {I’m never one to delude myself by saying “never again” because I know I’ll drink again, I just have to have better control on my moderation!}

I don’t, however, like the fact that the week I identify something which I would like to change about myself, I do possibly worse.

Typical Me

Great – Hoppy’s coming down on my first day of B*tch week L And this is the time I’ve chosen to not complain? No Fair!

Not to mention it's mere hours in, barely started, and it hurts so so much.

Oh well, at least I'm going to have to most painful days at home over the weekend rather than at work... If I last til the end of today!

Panic And Calm

Unusual fact: while I am a panicker by nature, and I worry and panic about little insignificant things; when it actually comes to crunch time, time seems to move at a slower speed for me. I have forever to think it through in my head; I am calm and relatively collected, I don’t panic or even need to panic.

I am good in a crisis, and it’s probably because I’ve already spent all that time thinking about the worst things that could happen. I’m not bragging, just stating a rather random fact.

It’s the stupid things, the not even real things, which make all of my blood drop to my feet and the world feel like it’s going to end. I had a dream the other week where the world kind of had ended, and I was one of the ones trying to get people to go back to their normal lives and stop rioting – in the morning I didn’t want to leave my bedroom because I couldn’t prove that what had happened in my dream hadn’t actually happened until the sun had risen. But only because it was too much responsibility, trying to make society function after its collapse.

Don’t know why I felt like sharing that, just know that I did.

Complaining About Complaining....

It is entirely not nice to sit and listen to people who complain non-stop. I know there’s irony in complaining about people who complain, but I need to say it. People who loudly complain about irrelevant things and things that can’t be changed… Irritating. {I’m actually complaining about two people in particular, and if you’re reading this blog (and I know you personally) you can be safe in the fact that it is not you!}

Trying to get attention by complaining is not attractive and it is actually quite repellent. Complaining in ways that make it obvious that you are ignorant, oblivious, or just plain rude, racist and sexist is something that will make you unpopular. People will not like you; you will get a reputation as a complainer. Don’t go on and on about things, and don’t complain when something doesn’t work the way that you thought it would work: if it doesn’t work the way that you thought it would work then you were wrong, the system isn’t wrong. And once you’ve made your point, Let It Go!!!

Why am I stressing this? Why am I sticking to this point when I literally just said you shouldn’t?

Because. Because I am recognising that I am guilty of doing this. I am not too proud to admit and own up to this. Sometimes I can’t help it. It seems that when I am around Hoppy I always have something to complain about.

But being around these people constantly has really opened my eyes. Yes, I knew Hoppy was annoyed by my complaining (and a lot of the time my attitude has been ‘if there’s a problem, he needs to know how I feel’, which I still think is quite true) but I didn’t realise how truly downright infuriating, nauseating it actually is.

I need to stop. I need to keep my complainy thoughts inside my own head. I do not want to be as repugnant to Hoppy as these people are to me L

Although I can see the not-complaining thing not working, I have to try it. I’ll probably end up with prolific blog rants because of it, but I need somewhere to vent.

*Be like the pebble in the stream; let the water flow around you. If it changes you, if it moves you, this is all a part of your journey. It was meant to be and eventually it will take you to the sea.*

~Hey, I am part mermaid after all; I couldn’t resist adding the sea to my Zen-ism {and yes, it is a slightly altered version of a line from a book. That is why I have called it a ‘Zen-ism’, my attempt at creating something meaningful, a way to try and get my mind to adjust and stop complaining damnit! I have no idea if it’s real or based on a real quote; it’s just how poetic my mind is feeling this morning.}

What does it mean? Like I said, it’s a Zen-ism. Its meaning is pretty obvious to me, but I’d better explain it just in case (no I don’t think my followers and readers are stupid, over-explaining things is one of the ways I cement them into my mind – and I do need to thoroughly cement things in my mind!). In fact, now that I look back on it – some 20 minutes after I thought it up and wrote it – I don’t even know if my pretty little Zen-ism fully applies to the situation… let’s see if I can make it work:

Um… yeah I think I was going for a “like water under the bridge” type thing. Don’t worry about it, don’t let it bother you or complain about it, it’s in the past already (everything that has happened is in the past, true fact) and you can’t change it. If an event, an action, anything, affects you in any way, it is affecting you in the ways that it was supposed to. Accept the changes, accept what has happened because it’s too late to stop it from happening now. If it’s affecting you {if I’m using the wrong affect/effect, I apologise, I’ve been agonising over it the entire time I’ve been writing this paragraph} in a negative way, or in a way that you don’t want to be effected, and this is an on-going thing (ie, something that is still affecting you), then do something about it. Don’t complain – unless complaining is going to help, but it probably won’t – do something positive to change the course of events if you can.

