News from Kathryn Bjornstad-Kelly (yes, you read that right)

It's me again.  I'm still alive.  Slightly different name, different situation, plenty has happened since my last entry.  It's been so long since I posted that I almost feel embarrassed to be here again.

Things were really hectic after I made my last post till...well, about right now.  Taking 16 credit hours was a BIG mistake...school was horrible.  I came home and cried every day.  I barely had time to get anything done.  I felt like a failure.  The trip to D.C. was awesome but busy and left me with unfinished work-work and schoolwork.  I never even got to write a blog entry about it.  Corina did, and you should check hers out.  I intend to create a post about the D.C. trip eventually.  It's just not what I want to focus on right now. 

I ran out of steam long before the semester was over.  Most people have a hell week where they are super-busy trying to get schoolwork done.  Not me.  I had two whole hell months.  The last two weeks were the worst.  I had to write four papers 1-page papers for one class, two 3-page papers for another, one 30-page thesis in another, one 10-page paper for another, and take a midterm exam.  I was also supposed to be planning my wedding during this and I didn't have time for it at all, which led to even more stress.  I barely got everything done in time.  I finished my senior thesis an hour before it was due and I was so stressed and sleep-deprived that I could barely think straight.  I wrote it on the history of the online neurodiversity movement and it was supposed to be around 30 pages but it had ballooned to more like 65 (not including the six-page bibliography).  I couldn't move out of bed for two days afterwards and without the adrenaline feuling me like it had for two months, every single muscle in my body ached.  I was really, really sick.

I'm done with school now.  My final grades were great, especially given how poorly I expected to do.  I forgot to sign up for graduation earlier this semester so I have to wait till May, but I'm done with classes.  I'm not even going to the graduation ceremony.  I don't care about it that much.  I'm just relieved that school is over and I don't have to feel the horrible panic of having a million papers due at once ever again.

That was in December.  I thought now that I'd caught up on things I'd write another blog entry...except that when I wasn't working I was playing video games or messing around on the Internet.  Then I started planning my wedding again.  I'd left a lot of things go, including the invites, during my two hell-months.  I sent them out a month and a half before the wedding, and then it was a mad rush to get everything done in time.  Two weeks before the wedding I was regretting my decision to have a large wedding and a couple days before the wedding everything was going wrong.  Due to circumstances too complicated to go into, our minister and one of my bridesmaids had to back out at the last minute.  (No hating on them in the comments, it wasn't anyone's fault, just unfortunate.  I'm still friends with both of them.)   We got one of our friends to step in for the minister and one of my cousins was able to fit in the absent bridesmaid's dress.  Problem solved. 

I got married at the Univerrsity of Missouri-St. Louis's chapel at the Pierre Laclede Honors College on February 25, 2012 to Sean Kelly.  I was in a hurry the day of the wedding.  I barely had time to put on my dress and makeup before I was being handed my bouquet and I rushed to the chapel.  I was still calming down as I walked down the aisle to "The Princess Leia Theme" from Star Wars.

I never used to dream about my wedding.  Getting married was not a life goal for me because it seemed foolish to focus on wanting a wedding instead of marrying someone if you felt it was right.  If I had to do it over again I would plan it sooner and on my own and with less stress, but I'm glad it happened.  Everything pulled together in the end, and it was a beautiful wedding.  (The watermarked photos were taken by KSD Photography, by the way, and more can be seen on their Facebook page.  They'll have the rest of their pictures to me soon.)

Sean and me with our maid of honor, best man, bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girl, and ring bearer.

Bouquet by Krupp's Florist in Belleville, Illinois.

First dance.  Reception and the ballroom at the Ramada Inn in Fairview Heights, Illinois.

Wedding cake and groom's cake by Marla Price.

Being married doesn't feel that much different than being single did.  I'm still living in the same apartment with my husband, our roommate, and two cats.  My name is now Kathryn Marie Bjornstad-Kelly, and now I wear both pieces of my wedding ring set--it was a band and engagement ring, and I'll have a better picture soon.  Here's a picture of me in my engagement ring with Sean in his wedding band for now.  Mine is a light blue sapphire in white gold and his is titanium.

