Autism and Covid-19 Quarantine
What Quarantine feels like from an Autistic Perspective
For the Autistic it is a pervasive struggle with field placement and the persistent weight of the relentless issues of Mental Health
Hello everyone!
Please note that this isn’t true for every single Autistic person out there because a perspective on the COVID-19 quarantine so far depends from person to person, and mentions of TW/CW, self-doubt, the word “dead”, and the word “kill” are used for editorial purposes and to better engage the reader by the usage of verisimilitude.
When quarantine started for me, my college campus closed down and I didn’t physically go to college for a week since my college was setting up the online schooling system – I had just got back from my family vacation in Florida with my family which just made it that much harder due to Autistic difficulties with Transitions.
It felt like everything was happening fast and it felt like my college life was slowly turning into something that I would feel isolated with during quarantine, and the last few months proved that.
I started to feel less like myself – Sometimes being angry and hostile whenever I felt hurt by NT mental health advice from one of my family members.
I started to experiment with my pronouns and with my gender, and I am proud of myself for doing so, while my family still uses she/her for me, and I’ve accepted that I cannot ever change their beliefs because it is on them to change their own beliefs, not me.
Anyway, in-real-life friends, I found real help since I had a difficult time with logging on to classes sometimes, but I was thankful and grateful that I didn’t have to physically go somewhere while taking a bus, and that I do not have to attend class while getting dressed.
But, in the end, I persevered
While I was going through this ending semester, which will finish tomorrow for me, I kept thinking about things that I feel would never happen to me in real life. For example, finding a joy-friend/date-mate.
I felt more dead inside since I know that my finding some “soulmate” will never happen and that I won’t even have one. Of course! As my Pilates instructor told me: “I don’t even know what will happen in the future, and as one of my family members told me, just because I had a shitty experience with my first love doesn’t really mean that I can jump to conclusions about it”.
But, of course, my – Still healing from my first-relationship-looking ass doesn’t even know it yet.
As for my field placement experience since I am an Autistic social service work student, I had an easy time with my weekly field activities at first, but then I began to notice that my peers were having a difficult time with them since they were also dealing with their personal lives while balancing online placement.
Online Placement
There was no organization for me since I had a hard time finding a placement and the place that I wanted to get a placement at was closed because of COVID-19.here were some weekly field activities that didn’t teach anything. And the reason? Well, read on…
The Social Service Work Field
The entire Social Service Work field runs on the same carceral – Anything that has to do with the corrupt and often fucked up justice and law systems. Especially a certain kind of justice/law system that diminishes a person’s sense of humanity by making them into a white supremacist cosplayer that upholds capitalism and state-sanctioned fascism system, and that it also runs on the same systemic discriminatory oppressions that it preaches against.
The Injustice Law/System and Christian Church Places Undue Constraints on the Social Services System Constrains Access to Services
Conservative religious and Christian/Xtian fundies attempt to seem trendy and with the times, but their misogynistic beliefs aren’t even in line with the complex realities of life anymore.
If I have to be frank based on what I’ve observed on fundie Tumblr {I’ll say more about it later on). I’ve heard from a classmate of mine (let’s refer to her as J) that she didn’t want to fail placement ever again while I was there for her and for my other classmates who were also dealing with similar shit too…
Another thing that I’ve also realized is how entirely fucked both my college’s system and the SSW field is since they both still rely on capitalism, ableism, along with many other forms of oppression, all the while claiming that they are against the bootlicking clowns they are.
An Urgently Serious Issue for the At-Risk for Self-Harm Autistic Student
I remember that one time during placement where I was worried about some food drive project (Plot twist and spoiler alert: The fundraising website for it didn’t work for my group and me), and I felt as if I was a terrible leader for my team while also telling my group that they are free to kill me.
Luckily, one of my friends was even there since she checked up on me to make sure that I was doing okay. And, surprise, surprise, I was doing okay since I felt stressed and feeling a bit overexerted with my online college’s bullshit with assignments.
During my time in quarantine, I started to develop a kneejerk reaction to neurotypical-based mental health “advice” because it does more actual harm than good for people who understand what it is like to be told to “work” on themselves when in reality they are fine the way they are and it’s society who needs to cut their ableist bullshit because they aren’t fooling anyone.
