Review: The Rosie Effect

I've just devoured Graeme Simsion's second novel, The Rosie Effect, and I'm already hungry for the third part of the trilogy. I set out to read this quickly, as I was approximately one third of the way into Toni Morrison's Paradise when it came into the library for me and I didn't want to lose the thread of her masterpiece yet again, but I did not anticipate consuming it within 24 hours. Yes, I did other things, work, kids, household, in that time, but every spare second, and a few I probably shouldn't have spared, were spent completely engrossed in the continuing tale of Don Tillman. Simsion's writing is fast and fluid, and I find Don so relatable I don't need to ponder his thoughts or actions. Hence, whipping through the first two books in this series.

The new dimension of a baby on the way drew me even deeper into this book than The Rosie Project. The scrutiny of Don's suitability as father material raised some painful questions for me and caused me to reflect on my own journey into motherhood. Clearly, as a woman, I had the double-sided experience of being in Rosie's shoes as well, so reading this book provided an opportunity to explore two distinct forces within my own mind.

When I became pregnant with my first child, I had no idea I was autistic. I'd thought about it in passing as increasing numbers of friends posted things about it on social media, but the Ran Man stereotype was solidly cemented into my brain (just as in Don's), so I shrugged it off. While the female presentation of ASD was only just being codified by the DSM-5 around the time I was growing a baby, I apparently had enough "tells" to be picked out by some professionals. No one, however, had the decency to mention it to me.

The distain Don encounters from the social worker, Lydia, recalled an experience I had during my first antenatal appointment. I went blindly to see a random doctor, who I expected would instruct me on what I should/shouldn't do, as I was unaware of any of the protocols or procedures surrounding pregnancy at the time. Although I had become pregnant precisely when I intended to (four months after going off the pill, and a month after giving up coffee and alcohol, I deemed the safest minimum time at which to "pull the keeper"), was an appropriate age (34), finished with my PhD, gainfully employed on my second 3-year contract at a prestigious university, and married, I got the distinct feeling that the first doctor I saw thought I was tremendously unsuited for the task. I attempted to get the requisite information from her, but left angry and insulted after being spoken to like a child for half an hour. I took the pile of pamphlets home and ingested their guidance and recommendations along with half a round of unpasteurised sheep cheese, which I promptly put away when I read the warnings about listeria.

I can visualise that doctor's visit and the follow-up with painful clarity. I can hear her rising tone of irritation as I resolutely refused to have the amniotic fluid tested for markers of Down Syndrome, as my husband and I had weighed the risks of the procedure and were unprepared to terminate the birth on such grounds. I sensed she was angry with me about something else, but I had no idea what. I was healthy, fit, educating myself as rapidly as possible about all things pregnancy and baby related, committed to breast feeding, and making informed choices, what could she possibly be aggrieved of? 

It took seven years and this book for the penny to drop. If I were a betting person, I would put money on her judging me unfit because she saw my lack of eye contact, endlessly fidgeting and fluttering hands, "professorial" tone, sewed it up in one dismissive package and hoped I wouldn't bring "another one" into the world. It's certainly possible that I'm giving her more credit and a colder heart than she's due. Maybe she was just overworked and tired. Maybe she thought I was lying about my diet, exercise, non-use of drugs and alcohol, etc. because I couldn't look her in the eye when asked. Who knows? But the way she talked to me, like I was a child or an imbecile, rather than someone with exceptional brain power, makes it hard to draw a different conclusion.

I've heard many other autistics repeat this same refrain. The moment someone, particularly a (mental) health professional, either discovers our diagnosis or surmises it for themselves, we're summarily dismissed as too daft to understand what they're saying. Either that, or they dismiss the diagnosis, because we're clearly too "high functioning" to be autistic. A nasty Catch-22.

The Rosie Effect does great things to dispel so many of the myths surrounding autism. Don loves deeply, is a stalwart friend, is trusting and patient to a fault. The lengths he goes to in his attempts to protect, assist, and prop up the people around him are laudable. I was moved to waves of tears as his friends and family gave their heart-felt accounting of all he'd done for them. These are the stories of autists we need to tell.

