Episode 9 transcript
[Theme plays]
Zack: Hello Mr. and Mrs. Autism and all the ships at sea! You’re listening to Stim4Stim, the relationship podcast by and for autistic people! I’m one of your co-hosts, Zack Budryk. Who else is here with me tonight?
Charlie: Charlie Stern, Paris Geller-Stern, and Mr. Bird!
Nkozi: And my name is Nkozi!
Charlie: So this is a rare instance where we have a guest who I am always hanging out with. and we are very good friends who see each other a lot. So I just, you know, we’ve talked about all of this off the podcast, off record, so many times but I just want to — I just want you to go into your personal autism journey a little bit.
Nkozi: Yeah, absolutely! My name is Nkozi. I came to this podcast via Charlie inviting me onto this podcast… [laughs] several months ago, I think we were at the Vet, weren’t we?
Charlie: Yeah!
Nkozi: And you said that you wanted me on here. And essentially what’s been going on in my life the past year ish or so, is that through the process through a lot of self analysis and like talking to my therapist and you know, reviewing things that have been like said about me by medical professionals and like wondering about feelings I’ve had, I’ve kind of come to a place where I have begun to realize a lot of things in my life could be explained by me being autistic, in terms of ways in which I internalize information or relate to people or in difficulties I have regarding that and that like probably entirely due to racial and gender issues. Being black and being a trans woman, I would not have noticed those because the kind of like pathology or like model to help you understand autism is not made for people who share in my demographics. Similar to ADHD, which was a big thing for me. Kind of like realizing slash learning that I had ADHD last summer and then talking to family members and to medical professionals who were like “Well, yes absolutely, we thought you knew that. Etc. etc.” So that’s kind of how I’ve arrived here. It’s been a pretty recent process of discovery. It has been the lens through which I have looked a lot of things in my past over the past couple of months.
Charlie: You are a person who straddles the lines that Zack and I are on opposite ends of because you are married but you are also polyamorous.
Nkozi: Yeahs! Polyamorous is definitely the appropriate word for it, although it is a bit less like active than I think like a lot of people either married or unmarried are, yeah. It’s a bit less active. I will occasionally go on dates with or sleep with people and like my wife is aware of this. And if, especially if we are living in the same place, then it’s like a discussion we have each time. Especially now-a-days during Coronavirus times.
Charlie: Yeah. I think to add on to that I kind want to sort of let the audience in on my own personal philosophy on polyamory which is that it is a sexual orientation and it’s like how I live my life. Which is different from the sort of stereotype of a couple who is very horny and very much like trying to fuck other people and actively dating and actively seeking things out. Like when I am alone and single and not dating anyone and not fucking anyone, I am still polyamorous
[The rest make noises of agreement]
Nkozi: Yeah. I would say that is a similar thing for me. There was a point earlier in Serena and I’s engagement where I was feeling a lot of guilt around the desire I had for literally any other person. It wasn’t necessarily any specific person at the time, all the time. But it definitely was an instance of me being like this is a thing I feel very strongly about and even if I’m not engaging with it, I do at least want to be able to acknowledge. And you know, I am not actively horny and seeking arrangements with anyone as it were. At least currently, my wife and I have reached a place where if she ever felt that she wanted to be going out with somebody and pursuing somebody in some kind of relationship, I would have no issue with that and while again, I do not like often do this, if that was something I had a great desire to do, I could bring it up and talk to her about it. Also, I did reach a point as far as consistent relationships are concerned. I did reach a point sometime late summer, last year, where I realized that if I were going to be in like a relationship, like a dedicated relationship that was not with her, I would still want it to involve her as some kind of triad and or more situation. Operating with that framework has kind of like helped me healthy limit certain interactions or contacts that I’ve had.
Charlie: Did any of that coincide with your big move, moving away from her?
Nkozi: Yes, yes it did! So, when I decided to move here to Philadelphia, where you and I are, that was around that same point that I was like, “hey, I need to discuss the way that we’ve been doing our relationship and like how and why.” And discussed, saying “this is something that I feel like is very strongly me and even if I don’t feel the impulse to act on it, I do want to be able to acknowledge that I am attracted to other people without feeling a deep sense of guilt and or shame.” It’s not that necessarily like shame was being put in place by her or encouraged by her but it was something that our relationship model, as far as I understood it, just kind of suggested. You kind of get these messages from the ether. And then we lived apart for a time but in the same area. We were like one town away from each other while I was continuing to be at work and she was working and continuing her nursing education, which she just completed. So during that time, while we were in the same area, still seeing each other fairly regularly, I felt that was the time at which I could begin to explore having other relationships again. And this was before that we were legally wed but had every intention of doing so again in the future. And had it not been for the pandemic, my moving here would have just continued that model. While I’ve talked to people and definitely gone on one or two small dates, since I’ve been here, it’s been much the same thing. I think that as far as social capacity, or social engagement, is concerned when we are living together again — which will be about the end of next week, actually.
Charlie: Oh, nice! That’s really cool.
Nkozi: Yes! Yes, it is! She just graduated, she finished her schooling last week and graduates next week. And then immediately afterwards, we are moving her down here into our new place.
Charlie: I am so excited for you guys!
Nkozi: Unfortunately, I won’t be down the street from you anymore.
Charlie: Oh, that’s true! Oh my gosh. How are we going to walk equidistant and meet in a — So we’ve been doing this thing recently and we did it sometimes in the fall, where we would walk towards each other’s houses and then meet a third friend’s house and just sit on that person’s porch.
Nkozi: Yeah!
Charlie: It was so easy!
Nkozi: It really is like right in the middle! This is very easy. Honestly, especially during the fall, it was something I really needed cause I wasn’t seeing anyone.
Zack: Charlie, have you met Nkozi’s wife already?
Charlie: Oh yeah! So, they got married in January?
Nkozi: Yeah! Early January, late December.
Charlie: I did their newly wed portraits. So the trajectory of time was that Nkozi moved here and those conversations were happening, and then later they got married and now Nkozi’s wife is moving here. So I just want to set that up for people who don’t know us in person.
Nkozi: Mhm
Charlie: Because I think sometimes when relationships open, when they started maybe not as open, I think that people panic and think that means the end of the relationship.
Nkozi: Yeah, yeah.
Charlie: But of course, y’all just got married and moving in together and you have this whole life ahead and it absolutely doesn’t mean the death of a relationship.
