@seanwithwords A few weeks ago, I was in a conversation with one of my adult daughters when conflict with my parents (and why we -- my current chosen family -- don't have any contact with them) came up.The worst of it happened more than 10 years ago, when said daughter was too young to remember what had happened.

I told her that I was #ActuallyAutistic (I had not told any of my other children about this yet), and a lot of the conflict came as a direct result of my family thinking I was too mentally incompetent to be doing things I was doing (specifically, the #Polyfidelitous family that we started creating at the time), that I was clearly being manipulated into it by people who didn't have my best interests at heart, and that a lot of abuse wasn't directed just at me, it was also directed to the other people close to me.

Daughter said "you know, I've honestly kind of wondered about this, have you been diagnosed?"

I had an unequivocal diagnosis in 2019, but there was a less certain one in the 1980s that my parents believed wholeheartedly -- unfortunately, the 1980s may as well have been the 980s as far as understanding these things went, and that's where a lot of the conflict ultimately originated.

The kids are (for the most part) all right these days.

Loki: meow?

Me: Setting up a Mastodon account.

Hazel: meow

Me: I do have another one, @dpnash@mastodon.online, but I post a lot about #Neurodiversity topics, so I'm planning to do more of that here. For one thing, the character limit in posts is larger here, so not only is it a bit easier to post longer-form items, you fuzzballs get to have longer conversations with me.

Loki: *MEOW*.

Me: Oh, right.

- Things I am: #ActuallyAutistic, #LGBTQ+, in a #Polyfidelitous family of 3 older adults and 4 equally awesome (now mostly grown!) children.

- How I pay the bills: #DataEngineering now, #WebDevelopment and #DevOps before that, #Chemistry even longer ago.

- Other things I like: #Cats, obviously. Also #Astronomy (#AmateurAstronomy in particular), #History, #Science, #Books, #HistoricalFiction, #ScienceFiction, #SFF, #Programming, #Hiking, #Nature.

- Some weirder, more specific ones? Fine. #StudioGhibli. Indoor #Rowing. #Languages, currently learning #Spanish and #Latin. I geek out a lot about astronomical data and I maintain a widely-used database of stars (the HYG catalog, and its new extension, the AT-HYG catalog with Gaia data) at https://github.com/astronexus.

Yes, I'm a geek. But you still put up with me, right?

Loki: meow
Hazel: meow

Me: Love you both too.