Ari "Two Elements" Jackson

I dictated this to my phone early this morning before I learned that my cousin had passed. I'm really having one of these deep thought days today, and now these thoughts are compounded by grief. I'm considering turning this into a video. Let me know your thoughts on that. Thanks! ******* Let's talk about Neurotypical authority and entitlement. Have you ever noticed how neurotypical people just assume mastery in a subject even if they don't have it? Because they have been put in a particular social position, they assume that they know everything about what they are doing. On the flipside, my experience as an autistic person has been one of constant imposter syndrome my entire career, even though I have hundreds of certificates and thousands of hours of training and thousands of hours of real world experience in what I'm doing. The difference is, I know what I don't know. I feel like Neurotypical people go through life not knowing what they don't know, and assuming that they know everything. Especially if they're given a title, certificate, or a role, they just assume that mantle and think that hey, they know everything that they are supposed to know, so they are an authority on whatever it is that they do. I feel like that could not be further from the truth! I've been in my profession for almost 40 years and I still know that there are tons of things that I don't know. I watch people decades younger than me assume "mastery" of my profession and start teaching classes or making up their own modalities or whatever, and I'm looking at the whole thing thinking hell, we called that "XYZ" in the 1990s and now you're repackaging it to make a buck? It's frustrating because even at almost 4 decades in my profession, I'm still seeking validation through certification and training and I will never stop doing that. But it's difficult to take certification and training from people who have only been in my profession five or ten years, don't have the same neurotype as I do, and honestly, don't know what the fuck is actually going on with the human body. There's a reason why my business cards say trust in the hands of experience. Yet I don't even trust my own decades of experience and decades of training to be enough expertise to actually handle everything that might come my way. I know my limits, the scope of my training, and I stick to my professional boundaries. I also know when I can't help somebody and when I'm going to have to refer them out to somebody who might be a better fit for them. I feel like a lot of Neurotypical people don't know their limits and some of them are even doing actual harm in the world, and there's even a level of harm happening in my profession because of this. When I taught, I always tried to instill my own level of boundaries and ethics in my students, but I have no idea if it ever did any good. I also tried to instill a lifelong love of learning and curiosity about what we do. I still have that. I still seek knowledge and understanding, and I still examine my boundaries, my ethical codes, and look at what I don't know. I don't think very many people do that in relation to anything they do in the world and I find that very frustrating. I think one of the points of being a human being on this earth is to learn and grow and change and be good at what you like to do, or even multiple things that you like to do, but overall, especially to endeavor do no harm in the world. Skills and hobbies don't all have to be monetized. But apparently, that's not how normal people work. For them it's all about social hierarchy and structure and their status and who other people think they are and then trying to make a buck off of everybody else based on that. That's part of the reason why, as hard as I've tried for my entire life to blend in and fit in with society, I still don't. I can be excellent at a particular skill that might integrate me into a particular group for a while, but those connections don't last because I'm the weirdo, I'm the oddball, I'm the odd man out. And sometimes my level of mastery of something, because I have deep dived it in order to know everything I can about it, is offputting to normal people who really just function on what their social status is rather than what they can actually do to make the world a better place. In my life, so many Neurotypical people have taken up so much space that I probably should've been in rather than them, basically by just bullying their way socially into those positions. Entitlement is a thing, and it's rampant. I've had people and positions and connections taken away from me by pushy, and even sometimes jealous, entitled NT people who wanted what I had and who felt I was weak because I'm weird, so they just pushed in and took whatever it is that they wanted that I had away from me. I've never had that strong sense of entitlement that I should own a piece of the world, be in a particular position, or even be in a particular relationship, especially if it brings harm or discomfort to other people or beings. Often this ends up bringing a lot of harm and discomfort to me, but the people who are doing these things, because they're seeking social status and they can't process their own emotions or recognize what they're doing to other people in their attempt to push through and claim territory, never acknowledge the harm they are doing -- and never apologize. When and if I get to the point where I'm able to explain to them what they've done, what has happened, and how I feel, I'm labeled as a whiny baby who just needs to shut up and take my lot in life and move on. Even though words are my lifeline, because I can't create mental pictures and I have delayed emotional processing, once I find the words for things, everybody else has moved on and they don't want to look at the harm they might have done to me or the world by their actions in grabbing up space. It's also been incredibly rare in my lifetime for anybody who said they cared about me to actually go to bat for me. It's been a very lonely journey, even when I've been partnered, and, as it turns out, almost every single one of my long-term partners was also undiagnosed neurodivergent of some flavor. I guess we stick together, but my path in life feels like a solo one now. I have to go to bat for myself, and I need to learn to take up space, finally, and stand my ground. It's exhausting to think about. I don't want to be part of the society that has passed me by, but I still need to interact with it in order to do my profession and make money to survive. Yet, I can't go out and market myself the way normal people do even though I have decades and decades of experience in what I do. I've been in burnout for at least 10 years, and I keep having to push and poke and prod at the things I know how to do that will bring in a little bit of money so I can survive. Yet I've never crossed my own Professional and ethical boundaries in order to do that. I never just seek the buck because I'm desperate. I've never been like that. I've always put the welfare of the people I'm working with and for first over my own needs. That's the only ethical way to approach what I do because it is a one-on-one, close, therapeutic setting. I have tons of training and tons of expertise, but the way my mind works, I focus only on what I don't know and what I can't do. I don't just assume that I can do everything and then go blunder my way into the world thinking I'll be a success. In all respects of the word, especially according to society, I'm not a success at all! Yet, I can sleep at night knowing that I've held my boundaries, I've kept to my professional and personal codes of ethics, and I am doing as little harm as I can in the world, and probably doing some positive good. When I step back and realize that a majority of people don't operate in this way, it astound me. I guess that's my own bias, but I couldn't operate in any other way in this world. Do no harm, do positive good. Always be humble, always be able to say I don't know, and always be open to learning. I don't necessarily think this makes me a better person than anybody else; it's just one way of being. But I do know that it has been my survival strategy for my entire life.