Nkozi: Yeah, well I mean as far as open relationships and polyamory are concerned, if you’ll allow me to continue before say like, Zack chimes in with something maybe, is that we first got together in the middle of 2015. Our relationship was open by virtue of the fact that we were initially not like seriously seeing one another. We had both been in semi-open or completely open relationships prior to that, which is actually how we met each other. Long, complicated, in retrospect very funny story. A very pioneer valley relationship story. And that was the way things were for about a year and a half. And then the first time we moved in together, we closed our relationship. Which was difficult for me and I didn’t realize how difficult it was at the time. It remained that way, both closed and difficult, for about another year and a half, almost two years. At which point, I was like, “hey. I really want to make this big life change where I move to Philadelphia and there’s nothing in there that suggests that I want to end our relationship, cause it’s not something I want to do, even a little bit.” But I also did want to open up a relationship and you know, for whatever conflicts here and there we had had in the past, we were very clear with each other, especially from the outset, that the reason we wanted to be in a relationship with one another was to make each other happy and to care for one another. And so to that effect, she could really see that continuing to live where we both lived was really doing a number on me and that I needed to very much make a change and make a change in stages, not all at once. I didn’t immediately quit my job and pack up everything and move here. But she was incredibly gracious about that and also gracious about the fact she could tell I had been having difficulties with the way our relationship model was arranged. And pretty much what she said to me, and I feel like it’s relevant here, is that she just does not want to be in like open and or polyamorous relationship like if we are also raising children together. Which is a thing we have intentions to do. And that makes complete sense to me and would be fine. Like I would be more than okay with putting other relationship kind of things on hold if we both agreed to do that again at that time, if we were focusing on raising one or more children. And that was like her only real stipulation and then later on is when I said, after I had dated a couple people seriously or semi-seriously, it was only after ending these other relationships that I had in addition to the one I had with her and this was just before we got married, where I said, “I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone else if you are not also in that relationship.” And that’s not to say I’m not interested in somebody or might not be attracted to them in some capacity but this was essentially me putting that limit on myself. And she was like, “yeah, that makes sense and I’m completely okay with that. And that’s kind of how I would want to do things as well.” So it’s an ongoing discussion and we’ve been together for, god, six years now in total and yeah, it’s you know — it’s only gotten better and more solid.
Charlie: Zack, do you want to maybe engage for those of us who aren’t married? Do you want to talk a little bit about how marriage is a living organism that you actually have to curate and work for?
Zack: Yeah, absolutely! You know, the way I think about it is — that I feel like there are a lot of parts of being a person that are like brushing your teeth, where it’s not something you already did, so now your teeth are brushed. It’s like your state of being. You brush your teeth every day.
Charlie: Yeah
Zack: And you work at being married every day. You never take anything for granted. You never assume that something doesn’t need to be worked on or will work itself out. You don’t, you know, you’re reasonable about it. You don’t get paranoid or hyper vigilant about it or anything but you always — I don’t think it ever hurts to ask your partner if something is bothering them. I bring this back — I bring way too many things back to the Simpson’s, but there is in the episode where Milhouse’s parents divorce, Milhouse’s dad is telling Homer a story about how he thought his marriage was perfect and then one day he got home late and there was just like a thing of grocery store hotdogs thawing in the sink for dinner and he just realized his marriage was over when that happened and hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t noticed any warning signs leading up to that. And I think that to truly continue attending to your marriage, you have to not get to that point where something takes you by surprise. I already used the toothbrush analogy but it’s almost like a garden. You’re attending to those plants every day, you’re not just checking in every couple months or whatever.
Nkozi: And Zack, to be clear, you are also married?
Zack: I am married, yeah.
Nkozi: Yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about and it’s actually — I received similar, rather I received not dissimilar advice from my father, who is very much like a commitment oriented adult man. He loves to be committed to things and to do them for long periods of time.. [chuckles] And I thought about relationship models — When I realized that I very much wanted to be in a relationship with Serena for as long as was humanly possible given my life span with Serena, I began to think about the relationship models I had seen that seemed to work and not work like what the core components of them were and kind of like effective emotional communication was really the key. Effective for some people doesn’t necessarily mean talking about feelings all the time, so much as being willing and able to do that talking about any and everything. I think for me the bar is — I have two litmist tests that I run internally and that I ran internally when Serena and I first started seeing each other and then started living together. Which is, I really feel like you best get to know a person when you’ve lived with them for six to seven months.
Zack: Oh, yeah!
Nkozi: And I really feel that you know that a relationship is strong if you can talk about gut health issues.
[Zack and Nkozi laugh]
Nkozi: I think if you can live with someone for about half a year and you can say, “oh, I’m feeling kind of queasy and not in any kind of fun way,” and that’s an okay conversation, then you’re on the right track. [Laughs]
Zack: Yes!
Nkozi: And like other problems can be worked out because you have clearly gotten to a place where this is someone who is close to you! [laughs]
Zack: Yes! And one of the things that I’m really glad we did was we had a fairly long engagement just because we had both told our families we would finish school before we got married. The result of that was by the time we got married, which was the fall of 2012, there was absolutely no new annoying habits that we were going to discover in one another.
Nkozi: Mhm
Zack: I don’t necessarily recommend everyone waits as long as we did. But I do recommend that everyone get to a point where you know you’re in love rather than infatuated. Because those things are part of what you’re accepting at that point.
Nkozi: Yeah. You know, you bring up a really interesting point specifically regarding the length of the relationship or the length of the engagement because Serena and I were engaged for, essentially privately engaged for two-ish year and then we broke off our engagement for about a year and a half and then got re-engaged and then shortly there after, like six months later, got married. It was just, you know, us figuring out things between the two of us and doing this experiment of living apart after we had lived together for three years as a couple and seeing how that felt. In one of the relationships I found myself in during 2020, with someone who is a very very good friend of mine. Someone who I care about deeply. Someone I initially approached because I was attracted to them and was like, “hey, do you want to do something?” And I didn’t know where it was going to go, and didn’t know it was going to turn into a long thing — and it did. It’s been interesting to me to be in this one long-term committed relationship and then spend time with this other person, intimate, long time- and I say intimate in the most blaise sense — like, you know you’re in the same house for a couple days at a time and realized as much as I really do appreciate and care about this person, we’re not compatible and we’re not compatible in a lot of those little ways that really matter. And a lot of those little ways that really matter are how do we go about cleaning the living room or what is our dish policies. And this is not to say this person was messy in any way, shape or form, as much as just the way we approached these little things and the things that we might — and the way that those interact with what we may or may not need out of a relationship. Like after a while, said to me, “yeah, you know this isn’t going to be the right thing for either of us. Because what I need in a relationship is actually something I already have and I don’t necessarily need more of it or rather, if I do want more of that, I don’t want you to necessarily change in a way in which you are doing that. And you need things out of a relationship partner or romantic partner that I am either unwilling or unable to give you. This does not diminish the care I have for you at all, and again this person and I are still very good friends and still talk pretty much every day. But I was like, I don’t think it’s right for us to be in a relationship with each other in this way. And I don’t think I would have been able to made that decision when I was younger before I had other relationship kind of experience. Like I have lived with more than a couple partners, and as a very meticulous Carribean person raised by very meticulous Carribeans, the way I approach house cleaning and cooking schedules, etcetera, are just baked into me and I can’t get it out. And I just need to be able to be the one who cleans the house and not has anyone mess it up [chuckles], etcetera, etcetera.