Right now I'm relieved everything is over.  I'm slowly writing thank-you notes and I'm eager to get back to work now.  Things are looking bright.  We paid for our entire wedding in cash and don't have a cent of debt, we got to stay a night in the awesome Moonrise Hotel on the Delmar Loop, I'm getting a new phone and Sean is turning 30 soon, we have lots of new kitchen equipment, we're planning a honeymoon soon...it's been a long time since things have looked this good. 

It looks like I'll have a lot more time to blog now.  I hope all my readers are doing well.  You can expect to see a post on the ASAN Anniversary Fundraiser sometime this month. 

November Updates

It's been an interesting month, and it's been a while since I updated.  But I'm up late, can't sleep, and my back pain is particularly brutal at the moment, so I figured I'd take the time to let everyone know what's going on.

Autistics Speaking Day was November 1st.  It was our second annual ASDay, and more successful than the last.  The permanent ASDay page got more likes, and although we had fewer people who clicked "attending" on the event page this year, we had a significant increase in the number of people who created videos, blog posts, pictures, poems, and other works for ASDay.  Last year we had 80; this year we had over 100.  Corina and I are very pleased with the results.  I wish I'd had more time to devote to promoting it, but as I'll explain in more depth later I've been ridiculously busy this year and I let it go more than I should have.  We have links to all of the posts on our blog, including an article in the Guardian.  I even made my brother jealous when I found out Stephen Fry tweeted about ASDay, which led to several more people becoming interested in it and me basically freezing for several minutes going, "Stephen Fry knows who I am.  Stephen Fry knows who I am," and talking about it to anyone who would listen. 

All in all, was a good day, but after it was over I had a drink to calm my nerves and slept for 14 hours.  I'm sure I mentioned this before, but it's extremely stressful running an event like ASDay, and the "YES, I DID SOMETHING AWESOME" feeling comes along with feeling overwhelmed and overworked.  I think it will be easier for me next year when I'm out of school.  I'm really glad I had the opportunity to work with Corina and with all of the people who participated in ASDay.  I know it meant a lot to a lot of people, and I think we all deserve a huge round of applause for our work.  It will never cease to amaze me what happened last year, and now that I'm here looking back at Kathryn Bjornstad in 2010 I see that ASDay changed my life for the better.  It was the first time I really participated in the autistic community, and it was a launching point for me to begin working with ASAN on their communication team, which has put me more in touch with the needs of our community.  I feel like I'm making a difference in the world, and I'm doing things I never thought were possible before.  I went from seeing myself as an unemployed student with an inferiority complex to seeing myself as an activist.  I'm not famous, I'm not all that impressive, I'm not charismatic or anything like that, but I'm still capable of having some kind of an effect on the world.

Corina and I have seen our work pay off.  Most of you have probably already heard, but ASAN is having an anniversary fundraiser later this week.  When I heard about it I wanted to go but did not think I would be able to.  Then I found out that Corina and I were receiving an award for our work on ASDay and I would get to go to the fundraiser in Washington, D.C. to receive it.  I am both shocked and extremely excited about this, and I'm grateful to Ari and the others at ASAN for giving me this opportunity.  This will be my first time meeting Corina, who changed my life when she first typed out the phrase "Autistics Speaking Day."  We work really well together and I consider her a friend, but I've never spoken to her before.  I've never met any of my other advocate friends in person before, and I'll be meeting a lot of them this week, including Ari Ne'eman, Melody Latimer, Lydia Brown, Emily Titon, Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone, and possibly others I haven't heard from yet.  (Please let me know in the comments if you'll be in D.C. for the fundraiser--I'd love to meet you.)

