Writing What You Don't Know: The Assistants

I'm also more than interested in helping people with life in so cal. I can even help a bit with surfer culture, seeing as I grew up in that.

 

Answer questions in a Google doc then link, + a mother doc of those links in OP?

 

My brain kind of forgets what it wanted to do if I have to go to a different format or app to write an answer (could be an adhd thing?) so I know I'd be happier writing here and then I suppose c&ping to another document. I also suspect that answering within the thread will encourage more interaction, more people adding questions original querant might not think to ask but would benefit from, that sort of thing.

 

Added some weirder ones to my post. I can't believe I forgot about diving.

 

i can provide info on the following-
-being out and trans from the age of 14 onwards in a semi-rural area
-binding w/ ace and why it's a horrible idea plus why it was worth doing anyway
-how poly relationships can go wrong, esp if you're doing them as a teen
-showing livestock at the state fair
-rabbits
-chickens
-livestock. just ask me abt livestock go on fuckin do it
-ped psych ward
-bullshitting my way out of having to go to the ped psych ward post suicide attempt, or: cops really aren't trained for this, wow
-eating disorder stuff
-self harm
-mental illness from a youngish age (11/12 onward)
-med side effects
-growing up autistic w/out being actually told that ur autistic despite having the dx
-being trained to act like a neurotypical
-english riding, specifically hunter-jumper, and the culture that surrounds it
-co-running a gsa
-i live in florida, so if your setting's florida for some godforsaken reason, i can prolly help out there, too.

edit: also medical care while out and trans and mentally ill

 

oh and I have experience with a number of slightly more obscure medical practices as the patient. I guess I'll probably be more easily able to answer if people ask about specific things than just list all the things I've been administered/been doing

 

How do people react?
Generally- pretty stupidly. Most people think that if they yell louder my brain will suddenly start processing words. Then they start trying to explain what they are trying to say, as if making MORE words will make it easier for me to understand the words I am already struggling to process. This happens everywhere, with everyone. It is very rare to meet someone that will not try to talk to me even after finding out it will make no sense to me, even when they see me using ASL and my tablet to communicate. Speech-to-text manages to catch most of it, although some people speak oddly and the computer ends up outputting phonetic versions of their mouth noise.
Outside of the office, most people pretend they cannot understand my computer's voice, which is not robotic - which also disturbs people (uncanny valley, I think). Almost no one knows ASL. Clerks and fast food workers consider it something to make fun of. Older people pity the "poor little girl" but still make no effort to listen to my computer, read what I write on it, or read my ASL.
At the office, most men ignore me completely unless they must interact with me, and then they try to do it by email. Most women either try to mother me or ignore me.

Do you think in words?
No. I have to translate back and forth, which takes time. Even written words take time to process, making things like closed captions nearly as useless as the voices, since they often don't stay up long enough for me to grasp them.
EDIT: my doc calls my way of thinking "experiencing ideas" - if I see the word orange, for example, it becomes the smell of an orange being peeled, the feeling of the bumps on the skin, the feeling of the spray from squishing the inside bits, the sound of the skin tearing, the taste of a navel orange, the image of a bright, fresh navel orange.

Is it easier or harder to communicate in certain situations or with certain people?
It's always hard in-person. Email, forums, and such, where time is not a factor, are easier. Outside of family it's rare to find someone that I can communicate with for any length of time. Most people don't have the patience to wait for my tablet to process their speech to text then me to process the text then think about a response then translate it to words then write them on my tablet then have it speak them.

One you didn't ask but you can have for free:
The sound of people talking gets on my nerves. My brain tries to process it because it sounds like I should know it, but fails, but keeps trying. Very good way to get a stress headache and become irritable. People are not allowed to talk around my office or my computer room.

