Devotion to Polymer Clay

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m joining John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop. I’m choosing to write on the prompt about devoting your life to art. What type of art would I devote my life to?

The question here is, are we to choose just one particular form of art that we’d devote our entire life to, or are we allowed to pick more than one form? After all, many art forms are interconnected and I would not enjoy one without the other.

For instance, I would probably not enjoy polymer clay as much if I didn’t take photos of my work and didn’t write about the craft on here. Also, if I make jewelry out of polymer clay or use polymer clay beads in a necklace or bracelet, that’s basically combining two crafts.

So, let me say I cannot choose just one art form, because, though my photographs aren’t all that artistic, I’d still have to choose between polymer clay and writing. I flat out refuse.

After all, though writing comes easiest to me, polymer clay is what brings me the most joy. I just love the fact that, even though I’m now totally blind, I still have some insight into colors. I also still, four years into the craft, love creating unicorns.

I made three unicorns in the past week. The latest, I haven’t baked yet because I just made it this evening. The other two I made late last week. One is probably going to be a gift to a staff who gave birth last week. I loved working with the two colors for the mane, tail and horn, but its horn is a little crooked.

The other one, which I myself like best, is for me. After all, you can never have too many unicorns.

A few years ago, I talked to my then staff about possibly creating unicorns to go into the care agency’s shop. That idea never materialized, but I’ve brought it up a few more times. I’d just love to have polymer clay as my “job”. Here, I chose anyway. And I also wrote on another prompt, because creating the unicorns is the main thing that made me smile recently.

Some Might Say It’s Wrong to Be Angry

Posted on by Astrid

Some might say it’s wrong to be angry. I was actually told when I was in fourth grade that I was “angry too quickly”. What my parents and the professionals meant is that my expression of my emotions, whether I was actually feeling angry or not, was wrong given the situation.

That’s not the same. An emotional expression isn’t the same as the emotion that someone is actually feeling.

Besides, I strongly disagree with the idea that emotions can be “right” or “wrong” even given the circumstances. I have always felt that the idea behind dialectical behavior therapy of deciphering whether an emotion you’re feeling is justified in that situation or not, and, if not, acting opposite, is incredibly invalidating.

It’s never wrong to feel angry. Or sad. Or happy for that matter. Yes, it can be wrong to express your emotions in a certain way, such as when you become disproportionately aggressive. Even then, your emotions aren’t wrong. And, at least in my case, the emotion I’m actually feeling isn’t usually anger.

Like, when, last week, I became physically aggressive towards a staff by trying to hit him, I wasn’t angry. I was panicking because the staff was restraining me for the relatively minor offense of trying to grab a small object that he thought I was going to throw to the ground. That assumption may’ve been correct, but that doesn’t mean my feeling of utter panic when grabbed by both arms, was wrong. For what it’s worth, I feel that restraining someone for fear of them damaging an easily replacable object, is out of proportion.

It’s easy to say that people are wrong for being angry, when in reality you can’t know what’s in their minds, so whether they actually feel anger at all. It’s also easy to think that a person trying to throw objects is disturbing the peace for the other people around so you, as a staff member, are justified to do whatever it takes to prevent them. However, just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s right.

I’m sharing this post with Missy’s MAD Challenge for this week. The prompt is the phrase “Some might say it’s wrong to…”.

Share Our Lives (May 2025): How I Celebrate My Birthday

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! It’s the second Monday of the month and this means the Share Our Lives linky goes live. This month, the theme is how we usually spend or celebrate our birthdays.

My birthday is at the end of June, so the weather’s usually pretty good. That is, my parents used to joke that my sister, whose birthday is tomorrow, always got better weather on her birthday than I got. It isn’t true and, quite frankly, now that I have more insight into our family dynamics, it feels like one of their endless comparison games rather than a joke. But I digress.

My birthday and the time around it usually are quite stressful, since it’s the only time a year I ever see my parents and that’s with good reason. Over the past few years, my parents, my best friend and I have often been going out for dinner. It’s always awkward but was more so last year. I haven’t made plans with my parents this year yet.