Zack: Yeah. That makes total sense and I think that a lot of the — I think this is part of having chemistry with somebody, obviously…
Nkozi: Mhm
Zack: ..I know that it’s mostly thought of as like a romantic thing but it’s every facet of how you connect with one another, including what might seem like mundane things like that. Again, if there’s something that is going to bug you to the point that it becomes a problem down the line, that’s something you need to figure out while you can.
Nkozi. Yeah, absolutely. Preferably the first or second time that you notice it. You know, I think it also — I think my parents were very struck by me being like, “yey, Serena and I are getting married.” And they were like, “You’ve been in a relationship for a really long time, so this isn’t unexpected but also it’s a little unexpected.” And that’s just because from my like youth they knew me as somebody who was in and out of relationships all the time. And I just had to explain to them, and I didn’t explain to them in great detail, that no, we just work extremely well together. We are such a good team on any and everything. We’re even a good team at being lazy.
[Zack and Nkozi laugh]
Zack: I love that!
Nkozi: Yeah! I’m just truly excited about literally every thought she has and everything she does. And it’s the same. And I can just be walking around the house spouting nonsense and she’ll be like this is so great, keep going, tell me more [laughs] I mean, that’s really what I need in a partner. Just someone who will let me like just have stream of thought, absolute bat-shit sentences rolling out of my mouth at four in the morning and who’s just like, ‘that’s so nice. Go back to sleep now.”
[Zack laughs]
Nkozi: And I think Serena really needs somebody who is down for the fact that she has to be the one who arranges all the furniture and that’s just how it has to be. Yeah, you clearly have a passion for this and you’re very good at it, go ahead. I’ll sometimes offer a general critique but I know that this is your thing.
Charlie: Yeah! I think it’s a really good way to frame — Nkozi from you saying team and Zack saying chemistry, I think it’s very mind blowing for people to realize that relationships are more than addressing the relationship itself. You know?
Nkozi: Yeah
Charlie: They’re about existing also.
Zack: Mhm
Charlie: Not only who you are inside your home with that person but how you approach the outside world.
Nkozi: Yes, absolutely!
Charlie: Not only how you interact with each of your families and introducing the partner to your family but how do you function in your social circle.
Nkozi: Mhm
Charlie: How do you — when you’re driving to a store, are you natural sort of playing off each other? Do you know what you’re doing when you’re leaving the car? Stuff like that, I’ve certainly noticed when I have good, comfortable living with people energy, with a partner versus I’m spending a lot of time at their house energy. Does that make sense?
Nkozi: Yeah
Charlie: Yeah
Zack: That makes sense, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nkozi: Yeah, that’s very very very legible to me. Oh my god, that is so legible to me. The example of how like one gets out of a car with a person actually strikes me as quite surprisingly profound but that’s very very real. That’s extremely real. Yes Charlie! Damn! [laughs] I’m actually remembering various relationships I’ve had where I’ve just walked down the street with somebody and been like, that was like a little difficult
[Everyone laugh]s
Charlie: Oh my gosh, yeah! Like getting on the train with this one person I dated in 2017. It was bizarre to take him out in public and he was like normal. There was nothing screamingly wrong with him.
Nkozi: Uh-huh
Charlie: But it was like weird to like go places. The act of being in transit to go places, even if things went well when we got there, it wasn’t a well oiled machine to actually move through spaces.
Nkozi: Yeah, oh god. That’s so specific to whatever person you end up being with or spending time with, because it’s different with every coupling, as it were. To bring this back to the show’s theme for me, as I have discovered many things about myself and neurology, and mental health things. A lot of those discoveries have been made while I have been with Serena and one thing I have never had to question, and for a while it surprised me because it hadn’t been true in other relationships before and then afterwards when it wasn’t true in other relationships it surprised because I was so used to it, is that with her I have never had to question whether or not I was loved as a complete person. That wondering has never entered the equation in all of the years we’ve known each other and it’s not to say that doesn’t exist in other relationships I’ve had, but the strength of it, the power she puts into that care, that love at once is gentle and really just overwhelming. And I say overwhelming because for a couple months early in our relationship, I remember feeling weird and reflecting back, I felt weird because there was nothing wrong.
Charlie: Yeah
Nkozi: And I don’t know if that’s a legible feeling for everyone who will listen, but I imagine it will be pretty recognizable for many people. It’s like when something is going right, sometimes just feels incorrect because you’re so used to having to address a crisis or some kind of other problem or you get to a place where you know that this isn’t going to be a forever thing in some way, shape or form, and you kind of just like, well you know I’ll enjoy it while it’s here. And this feeling of weirdness was the feeling of, oh this is going to be a forever thing.
Charlie: Yeah. It’s almost like a certain type of emptiness. But the emptiness there isn’t negative.
Nkozi: Yeah, exactly!
Charlie: Like ok, I don’t have to adjust to weird conflict and stimulus. I don’t have to be on the roller coaster that I’m used to. What do I do? How do I act?
Nkozi: Yeah. Throughout the course of our relationship, Serena has seen me become an entirely different human being in more ways than one. And I have seen her do the same. And we’ve made a habit and practice of encouraging each other’s growth, independently and interdependently. And I specify interdependently as opposed to co-dependently.