Trying to attend the fundraiser has created even more work for me, including something you all will hopefully see at the event itself.  It's been hard trying to plan the trip while I'm so busy myself.  We had to arrange our flights and find a hotel room for both myself and Sean, who I would not be able to travel without since I will melt into a ball of oversensitive mush as soon as the plane's engines start making noise, and I rely on Sean's help a lot, especially in stressful situations.  I also had to find clothes suitable for a formal event when I realized the dress I had planned to wear doesn't fit. 

It's just been a stressful semester in general for me.  I'm taking 16 credit hours at the moment, when I've only been able to survive taking 12 at a time before.  At the end of this semester I will be done with school and I'll get the degree I was going through all this pressure for.  I'm writing my senior thesis on the history of the autism rights and neurodiversity movements while trying to keep up with work and the rest of my course work.  I don't have much time to myself anymore.  I normally need to relax for as much time as I spend working in order to retain my sanity, and it has been sadly impossible to do that between everything that's been going on.  I've been experiencing more meltdowns and more panic attacks and started taking medication for my anxiety. The stress is causing my muscles to tense, and tense muscles make my back more likely to hurt, and the pain creates an even lower tolerance for stress.  I turned 23 a few days ago, and my only wish for my birthday was that I could spend the whole evening letting my back unclench and watching Sean play Fallout: New Vegas.  I'm thinking about my upcoming wedding that's only three months away.  I'm thinking about the student loans I'll have to start paying off and the terrifying amount of money I spent on my education.  I'm thinking about the fact that my house is in desperate need of a cleaning and that it's been a while since my last cortisone injection and I can feel it.  I have two papers due while I'm in Washington D.C., one of which is 30 pages and I haven't had time to start on either.

I'm really lucky to be working with people as understanding as the folks at ASAN, who are working with me to make my work load easier.  A great deal of my stress is my own fault for not letting them know earlier that I was struggling.  I hope once I'm less stressed out that I'll be of more use to them.

I hope I don't sound too depressed or negative.  I know everything is going to turn out okay.  The thing I want everyone to understand is that my life is a heterogeneous mix of happiness and stress right now.  I'm extremely happy with the way my life is going.  A year ago I had no idea what my future was going to look like, but now a huge part of the image is clear and the future is very nearly my present.  In a few months I will be a college graduate, be married, my resume will have an impressive-looking award and an actual degree to make it prettier, and hopefully I'll be increasing my work at ASAN.  But what that means is that my life is changing extremely rapidly, and sometimes that makes things look a little ugly.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but what I need right now is more sleep, a good massage, and a soak in a hot tub.  Well, at the very least I can work on the first one as soon as I post this, and I'll wait until the others become possible.  I'm looking forward to the event in D.C. and hopefully it will be a nice little vacation for me.  Wish me luck!

On getting my ass moving...

I keep not posting and I really don't know why, although now that I think about it I guess I'm afraid no one's listening.  I have a lot of connections with other autistic bloggers and so on but I haven't exactly gone out and invited everyone to start reading the blog.  I'm kind of terrified of the idea that I could post something about people from my personal life and forget that it may offend them.  Because this is the first time I've had an idea of myself putting things out in public instead of keeping them in private conversations.  Oh, well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So a sorority at my school was raising money for Autism Speaks.  I was going to lunch with a friend from class and I turned and saw one of the girls waving a sign with the little puzzle pieces on them.  I was so angry.  I was just shaking with anger and I could barely think straight.  I went up to the table and asked them if they supported eugenics and told them they might consider finding a new organization.  Actually that makes me sound too well-organized.  I was kind of in mid-meltdown (and meltdowns don't leave me with much room for effective communication), so I wound up stuttering out something that made me sound a little insane and then running up the escalator.  I couldn't concentrate in class; I was shaking still an hour later.  So I stopped trying to take notes on my computer (which I sometimes use instead of notebooks for the sake of organizatino) and instead typed an e-mail to someone in my school about it, hoping it would get someone responding to me. 

I was very surprised when I got a meeting out of it with the advisor for Greek Life and someone at the Student Life center.  I organized a bunch of  data on why Autism Speaks is bad (if you don't know about this I think www.notautismspeaks.tk sums it up pretty well and a Google search can get you the info as well.)  So I managed to convince the boyfriend to take off work to come with me because I was terrified and I am not good at that sort of thing, and he works for the government so he is used to the kind of bullshit I expected to encounter.