This wouldn't be an honest review if I didn't include the things about this book that chafed. No great criticisms, but things that made me pause and suspend my belief. I find Don's best friend, Gene, continues to be far too two-dimensional. I recognise that this is normal through Don's lens, but even Gene's words and actions don't belie a full human rendering in this book. I keep waiting for him to be more completely revealed around every corner then feel disappointed when he's not.

I will also add one editorial comment. No American medical student would use the term "muso". That is an unabashedly Australian term, which had me scanning back through the pages to see if there was any indication that the study group contained other Aussies. It was also odd that Don used the term "crib" instead of "cot", even when speaking to his father, but I can see why the former would be selected for international audiences to avoid confusion.

Finally, I gave this an unreserved 5 stars on Goodreads and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a touching, fast-paced, insightful read.

Mirrored Wound Magnetism

Shattered Reflections of Past Future Selfs (Cath O'Connolly)

I've never studied psychology beyond a few breadth courses at university, but having spent more than my fair share of time in counselling with a variety of mental health professionals, I've swallowed a fair bit of psych speak over the years. One concept I find intriguing and able to explain a significant number of my own challenges is that of mirrored or twinned wounds. Essentially, in as far as I understand it, the concept is that we are drawn to those who share or mirror our own deepest emotional wounds. Clearly this is an over simplification as humans are far more complex than that and many of us carry a mixed bag of issues, but it certainly presents an interesting lens through which to examine patterns of dysfunctional relationships.

If time were sufficient investment to yield equivalent degrees, I would have a Ph.D. or two in dysfunctional relationships. Looking back through the years, I can point to exactly one romantic relationship that was based on a healthy friendship and mutual respect. Not surprisingly, we dissolved the intimate side of that relationship because it introduced too much complexity into a friendship we cherished too much to ruin. In other words, I was too damaged and he too healthy to bind us to one another. The upside is we're still friends 20 years on.

All other relationships were a mixed bag of short-term physical attractions between strangers that fizzled out nearly as quickly as they started and a few messes of rapid intertwining too complex to pick apart before it was too late. At 40, I have had exactly three long-term relationships (anything over a few months, by my own definition). The first was with a horribly manipulative individual who made it his unspoken mission to build me up for the express purpose of rigging me like a puppet fully under his control. After a few fun happy weeks, I was so tightly wound in his web I couldn't make a single independent decision, was incapacitated by fear of his rejection and wrath, and isolated myself from every friend and ally who might have saved me from him. A few months in, I made a split-second decision to drop out of the prestigious university to which I'd spent a lifetime busting my ass to gain entrance and generous scholarships in an effort to appease him and return into his favour. He was cruel and held sway over me for two years before I finally grew a spine and saw him for the petty manipulator he was.

This relationship was founded upon the most insidious and overt manipulation. I was too young, too naïve, too inexperienced and far too motivated to please to see the endless stream of red flags: he dictated not only with whom I could spend time, but also how much, where we could go and what we could do; he was not only uninterested in my pleasure in the bedroom, he forbid me from doing anything that might enhance my sexual experience because it was "an insult" to him; he determined my preferences in food, entertainment, activities, and experiences by praising me when I "chose correctly" and reprimanding when I did not. He once hid my passport the morning I was departing for a three-month study abroad program just to see how I would react. The "correct" reaction was to throw up my hands and say, 'oh well, I guess that means I just get to stay here with you! Yay!', rather than my severely "incorrect" reaction of freaking the fuck out that my entire trip/degree was going down the toilet because my passport had mysteriously disappeared. He then made himself the "hero" of the hour by "finding" said passport once I was in full crisis mode. I could write an entire book about all the horrifically fucked up things he did or said to me over those lost years, but I have no desire to waste any more of my life on him.

To say I walked out of that relationship with a twisted sense of who I was and what I was worth would be an understatement. I was completely lost. I nearly starved myself to death and jeopardised my chances of going on to grad school in the fall out, trying to regain the internal compass he'd so completely destroyed. I started this blog in the tumultuous aftermath of his destruction, an attempt to write my way through the quagmire.