Charlie: Yeah! That’s an important distinction
Nkozi: Yeah, because actually when we got, we did specify that we didn’t want to have the kind of relationship that was going to damage one another. And if there was ever a point where one of us really needed to leave said relationship, that was going to be an okay thing. And said that right from the outset. And honestly, I think that making that agreement is why we have been together for so long. One of the major reasons is that there’s never been a point where either of us has wanted to not be there. Well, that’s not actually true. When I was going through a severe mental health crisis, there was a point at which I was like I don’t know that I can do this. I was feeling that due to outside factors that were not me operating at full capacity. And once I got my head on straight and addressed other problems, that was no longer a thought I was having. Which sends me back to the point I was initially trying to make before the very important aside, which is Serena has seen me change into an entirely different person and go through intense pain and intense loss and heartache and grief and discover many, many things about myself. She was there when I got diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and was holding as I just literally wept openly, thinking about my teenage years and how that had been marked by my emotional instability and not knowing what the hell was wrong with me. She kind of was the one who informed me that I very clearly had ADHD and then was there when I essentially learned that I had known this before and had forgotten about it. Which is a very typical thing for me. She has been around me when I have been completely out of work, no income for ten months at a time, in deep deep deep depression and mourning and throughout all of this, even when we had to have difficult conversations, even when at some point she had to be like, “I know that this is really hard and I know that you’ve been really suffering, but at least like one thing has got to change etcetera, etcetera,” has been so gracious with me and understanding that — has been very understanding of my personhood. I try not to say humanity because I think it goes beyond what we understand our species make-up to be. She’s truly understood me as an individual.
Charlie: And that distinction also has a lot to do with autonomy
Nkozi: Yes! Yes. Very much so. I have never felt so, and I say this as someone who autonomy is paramount. There is nothing about my relationship with her that has ever felt like constraining and if it has for any period of time, I have brought it up. I am not a person who is very good at hiding my feelings, especially when something serious is going on, and I don’t have to. And that’s the big deal is that I don’t have to because I am a very big feeling immediate person and I don’t necessarily react to the emotion I’m having instantaneously but I do have it and it’s legible. Again, I say this as someone who I’ve been in relationships with many kinds of people, a variety of genders and races, but I remain somewhat surprised that my best, longest, and healthiest relationship has been with a white woman from Massachusetts. [Laughs] You know you never know who you’re going to end up with, who is going to end up being the one for you. We really just get along. We get along fantastically.
[Theme plays] 36:31*
Charlie: I think this is a great segway into what we want to address with our — this week’s submission, which is damage from failed relationships. And before I have Zack read the question, I want to share that I asked our austic writers group chat, which is like a vital life line for this show, like we bounce so many things off our friends in there. I asked them what they wanted to contribute about exes and they did talk about personhood. They did talk about as austic people, sometimes we are afraid that no one will ever love us, so that desperation puts us in danger and sometimes makes us a danger. That very unstable, precarious sense of panic. That’s something I personally, even though I’ve had wonderful relationships, I think that’s something to keep in mind for our specific population. The messaging and of course us being — us belonging to other demographics, especially in regards to queerness, you know there is an assumption of brokenness that a lot of us are operating from. Yeah, I want to transition our discussion into exes and ended relationships and the damage that either we have or has been caused to us.
Zack: Okay, so our questioner says:
I’ve tried really hard to package myself quote on quote appropriately and present the potential partner with the relationship option that I thought A). matched the quote on quote right social script, B). was most likely the thing they wanted to reduce possibility of rejection, and C). unfortunately, then often did not match what I actually wanted and I think that people could sense that. Do you have any good decision making frameworks for talking about newly discovered autism to exes as a way of getting closure or how to grieve parts of relationships that went sideways because you didn’t know you were autisitic and forgive yourself for thinking it was all your fault? I guess that’s not so much about the ex themselves. I want to connect to share the new insight but I don’t want to intrude on lives that don’t involve me anymore.
Nkozi: When Charlie sent me that question, I read through it twice and sat with it and the only thing I could say is just, “OOF” in all caps!
Charlie: Can confirm
[Everyone laughs]
Nkozi: Just, oof… [silence] ..Wow. First of all, whoever sent in that question, that is an extremely relatable feeling for me, very much so. There are not many exes that I have that I am not on pretty good terms with. The ones that I am not on good terms with, I am on very bad terms with [chuckles]. It is unfortunate that those difficult past relationships have had a lot to do with, not entirely to do with, but a lot to do with emotional instability on my part. And when I say instability, I do mean the kind of like self doubt and very deep negative self image that goes into trying to mold yourself into a different person to be accepted and or loved. I wish I could say these were distant memories and or events but unfortunately they are not. Earlier I mentioned a brief time in my relationship with Serena, with my wife, where I thought about leaving said relationship. The difficulty I was having during that time was with another person and I was in an emotional position where I felt that — rather I believed rather strongly that in order to make myself worthwhile to someone else in any capacity, I had to take very drastic life changing actions. This was essentially my — it resulted on my end from a feeling of deep shame and failure. Essentially, failure to maintain a facade that I had been putting on. Failure to maintain a level of emotional accessibility and or malleability with regards to this person’s desires. I felt very strongly that because I had broken down or pushed back in this particular instance, that I had done something very very wrong and in order to rectify it, I had to make very very drastic changes. When I say drastic changes, I mean like although I love the therapeutic practice I have engaged in cognitive practice. I gained really amazing skills from working with my therapist for a number of years. The reason I began seeing her is because I thought there was something wrong with me, that I had to fix in order to repair this relationship. The reason I sought her out was because I was very convinced, partially through the negative self image I had been maintaining, I was really convinced that I had to, I believe what is called mask. I had to mask to be a very different entity emotionally and socially in order to be worthwhile or worthy of this person’s love and attention. And I felt very hard that the pain of rejection — I think actually in this instance that I’m trying to describe, rejection isn’t the most accurate thing. I think the feeling I was having was one of deep failure. Shame for having failed to maintain a certain level of acceptability with regards how my actions and my emotions and my ways of socializing like gelled with another person’s. Yeah. As far as decision making goes with talking about things, I will say that having a non-romantic group of friends with whom I could talk. Just someone I could be like, “Hey. I really need to talk about something. Can I call you or can we facetime? Can we meet up, if that’s a thing that you’re doing or we’re doing?” Having that kind of support system has been actually invaluable. I do not think I would be where I am in terms of being more or less emotionally and mentally stable had I not had a group of friends who, even if they didn’t understand specifically what I was going through, could hear me and could really see me as a person. And — where — yeah — neurodivergents, autism when it comes into these things, that has been big big big big hurdle for me. Especially with this one relationship I have been more or less outlining is that I thought that I had essentially failed this person by being too bipolar. I thought that the emotions I was having, which were for very different reasons, I was being caused a lot of harm by this person. But I thought that what I was going through was not necessarily a reasonable reaction to something very bad happening to me over and over again. But I thought it was me not being able to correctly respond to normal stimuli. I thought that I was essentially too crazy for them, is what I had thought of.
