Rabid Sharks
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Prison Blog

In which Possum recounts his experiences as an offender in the system.

Possum Bones is autistic. He has identified as a dirty kid in the past, and he’s attended multiple rainbow gatherings. He has several years left to serve in the Washington Correctional system.

He has been making art since he could sit up. He communicates better in writing than speech. If you are interested in the experience of an autistic person doing prison time, check out his Prison Blog. If you are a fan of comic art, underground/outsider music, Lovecraft, Clarke Ashton Smith, Murakami, Cixui Liu, etc.

3/18/20

The bottom line is, I hate basically everyone. Well, more like I don’t care about them so I’m constantly annoyed by their existence. However, functioning that way is impossible so there seems to be a personality construct of some type that acts in my stead. I feel as if my time is always better spent at solitary pursuits, and I need people only for certain purposes…but ultimately, not having friends or being able to associate with people is dysfunctional so there’s this other me that actually does care about people and this is the me that mainly interacts in a friendly way with other people. This is actually some other type of personality created by a coping mechanism. The real me gets bored and needs to speak with other people for various reasons — more than that, the real me needs information and things from other people. The problem is, the real me can’t interact with other people because it both has no respect for their feelings but also scorns deception, even for the sake of kindness. Basically the things people say and think are only valuable to this me insofar as they are interesting, insightful, and logically sound. So much of what people like to say to this me seems completely inane, and this me is basically incapable of jumping through various hierarchical hoops required for polite interaction in society.

It is so unwilling to bow down to the demands of social interaction that essentially someone else has to do it.

As a young child I refused to listen to anything that couldn’t understand logically and insisted there was no reason to care for or respect other people’s feelings (by lying to them, no less!) because feelings were a thing meant to be ignored intentionally. I had feelings but they were not a voice that I overtly respected. I did not understand that feelings color a person’ perception of logic in a very capricious way.

Living this way proved to be impossible and I was continuously running into issues with authority and with other children. I was so intransigent and could only hang on t5o the same program so eventually, when I did begin to learn to make compromises for humans it created an entirely different personality matrix. This me is essentially more passive and kind to a fault than I would ever be and sometimes when i look back on my behavior the original part of me goes, “Why did I behave like that?” Essentially, the answer is as a coping mechanism. I often wish I could turn that off as its so easy to slip into the safe-for-work mode with people, when they really deserve the asshole. Because the asshole is usually right, and everyone is usually an idiot and a hypocrite.

Elisa Carlson