Umm… I guess that’s the sentiment I was going for. Complaining won’t help. If I need to vent, I have a specific tag in my blog to vent with, haha. I have to just try and carry this awesome Zen-ism with me in my mind and hold it steady in my heart.

~*~ I’ve gone quite poetic and deep this morning, I think this must have touched me more profoundly than I realised – but I suppose that every time a person realises, truly  realises, that an action they’ve been doing unthinkingly is this abhorrent, it will have a profound effect on them. And hopefully a lasting one. I want to change, I don’t want to be annoying, I want to be… well not “a joy to be around” which was the first thought that popped into my mind, but I want to be someone that at the very least Hoppy enjoys being around.

By the way, not wanting to change so that Hoppy/”a boy” will like me. Wanting to change because I want to be a better person.

·         Am I in pain? Maybe. Does everyone need to know that? No.

·         Is this confusing me? Possibly. Do I need to tell people? Well, yes I do if it’s something I need to understand, so this one was a bad example.

·         Am I irritated? Most likely. Who gives a damn? Not even me, so I should shut up!

Get the picture? I think I’m starting to.

I’ll trial the “be like a pebble” thing this weekend, when Hoppy’s down for the first time in five weeks. I’ll try to just shut up and not complain… I’ll let you know how it goes J

The Tidying Dilemma

Today I’m going to write all about cleaning and tidying – mostly because I have been needing to do that all week {or for the past four weeks} and I have been putting it off and putting it off, claiming tiredness. However, if I blog about it (no matter how boring it may be to you guys) then I sort of feel that I’m accountable – not terribly much, considering I only have one actual follower and however many informal readers, but accountable all the same.

This is something that I like to do – announce plans in my blogs so that I feel I’ve told someone, because if people out there know what I intend on doing, I feel that I have to do it. And it’s only my fault if I don’t. I can’t blame anyone, I can’t procrastinate because I don’t have a legitimate reason.

The house needs to be looking relatively tidy because Hoppy is coming down for the first time in over a month, and some of the mess that needs tidying is his mess from the last time he was here L Yes I could go on the theory that it’s his mess so why should I tidy it, but his argument will be the usual one: I had so much time, why didn’t I tidy it, blah blah. Oh I cannot wait until he gets his own house and moves out of his grandparents’ house, where his nan does all the tidying. Let’s see how “spotless” he can keep a house when he’s in charge of more than one {only fairly tidy, might I add, and I doubt he vacuums it himself} room and washing the dishes once a day at the most!

He might work full time {but I do too, for now – just because I have a job that starts and finishes earlier in the day or work less hours or am less active doesn’t mean I’m any less tired mentally or physically by the end of my work day!} but A) he’s used to it, he’s had a full time job forever and this is my first “proper” full time job; B) he’s physically healthy whereas I have fibromyalgia which means I’m sore most of the time; and C) Aspergers. I have it and he doesn’t. Hoppy will never understand – or want to try to understand – the mental fatigue that comes just from being in a room full of people all day, and that’s not even the hard part!

I’m not even going to let this get turned into a rant about how much effort it takes to just function from day-to-day, no matter how much I’d like to now that I’ve gotten onto this train of thought. So I’m going to shut up now and go back to tidying.

Today’s Mission:

My aim is to get the following completed before I go to bed tonight:

-          Tidy the games area. This involves getting the Xbox set back up and it all back into order like a gaming station, fully ready to play. Also maybe poking the vacuum round that corner of the room. Sorting out the clothes that are there (clean/dirty), maybe tidying up the shelves around the area, dusting.

