ascur

There's a great passage in David Foster Wallace's The Pale King that touches on this. A character finds that when he's home, he finds his parents' conservative views frustrating and backwards and constantly argues with them about it. But when he comes across those views in his daily life, he finds them oddly comforting and reassuring on some level.

So there are a few new developments, none of which have been widely released. Hardly the big trend of 2019.

Have you used one of these scooters? I was skeptical of them, and think they're an eyesore, and hate the idea of a private company keeping their property on public land, but they sure are convenient, and I have friends who use them all the time.

I liked the blandness of it, and I would try to put as much in my mouth as I could reasonably chew on, and just chew on it as long as possible.

I've looked into oral fixations, iron deficiency (pica is a symptom), and I can't really explain it except that I found it soothing and a way to cope with other sensory things that I found overwhelming. Now I think of it similar to cigarettes, like a hypothetical pleasing vice that I may be tempted by but feel no compulsion toward.

I have no reason to think that I have any form of autism, but growing up I did (and still do to some extent) experience severe anxiety regarding sensory perception.

I'd give anything to have had my parents follow that sensory guide toolbox when I was a kid. I couldn't explain why it "hurt" to make physical contact with people, why seemingly arbitrary things would give me head to toe shivers that I couldn't shake off. This was all dismissed as me being dramatic or wanting attention. But the worst was the ways I found to cope:

I found that eating a lot of paper and chewing (and I'm ashamed to say, eating) fabric helped me a lot. I'd secretly walk to a department store to buy bath towels and I'd "eat" one in about a month. Of course it was a gross habit, but it was an unstoppable compulsion. And everyday I hated myself when I'd excrete this shredded up fabric.

A classmate called me out in 8th grade, when in the middle of class, she said "Ascur it's disgusting how you're always eating paper" and it was just a horrible moment, I didn't even consider that other people would notice.

So things came to a head when I was 19 and got food poisoning, and was scared that the fabric had gotten stuck somewhere in my digestive tract. I told my parents we needed to go to the hospital and the whole situation, and of course it was just a whole mess of shame and being unable to explain myself.

Even after they found out, I'd still continue in secret, it was all I could look forward to on a day to day basis. I've since done CBT and discovered resources on dealing with this, but yeah, I just wanted to share how weird and hard it can be. So I really hope that kids today have access to these resources.