I won't claim to have crawled out of that mess significantly wiser, but I was certainly more wary. I was suddenly self possessed enough to realise I was physically attractive to others (the glorious conclusion of ugly duckling syndrome), but I had no idea what it meant to be attractive on any other level. I lurched from one heady micro-affair to the next with zero awareness of what I was inflicting on others. I lost respect in my community of graduate students and built an army of enemies without the slightest inkling of what I was doing. I was labelled a "man eater" and derided both behind my back and to my face until finally I found someone who made me pause, someone with whom everything snapped into deep focus.

Four and a half years, most of those spent co-habitating, sharing all friends and co-workers, living completely in one another's pockets, was not a significantly healthier alternative to the previous nightmare. I was no longer being coerced into shedding my own identity through praise and censure, rather I was coached, for my own sake, how to behave in order to fit in. The instructions were no longer coming from a single individual, but rather the whole community around us, so I worked diligently to behave correctly, fit the mould, and firmly affix my mask. I became socially acceptable and expected this would yield happiness.

Instead I became increasingly anxious and unable to function without my partner's guiding hand. I still do not fully understand our particular dynamic, but after I extracted myself most gracelessly from our entanglement, a friend passed me a book that outlined the characteristics of an enabling relationship and I saw how directly our relationship reflected that of his parents. It then made sense why his pattern was to get into a relationship with a strong, beautiful, independent, intelligent woman and reduce her to a non-functioning, depressed shadow of her former self all the while wondering what the hell went wrong. He was literally creating the image of his mother he was trying so desperately to escape. He was not an unkind or manipulative person, in fact, he was quite the opposite. It seems that he went to such extents to try to be supportive and helpful out of the good in his heart that he inadvertently destroyed the other person's sense of autonomy and self.

There were many wonderful and positive things that happened in the course of this relationship, so it was far from a miserable experience, but there was one key moment that completely opened my eyes and changed the course of my search to better understand myself. In a heated argument over something now long lost to time and memory, he blared that he wasn't my father and to stop projecting my "daddy issues" onto him. My mind flashed an instantaneous non-thinking thought in response, "not my dad, you're the mother I want". It was such a surprising beam of insight into a deeply buried secret previously held within the complete darkness of my subconscious I was struck dumb and didn't even respond. I'm sure he thought he'd hit the nail on the head, however he'd instead turned the key in a lock I didn't know existed. 

I can understand the primary reasons leading him to presume my issues were grounded in my relationship with my father. First, pop psychology feeds us a steady diet of women's "daddy issues" and how these translate into dysfunctional relationships. Second, for as long as he'd known me, I'd been estranged from my father and rarely spoke about him. What he didn't know, was that up until the catastrophe that was the relationship described above and my snap decision to abandon my private university aspirations, my dad and I enjoyed a wonderful and very healthy father-daughter relationship. The rift between us was forged and carefully fostered by a prime manipulator who ultimately wedged herself between him and all others in his life so she could covertly embezzle all of his modest wealth. My 20-20 hindsight reveals the clear pattern between my father's and my propensity to fall prey to cunning charlatans.

But the notion that I was somehow desperately seeking for him to fill the mother-shaped hole in my heart made no sense on the surface. My mom and I were very close, more like friends than mother and daughter, a characterisation she worked diligently to foster. Yet that flash of insight sent me down a rabbit hole of deep self examination. Recurrent childhood nightmares, in which I struggled futilely to reach her and get her attention, rushed vividly back to me. I began recognising how much of my childhood was dedicated to meeting my mother's emotional needs, rather than the other way around, leaving me in a confusing wash of disillusionment that I have spent the better part of the past 16 years trying to make sense of.

Unfortunately, I still didn't possess the emotional-cognitive skills or capacity to sort it all out before that relationship imploded. I still had more lessons to learn and apparently needed a more ruthless teacher to cut through all the crap. I don't spout many maxims, but I think if you really want to examine your daemons, you need to get together with someone more fucked up than you. So, when I was ready to pack it in and accept a life-sentence of solitude, the universe sent me G-Force. I was actively avoiding entanglements to such an extent I rarely left my lab except to go home to sleep and take care of my cat. I won't go into the details of the ridiculous efforts G-Force made to get into a brutal and emotionally abusive "relationship" with me, but the one gem he left me with was the enlightening observation that I didn't believe I deserved to be loved.