Charlie: You know, me having known about the relationship you’re talking about, I want to ask if there was a factor in this that had to do with disposability and that’s something that the group chat wanted me to talk about.
Nkozi: Oh, yes!
Charlie: Yeah. Yeah! Cause you know I know who you’re talking about. I don’t want to say who you’re talking about but I know the kind of feelings you’re feeling and I just want to highlight one young woman in the group chat who talks about this person that she dated who was in therapy and was kind of contending with their own feelings of inadequacy and feelings of loneliness. That person operating from the pain they were in resulted in them, my friend in the group chat, feeling disposable and treated like a disposable person.
Nkozi: Yes! What I have to say in response to that is that is exactly what was happening. When I — I’ve become intimately familiar with the ups and downs of the very famous text, conflict is not abuse and find it useful in continuing to exist in like a grey area of the aftermath of this particular relationship. The idea of disposability however, when I reckoned with my feelings of anger and recokend with exactly what the cause of my pain was and managed to take a pretty, not objective look, but managed to believe my own memory with regards to the emotional reality I was living with. I recognized the breaking point for me was this particular instance of feeling, of being treated as disposable, being treated as the help, and I say that with all the social, racial connotations it carries, specifically in my relationship with this person, who is not a black person. And I.. [audibly breathes out] ..how to grieve that. My process of grieving for a very long time, I would say the majority of time I was doing my active grieving, was just feeling it and I mean really sitting with it and sitting with all the worst parts of it. And then at some point there must have been some tiny little voice in my head that told me that I needed to begin the process of moving away from it. It’s still not really over. I think it’s going to be a very very long time before this particular set of memories stops being a sore spot. I don’t know when or if it will be over in terms of that not having — that no longer hurting. The way I got past, the way I have gotten past the pain of realizing that I was just, not even just, I was at least in some not insignificant part replaceable, disposable, was to lean into my pride. That same pride that caused me to be angry at this treatment in the first place also helped me to move past that hurt. Moving past it meant- meant first of all acknowledging the hurt and feeling the anger and allowing myself to feel that anger which was a very difficult process, a surprisingly difficult process for me as someone who usually doesn’t have a lot of trouble accessing emotions. The first step — first step in the grief process was just rage. Just absolute, overwhelming rage at the injustice and the insult of being treated so poorly and while I did not act on that anger, allowing myself to feel and allowing it move through me in a very physical sense, and not damming it up and letting it seep into other activities was one of the best decisions I was able to make regarding that. [Audibly breathes out] And then another very big thing was I very intentionally, for a long period of time, just sought out affirmation. I just said I deserve and want to be affirmed and desired and to be in a position where if someone had the impulse to be rid of me, like that was not the arrangement we had. For me, in my particular context, this meant that I just started dating a lot and very casually. Pretty much right before the pandemic happened, I was going on two or three dates with people a week and I’m not just talking — I’m talking we went on a nice picnic to we saw a movie to we made out outside the gay bar to we had a couple consecutive hook ups. I’m talking like every facet of dating and you know, it was important for me, and again I say this as someone who you know very much outlining this positive, mostly monogamous relationship, slightly polaymous relationship, I’m in. It was important for me that I was getting that affirmation from people I did not really know or have connections with. So I was just on the internet, posting thirst traps, having fun conversations on Tinder. It really made me have a lot of sympathy for the idea of somebody going through a rebound phase. Never before have I known how necessary that can be. It’s a real confidence booster to, after a period of really emotional pain, to feel wanted, even if you don’t indulge someone else’s wanting. To just to feel and to be even slightly wanted, especially if you can get yourself into a position where you feel wanted in the ways you have previously felt unwanted or undesired. That was a big, big, big part of me getting past this. And, I don’t know what I would say if I ever talked to this person again. I think I initially would say, “Why are you talking to me? I said that I didn’t want to be speaking to you.” And if somehow the question of you know, if things about being bipolar, things about having ADHD, being autistic came up, many of those things came up, I would acknowledge that they were definitely factors in relationships, in this relationship, and almost certainly have been in other relationships. In this specific example that I have been really, really talking about I think that very much was a factor. I think that my desire to be — my desire to be useful, to be palatable, to be worthwhile was very much wrapped in previous feelings of worthlessness, and of alienation that I had experienced socially and romantically. Definitely not the first time I felt disposable, that I felt abandoned and or used. I think at this particular point in my life with this particular person, a lot of things were coming to the surface for me for so many reasons and they happened to entire into my life in a very vulnerable period for me. And I think that vulnerability was expressed in ways where I — it was expressed by me not being able to do that masking — it was expressed by me being — being like only occasionally socially charming and having difficulty understanding, you know, their emotional range and how things were going. And I think it was also very much expressed in me not having the willpower to stand up for myself when I really needed to and that’s not to say that this relationship was all bad, because it certainly wasn’t and I cannot in good conscience pretend that everything I did was perfect or that I was always the most open but I think — I do maintain that the breaking point for me was confronting, yeah confronting this very difficult, very painful pattern of not just feeling used but being used and being criticized and being emotionally undermined for what for me are very natural reactions, like being tired and not being able to do x, y, or z. Or having difficulty understanding the cues that somebody is giving and as I — I’m good at social cues but that’s only due a significant amount of practice and I do mean practice and remembering me being 12 years old and thinking through every potential social interaction I might have in a day and going over them until they were memorized was a big- was a big — [chuckles] was a big, like oh yeah that’s not necessarily a thing everyone has to do kind of moment for me. You know being in an emotionally vulnerable state in which I was not able to put those skills into practice or be as immediately responsive was, yeah, I was in a situation in which it definitely went sideways to use the language of the question. It went sideways.
Charlie: Can I interject?
Nkozi: Please, please!
Charlie: To answer our listener question a little more, I really want to help the person but I also — I think we really need to address power imbalances.
Nkozi: Yes!
Charlie: And if they were to go back and have these conversations with their part-their ex partners and explain discovering that they are autistic and any other revelations they may have had, what about those relationships they had been harmed in? From their language, from the rest of their email, it sounds like they have this need within themselves to explain every single thing, every single thing they were thinking at the time or every single thinking now. You know, do they owe those people? I don’t think we necessarily owe people time. I don’t think we necessarily owe them the answers or explanations…
Nkozi: I agree!
Charlie: …especially when they’ve harmed us. It might make us feel better to attempt to be heard but in the cases of very, very bad relationships that ended, that we’re grateful have ended, I don’t want us to put ourselves in harm’s way trying to have these conversations.
