Power has been out since yesterday. Unplanned. I’m okay for a day. But I’m already thrown by the not planned thing that happened.
Ahh yes a normal life thing you just shrug off and are not affected by. Just a minor inconvenience. Right?
A little irritating but nothing to cry about or get upset about. You just cope with this little thing and let it roll off your back..right?
Here is the difference with autism or neurodivergent brains that are in fact wired differently. It’s not a little thing. It’s not something I can just easily let roll off my back. I can convince myself and do often…that it’s no big deal..I was taught this…but my brain doesn’t accept that. I’m not running around screaming all crazy and stuff…but inside I am tense and feeling so many different things…hyper aware of the lack of the normal electricity hum..hyper sensitive to a change in my daily routine. I am having to problem solve..do without my normal things…and just over all feeling constantly unsettled. One way I can describe it is..it’s not a rush of water enveloping me..it’s a slow drip through the day that slowly fills the space around you. You don’t even notice it at first..until the drips add up and you are deep in the water surrounding you. All other things become harder because you are trying to move through water that wasn’t there on a normal day. So that appointment you need to make is way more frustrating. It’s hard to think about mundane things when you are trying to stay afloat. Your focus is very, VERY busy processing all the change around you. The no electricity for lights. Again..another sensory thing. Fumbling in a dark bathroom just to go to the bathroom is now..harder..different…a challenge.
So subtle all these things…but to my brain..each thing isn’t rolling off my back. It’s still there. It’s making it harder for me to move through it because it’s not disappearing..not rolling off someplace else. It’s slowly building and my brain just does not let it go because it can’t. I am autistic. There is no one and nothing to blame for the way my brain processes things. I just have to deal and not attempt making that appointment. Not make big decisions. Self care with music or art or anything that for me on a personal to me and what regulates me level..soothes the irritation I feel and all my brain is trying to process. If I don’t do these things…eventually I will have a meltdown. The weight of the water that has been dripping non stop will eventually need a place to spill over at if I’m moving too fast through it. The goal is when this event is done…to allow the water around me to slowly subside. Slowly be absorbed back into the ground.
It is a delicate thing. I am extremely sensitive to everything around me. And if I’m not careful…it spills over and creates quite the mess. And if you are close enough to me..you will get some on ya. This is what it is to be autistic. This is how huge a thing it is to finally understand what is happening in these moments to me and what I can do to soothe what I can’t help but to feel.
This is why it’s okay if you can’t understand what it is to be me…but not okay to tell me I’m not feeling what I feel and I should just not. I should just stop. I should just not be a baby about it and be an adult. I am an adult. And quite frankly in many moments a better adult than most I know. But I am autistic and I am feeling everything so much more than you as a neurotypical will ever fully understand or feel yourself. And you’re gonna have to be okay with me telling you my truth. You’re gonna have to trust people when they say…you may not feel the same things but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The intensity in how I feel just my environment alone is and can be exhausting. It’s real as the nose on my face to me and I think the biggest thing that has hurt me over the years was being convinced it wasn’t affecting me..not even understanding it really was affecting me and told to suck it up and feel things like everyone else and constantly failing at that.
You Had To Be There… 