Category: social exhaustion

Finding your Polytunnel: Autism

What on Earth has a polytunnel got to do with autism? What even is a polytunnel? What are you talking about? Is this a tangent too far? All fair questions, and all with answers - tangential as they might be. I’m writing this from my polytunnel. It’s a ten metre, steel-framed structure covered in some … Continue reading Finding your Polytunnel: Autism

Autistic Gifts

Christmas, for me, is about showing the people I love how I feel about them. It’s a time when it’s okay to build routines, because we can call them traditions and that makes them indisputable. One of the things I learnt when I found out I was autistic, is that when I get terribly run … Continue reading Autistic Gifts

Unwelcome Guests

I’ve welcomed in an old friend this morning, and she’s happily making herself at home. At the moment she’s lying over my chest making each breath a shallow grab.  I don’t like her, but instead of kicking her out, I’ve fed and watered her, and you know what happens when you feed someone; you make … Continue reading Unwelcome Guests

Taking or Leaving the Mask

I am a guilty masker. I’ve always masked. It’s a complex creation with different weights and different angles. Each occasion has a different variation of it, a different material, a different pattern. I have my work mask; professional, straight-backed, walking tall. She has a specific amount of makeup and specific hair. She keeps her outlandish … Continue reading Taking or Leaving the Mask

Swimming Uphill

So what’s it like spending a weekend camping at a Fringe Theatre Festival, when you’re autistic? Tiring. That’s probably the word. Tiring both physically and emotionally. I am so glad that I went, and so frustrated that I didn’t have the energy to do more, to see more, to connect more. I hadn’t been to … Continue reading Swimming Uphill

The Duck: An Autistic Play

I’m in hiding. I don’t have time to be in hiding, it’s possibly the worst thing I could be doing at the moment, and yet hiding is where I am.   I feel like I opened the floodgates because a beautiful butterfly fluttered by, and now the waters are rising and I can’t get the … Continue reading The Duck: An Autistic Play

My head hurts and it’s a good thing

I’m not a joiner. Even when I really want to do things, I find groups hard. There is always so much going on, so many variables, so many possible ambushes - small-talk, change, new social rules - that I feel overwhelmed before I begin. How I spend my cherished energy is important, it is a … Continue reading My head hurts and it’s a good thing

Beginnings

January swelled and fell with a clash of cymbals. I started the year with the flu. It was my own fault for waxing lyrical (I’ve never been able to work out a pattern for that particular saying, but I love the sound of it) about not getting ill at Christmas since my diagnosis. I invited … Continue reading Beginnings