It Was Nothing More Than Once Upon A Time

A wise man (that would be Chuck Palahniuk, who knows a thing or two about visceral storytelling) said, 

"Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you."

Chuck Palahniuk may remember me from such 'Stan'-style letters that ran, 'I'm a really really big fan of yours', 'I want to be a writer TOO' and 'How do you do what you do?' 

I have his delicately typed, 'Chill the fuck out, hunny' responses still saved in their envelopes. Maybe I'll frame them. 

He does makes an excellent point. So many times past memories, triggers, fears, anxieties feel like real and present danger. They make fingers go totally numb, chests cramp, bowls unleash, heads explode with pain, arms shake, voices stutter and language and sometimes actions unfold into some confusion of fighting something that is no longer happening. 

Though memories can leave great imprints, leave keloids on the heart, they are no more real than a Netflix box set or a really long novel. A detailed tangled story. Your story, but a story. And stories live only in the mind.

But those feelings. Oh, those feelings are fried gold. If a traumatic/weird/hysterically dark past can be separated from present-day living, then we have that thing some writers bitch that they cannot find. 

Plot. 

Plot is story. Plot is narrative. Plot is the tale of a person or people navigating life. Plot is someone's past formulating a future. Plot runs a book, a TV show, a film, a play, a poem.

I cannot claim that I do not get sudden shooting pains through my jawbones or numb fingertips when I get caught in the past. I can't claim I don't think something terrible is about to happen. And then I see I am stood still at a bus stop, waiting to go to work. There is a lone teenager with exploding acne sloped against the lamppost, half-awake for college. A man wearing ADDICTED sweatpants idles past me and lets their elderly dog shit on the grass verge. Life is just life as it should be.

Then I know I can gather up those scraps of past that have screeched through my head like serial killers on Spice and twist them up into fiction like horrible origami.

I think this is my way of saying today was a difficult 'aspie' day. But I went to work, hid my hand-flapping, only had mild outbursts and right now I'm in front of the laptop, favouring fiction over planning my wedding. I have fourteen months until I'm wed. I've been waiting my whole life to turn hours of cramped typing into more than something that just makes me want to sleep through my day job.

Ctrl + N. 

Now. Begin tying.

The Search For Silence Continues

Sometimes I'm quite amazed at how sensitive hearing can be on the spectrum. Years ago I was convinced I was going crazy. Now I know that I'm highly-tuned. But this doesn't make coping much different.

The day has been fine. In the afternoon myself and workmates went to an external meeting. After the noise and chatter settled and it became one speaker in a large, high-ceiling room, I quickly felt sick. I winced and covered my ears, trying not to look too...aspie. 

The sound of the lights, some twenty feet above me, sounded like hair clippers held directly beside my ears. It turned my stomach, made my palms sweat and wanted to vomit. I began to panic as I could no longer focus on the meeting. More frightening is that looking around, no one else appeared bothered. I began to rock gently on my chair.

Come the break, I legged it out the door for a cigarette. When I had to come back inside the buzzing room, I felt my eyes get hot and wet and I feared a meltdown was coming. I slipped over to my manager and asked to be excused. She laughed and said, 'You're not in school. You can just go.' I tried not to cry, grabbed my bag and ran out even as I heard someone call my name.

I didn't recognise town and just turned right and walked straight until I found myself back at my workplace. 30mg of diazepam took 30 minutes to kick in and I didn't want to go foetal in the street. 

Ironically, I went to see the psychologist after work. The rooms are thin-walled and I flinched for fifty minutes at cleaners dragging tables around in other rooms. When I left the room, I gagged and covered my nose at the smell of bleach.

My sensitivity is already high, but I feel like my tolerance is getting worse. I don't know exactly why. I don't think sensory issues can be progressive so perhaps it's stress-related. 

I get home and try and relax. I smell toast cooking through the terraced, but very solid walls of my neighbours' house. I know I'm not going insane. But this feels like a very mad way to be trying to live. 

Could Everything Be Less Noisy/Less Smelly/Less Itchy, Please?

I met for a 1-1 with my ASC worker recently who is referring me to the newly-qualified psychologist on the team (so new, I'm sure I can hear braces on her teeth) to help my 'well-being' and to help with social skills and sensory difficulties.