Nkozi: Framing it as being put as putting oneself in harm’s way is a very apt way to go about that. Yeah, I was — [laughs] that was a wonderful interjection. I’m glad you made it especially because I was like let me bring this back to the question at hand. You know, knowing this person is going to be within your audience, what I can say directly to them is that, I understand the thought that it was all your fault. It absolutely was not. A relationship, any relationship requires a minimum of two people. Even if things went absolutely sideways as you said and you feel very guilty about it, there is inherently — inherent to the relationship model of two people a lot of grace and leeway in that. And the impulse to explain oneself and to be — to quite frankly to be heard is…
Charlie: To argue for your own personhood.
Nkozi: Yes! That impulse makes complete sense and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not always a good idea to engage it. If you believe — if you believe you could reach out to one or more ex partners, etcetera, and say hey I’d really like to connect with you about something and talk about feelings stuff. If that person would be open to doing that and you believe that they genuinely want to hear you. Do it. That can be incredibly healing. Excuse me. It has been like once or twice when I have done that, it very much has been for me. There are some people for one reason or another who don’t want to hear you, they don’t want to hear — Not like what the excuses are but what the reasons are. And that sucks. That sucks so much. It sucks so much to know what was happening and have the answer to the question that someone else might have had and want to give it to them. And understand that or feel that they might just not be in that place anymore. And you know, I think — I think in these kinds of emotional situations one should [audibly breaths out] quite frankly, and I’ll try to say this very carefully, just put yourself in the shoes of someone who — who is just not you. Maybe put yourself in a person who has done you wrong and understand that explaining yourself won’t necessarily make them apologize nor will it not make them not have hurt you in the past.
Charlie: Or even, you can communicate as clearly as you can but they might understand.
Nkozi: They might not…
Charlie: And they might not ever understand
Nkozi: Yeah, they might not — and this is to use my own example, to really hammer home my own example. What changed for me when I decided to prioritize myself completely was realizing that this person I was so so hung up on, so obsessed with, was not capable of loving me.
Charlie: Wow!
Nkozi: And that hurt. And that is not to say that they are not capable of loving. You know I truly believe everyone is capable of doing that unless they truly prove to themselves or others otherwise. But when I — I realized after I made myself perfectly clear and I was not hiding anything when I asked a question — when I was asked a question, I gave a direct answer. I was being entirely clear with this person and they confirmed to me that they were very intentionally not giving me that clarity back. There was a point at which I realized, okay you have crossed the domain to do things to harm me on purpose. This is no longer a miscommunication, this is something that you are actively doing because you want to, you want to be hurting me. You know this is something that will cause me great harm and because you want something from me, you are doing this and you have said as much and this is not a hyperbole, I’m saying this person said and I quote, “I knew I was using you.” And I was like, oh okay. Well that’s just unacceptable. And I was like, you know what, we have reached this point where you’re saying this to me after I’ve done all this explaining, after I’ve come to you with reasons, after I have come to you with reflections, after I have shown and explained changed behavior, like things that I thought were wrong on my part — things that I thought were my fault. And then, the way you respond is with the same actions that put me in this position. The things that I explained I was not okay with and I explained how x, and y, and z happened and why I reacted that way and I was like oh, okay. You have either by some inherent factor or just through a decision making process a point where you cannot express any kind of love or care for me.
Charlie: Yeah
Nkozi: And I had to believe them. Yeah.
Charlie: We say this sometimes on the show. There’s a huge difference between not knowing a boundary exists and not caring a boundary exists.
Zack: Absolutely.
Nkozi: Yes, yes. This example which I think is really like a perfect microcosm of that was that you know, I might have not been clear about this boundary a year prior but at this point, I have been clear and you’re not only violating it again, you are doing it with intention so that you can get something from me.
Charlie: Yeah
Nkozi: And that is the definition of trying to use a person. There is something I can provide for you and you are like going through the motions, knowing that at some point you will reveal to me that this has all been a sham. And I was like oh, okay. You know, I went through this process of knowing that I really internalized how boundaries worked in these kinds of relationships and again, I’m like I’m not kidding, I started therapy because I wanted to work on myself to improve this relationship because it really mattered to me. And a big part of that was how did I violate such and such person’s boundary, what boundaries of mine were violated, how can I meet this middle point, etcetera. And then setting that boundary and trying to maintain it, and then in trying — in again, trying to operate from this place of extreme guilt and you know coming with all these reasons, all these pathologies I had internalized from them or from the ether to try and explain myself, what I had realized in this example and unfortunately I feel like this applicable to many people’s relationships is what I realized is that when I actually engaged in respecting and setting boundaries, not just respecting them but setting them for myself, that is where we had a problem. The problem was with me establishing clear boundaries and like clear needs that I had, and them — this other person, both not caring about this need being met, not caring about my desires being met, but also very intentionally violating my boundaries. And again I’m not exaggerating, very intentionally doing so. And admitting as such to me, because I have to imagine they did not care that I knew this. And that, that is admittedly somewhat of an extreme example but there are unfortunately people who you know will do things that very much hurt you and not care that they have done so. And it’s a little baffling… [Chuckles]
Zack: Yeah
Nkozi: …to think about that.
Charlie: Are there any exes with whom you think you could go back and have a conversation with and explain where you’re at? Because I’m right now trying to think of my past relationships where you know somehow, if by some reason we’re not already connected through social media and they don’t know kind of various things about diagnoses and revelations and things, is there a situation where I would like, where it would be good for the both of us to come to a peace? And I don’t really know if I really have exes like that who are not already my friends, you know?
Zack: I don’t have so much exes but like, almost like most of the people I knew when I was — honestly like when I was younger and maybe pre-diagnosis but maybe pre-understanding what diagnosis meant for me as a person and as a identity, I just I think the instinct is just strong to introduce people who knew you superficially to the version of yourself where you’ve really figured out who you are.
Nkozi: Yeah.
Zack: That’s why I think so many of us wish we could do — sometimes wish we could do high school all over again.