My initial reaction to this outrageous statement was to call 'horse shit' on it, as with most everything that poured out of his brilliant but feral mouth, but I paused just long enough to realise the bastard was right. My entire life, as it related to others, was based on the premise that no one would ever actually love me because I was fundamentally unlovable. My constant striving to excel at everything, whether academic, athletic, or artistic, was a constant attempt to attain an undefinable state of "loveableness". My painfully misguided belief that I could achieve my way into the good graces of the world left me with a shining résumé and a patchwork heart.

While there was still much unravelling to do after this revelation, it at least gave me a legitimate starting point for deeply examining the conundrum. Sadly, there was no one on hand at that point to highlight the propensity to propel oneself toward those suffering from the same flavour of broken-ness. I tried to formulate a plan to avoid the pitfalls I'd identified in all previous relationships, but this fundamental flaw inside of myself was a bug in the code that needed another iteration before it could be identified.

The second counsellor my husband and I went to pointed out our shared or mirrored wounds, proffering this as an explanation for the constant pain we inadvertently inflicted upon one another in spite of (or perhaps due to) our overpowering love of one another. He brushed it off as psychobabble and insisted he'd done all his work and this all came down to my issues. But it takes two to tango and after a few more years of trying to fix one side of our see-saw, I'd had just about enough of it. I've written previously about the inescapable downward spiral and fall-out that precipitated as a result, but I'm only just starting to understand the dynamic that thrust the final wedge between us.

I'm obviously not qualified to diagnose anyone with any sort of mental health disorder, but there are a few people in my litany of seriously damaging or damning relationships that fit a striking pattern. Not just a pattern of their behaviours, but my self-destructive moth-like attraction to them. The one commonality I now see clearly is their deep-seated fear of abandonment and my overpowering desire to mollify that inner terror. There are clear signs of borderline personality disorder in some of these individuals, enough to warrant deeper exploration to help me better understand what this means for me personally.

It's interesting to explore this through the lens of ASD. There are several shared characteristics of BPD and ASD, enough so that many people on the spectrum (especially women) are initially mis-diagnosed as borderline. This was my doctor's initial suggestion when I asked for a referral to seek a diagnosis. The irony of the similarities and common misdiagnoses is how many autists report being subjected to manipulation and suffering horribly at the hands of those with BPD. We're so inherently trusting and loyal to a fault that we're the ideal target for anyone who desperately, pathologically needs to be idealised and praised by someone who will keep coming back no matter how much horror they're subjected to. I've read so many stories of autists who grew up with such diminished senses of self worth that they were never strong enough to break the cycle of abusive relationships until very late in life, if ever at all. I've read stories of many young autistic adults still pinned under the thumbs of emotionally abusive parents. All these stories make me want to do whatever I can to help stop the cycle, weave together all these lessons learned and use my brain and voice to pull the hand break.

This is one of many reasons we need better and earlier diagnosis of ASD. The earlier we can help someone recognise, accept and embrace their differences, the earlier we set them on their path toward a healthy relationship with their self, which is the foundation for healthy relationships with others. But we also need counselling and support for families to see their children in a positive light and address their own histories of trauma, which are transmitted and entrenched more readily in autistic brains. Current scientific research is showing that part of what makes autistic brains different is their propensity to reinforce any and every neural pathway from an early age, rather than rapidly and repeatedly breaking and reforming pathways throughout life, especially in the early years. So when the autistic child is steeped in negativity about their identity or worth when they fail to conform, it is hardwired into their brain in a potentially unbreakable pathway. I cannot think of a more compelling argument for treating autistic children with the heaviest dose of compassion we can administer.

