Author Archives: C. M. Condo

About C. M. Condo

I am a late-diagnosed, high-functioning autistic living with chronic pain. I started this blog in March of 2014 as a way to try to process what was happening to me. It is my hope that by sharing it with you, we can both gain something, or at least learn something, from my experience.

autism and trauma: betrayal trauma

Posted on March 27, 2024 by C. M. Condo

As bad as betrayal traumas are, they can be much worse for autistics. Since most of us endured constant negative feedback growing up, teaching us that our instincts in any given situation are always wrong and any mistreatment we receive are our own faults. If we are being treated poorly, we think, we must deserve it. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Two - Mind, Setting 4 | Tagged actuallyautistic, Aspergers, autism, betrayal trauma, disability, relationships, Trauma | 1 Comment

it’s not me it’s you

Posted on August 20, 2023 by C. M. Condo

The idea that this occasional concern about what other people thought was a common experience was dispelled by an article I read by an extrovert complaining that after COVID, the “extrovert/introvert script got flipped” and now all of a sudden she was “mismatched” to “the world’s expectations.” Continue reading →

Posted in Book Two - Mind, Setting 4 | Tagged actuallyautistic, COVID, doubt, extrovert, introvert | Leave a comment

one and all

Posted on June 19, 2023 by C. M. Condo

You can’t just remake the world via relabeling. Not that people don’t try. Firing a bunch of people is “downsizing” or, I read somewhere, “restructuring,” a euphemisticky euphemism that means nothing because it could mean anything. Continue reading →

Posted in Aspect IV | Tagged actuallyautistic, meaningless, slogans, words | 3 Comments

done-ing

Posted on February 14, 2022 by C. M. Condo

*this post contains profanity I’m doing trauma work with my therapist, starting with an event in my childhood that I’d only recently started calling a trauma, even though I remember it clear as day despite it having occurred when I … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Two - Mind, Setting 4 | Tagged anger, Aspergers, autism, chronic pain, doubt | 4 Comments

Crash the lab

Posted on October 10, 2021 by C. M. Condo

Three semesters of grad school via Zoom have wrecked me. Class discussions and impromptu tangents are the fun part of grad school. They balance out the herculean and thankless labor one must otherwise expend reading gross amounts of peer-reviewed literature and pulling together a research project that will culminate in a thesis or dissertation, otherwise known as the longest and most harrowing paper you will ever write in your entire life. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Two - Mind, Setting 4 | Tagged actuallyautistic, Aspergers, autism, autistic woman, burnout, disability, doubt | 1 Comment

recuperation

Posted on July 22, 2021 by C. M. Condo

The Ape is on hiatus to recover from a surfeit of anxiety and stress, and will return in Fall 2021.

Posted in loose leaves | Tagged actuallyautistic, self care | Leave a comment

Musk-rat

Posted on May 16, 2021 by C. M. Condo

“the last thing the autism community needs another example of a white male autistic who fits the vanishingly rare stereotype of the super-genius misanthrope” Continue reading →

Posted in Setting 3 | Tagged ableism, actuallyautistic, autistic, Elon Musk, invisible disability, stereotype | 4 Comments

get past

Posted on April 30, 2021 by C. M. Condo

Fear is what makes you careful. Fear is what keeps you from being alone with strange men, from going on a hike out of cell range without telling anyone, from buying LSD from a bartender you just met. What kind of fear is this woman talking about? Fear of not being able to pay your rent? Continue reading →

Posted in Setting 4 | Tagged autistic, fear, life hack, women | 1 Comment

special victim

Posted on March 3, 2021 by C. M. Condo

“So instead I just go on and on about a single episode in a series with literally hundreds of them because that single episode explains my entire life story and sometimes you just need someone or something to blame. For the years and years of abuse, infantilizing, minimizing, belittlement, and disbelief that have carved psychological scars in me that are so deep I might never be able to fully heal from them.” Continue reading →

Posted in Book Two - Mind, Setting 4 | Tagged actuallyautistic, autistic, autisticwomen, disability, media, neurodivergent, real autism, stereotype | 3 Comments