Amy Parrish (00:02)Hi, welcome to Rebelling. I'm Amy and I'm your host. And the first thing I want to say is that this is the first time I've ever made a podcast. And so I've spent a lot of hours trying to figure out the tech, get it right, make it good. And then I realized that I'm just a beginner at this. And so instead of feeding into the idea that it has to be perfect to put it out. I'm gonna record and add my intro and my outro and I'm gonna put it out in the world. one of the things that I really want to do with this podcast is change the way that we do things.

 

And so I'm not gonna sit here and try to make it perfect anymore.I'm going to give you what I have as the podcaster that I am as a beginner. And so I hope you enjoy the episode and I hope that you'll keep listening and watch how now as a beginner, I will change into someone who gets better and better at it. And I want to do that in a way that is joyous and notfull of pressure. And so with that, I'm going to start our episode.

 

I imagine you know what I mean when I say, I've spent most of my life on the edge of things or completely outside of them, all while I was trying to figure out how to crack the code to get in and not understanding why I couldn't. Growing up, I often felt like an outcast. It seemed like I was always trying to figure out what was wrong with me, why I didn't care about the things everyone else cared about.

 

How did people just seem to know things like when to talk or how to be included? And why didn't I know these things? And why couldn't I find the answers? Why didn't I understand? Why was I always different?

 

Why couldn't I just figure out how to be normal? I tried so hard to fit in at home, at school, at work. I'd wear the clothes and do the things and say the things, but somehow they didn't land for me the way they did for other people. Unaware of what I was doing, I masked and assimilated and figured that if I could mostly blend in, I could mostly avoid being embarrassed or shamed. Or fired. 

 

And so that's what I did. For a long time, I tried on different identities, trying to find the one that would be tolerable to me and help me fit in. 

 

I started smoking cigarettes at 13 because it was cool. I started drinking at 14 for the same reason. I smoked pot at 15 because that was cool too. I started being sexually active at 12.and lost my virginity at 15 because the way I interpreted things, girls who said yes were more likeable than girls who said no. And somehow that was going to make me fit in.

 

In college, I gravitated towards the hippie crowd because hippies could act weird and it was considered normal.I dropped out of college and waited tables, and that turned from a part-time solution to my full-time job. In my 30s, still waiting tables, I got married, bought a house, and had two kids. More answers, more identities. And even though I was checking big boxes of what's normal, still so many things didn't make sense. 

 

I didn't make sense.

 

It wasn't until I got sober at 41 and I'm 54 now that I started to scratch the surface of who I really was underneath all of it. I started to see that I'd been drinking at life because I didn't understand it. And so I decided to try to figure it out. I started studying and researching, learning everything I could about myself, humans, and human behavior. 

 

And then 12 years later,In April 2024, still deep into my self-education, I was diagnosed with ADHD. And six months after that, I was diagnosed with autism.

 

It was like putting on glasses for the first time. Everything that used to feel blurry suddenly had a shape. There was meaning, clarity, definitions, explanations. And the more I learned, the more it felt like I was finally in the right place, that I could stop trying to figure out how to be normal and just figure out how to be me.

 

What getting sober had started, diagnosis had busted wide open. 

 

And that's why this podcast exists.

 

Let me take you back. I remember being 15 years old. I'm standing in the record store at the mall. I picked out my first three albums. The Dead Milkmen, Eat Your Paisley, The Cure, Standing on a Beach, and The Smiths, The Queen is Dead. 

 

I didn't really know why I picked those three. I just knew they felt right. Then when I got home and listened, I knew I'd been right. That music made me feel like myself. It was weird, different.It was like a secret world I could finally belong to. I remember listening to The Queen is Dead for the first time and the lyrics were not like anything I'd ever heard and also like what I'd been waiting to hear all my life.The intro to a song called Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others and the way it faded in and out, loud to soft, it made me feel like I had left my small Virginia town behind and went to a place where I felt understood.The cure opened up this dark depths in me that I'd never dared explore. And the dead milkmen were so weird. It was so wonderful. Every album made me feel recognized and like maybe who I was wasn't such a bad person after all.