-          Tidy the drinks area. This involves going through boxes and finding out what’s empty and what’s not. Re-organising things so that they don’t take up too much space. Sorting through the two boxes from my childhood home and finding places to put them so they’re not blocking a door. And making everything look all neat and tidy and not like I’m an alcoholic. Last time I did it artistically, arranging a green blanket over top and organising marine-life soft toys up there J

-          Look into the Spare Oom. I say ‘look into’ rather than ‘tidy’ because it is a massive job – Spare Oom is pretty much the storage cupboard, there are things packed away in there that have been in bags since we moved to our last flat, and we’ve lived in this one for 4 years almost! Things that need to be done in there are:

o   Move things around so it looks tidier

o   Make sure the piles of things are structurally sound and won’t collapse when the cat decides to nose through

o   Make room for the fishing/diving gear that’s still in Hoppy’s truck from my birthday trip and he will make me unpack on my own “because he’s not allowed to lift things from breaking his foot” {I think he is allowed to lift things by now, but taking advantage of the fact that I don’t want him to be hurt worse or damaged}

o   Make sure the window in there is open to allow the house to air

Along with all that, I have to make sure I’m leaving the front door open as much as possible and airing the house out – even though it’s both cold and wet at the moment – because the moisture in the air from trying to dry flannelette sheets inside is causing me respiratory problems, and my issues with asthma are nothing compared to Hoppy’s. I fear the house may kill him.

Okay, I think I’ve covered everything that I want to do today. There is more (much, much more) but that’s tomorrow’s job. Or up to The Crazy Flatmate.

Wish me luck!

Eye Contact

I can make eye contact. Just thought I’d bring that up. I can make eye contact and it isn’t “painful”.

I’ve been – for the purpose of the story I’m going to write (haven’t started yet but will be starting shortly) – googling “why won’t people with Aspergers make eye contact?” because while I can make eye contact, I do know that there is some sort of conflict with it. I’ve watched, fascinated, as people make their gaze slide away from making eye contact – and I do mean ‘slide’.

But the search results I pulled up irritated me more than anything else. I know, my fault for google searching, but how else am I supposed to find things out?

One woman mentioned that people don’t think she’s Aspergers simply because she can make eye contact, and another got asked “can you do it when you’re drunk? People with Aspergers still have Aspergers when they’re drunk.”

I can make eye contact, but I also don’t sometimes. With my old counsellor (who was useless) I would stare off into a corner of the room while talking. But I have less issue with making eye contact than there are just some people I don’t want to have to look at – not an aesthetic thing more of a psychic sense that I don’t want to or need to look at them. In those cases I have issues forcing myself to make contact and “faking it”. And in emotional issues I may have problems making eye contact.

It still doesn’t hurt, or feel like my soul is being stolen. Sometimes I feel like I can’t hear a person if they’re at the very least facing me, and sometimes I feel upset if people don’t look me in the eye or face.

And yes, I still have Aspergers when I’m drunk. But I’m also different, in different ways.

Emotional Ouchies

I suppose I should put a trigger warning in here. I'm not sure how those work but this may at the least allude to self-harm.

I don't like pain when it's on the inside. When it' s my feelings that are tearing me up . When I was little I used to fix that right up. Over ride strong emotional pain with physical pain.

I guess I just have trouble keeping my emotions inside. Happy and I want to flap. Sad and I want to see myself bleed. Just a little bit, just until the pain is on the outside.

My emotions are just... too strong for my body, my mind to handle. Black and white, no shades of grey, one small comment... one stupid confusing comment... can take my happy away and leave me wishing I was strong enough to cut myself.

Or wishing that I wasn't so strong that I can stop myself from cutting. Because maybe if I let go and...

I know that hurting myself isn't the answer. Intellectually at least, I know that.

But I wish it was, because my emotions hurt so much more

My Novel Idea

As you can all no doubt tell by now {I hope!} I am a writer. I love writing; I would do it all the time if I could. The only things holding me back are time {nasty little thing called a job seems to get in the way, somehow, and then I just want to sleep or at the very least, not look at a computer screen}, medium {seems like a strange thing to be holding me back, but it is a valid one: for some reason I just can NOT write my novel on the computer, it has neither flow, continuity, nor attraction when I do it that way} and creativity {can’t write like a lunatic if I don’t have something to write about!}.