They were surprisingly polite and seemed pretty sympathetic to me.  I was surprisingly conversational, although I'm sure they weren't used to someone being that eloquent while staring firmly at the table for an hour.  I tried very hard to fake eye contact and I just couldn't.  It always sounds like it will be easier when I'm thinking about it than it is when I try to do it.  They told me they would talk to the sorority but they couldn't really do anything about what student organizations raised money for.  Basically, they could raise money for the KKK and the school can't do anything about it.  The important thing is that they actually listened to me for an hour and took the information I gave them, along with a list of other organizations that would be more suitable to raise money for if the sorority is really interested in promoting supportive services for autistic people.

I also got information on how to form a student group for disability rights.  It's entirely probable that next time the sorority or anyone else tries to raise money for Autism Speaks, I may have a few people willing to picket them with me. 

I recently got an e-mail from Disability Access Services from my school.  For a little background, I went to DAS as a freshman asking for them to help with things related to my hearing loss and my autism.  They were kind of the opposite of help and we couldn't figure out a way to make them do what they were supposed to.  Although they did tell me I was to meet with one of them once a month for reasons I can't exactly figure out.  Went to two meetings, but the second one (with the coordinator of that office) happened while I was sick with a mild flu.  I asked her awkwardly at the end of the meeting if she knew how I could see the campus clinic next door.  She seemed alarmed and took me there herself, and told the girl at the front desk I needed a psychiatrist and it was an emergency.  I had to explain in front of everyone that I was not in fact suicidal and just needed someone to check up on my respiratory illness.  I left without seeing a doctor, feeling both embarrassed and weirded out.

Then I broke my foot badly.  I had an avulsion fracture of the 5th metatarsal that required two surgeries to fix.  I am too uncoordinated to use crutches so I was in a wheelchair for two months.  I wasn't too upset because my brother had brittle bones when we were growing up and I'd used his wheelchair before; they don't actually suck as much as my friends seem to think they do.  But my school has a lot of hills so my father had to take me to school every day.  One building I had three classes in was an older building that only had one door that was accessible for a wheelchair user.  When I tried to get into it for the first time, I found that it was locked.  There was a card slot next to it, so I tried using my student ID but it wouldn't work.  My father had to go around into the building and open the door for me from the other side.  I contacted DAS to figure out how I would get in the building.  They said they had to put something on my student ID card to make it work in the door.  I asked if they would do that for me, and they said no.

DAS has never done anything to help me, even though I have only asked them for the simplest, least time-consuming things possible.  So I'm not a big fan of them.  And today they sent me an e-mail letting me know about their exciting news.  Seems they have a new office space (yay for them) and the old coordinator who gave me so much trouble has retired and a new coordinator started in her place.  I wrote him an e-mail detailing my experience with DAS.  I then asked him if I could continue to expect the same level of services s before or if they would actually start helping the university's disabled students, which is what they are paid to do.  Haven't gotten a response yet, but I felt awesome after sending  the e-mail.  I just sent it today, so I figure I'll wait a week for a response and then decide what to do.

In other news, October 1st was my one-year anniversary with Sean, and he proposed to me.  He took me out to eat and when we were standing outside the restaurant looking at the sunset, he pointed to a nearly jewelry store and told me I had to go with him there because he didn't know my ring size.  I couldn't talk for a minute and just made excited squeaking sounds while I hugged him, and then I said yes, even though he hadn't asked the specific question. 

So we went inside and explained to the people we were looking for an engagement ring but I don't like diamonds (not just personal preference; the idea of blood diamonds makes me queasy).  So we wound up doing a custom sapphire ring with a light blue stone.  It was awesome.  Now I'm doing wedding planning.  So between this, school, and everything else, I have suddenly become a very busy person.  But I like constantly having projects so I suppose that's all good.