 

When we moved to a new state my senior year of high school, I suddenly became the cool new girl because I liked weird music. That was one of the first times I realized that this part of me, the weirdo, outsider, the strange one, maybe wasn't a flaw. 

 

Maybe it was something else.

 

Fast forward to now, I'm just starting to learn how to be myself, fully, honestly, and in front of other people. I don't totally know what this rebellion looks like yet, but I know I'm in it. Wobbly and uncertain, but steady in my desire to belong. And that belonging looks like belonging without pretending. 

 

That means going against the social grain.The social grain that says things like, 

 

act like you understand when you don't. 

Say yes when you mean no. 

Having needs is high maintenance. 

You have to feel the same way as other people. 

Make sure you only do one thing at a time and do them fast. 

And also make it easy to transition from one thing to another all while you're agreeable, chatty, and friendly.

 

And if you don't do those things, you're labeled as a problem. 

 

I want to challenge all those ideas. I want to rebel against them. 

 

And not just in theory, but in real life, in our bodies, our relationships and our spaces.

 

Here are some ideas I've had about how to do that. 

 

On my next coffee date with a friend, I'm going to let myself rock back and forth if I have the urge to stim. 

 

And I'm going to speak up if the sun is too bright in the place where I'm sitting and ask, could we move over there where the light won't be in my eyes?

 

At the grocery store, if someone's standing too close to me, I'm going to try saying, could you please move over a little? To feel comfortable, I need more space.

 

If I'm going to a new place, I'm just going to ask for clear, specific instructions. So if I'm meeting someone and I've never been there before, I want to be able to say, hey, going to new places is really hard for me. I really need to know exactly where to park and exactly what door to go into. It really helps me feel like I can handle going somewhere new.

 

By doing these things, I'm teaching myself that I will honor myself and stop all the self-coercion. It's like self-respect practice. 

 

And maybe this is something you can try too. See if there are small places where you can support yourself by making simple requests. No, thank you, I don't want ice in my water. Like that.

 

The reason I started this podcast is because I'm building a life that doesn't ask me to be the same every day. And I want to share what I'm doing with you. 

 

I want us to live in a world that is built for us, where we're part of it, where there's room for us, not othered or difficult or too much, just part of humanity. 

 

And that humanity is where our needs and our differences aren't just merely tolerated, they're welcomed.and also not a big deal. 

 

That humanity wants us to unlearn all the ways we've covered up who we are. It wants us to take care of ourselves. 

 

It's a humanity that affirms all the shifting, inconsistent, too consistent, creative, complex, and nonlinear ways my brain and body move through the world. 

 

It's a humanity that doesn't whisper or stare when I'm stimming by rocking in the coffee shop.

 

So now I'm researching, learning, creating, and talking about how to build a life and a world that is built for us. 

 

An ecosystem that makes space for all of us, our differences, our weirdness, our abrupt goodbyes, and long info dumps. A place for the days we're unstoppable, and also for the days we're in brain fog and need extra support. 

 

Rebelling is that place, and there's room for all of it here. If you're listening, I'm guessing part of you is already reaching for a version of life where you don't have to conform to fit, where you can stop hiding.

 

I crave systems change, a new emerging future. I am pushing back on the expectations normal has placed on us. I'm talking about new ways to do relationships, timing, work, mental health, home, education, communication, resources, possessions, and money.

 

I want to live differently, like humans, and help others do the same.Maybe you do too. So let's examine our assumptions and presumptions, deal with our internalized ableism, share information, figure out who we are, how we work, and what we need so we can openly ask for it. 

 

And let's, most of all, stop trying so hard to change ourselves and start changing the world around us.

 

So welcome to Rebelling. This podcast is where we figure out how to make all that happen. There's time, there's space, and there's so much room for you here. So come on in and let's rebel together. 

 

And that's our first episode!

 

On our next episode, we'll talk about pre-diagnosis stories, my own story and the stories of a couple other people I've met along the way. We'll share what got us started on the path to diagnosis, what it was like to get diagnosed and our reactions to it. And it's important to name that diagnosis here can be self or formal. I'm looking forward to sharing those conversations with you. Until then, you know what to do. Keep rebelling.

 

See you for the next episode, May 5th.