 

I can provide the following:

• being afab and agender with dysphoria
• being autistic/having parents who refuse to get you diagnosed even though you know you are, growing up like that, and being forced to act neurotypical
• parents refusing to accept diagnoses
• having ADHD
• having DID
• having BPD
• having STPD
• having ASPD
• having AVPD
• having DPD
• having PTSD
• having psychotic symptoms
• panic attacks
• having depression and anxiety
• eating disorder things
• jewelry making, particularly ring making/clay work
• being polyamorous/the realization that I was poly and how it happened
• abusive relationships
• abusive parents
• my experience of being nonverbal
• running a GSA in a rural white Christian town
• growing up in a rural white Christian town while being an agnostic witch
• growing up in a rural white Christian town while being Native American
• being Abenaki (Native American) and what that's like/what our culture is
• mental illness from a very young age (specifically, my DID started at age 4 or so and I can go back through my life and see the symptoms now but wasn't aware of them at the time, but my depression started at age 11/12 and I was very aware of that, so those are things you can ask about)
• self harm
• attempting suicide
• anything to do with Rhode Island
• moving around a lot as a kid, and what that's like/what it does to your ability to form social connections
• what RI's psych wards are like
• being nonverbal at times

okay wow that's all I can think of but damn this is long

 

Tbh I don't actually feel like my own experiences are valid enough to offer up as a resource, lol... I'd do it badly

I'll look here if I ever do need writing advice myself, though. It's cool that so many people are doing this! Thanks Kintsugi.

 

Can help with:

-being gender fluid and bisexual
-PA livin
-being formerly super racist and now being a minimal amount of racist hopefully
-being formerly pretty abusive and now being a minimal amount of abusive hopefully
-therapy as a fifth grader
-OCD livin
-being occasionally nonverbal
-being aromantic
-dating while aromantic

 

I turn my tablet toward them so it can pick up their speech correctly and turn it to text for me.
If they don't wait for that before talking it can't get most of it (the mic is pretty directional).

 

Sure - I have skype and gtalk (google hangouts), etc. My tablet is actually a high-end notebook/tablet hybrid computer (Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro). If we're in a place where wifi is not available I do have an old style cell phone that gets text (no fancy fonts, please, they show up as boxes). If I trust the person, I let them write on the tablet (it will convert handwriting to text, even as scribbly as mine).

 

Before I started carrying a tablet (so until I was about 17) I carried cheap slate chalkboards and a pouch of chalk. My Mom got the boards in the toy store for something like 10 for 7$. She started getting them in packs because I had a tendency to fall out of trees and break them a lot.

 

Huh, would it be acceptable say for somebody to pull out a smartphone and type text on that? That's what I tend to do when I'm at a music venue, for instance (where the volume and subsequent temporary deafening makes it essentially impossible for me to communicate by speech) and I tend to find that that's a lot more reliable than using a handwriting detect device, and in general speech recognition tends to fail a lot (especially when it's not keyed to my accent). Or is it a further accessibility issue in that you prefer to read text on your own devices rather than somebody else's? It's something I should probably know in case I'm ever hanging out with somebody who's nonverbal :)

 

As long as I didn't have to figure out the interface. However, my tablet does have a digital keyboard as well as a physical one, plus the handwriting (or printing) recognition. In some places a smartphone, being smaller, might be easier, but I am very rarely in a tight space and capable of communicating at the same time.

 

Whoops, I meant more as in the person you were talking to would type on the phone, and show it to you, and then you'd type back with your tablet or the like, I suppose? If I am recalling correctly (and correct me if otherwise), another issue is that there is difficulty processing if people speak to you out loud? Which is what I was thinking of. Although I suppose that that in and of itself is not intrinsically related to being non-verbal, so I guess I kinda misspoke in my last post. But ye.

 

No, speaking to me is a problem even when using speech to text - my brain is trying to process the speech even though it can't, so that messes up my concentration when trying to read and write. So text and show WOULD work good, if I ever met anyone that would do it :).
In most cases people just say "forget it" and talk to whoever is with me instead of me. Back in the old days when I could handle being near people better it was infuriating because I would go shopping with Punk, who was underage at the time, to get beer for Ancient Guardian and the clerks tried to insist that she show her ID to buy it since they refused to acknowledge my existence. Almost always ended up getting a manager involved, and even then half the time the manager would just refuse to sell to us (I look too young, Punk was too young).

 

see, I...hate talking. I'm nonverbal sometimes but not always, but talking aloud in any more than a few sentences just makes me uncomfortable. so I prefer to write down what I want to say and show it to people...not that anyone ever wants to accommodate that...