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
Category: social exhaustion
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
Festive Autism
Musings and memories of a year almost over
My Gift is Time
Why autistic people may find it hard to build relationships: the time we need to invest in each interaction is so much higher.
Accessibility
I like to write about the good bits. I like to write about the joys that autism brings me. So much of the world wants me to focus on the bad bits. They want me to look at my deficits. No one can live like that. No one can live happily with someone pointing out … Continue reading Accessibility
Tomorrow the World
My hands smell of soil, they are stained and scratched, dirt embedded under my fingernails. I like to call it a gardener's manicure. I usually hate anything under my nails, sand grates and teases me terribly, but not mud. Not the evidence of a job well done. I am quiet now. After a week of … Continue reading Tomorrow the World