Review: The Rosie Project

I recently had the pleasure of reading Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project, the first in his fictitious trilogy about Aspie geneticist Don Tillman. This was not a book on my radar until this Austral summer when it caught my eye on the staff picks shelf at a bookstore in Canberra. As I'd entered the bookstore with the express purpose of finding presents for others, not excess baggage for myself, I limited myself to only one new friend for my collection. It was a toss up between The Rosie Project and Eleanore Oliphant is Completely Fine. In the end, the lure of a female protagonist won and Don was relegated to the back of my mind.

After returning home from my intensive summer teaching stint, I was bombarded by people asking if I'd read the Rosie books as the third in the series (The Rosie Result) was suddenly getting lots of press, particularly in my neck of the woods and in the autistic online communities. I listened to a radio interview and read some articles with Simsion, which piqued my interest and led me to add the books to my "want to read" list. I was just finishing my Anna Karenina marathon and had half a dozen other books queued up for my attention, so again Don and Rosie slipped far down on my priority list.

I then went on to write a novel of my own in three months. A feat I'd never dreamt of ever actually embarking upon, let alone completing in such a manic timeframe. This was far from full-time writing. This was writing that poured forth in the interstices between three jobs, two atypical kids, massive household management commitments, and a husband frequently travelling overseas for work. My main characters and their storyline were inspired by encounters during my summer teaching stint and an overwhelming urge to bring a female autist perspective to the world of fiction.

When I finally cracked open The Rosie Project last weekend, I was floored by the end of the first page. I immediately messaged my editor, who was just settling into round two with my manuscript after her initial glowing review, with slight reservations whether my protagonist's voice wasn't "too grating", to share my initial impression: 

'OMG, I just started reading The Rosie Project. My book sounds like a young female version…' 

They say that imitation is the finest form of flattery, but I never intended to imitate anyone. I couldn't believe how similar our first-person present-tense narration from these two very different characters who only share a very broad neurology could sound. The explosive popularity of the Rosie books gives me hope that there is actually an audience for Perfect Chemistry.

There are so many moments in The Rosie Project that read like excerpts from my own life. If I hadn't received my ASD-1/Asperger's diagnosis prior to reading this book, it would have rung very loud alarm bells that perhaps this would be something requiring further investigation. Although Don is initially far too one-dimensional for anyone, even autists, to deeply identify with, his evolution and gradual unfurling throughout the story is an incredibly familiar story.

As he began his "Wife Project", a tiny voice in my head clambered for him to 'Pick me! Pick me!!', knowing how closely I fit all his enumerated criteria and he mine. I was struck how if he were not a fictional character, we quite likely could have crossed paths in real life, inhabiting the same city and frequenting the same haunts. But our shared neurology would have precluded looking up and seeing someone so likeminded without the aid of some matchmaking tool or well-meaning friend. I realise that the point of the book was to show Don the error of his ways in thinking that love could be found simply through the correct survey, but there is definitely a part of me that found this unfair.

Finding love, or even true friendship, is exceedingly challenging for many of us on the spectrum. Unless we have the good fortune of being surrounded by genuinely compassionate, understanding, and accepting individuals who can 'get us' and forgive our foibles, we often end up very lonely. Being alone isn't the problem, but loneliness often becomes problematic when outside forces start to impose guilt and expectations that we conform to normal standards and pair off acceptably. Then our atypical social skills and inability to read others, flirt appropriately, detect subtle hints of attraction, etc become such a liability it can completely override our brains. Thinking back to these times in my life is still painful, even decades out.

One line from The Rosie Project really resonated, causing me to seize up in unison with Don, "Riding home, I was aware of a tightness in my chest… I knew that if I could not 'fit in' in a science department of a university, I could not fit in anywhere." Although I'm prone to springing a leak whenever these thoughts occur to me, unlike stalwart Don, the effect is the same. It hurts so much to write about this, it's making me ugly cry as I do so. I've given up hope of every actually fitting in anywhere, but I desperately hope I can help pave a way for a world that will be slightly more accepting of my daughter.