I remember doubting myself whenever I had a bad day with college’s assignments since I sometimes feel as if I wasn’t meant to “deal” with reality in the first place, or that I feel as if no one would miss me if I were to be dead, which isn’t true because if I stopped living, then the entire “trans and autistic communities would mourn over me”, as I paraphrased from what my online friend told me.
And to my online friend, I am honored to be your sibling because if I didn’t meet you, then I would still hold myself to ableist and NT standards that would eventually harm me later on), and hell, I know that my own family and friends in real life would.
Let’s just say that I got sick and tired of having to remain at home (then again I am still doing that to help flatten the COVID-19 curve that is going high in my province), and I guess my personality has changed a bit in terms of feeling more lonely and wanting to pull all-nighters more frequently than I should.
When you’re Autistic, your perspective can depend on your circumstances whether you’re MOGAI, Jewish/Muslim (or any other religion) (etc.), and/or being Black, Indigenous, or an Immigrant/Refugee of Colour. For mine, personally, I am thankful to still have a home, good food, a warm bed to feel safe in at night, a good education, a loving family (even though they sometimes say shit that is ableist or that they shouldn’t say), good friends who actually care about my well-being unlike my shit-clown excuses of ex-friends who would care less if I went missing and if I were to end up mortally and/or fatally wounded.
For mine, it was a mixture of both good and bad.
Good because…
a) I met my online friend along with many other badass siblings on Discord I am happy to ride or die with (it is like an expression to express that someone and a group of people or another person they trust would be sibling-like best friends forever)
b) I was able to go to my Pilates class which is more endurable than having to stay 2 or more entire years of this (because let’s think about it this way, quarantine is like a lighter version of isolation and a mixture of prison shit together) shitshow known as 2020.
c) I was able to celebrate my birthday with an adult coloring book on coffee and animals along with two Bleach (TM) shirts that I am thankful to have (and I am wearing one right now), and…
d) I am lucky that my family and in-real-life friends, are still alive and well during this pandemic.
Bad because…
a) My clown-fuck excuses of ex-friends reached out to me in July when they literally didn’t even check up on me when the pandemic started (which is a dick move of them to do)
b) My headspace is becoming shitty over who said what (which I gotta help it by distracting it with study vlogs and aesthetic vlogs and other YouTube videos along the side of horror podcasts on Spotify and more)
c) I am feeling more lonely and isolated (knowing that I will not be able to find love and that love is only worth it if someone sees me as an equal, but I know that I ain’t the only one feeling this way), including feeling like I don’t even belong to any friend group.
Reach Out To Me With Your Emotional Responses
That’s All In Want –
That’s All I Ever Want
That’s all I Should Need to Say
Anyways, that would most likely be it for me, but I encourage people who are reading this to share their perspectives with me, and believe me, I would love to hear from y’all and to provide emotional support if you need it!
Please stay safe and only talk to people y’all trust (if there are some of y’all that live in unsupportive families), and please take good care of yourselves (i.e., doing what feels good for y’all, eating what makes you feel happy, using an understandable coping mechanism that you need time to go through with, and more)!!!
~ From an Autistic raven who is fine with destroying their
non-existent sleep schedule ❤
Final Word on TM
A/N: TM refers to a trademark if anyone is curious and fundie Tumblr is a side of Tumblr in which people observe and follow mainly Eurocentric, perisex and allocishetero, abled, NT, privileged, and Xtian Americans who still rely on toxic gender roles since some of them come from megachurches and/or from nondenominational church communities.
For example, some of the worst examples of them are: “Girl Defined”, and infamous for being MOGAI-misic, and for having a grandparent who was nazi if anyone uses r/FundieSnark on Reddit to listen to what is going on in the Sub-Reddit.
The Transformed Wife, is very misogynistic and is also bitter since she dislikes “working women”. Jill Rodrigues and the Rodrigues Family are also racist and ableist as hell. Karissa Collins is also misogynistic since she only perceives people who menstruate as women because she is cis, using old-fashioned stereotypical language like baby factories.
This is also ableist and racist as hell if y’all know where to look on fundie Tumblr or on r/FundieSnark et al., that has beliefs that are already harmful to their most vulnerable and marginalized members.