My sister and her family will also visit me. Last year, this was a bit hard, as my oldest niece was tired and, being four at the time, easily bored. This led to her being cranky and me being cranky from being overloaded as a result. For my birthday this year, we’ve planned a relatively short visit.

All this being said, I do like to have somewhat of a birthday party at the care home. Even at the intensive support home, I treated the entire group to fries and a snack. Last year, I made a cheesecake and also treated the home to home-cooked burgers and salad.

I think gift-receiving is also a fun part of my birthday. The best gift I ever received was my music pillow, which my best friend gave me last year. My parents usually buy me a small gift plus some thrift store items. It may seem stupid, but I do like not knowing what I’ll get even though chances are I won’t be using it much. Besides, I haven’t bought my parents gifts in years.

Now that I look over this post, I realize I honestly don’t know why I usually say I like my birthday, as now that I’m an adult I could easily be buying my own gifts and I don’t like most of the company I get. I think part of it is childlike excitement.

To Speak Out or Not to Speak Out

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s Sunday Poser is an intriguing one. Sadje asks whether I’m the one who will speak up when I see a wrong being done or whether I’ll keep quiet. I’m going to interpret this more broadly and share how I tend to react to injustice in the world in general.

And the truth is, shameful as it is, I no longer speak up. This didn’t use to be the case. When I first started out blogging on WordPress in 2007 and especially between 2009 and 2011, I frequently wrote about injustices to groups I didn’t even belong to, like trans people. Now though, I struggle to speak up and I’m not even certain this is out of fear of speaking over marginalized groups. Well, that is, I’m quite certain that it isn’t that. It’s fear of being targeted myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I still speak out in real life against injustices being done to other people, especially those I love.

I struggle with this when it’s microaggressions like “jokes” and I actually regularly catch myself making hurtful comments towards people in minority groups I’m not part of.

This is, actually, more problematic than it might seem. I mean, I could say I’m not trans, not an immigrant, not [insert the latest scapegoat of fascism], but in reality everyone has privilege and almost everyone is marginalized in some way. Besides, like my best friend recently said, fascism’s goal is to destroy society.

I am, however, often too scared of being the next target to speak out openly. This is why I’m more gentle than I’d wish I were when pointing out transphobic or racist or otherwise oppressive comments in real life and especially why I’m no longer as vocal as I used to be on my blog. The world just isn’t as safe anymore.

This does also mean I can no longer be fully myself online. It’s just too easy to track me (and my loved ones) down from my blog. It was even easier back in the early days of my being on the Internet, when I’d almost always use my full name everywhere. However, either I was the lucky one back then for not having been attacked in real life, or the world’s become a harsher place. Probably a little of both.

School Reunions

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. One of this week’s Writer’s Workshop prompts is to write a post based on the word reunion. This reminded me of two reunions, one I actually attended and one I didn’t.

The reunion I did attend was for the school for the blind I had been a student at for my last three years of elementary school in the late 1990s. The reunion took place in 2008 and it was on school grounds. The reason the reunion was held, was the fact that many buildings would be reconstructed in the next couple of years, so as to give former students and staff one last chance to see school grounds in the form they’d remembered them.

The school included buildings for both elementary and secondary school, as well as homes for the residential students and a place for leisure activities where the non-residential students had lunch too. I was a non-residential student and only attended elementary school, like I said.

There were two reasons why I wanted to attend the reunion. One was to meet former fellow students and staff. That was a success. I met my best friend from school, with whom I hadn’t been in contact since leaving this school in 1998. I also briefly talked to my fourth grade teacher. That was awkward, as I didn’t feel comfortable disclosing to him that I resided in a psychiatric hospital at the time.

The other reason I wanted to attend the reunion, was to see the school in the form I remembered. That, unfortunately, wasn’t a success, because part of the elementary school, including the classrooms, had been destroyed in a fire in 2006. Part of the building was still standing, but it was no longer useable.