Day 2 of the new drug. I read up on it yesterday. I like gathering information, but now I'm really discouraged! I read so many articles about how this delivery method was untested, and why it wasn't going to work (mostly having to do with peptide size, absorption issues, and saliva and stomach degradation of the drug), and how it wasn't metabolized well at all this way and all this stupid shit that made me really depressed that I can't do the injectable (which is 95% more effective, apparently) bc fuck needles. Still, I'm sticking to my guns with this route for now, administering it precisely as it should be administered, following all the rules, and crossing my fingers that it will do me some kind of good. Eventually I may try needle desensitization training, but later. Later!!! I can't think about it now. Too stressful. Or, maybe, I can figure out a way to increase my income so I could afford injection pens? Not there yet! Had minor stomach upset starting around 4:30 PM yesterday I attributed to swallowing the first dose, and that didn't go away until after I was asleep overnight. I'm used to stomach upset on a pretty regular basis for whatever reason, but it was pretty annoying. Expected, but annoying. Understanding that once saliva has started to mix with the drug there's no point in swallowing it, also because the stomach and liver will completely inactivate it, I spit most of it out after keeping it under my tongue for about 10 minutes today. Two minutes is the supposed effective time, but I was able to keep it in longer by not opening my mouth and not talking to my dogs. Also, even though the pharmacy said it doesn't need to be refrigerated, I know now that peptides can degrade under variable temperature and light conditions (e.g. the bathroom), so I stuck the bottle in the fridge. I'm trying everything I can to make this work! The thing about stomach upset is, your guts are sending constant crisis signals to your brain so it puts you into a mild fight-or-flight state which increases cortisol, etc. So getting into that state is not good AT ALL for me, considering my stress and inflammation markers were already incredibly high when they were measured in May and my HCP insists that I need to "reduce my stress" this summer. I've also learned a lot more recently about neurodivergent brains and how that's basically impossible for a lot of of us. There are switches/filters in our brains that just don't work properly. It's possible if I went back on a really strict keto diet, which is difficult when you don't eat red meat, that I could influence that a little bit. I don't know. So, I resorted to diet 7-Up and Tums. Not things I usually eat or drink, but calming the stomach down in order to calm my nervous system down is essential. I remain optimistic and hopeful that I will see some benefit from this drug administered this way. I didn't realize I was on the cutting edge of science doing this! That just means that nobody's studied this particular way of doing it, even though it is allowed by the FDA through some kind of compounding pharmacy loophole. I trust my local compounding pharmacy. They're not quacks. They may be onto something here. I doubt they're going to make up a drug formulation that doesn't work. Only time will tell, though. One plodding foot in front of the other. It's the best I can do. My birthday is in a week. I'm not excited. I won't be able to have a cake or ice cream or a meal out or drink more than one glass of wine, so I think I'm just gonna hide. Food is no longer fun. My family will try to force me to celebrate, but hopefully my work schedule will prevent that. Hah! I know. Curmudgeon. I'm annoying my own self at this point. *stomps off in old*

@emily_rugburn@lgbtqia.space If it's any consolation, most of my friends who are on it use an injection pen, and they say it's really pretty easy -- you don't even see the needle. If I could afford that, that's what I would do, the Zepbound pen. Alas, I don't have $400-$600 a month for that right now (with the direct "cash" purchase plan from the manufacturer, that's how much it would cost me).

@emily_rugburn@lgbtqia.space That's fascinating that it affects ibs-d! I don't have insurance, so I can't afford the method that I would like to do (the pre-filled pen). I can't do straight up needles. I freak out! I'm not holding out too much hope for this actually working that well, but you never know. I had to give it a try.

@emily_rugburn@lgbtqia.space Oh that's just downright annoying! I think the only time that people throw up is if they eat too much on this drug? I do have one friend who is on a different version who finds that a few days after she takes the shot, if she eats too much, she gets really sick overnight. So I guess it is a concern.