[Nkozi laughs]
Nkozi: Yeah. I am super on that same page! I think — I think more so than exes, this isn’t to say that I don’t have exes, but I think more so than exes, there’s an entire generation of people who knew me as a teenager that I would at least take some amount of pleasure in showing me as a well-adjusted, self confident adult. There are definitely some exes [laughs] that I would like to explain myself to. One of them, I could reach out to more seriously. I sent them a happy birthday message the other day. They’re not a very responsive texter but perhaps, they’ll say, “oh, hey. Thank you. Etcetera.” And I might say, “would you like to talk on the phone at some point for x, y, z reasons.” But they’re a community organizer and very dedicatedly so, so they’re a busy person. There’s one ex — there is only other partner besides my wife that I have lived with, who some years ago we agreed — I’m going to say this was about a year and a half after we broke up. They’re Candian and they moved back to Ontario, where they’re from. And we agreed it really wasn’t going to work for us to kind of remain distant contacts, etcetera, and we were just going to go our separate ways and let bygones be bygones. There weren’t any hard feelings in our relationship whatsoever but it ended up with us not being compatible, which sucked because we really loved each other and that’s just a thing that happens. I do sometimes, not often, but I have wondered what it would be like to reach out to this person and say, “Hey. We still have mutual friends. How are you doing? I just wanted to check in. You’ve been on my mind and you know, can we talk about some stuff if you’re open to it?” And this — I think a thing that would really make this interesting is that this ex is autistic — this ex is autistic. And before I had any understanding of self or how any of this was working, or how I might work based on this paradigm, I was already engaging with them and the way they approached the world. And you know, it’s been — it’s been four, almost five years since then. This is a person I broke up with shortly before I started seeing Serena, maybe a month or two before. But, yeah. If the stars aligned and I don’t think it’s very far-fetched that we could connect in that way, I would love to have that conversation with them. I think it might go very well and they might be very understanding. And there’s other exes who would, you know, not would not be understanding at all. And then there’s other exes [laughs] that I just don’t want to talk to. I don’t want to tell them anything about myself. I just want them to continue on with their life and if they ever think of me, keep it to themselves
Charlie: Yeah. And I think you’ve joked before about me and my relationships with my exes and the fact that I’m friends with so many of them
Nkozi: Mhm
Charlie: And I mean, when I was traveling back to North Carolina for my friend’s funeral, I just was so relieved to be welcomed back into the fold of my old communities, my college and my healthy social group of exes. And I really enjoy being friends with a lot of my exes because I’ve just dated so many people. So of course there’s going to be those people who I have blocked on all social media and if they contacted me, I would freak out with anger or panic. But yeah, so I’m kind of two minds where I’m like sometimes I really am life long friends with these people and sometimes I think about people as if they no longer exist. I think that’s kind of what I’m working on, that people continue to exist, people continue to grow and change. And I think maybe that’s what our submission is trying to get at. You know, the good faith of we have both evolved in the years or however long since our relationship and we should have a convergence. So I think they..
Nkozi: Yeah
Charlie: Yeah. I think they have a lot of guilt but they have a lot of hope at the same time. I’m trying to like work through that in my mind, knowing what I know about myself and my relationships with people I no longer have relationships with. I’m trying to think about, you know, how could that be a positive thing for them, you know?
Nkozi: Yeah
Charlie: How do you navigate the huge expanse in the middle of each point on the spectrum from being completely blocked from everything and actively friends? How do you navigate that lukewarm water of like what are we? Should we — should we talk through this? How are you? Where do you live? What are you doing? Like, there are so many ex relationships that are very very murky and sound like they are murky for this person
Nkozi: I have what might be a very good example of this. The example of this is one of those greyer relationships where I like very, very briefly saw someone that — I was very, very interested in her in a way I’m not typically interested in people. I was like this is exciting, I would like to get to know you, date you, etcetera. And I’m going to say, almost comically so, pretty much misread almost every signal she was sending me to kind of tone things down a little and this gets to a point where she was like, “what are you doing? This is so uhhh.” But it did — it did get to a point where she sent me, “Hey. Sorry I haven’t reached out.” This was again after sometime away, early in the pandemic where I had been like, “hey, I hope you’re doing okay. I brought some cookies to your house, just wanted to say hi.” And to me, this was just a gesture of good will but I did not understand to her, this felt like somewhat invasive. And she did — she did have the good grace to after a while say, “hey, I didn’t really feel great about that and here’s how this, this things. And I feel like the kind of way in which you’re communicating with me wasn’t what I was looking for based on this other thing I had sent.” Again, she was very gracious with me and I felt crazy embarrassed. The kind of rejection embarrassment that sends you into a spiral [laughs]. And I initially had the impulse to either run or react and I was able to thankfully do neither of those and sit with that feeling for a very long time, and continue to sit with it. I was just patient with myself and understanding I had, yet again misread a situation and tried to charm my way through a situation in a way that did not work and I had experienced something embarrassing which is something I am terribly afraid of.
Charlie: That hits me right in the inner, autistic child.
Nkozi: Yeah
Charlie: Where you just made a huge mistake…
Nkozi: Yeah
Charlie: …And you had the best intentions and that came off as weird…
Nkozi: Oh, yeah!
Charlie: …Or creepy. Or something like that
Zack: Absolutely!
Nkozi: Oh, yes. And the amount of times where I have essentially been like why are you being so creepy? Why are you being so weird? Where I’m just like I did not know I was doing those things..
Zack: Oh god, yeah
Nkozi: …is too many to count! And I do appreciate that this person did not approach this, essentially confrontation, with a disposability mindset and I’m very grateful to the friend I had by me that explained that to me.
Zack: Yeah
Nkozi: Who explained this was a person that was giving me feedback and being like, “hey, that was like a little odd to me. But, you know you’re still a person, I still care about you. Can we celebrate you and your achievements, etcetera, even if I’m not interested in such and such?”
Zack: Yeah. I love friends or partners that are willing to do that because like obviously it’s kind in our nature to value bluntness and they’re meeting us where we live, from a place of love.
Nkozi: Yeah.
Zack: Where they are saying, “this is a little over the line. You’re kind of coming on strong. Here’s what might benefit you to change in terms of your approach.”
Charlie: Yeah. And it’s from a place of mutual respect.
Nkozi: Yeah and honestly, that was one of the first times in my life I had received — honestly received something I was looking for. Not necessarily with the speed I was looking for it, I would have much preferred the feedback to have come in the moment but it came and like, again, very grateful to the friend that I had nearby who was like, “hey, take a second. Don’t react to this. Get out of your feelings of rejection. Get out of the sensitivity you have to this and this feeling and look at what she is saying. And then be like, okay. I might — I might still feel that embarrassment.” And quite frankly, I do. [laughs]. I see her name on social media and I’m like, oh that was so embarrassing. But I know that is like a me thing and not a her thing. And honestly after this conversation, I’m feeling mildly inspired to reach out and be like, “hey. So you know the conversation, that long thing you sent me. I had a weird reaction to that but that’s not your fault and I’ve learned some things about myself since then that have kind of make me understand my own behavior and I want to express gratitude to the way in which you approached me during this. I think that grey area can exist and can exist positively if one gives themselves space to approach it positively, which might not be one’s initial reaction.