I was on grounds a few more times attending smartphone use training in 2017. On May 24, I believe, there’s going to be another reunion for this school, but it isn’t on grounds and I know no-one who will be attending, so I won’t either.

This brings me to my other reunion story. IN 2013, my high school celebrated 100 years of existence. I for a while considered attending, but was still in the psych hospital at the time and besides, my entire high school experience had been quite bad. So I didn’t go.

A few years later, I got an E-mail from a former teacher there. She had been my Dutch teacher and tutor for the first year and part of the second year of my attending this school, until she went on sick leave and finally found another job. She had been at the reunion and had wondered about me. Having read part of my website, she now understood why I hadn’t been at the reunion.

This, as it turned out, would also have been my last chance of meeting the teacher who’d become my tutor after the Dutch teacher left. He got cancer about a year after I’d graduated high school in 2005 and died in 2016. I am pretty sure it was for the better that he didn’t know that I was still in the psych hospital then.

Neurospicy Burnout

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. A few days ago, I listened to a podcast episode on autistic burnout. It’s the most recent episode of Beyond Chronic Burnout, a podcast for autistic women (and other marginalized genders, I hope) and their helping professionals. It discussed the Spicy Pepper burnout questionnaire, which apparently is a questionnaire to determine your level of burnout. I got overloaded trying to find the actual questionnaire amid all the ads etc. and it looks like the website it was published on, isn’t particularly screen reader friendly, so I wasn’t able to take the test. However, from the descriptions discussed on the podcast, I believe I’m in quite a significant burnout and have been for, well, years.

What is autistic burnout, you might ask? Autistic burnout is like regular burnout from being overworked, but it is really more like being overworked living life in a world not designed for autistics. As I have said for many, many years, just living in a neurotypical world is hard work for me.

I want to clarify that autistic burnout is often amplified by co-occuring conditions such as ADHD. In fact, writing this just reminds me of something I read several years ago that said that having fibromyalgia, which is often agravated by stress, is often correlated to ADHD. This is why I refer to neurospicy burnout.

The podcaster claimed that the first signs of burnout in autistics usually appear between the ages of four and six and many autistics experience their first actual burnout between the ages of six and ten. This was hugely validating. I, at age five, fell ill with what my parents claim was the flu, but it did lead them to get me into special ed quicker than originally intended. Age seven is always when my parents claim I changed from a cheerful, happy child to angry and depressed. This correlates with my having to start learning Braille, so according to my parents I then became aware of my declining vision. This is probably correct, but it doesn’t mean that my difficulty accepting my blindness was the only or main problem.

The first warning sign of autistic burnout, the podcaster says, is suicidal ideation. Oh my, can I relate! I honestly always thought that the first sign of burnout, whether neurospicy or work-related, was exhaustion. That with the fact that I react to overload with overactivity and irritability, always made me believe I’ve never had “real” burnout symptoms. Now I realize that I may not have fully collapsed (yet), but I do certainly experience burnout. And have for, well, my entire life since I was seven, I guess.

An Allergic Reaction

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! Today I’m joining in with the Writer’s Workshop. One of the prompts is to write about an experience of having an allergic reaction.

I have never had very strong allergic reactions to anything. However, the fact that I would not classify my allergic reactions as strong, is probably because I haven’t fully figured them out.

I am allergic to nickel. That is, that’s what my parents have always told me. I never knew how to recognize an allergic reaction though and, with the fact that it can take some time for your body to react to nickel, even if I knew I had an allergic reaction, I wouldn’t always be sure of the cause.

When I was 15, I got earrings. After the little studs you wear for the first six weeks, I immediately switched to long, heavy, silver rings I got from my mother. No-one had told me not to wear heavy earrings for the first year. Or that silver earrings, especially those made back in the day, could contain nickel.

My earlobes started getting inflamed pretty soon, but I didn’t actually realize this was abnormal. It could’ve been the nickel, but I also constantly fidgeted with my earrings, thereby touching my pierced ears.

