Posted: 2026-03-13
Lewis's Travels 16-30
π A Whole Lot of Living
A former friend said I have an "abnormally large amount of life experience", and that most people just recycle the same few years over and over again. I don't have a reference point — this might not be true. But I'm happy to keep sharing vignettes from my life anyway.
Whether or not this style of relationship is "normal", it is still human, and maybe even a higher concentration of human than you'll find elsewhere.
π Deliveries
I went over to sample her famous chili con carne (which she says is built around a very different philosophy to mine). She's an amazing cook, and I'm starving, so I'm kind of wolfing it down.
Her daughter is sitting there, carefully watching me do this.
Then, suddenly, she pipes up:
"Did you eat all the food at home, and have to come here for more?"
"...oh, yes. I've been very hungry and eating everything in sight. I have to thank your mum for helping me."
About two weeks later, while I was at home, they were playing deliveries. This is a pretty solid educational game: take an item, say where it needs to go, and take turns bringing it there. Helps identify location names, item names, handling different types of objects, and is also a test of executive function.
She picked up a pizza box and said "bring this to the boy with no food."
He lives above a supermarket now. The supermarket is yet to run out of food.
π Arrival
"You are getting the chance to do the thing you always wanted to do, with the person you always wanted to do it with."
I have never seen someone this happy in my life, ever. It was like twenty Christmases at once for her.
π Meetup
I went to a local meetup for people who are interested in unconventional relationships.
"What's it booked under?"
"'ADHD Support Group'... which... it basically is."
π Forbidden
I was inspecting an apartment in Footscray with my support worker.
As we're getting out of the car, I say "do not, under any circumstances, say the following phrase: 'Δα»₯ mΓ‘ Δα»t mαΊΉ'."
He replied: "How could I possibly know that phrase?! BUT NOW I DO!?"
π Beneath The Mask
Like many autistic women, she has a very, very, very good mask. She has to. Way too many have to.
I was the first person to spot hers in action.
Seeing what is under one — even once — half the people you walk past stop reading as distance and start reading as protection.
π Love
There's something singularly extraordinary about being asked by a small child "why do you two love each other?"
π Curtana
A blunt sword. A sword of mercy and compassion and forgiveness. But a sword nonetheless.
Because when you're hit with mercy and compassion and forgiveness and still fall, you have no excuse. You're utterly done.
It's the most dangerous sword you could ever wield, a sword that only harms the irredeemable.
Every time it draws blood, the person is finished. A nick, a scratch, a droplet of blood. We know who they are now.
There was initially a dark humour to the nickname, since this was someone who ends lives on a daily basis. But we found something deeper in it.
π Kumite
A classic Kyokushin stunt: one person stays in, and a fresh partner rotates in to battle them.
I have no comprehension of what possessed me to do this, but I agreed to play 3 times in one week (with a different partner every time). By the last one I was begging to just fix her Xbox instead, but then she started taking her clothes off while I was doing it.
A year later, a platonic friend needed her Xbox fixed and promised not to take her clothes off. Well, on the way there, her dog pissed on her shirt.
π "You WILL latch onto me."
Rescue attachment is an interesting one.
When someone begins a (casual) relationship by taking your hand and walking you out of the trauma house — stopping only to advise you to record a video of yourself going through the house one last time, then locking yourself out — it creates a special connection. Something that actually can't be fully rendered rationally.
She has lived more than her fair share of traumas herself. The "record you locking yourself out" thing was from personal experience. She knew full well that the attachment would happen, and was quite explicit about it. But we thought I'd be able to handle it, and we were mostly right.
π Crush
"What's on your mind?"
I told her.
Her face did something I'd never seen before — a kind of smirk.
"Here you lie, next to a naked woman who will do whatever you want, and the thing on your mind is that other woman who is not currently lying next to you. Seems like someone has a crush."
That was the day I learned the word "compersion".
π Moths in the Apartment
When I was in a transitional sharehouse, I stored most of my possessions in a big pile at the far end of the house, packed into modular labelled boxes.
My housemate at the back of the house had a bird, and left birdseed openly lying around. This attracted moths, which laid eggs on my gear.
For about the first year in my apartment, there were moths. Moths in general are quite specific about what they'll eat; if there isn't anything resembling birdseed lying around, this type will starve over time. So they went away on their own, but there was something almost fun about having traces of the liminal space in the new place.
π Cute
All I remember was falling asleep to her grinning like a madman, then being told the next day that "sleepy Lewis is cute."
π Impropriety
"Excuse me. You can't be neurodiverse in public."
"It shall be quite the scandal! What will the local country club think?! Next they'll think you're some kind of floozy who shows ankle!"
π Chat
I had connected with a friend who wanted to know about this kink stuff, and wanted to learn more.
I added them to a group chat with two ladyfriends. One of them renamed the group chat "Lewis's Harem".
Her response: "*shrug* works for me."
π NYE 2010
Shared with permission.
A few days earlier, she had met me for the first time, thrown me in her car, and taken my virginity the same night she met me.
New Yearβs Eve itself was chaos — overproof liquor, a road flare, a blacked-out host having the same argument twice.
We walked back to my house around the corner singing love songs. It wasnβt the right time for us yet. We broke up in short order.
A decade and a half later, after my separation, I saw her online on December 30, and messaged her at 4am on several platforms. We pretty much picked up where we left off. She drove down across town in the same car she had originally picked me up in. And we sang the same songs.
π Checkin
Version: 1
Written: 2026-03-13
Written on: 7.5mg olanzapine since 2025-11-11
Mental health was: very poor - estimate 10-15% brain