Charlie: Yeah, giving it time.
Nkozi: Yeah
Charlie: Yeah. Smoothing over, sort of the spikes. I picture it as like spikes that you have to like put a buffer on
Nkozi: Yeah
Charlie: At least with my own embarrassment and feelings of rejection and anger and things
[Theme plays] 84:00*
Charlie: So I think I want to transition into our decompression segment which we usually have just because we have a lot of heavy conversations on this show. So I want to ask the two of you, what’s your most recent YouTube hole? And I’m going to go first. I’m going to let y’all think of yours. But for some reason, with me, I am now researching things I will not buy. Specifically, luxury goods. I’ve been doing a lot of restoration, ASMR sort of videos, of vintage Chanel bags being restored and like, I have no interest in — well I do have a lot of interest in restoration but I’m not going to buy these things. But now through these restoration channels, I have learned how to source genuine Prada and Louis Vuitton and all sorts of things on eBay.
Nkozi: Ooo!
Charlie: How to look for the real ones on eBay because sometimes eBay is the wild, wild west and so is Poshmark. And so I found out that if you source from Japan, like for some reason, the luxury handbag market especially, takes keeping items in good condition very seriously. And I don’t know why that is. But you know, all of these most reputable eBay resellers, luxury eBay resellers, they’re all sourced in Japan. So, I now have this knowledge and I now know how to restore suede.
Nkozi: Hmm!
Charlie: These things are not the things I do but now I know and it’s all because of YouTube.
Zack: Hell yeah!
Nkozi: Ok! Yeah, here Zack, you go next!
Zack: Ok! So Rachel, my wife, actually introduced me to this but there’s this whole genre of people who do covers of pop songs but on medieval instruments in the like in the high english or whatever it’s called…
Charlie: I love where this is going!
Zack: …like that was spoken in the middle ages and there’s like this — there’s like this renaissance faire sounding cover of Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People that’s about using a crossbow rather than a gun and it’s — it’s all the [mimics the instrumentals] kind of style
[Everyone laughs]
Zack: I’m really getting a kick out of it. I am worried that as is often the case with anything about medieval culture, there are — there is racism at the bottom of the rabbit hole somehow
Charlie: Like Nordic fetishism?
Zack: Yeah. Haven’t gotten there yet, knock on wood.
Nkozi: Okay. Here’s mine. I have this truly obscene guilty pleasure and by obscene, I don’t mean truly obscene. It’s just weird to me that I have this thing where I like to watch videos made by contemporary christian guitarists on how they’re using gear they are using. And I say this because as a — I am a musician, I’m a guitarist, I’m into kind of like somewhat into guitar pedal culture. And I hate these dudes.
[Zack laughs]
Nkozi: And I don’t hate them for any good — I don’t think they’re necessarily bad people although I imagine some of them are very bad people. I just — it like allows me to engage with snobbery instinct from a very, very safe distance. All that is affected by it is my YouTube recommendations but you know, there is this one guitar channel where it’s this bearded, blonde dude, that is always wearing a forward facing snapback.
Zack: Oh no!
Nkozi: And his guitar — his youtube channel’s name is Hey Worship Leader and I’m like god…
Charlie: Oh no
Nkozi: …I despise this man and sometimes I’ll just watch his videos to hate watch them but it’s such a niche hate watch that I can’t really share it with anyone else, which is very important to me. I want to be in my room and be like wow, I really don’t like the thing I am doing but I also can’t engage anyone else with it at all, it’s entirely private
[Everyone laughs]
Nkozi: Over the past couple of days, every once in a while, I’ll just be like let me watch you know, some Evangelical yack-off white dude’s very boring guitar tone video
[Everyone laughs]
Charlie: I actually used to be fascinated with abstinence vloggers
Zack and Nkozi: Ooo
Charlie: So, I’ve experienced hate watching aggressively christian content
[Zack laughs]
Nkozi: I might get into that. That sounds awful!
Charlie: Yeah!
Zack: I, yeah.
Charlie: There was this one I followed since before she got married. She was waiting for marriage and she — she went viral for some reason. You know, she’s — she’s got — she’s got it all figured out. The very aesthetic, contemporary christian thing with the wide-rimmed tan hats…
Zack: Right
Charlie: …and that sort of thing. But I recently caught up on her life and watched her entire half hour labor video for her second child because you know now that she’s married, she’s wasting no time. You know, filling the world with her own personal army for the coming culture war, basically. But I love christian content, I love it so much!
Nkozi: It’s extremely fascinating!
Charlie: I love when they’re doing it correctly. Like whatever the rules are in their world, that is completely inaccessible to me. When I get to see them succeeding in that and being so them, that’s what makes it so much more fascinating!
Nkozi: Yeah. You can say a lot of things about those people but they’re not miserable.
Charlie: Yeah. They’re so happy. They are excelling.
Nkozi: Yeah, yeah. They do have something figured out and can’t deny that.
Charlie: So on that note, where can we find you online but most importantly where can we find your music online?
Nkozi: Okay, so online the past couple years I have been either at @halal.bitch and if you say it like a website, it makes perfect sense. Halal.bitch which is on instagram, which are like semi frequent updates of like me hanging out with other people and cats and strange noises which i make for fun. On Twitter, I am @halal_bitch, where you can see me doing the same thing but also, you know, ranting about the state of various kinds of like long critical pedagogy in the US and how we really need to fund more things in teacher education, which is a very, very underfunded educational field. As far as music goes, I am taking a break from having any current releases but my band, which is at time of speaking called Other Girls, will be beginning to work on some serious recording later this summer. Probably starting at the end of the next month we will be setting up a rehearsal space here at West Philly and studio spaces either at that same location or within our homes, and will begin the recording process after a very, very extended writing process. The idea is that before the end of the year, I will be able to share some completed and very personal — personally meaningful work with the world. And you’ll be able to find it linked at places I have already listed.
Charlie: Thank you so much!
Nkozi: Thank you so much! This was really, really a lot of fun!
Zack: Yeah, thank you so much for coming on! This was -
[Theme Plays]
Alyssa: Thank you for listening to Stim4Stim, co-hosted by Charlie Stern and Zack Budryk. Edited by Alyssa Huntley and transcribed by Stacy Fatemi. Thank you to all our Patrons, including ten-dollar tier member Kaitlyn Johnson.