After a few months of wearing all sorts of, mostly quite heavy, earrings, I was wise enough to give up. For over two decades.

And then, the whole saga started over. I got new studs put in, because my old earring holes had long formed scar tissue. This time, I googled what to wear and not to wear while getting used to earrings. I only wore small studs.

However, I was unable to make sure that my earrings didn’t contain nickel. In the EU, nickel is no longer allowed in jewelry, but no-one ever checks manufacturers for compliance.

I got silver studs that the vendor said were nickel-free. Though I was fine for a few months, my ears eventually started getting inflamed again. I tried ignoring the issue, believing it would get better over time. Which, if it’s truly my nickel allergy acting up, isn’t true. In fact, the opposite is true: an allergy keeps getting worse the more someone is exposed to the allergen.

Eventually, after several attempts wearing various studs, I gave up. And this time, I’m hopefully not going to ignore my body again and have another go. Whether it was my nickel allergy acting up or I was just touching my ears too much, we’ll never know. Now I’ll just wear necklaces and bracelets, so that when I fidget with them, I’m not essentially touching a wound.

Young At 40 Yet Old At 36

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! A few weeks ago, my spouse sent me a YouTube short about millennials’ reactions to the idea of midlife. According to the American Psychological Association, or that’s what the YouTuber said, midlife starts at 36.

Then I read a blog post today in which the author, now retired, reflects on how she imagined retirement to be when she was still young… at 40.

I am 38. Does this mean I’m in midlife or does it mean I’m still young? It probably depends on your perspective.

After all, with respect to my daily life, since I don’t work or study and since I’m childfree, it allows me the same freedom a retiree would have. I also enjoy many things older people enjoy, such as crafting. That is, often younger women do craft, but it’s more for their kids.

With respect to my health, it’s a mixed bag. I am physically healthier than I was five years ago thanks to weight loss and moving more. I however do notice the effects of my disabilities (and probably my history of obesity too), in that I’m probably less fit than many women my age. For one thing, I do find that my knees hurt regularly.

All this being said, age is in many respects just a number for me. Sometimes, I feel like a lady in her seventies, while at other times, I feel quite childlike, both in a positive and a negative way.

Statistically speaking, I do realize I’m at midlife. This sometimes causes me to worry about aging, but then again I always had this worry that I’d die young. That’s not necessarily specific to midlife. I am pretty sure, in fact, that now that I’m physically fitter, the worry is less about myself. That doesn’t mean the worry has gone, but now it’s more of an existential dread regarding the world as a whole. I don’t think one is easier to deal with for me than the other.

I’m linking up with Talking About It Tuesday and #WWWhimsy.

Abandonment Wounds: What Will Happen If I Can No Longer Mask?

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling with attachment issues a lot lately. Not related to a specific person this time. I mean, yes, like I said on Wednesday, four of my “favorites” among the staff are either on leave or will be leaving (be it temporarily or permanetly) soon. That’s not the problem, since I’ve learned the hard way to expand my list of “favorites” when necessary. It’s in my best interest too to avoid a situation like the one with my assigned staff in Raalte, who was leaving and left me with just two other trusted staff.

The issue I’ve been dealing with lately, is much more existential: the knowledge that, if I’m truly myself, I’m unacceptable. Not because I’m some kind of criminal. I’m not. Rather, I’m an outcast. And while I won’t be in the prison system for that, being shoved around care home after care home while not having family to advocate for me, will be equally horrid.

I have been struggling with memories of the circumstances surrounding that assigned staff leaving. A few months before she left, I sent her a rather dramatic E-mail about how no-one will be in my life forever. Well, my spouse says we’ll always be in each other’s life, but truthfully we can’t know that. Besides, when we lived together, there were just a little too many situations in which my spouse (understandably) was disappointed in me that are however things I couldn’t help. For clarity’s sake: I don’t blame my spouse, but maybe with my being multiply-disabled, I’m not suited for “traditional” long-term relationships. Ha, now I’m reminded that my spouse often reminds me that I said when we were choosing to be a couple, that I didn’t want a traditional relationship.