Onward to The Rosie Effect just as soon as it available at the library…

Online Communities: A Double-Edged Mental Health Sword

There seems to be an online community for just about any interest, identity, or desire out there. From Facebook to Twitter, Redit to Tumbler, and on to an entire encyclopaedia of additional platforms beyond, anyone can find people with whom to share ideas, commiserate, or wage war. These global networks of often anonymous and carefully curated identities are available 24-7, meaning there's always someone somewhere up to play, chat, or listen when you scream into the ether.

This is absolutely a boon for those isolated by and struggling with their mental health. With a quiet tweet or desperate plea to an online group, one can immediately elicit dozens, if not hundreds, of consoling comments, an avalanche of advice, glorious GIFs, and possibly even direct messages from someone willing to talk you down from the edge. When it works, it can turn a crisis moment into a teary laugh and perhaps a long online conversation about everything that's going on. Instead of simply shouting into the void, you now have a real, live, compassionate human being on the other end, telling you you're not alone, you matter, your thoughts/worries/anxieties are valid, you've got this, you can make it through to another day. It's an incredibly beautiful thing.

Good online communities look out for their members. People notice when someone disappears for a while or the tone of their posts darkens. They ask how things are going, pull individuals who are struggling aside for a one-to-one chat, link them with local support IRL, and follow up over the days and weeks to come. This can literally save lives.

I wrote briefly about my time in a maternal psych ward here, but didn't go into details about the long slippery slope of degrading mental health and the online community of local mothers who did their damndest to keep me afloat as I was frantically bailing water from my sinking ship. I connected with this group when I first moved to my new home five years ago because I knew no one and was terrified of being completely isolated with my challenging child yet again. I opened up to them about my history of PND/PTSD, shared my fears of having another terrifying birth experience, sought advice on balancing work and a potential second child, and started making friends I could actually talk to in the real world. These women helped me immeasurably in the decision making process before becoming pregnant again, during the three brutal months of vomiting and nausea that marked the beginning of pregnancy, working through the terror of birthing what-ifs, and filled our freezer and fridge with ready-to-eat homemade meals to ease the burden of the first few weeks.

They were so much more than just an online community; they were an actual community sewn together with the ease and convenience of the internet. The group was carefully designed and moderated to be a place of support, not mommy wars or pyramid marketing schemes. It was a mothers' group on steroids. A call for help was invariably met with outpourings of whatever support anyone could offer: a chat in the dark when babies weren't sleeping, a cup of tear-filled tea to get you through a hard morning, a walk in the park, a hazy coffee date, soup for your family's dinner, grabbing your weekly shopping for you. No favour was ever deemed too big and the only request in return was that you pay it forward someday in your own way to someone else in need.

The group gradually grew too big for its britches. Somewhere around the 800-member mark, the vibe changed. The old guard moved on as our kids started school and we returned to more work outside our homes. People's needs, desires, and trust shifted, or at least mine certainly did. It's no longer my go-to port of call when I need to vent or ask for support, although many of the mothers I connected with initially through the group are still valued friends.

My journey into uncovering, discovering, and embracing my Autistic identity and that of my eldest daughter has led me into different online communities. Some are good, others are downright toxic. I've tried to learn to be very selective about which groups I engage with and how quickly to flee the savage spaces to protect my own tender skin, but it's not always easy to know what conflagration you're walking into. Some spaces are kept safe and welcoming by ardent guards who take swift and unrelenting action against anyone who breaks the sacrosanct group rules, but even they can't moderate all corners of their little cyber space every second and it only takes a single thoughtless moment to crush someone with a careless comment at the wrong time.

Some very large groups seem to be populated by generally well intentioned individuals who are there as much for the camaraderie as they are for their own selfish needs. The Twitter #WritingCommunity is such a place of silliness, shameless self promotion, writer lifts, follow threads, and virtual tackle hugs. There are certainly some who are only there to boost their follower numbers and promote their wares, but there are a lot of incredible people there too. People around the world are sharing writing tips, industry advice, critiquing each other's work, and bolstering anyone having a hard time. It's kind of amazing to watch sometimes, but there is a dark side to all this incredible "connection".