And really, that means that all the things that are holding me back are in my head:

·         I’m tired when I get home from work, sure, but I don’t (can’t) go to sleep as soon as I get home, or I’d be waking up around midnight wanting to do things.

·         I can’t write my novel on the computer, but I seem to do just fine writing my blog on the computer – although I don’t really need much continuity, and I generally lose interest within a certain amount of time… But still…

·         If I just write and write and write, something will click. Creativity doesn’t have to come from the start – I’m hoping – it can happen when I least expect it. {either that or I’m so full of natural creativity that no matter what I write, the creativity will come! Hope, hope!}

Or I could say, cruelly, what creativity is needed when I’m doing the 35176^th re-write of a novel {actual re-write number may vary} of a novel I’ve been re-writing since 2002?

The answer to that is: more and more, and less and less. Simple, but complicated. {Sigh}

The characters have become more real to me, needing less and less creativity to think up their actions and motivations, less and less time spent thinking up how to describe them because I know so well what they look like.

More time, however, has to be spent on something that has been grossly neglected from the start: a plot. My most recent version was extremely slow moving, slight bad-ness {can’t think of the right word, maybe it’s too early to be writing} with continuity and small details… it kind of ended up just being a story about a girl who got drunk with a bunch of vampires every night.

Yeah… I don’t see that being on the top 100 list, let alone anyone’s top ten.

Although, edited right, it could become an “outtakes” or “extra scenes” type thing for my die-hard fans – and we all know that one day I’m going to have die-hard fans other than The Crazy Flatmate.

Well, anyway, all that aside. The moral of this blog post is nothing (semi-nothing) to do with that at all. Basically just a preamble into the following statement:

I’m getting that urge again to work on my novel.

I’ve realised, looking back, that my main character may be an undiagnosed (and unknowing) aspie so I’m wondering if I should play that up.

Aspie/vampire romance rather than slightly crazy in the head mortal/vampire romance. Haha.

I don’t know if it would work, I don’t know if there’ll be a market for it – at all in either case. I’ve been added to an aspie writer group on Facebook and I’m going to ask around on all the Aspergers related (and private – sucks to be Aspie-outed by facebook to people I don’t want to be aspie-out to) groups I belong to on Facebook to see what the general consensus is.

So: Aspergers girl (openly or not, knowingly or not both as yet undetermined) meets vampire boy and they fall in love. Kind of.

That’s the general plot. There’s issues along the way (these are ones that are already in there, before I realised she may be aspie): he’s trying to woo her and she doesn’t even realise they’re pretty much a couple being the biggest issue.

Plus there will be conflict and adventure and misunderstandings and… well.

This time round I want to try and plot things out, actually have a plot and events on a timeline that I have to reach by a certain point… In other words, I can’t be 300 pages in and still in the first week – which is at least a week away from the first major plot/conflict event – and every chapter just them getting drunk and watching movies. Yes it’s good for character development and relationship development, but not good for creating a book that will get published, I don’t think.

I’m going to give it a go.

If you’ve been lead here from my link(s) on Facebook groups, please leave comments or whatever, your thoughts on the idea of making the main character Aspie. Please!

Rules and Fairness

This is just a rant I have to get off my chest, just to anyone who’s out there reading.

FAIRNESS

When something isn’t specified in the rules as cheating, how can it be called cheating after the fact? How can all the NT people accept that it was cheating, when we weren’t told it was cheating at the start? And how does studying for a test before hand or using the internet independent to the actual event make it cheating, either.

I’m not a person who likes cheating, and I don’t see it as “breaking the rules” if the rules didn’t specify that you weren’t allowed to do it! I don’t know why no-one else feels that it’s unfair! If they wanted us to not do it, they should have specifically stated that we can’t do it. Otherwise it’s not against the rules. {This may be coming from the mind of someone who has learned that following the rules to the letter can make for more creative ways to get outside the rules, yes, but I still follow the specified rules!}

But most of all, I don’t like being labelled a cheater when it wasn’t cheating!