21/02/25
i was washing some berries for breakfast in the morning and remembering all the time spent at my grandparents' allotment when i was younger. how often my sister (well, cousin) would fail to join us, because she was just so busy. i remember at first it baffled me, what could she be busy with? we're kids. we have homework and that's basically it. i was almost in total control of my time outside of school. granted, i was burnt out as an autistic and greatly avoided most activities, even just going out of the house. i spent hours and hours stimming/regulating by playing what's now called single person card games (insert blood orange meme - it's fuckin' solitaire), wore out many a deck by playing on floors and carpets all over. it hadn't occurred to me that you could be so tied up time-wise that you couldn't come over hang out in nature and help your grandma?
later i thought - well, her dad's whole life is his work. whether by necessity (small business owner, sole bread winner) or through workaholism, she's learned that is normal, and maybe she's using "being busy" as a way of not dealing with stuff and avoiding a difficult home situation, emotions etc.
it literally dawned on me today that... it was simply "having a social life". she's always had many friends, still does, who want her around and who she enjoys spending time with. many people, with a variety of events and situations they'd invite her for, ask for her help with etc. other people's schedules influencing her own. mostly i'm baffled that this never occurred to me, it's that different to my entire life of having like... 1 friend at a time, if i'm lucky.
there's an emotion here. i'm not sure what it is. at first i thought maybe i'm jealous, but back then i definitely wouldn't have been able to cope with maybe even being invited along to anything by her. so maybe a tinge of regret or. idk, part of that grief of being disabled? like i /do/ wish i could have had that, in the sense - i wish i'd have been able to have that, then and now. i want to say it's a "little twinge" but i don't know, the bafflement is big and echoing and obscuring the rest.