I argue that our brains are simply not evolved enough to know on a deeply visceral level the difference between online and real life connections. Sure, we know intellectually that these "friends" we're making are only as real as we are to them, but that doesn't stop the flood of neurotransmitters from generating feelings of adoration, attraction, jealousy, and rage. We feel the feelings but there's no way to gauge reciprocity.

I know this is one reason involvement in online communities is ultimately terrible for my mental health. Yes, I may get a daily hit of serotonin and dopamine when my peeps like or comment on a post. Sometimes there's a suggested activity, such as posting daily gratitude tweets, that helps me take stock of just how fortunate I am. Occasionally, someone may write just the right thing at just the right time, when there's no flesh and blood human available to tell me to breathe and stop scrubbing the sink frantically as my mind whizzes out of control. Those random people on the other side of the world who take a few seconds from whatever else they're doing to send a little virtual love can have extraordinarily positive effects in the short term and doing the same for others makes me feel valuable, but the long-term effects are not so shiny.

Sure, commiserating over the heartache and exhaustion of raising a differently wired child with a parent on another planet can ease the burden of those feelings, but it doesn't lighten the load of caring for said child. Sharing inside jokes with a group of like-minded individuals is great fun, but it isolates us from loved ones around us who don't "get it". Swooning over the brilliance of someone else's thoughts, regardless of how carefully curated those thoughts may be, decreases our tolerance for the inane things that spill from the mouths of our unfiltered friends and family.

Creating the perfectly likeable online persona also eats up an incredible amount of time and energy.  There's so much preening going on we may as well be a pack of chimps constantly picking nits off one another. I've seen at least half a dozen tweets just today from people apologising for being too negative in their posts because they're going through a hard time. Why do we have to apologise for speaking our truths? Why do we have to be up-beat and glorious for thousands of strangers all the time? This creates an inordinate unnecessary mental burden no one really needs, most of all those who are already struggling with their identity and mental health.

Maybe it's harder for someone like me for whom face-to-face interactions are so fraught with anxieties and baggage. Online communities allow me to read the lay of the land, figure out how the "cool kids" do it, and then put my best foot forward. I can slink away when my head is in a terrible space or spill the thoughts out across multiple groups to avoid overloading any particular one with all the garbage in my head. But I have to continually remind myself to be cautious, not to put myself too far out there, not to invest too heavily in straw men with no investment in me.

It's much easier for me to put my thoughts down in writing, heavily edit them and add a graphic that further enhances the expression I wish to make than it is to spit out what I want to say to someone's face. In real life, I'm invariably interpreted as overly blunt, uncaring, egotistical, or someone who simply thinks they're "way too smart for the rest of us plebs". Online, I can weigh my words, put my compassion first, and check my caustic tongue at the door. My anxiety is lower, so I'm able to tap into my heart sometimes instead of just my head.

It is a brave new world we've created, one our biology is far from catching up with. My only hope is that we can all learn to traverse it more kindly so everyone can benefit more from the infinite possibilities simmering just beneath the surface.

Saying I'm Sorry (*Again*): Part III (Ant)

Cover of: I love you, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I love you, by Kevin Farran

I love you, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I love you. It's a beautiful book title and an apt summary of all my more intimate relationships. If we remove the second comma, my entire love life suddenly falls neatly into one of these two categories. Either I'm apologising to those I love because my love is simply never enough or I'm deeply sorry to someone for ever loving them in the first place. I suppose many of us are often sorry for loving someone when it goes wrong and wish with all our souls we could go back to intercede at some fateful moment past, but for me, the guilt comes for the havoc my loving seems to wreak on others. I feel I'm a tornado in a trailer park: unleashing calamities upon the most vulnerable, innocent and unsuspecting victims of all.

In Part I & II of this series, I explored two formative relationships gone awry because their unresolved questions refuse to release my mind from purgatory. I classify these two intersections under the "I'm sorry I love you" heading. I believe my affections were more burdensome to the recipients than they were worth and generated chaos where there was calm. But now I want to explore a relationship of the "I love you, I'm sorry" variety.