Social Skills is going to be a very hard one to work on because I've gotten very good at 'passing', however I know that what I'm saying is completely without feeling and is invariably copied from TV or the radio. In fact, the things people laugh at are just quotes from films or sitcoms. When I get really, really comfortable with people I will 'pass' less i.e. I will feel able to be more like me. Unfortunately, where I feel most like me, most comfortable is around the emotional age of 14. It's like my cognitive reasoning kept maturing, but my emotions didn't. So, when I'm happy around people, I will run around, blow raspberries, swear, wear silly t-shirts, giggle and then eventually make what I'm told are inappropriate comments such as, 'Are you limping because you fucked last night?'

The plan is for me to either work on passing (which I very much hate doing) and understand that sometimes you can't tell people how many times you've had sex this week or that you think some people are completely irredeemable thundercunts, without getting into trouble. I don't think that's an honest way to live, but apparently it's correct. 

Or I just say that I really don't care what other people think of me. Maybe that's worth a go.

The other issue is sensory difficulties. Reportedly of all the people that have been assessed, under Sensory Difficulties I've come in as one of the lowest scorers (1-2 (most people are coming in at a minimum of 5)) and have been the topic in supervision, mostly because I explained how I can hear electricity or bubbles popping in a glass of Coke from 14 foot away. 

For years, psychiatrists thought I was hallucinating. I thought I was hallucinating. But it appears I'm very in tune with sound, smell and light/colour. For example, my 1-1 was in a different room. I was about 4 foot away from a small wooden coffee table. It stunk. It smelt like untreated wood and that it had been stored in a musty second hand shop and previously owned by smokers. I asked my worker if she could smell it. She couldn't, but dutifully put her nose on the table and only then could she smell what I described. I could smell it freely in the air from a distance of at least 4 feet. 

It's no surprise then that I'm constantly jumping around my house and workplace trying to work out noises that are deafening to me or smells that seem to be taking over, but don't bother anyone else. That's a lot of energy spent chasing intangibles. 

Maybe just watch this video from NAS about a kid in a shopping centre and imagine that that level of noise is normal and makes you feel like the world is about to explode, you will implode and everything will cease to make sense unless you scream your noise over the top of it and move your body to shut out other people's noise and pointless information.

Prozac Placebo

Three weeks ago I came down with a viral infection of epic proportions. I swallowed all the painkillers I could legally get my hands on and went to work with my neck swollen to the point where it felt like my head was being crushed. By the Friday, I made it to the bus stop only to do a stop and start dance about turning back from home with an...uncomfortable stomach. 

Cue a weekend of severe stomach pain and cramps. I went to work on Friday, went home sick and saw the doctor who said I may have glandular fever as my glands and spleen was swollen and blood tests had to be done ASAP. Health anxiety goes nuclear. 

Over the next two weeks the fatigue gets worse and for some reason my mood spirals. I haven't spent every day hiding in bed crying for 5 years. Or wanting to launch myself from the railway bridge. Could it be leukemia? Liver disease? Would my workplace destroy me when I went back because we're 5 staff down and I left with work unfinished on my desk? 

I have my first ASC 1-1 and rate my Wellbeing at 3 or in my words: "shit". That was, coincidentally, my first word. She put me in touch with Spectrum E, a company who specialise in workplace support for people with ASC. I feel better talking to the lady, but ashamed. Will work detest me for having to make reasonable adjustments? Running deeper, I'm furious that I don't cope the same way as other people and need adjustments to work well. Flip it, I get good feedback. My contract was extended.

I live in fear that I will never fully integrate with other people, what my ASC worker keeps calling 'neurotypicals'. Will I ever have friends I see offline? Will I ever 'do' small talk or care about their weekends, their social lives or the things they say worry them? 

Some of this comes out in verbal fits and starts to the doctor. She's put me on Prozac. This is the first day. I know it takes weeks to work, I know I am high risk for dangerous behaviour with a number of Sections in my past, but here's the odd thing. Today's the first time I haven't cried. The first time I haven't felt awful and feel so low it feels like it's physically crushing my limbs, but conversely when I walk that half of my body is missing. 

I want to go back to work. I'm told I'm good. 'Professional', 'Capable', 'Reliable', 'Hardworking'. But I know I can be better. I admit I am frightened. Even though they know my diagnosis, I fear being found out for what I am. A 31 year old child who pulls out her hair when upset or cries when the washing machine is up. But, if Prozac helps me hide, then good. I don't want them to know what it really looks like. What daily life is like.


It can only be a placebo effect, but it's a very effective one.