Of course, the reason I’m undesirable by society’s standards isn’t my fault. Like, I can’t help being disabled. But just because it isn’t something I choose, doesn’t make it any less real or hurtful. In fact, it hurts more because I can’t choose not to be me.

I mean, I’ve masked more or less successfully for many years. Mostly less successfully, but my parents prevented me from landing in the care system at a much earlier age than I did by claiming the police and other people who thought I was disturbed, were just stupid. They were masters at manipulating the system. I am not.

Back to my assigned staff in Raalte. She was the first to take my wish to leave seriously. I assume she genuinely felt that the intensive support home could better serve me than the care facility, but I also assume she had a team and a manager to deal with and it remains a fact that some of her coworkers couldn’t cope with my behavior. Which was, for the record, much less challenging than it is now.

It genuinely scares me to think of what will happen if (when?) I can no longer mask at all. There was this news feature sometime in 1997 or 1998 about a girl, aged about sixteen, who was too intelligent for intellectual disability services but who still couldn’t cope in adolescent mental health services and was, as a result, restrained long-term. After her family sought media attention, she was transferred to a treatment center for youth with mild intellectual disability and severe challenging behavior. I don’t know what became of her.

Last week, when I had several severe outbursts related to my most recent frustration, I begged my support coordinator to ask the behavior specialist to involve the Center for Consultation and Expertise (CCE) again. I really want to get the ball rolling on getting them involved before it’s too late and I’m being kicked out again, like the last time they were involved in 2018. In this sense, a consultation might help more this time, because at this point, as far as I know, staff aren’t yet so much at their wit’s end that they see the situation as unresolvable. But I’m scared of what will happen if they do get to this point, like apparently some staff in Raalte were.

Health Anxiety

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today in her Sunday Poser, Sadje asks us whether we deal with health anxiety. Health anxiety is excessive worry about one’s physical health. People who suffer from it, interpret normal bodily sensations or minor ailments as a sign of serious illness, such as cancer. There are people with health anxiety who are constantly running to the doctor, but also those who bury their heads in the sand and worry in silence.

As for whether I myself suffer from health anxiety, I used to suffer pretty badly. I could be a mix of the head in the sand type and the running to the doctor type. When I was nineteen, I remember having pretty bad anxiety one night and concluding I had some serious thing going on. My sister was in my room trying to comfort me, but not being able to figure out why I was having the symptoms I was having (most likely, a panic attack), drove me crazy. I don’t know why I didn’t peruse Dr. Google, but I didn’t. The next day, I called my GP, who wasn’t fully comforted either, particularly when she learned I have hydrocephalus. Long story short, three weeks later I got the all-clear on my shunt from a neurologist, but I never figured out what those weird symptoms were.

I also had bad health anxiety when living on my own in 2007. I, being the type for objectivity, at one point purchased a talking thermometer, so that at least I could take my body temp. After all, my parents used to have a rule about staying home from school: if you don’t run a fever, you aren’t sick.

Thankfully, most of my health anxiety went away once I was admitted to the psych hospital. I still worried about my health sometimes, but it wasn’t significantly distressing. My health anxiety didn’t return once I was kicked out of the hospital to live semi-independently with my spouse.

One thing I struggle with, is knowing when a symptom is significant enough to go to the doctor for or even when it’s abnormal. I for this reason can go months with a symptom before I actually ask my staff to call the doctor.

Since owning an Apple Watch, I don’t freak out when its values are abnormal. Like, back when I first used it in 2022, my oxygen levels often were way below the minimum normal value of 95%. Now they are usually high enough and I have had them checked with an actual oximeter several times. I might’ve had sleep apnea back then, but then again my night-time breathing rate according to my Apple Watch is usually higher than average, not lower. In any case, I am not one to consult my doctor just because my smartwatch says I might be ill. Maybe that’s burying my head in the sand, but I do feel fine generally.