Before I do, however, I need to lapse into a brief interlude to discuss the twined beauty and beast of neurodiverse relationships. As always, I must emphasise that my experience is certainly not universal, but these paired traits I am about to discuss are incredibly common among those on the Autism spectrum. We seem to be given to express most things in extremes, in this case oscillating wildly from unwavering loyalty to suddenly and unapologetically severing ties. It certainly sounds paradoxical and I imagine is the emotional equivalent of a swift kick to the head. 

Loyalty is an oft cited positive Autistic trait. It is a wonderful thing not to be fickle, to be willing to lay down your life or sanity for a cause, an institution, or a friend, but it can also be extraordinarily costly, personally, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Autistics are very vulnerable to manipulative people who learn to use this trait (often conveniently coupled with naïvety) to their advantage. While I haven't discussed this particular topic with many Autistic men, the female identifying portion of the population would resoundingly prefer support and coaching on safety skills in this arena over being "trained" to conform to NT social norms. However, when that loyalty is appropriately bestowed upon a deserving recipient, it is a grand and noble thing.

The flip side of this coin is as insidious on its face and protective in the long run as loyalty is the other way around. While not a diagnostic criteria for ASD, a tendency to abruptly sever ties with little or no explanation is a common question on Autism screening tests. It is often chalked up to black and white thinking, and this is the only explanation that makes it make any sense to me. Otherwise, I have no idea why a switch suddenly flips in my head, telling me to walk away from someone I had deep affections for a moment before and never look back. Even when it hurts so unbearably much I'd rather be hit by a train, only forced proximity and outside intervention can unfurl the clenched fist of rejection once I've made up my mind. It's a pattern I've repeated far more times than I care to remember. I feel deeply sorry in retrospect for every time I've done it, but I had my reasons, they were logical, and I had to stick to them regardless of the consequences. I know this doesn't mean shit to the people I hurt.

I can only see in hindsight that I mattered enough to someone for my hasty departure to cause them suffering. It was only ever after I made up my mind to tarry no longer that their affections became clear enough to register. This has been a brutal source of confusion and misery throughout my life, but I now finally understand from whence this idiosyncrasy springs. I suppose this is why I now feel an ever more intense impulse to go out and say I'm sorry to everyone I ever did this to. Now I can explain it. Now that I understand the thing, I feel like my apology has more weight, is more sincere free from entanglement within my own self confusion. But I'm almost certain no one else gives a flying leap at a rolling donut.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this unrelenting need to apologise for these transgressions haunts my dreams. While I find myself occasionally wending through my unwaking world to seek forgiveness from some of the minor players in my life, there is one refrain that dominates: seeking absolution from Ant. I beg for it in my dreams because I cannot grant it to myself in the light of day.

My dreams are always intense. Wild and fantastical worlds, complete with colour, sound, and even smells light up my nights and sometimes leave me feeling exhausted when I awake. I don't know whether it's sad, ironic, or just an early red flag I missed that one of the first presents Ant gave me was a dream journal. I thought it was a wonderful present initially, but when he added that I no longer needed to regale him with my nightly adventures as I could enter them in it instead, I was deflated. He was the first and last person to whom I ever tried to fully describe the magical realms of my dream world. So, it is certainly with more than a hint of irony that I now chase him through the hallways of my mind, endlessly trying to explain my actions and beg to resume our friendship.

I want to explain why I couldn't stand having face-to-face conversations to talk about our relationship problems, especially not when he insisted I make so much eye contact. I want to explain why I was so "embarrassingly" over the top at parties and incapable of making respectable small talk. I want to explain why I would invariably blow up and become a raging mess after every social occasion, why I just wanted to stay in bed sometimes even when the sun was shining, why I wanted to be alone with him and not out interacting with others so much of the time it drove him crazy.

I wish I could tell him that I didn't know I was worthy of love and therefore I didn't think I really mattered to him at all. I wish I could tell him that his insistence we share a tightly coupled schedule that allowed me no breathing room when I was completely overwhelmed by people and responsibilities fuelled the deepest burning resentment I'd ever experienced. I wish I could tell him that my suicidal ideation and adulterous fantasies were born out of an overwhelming and very real need for solitude. 

Through the lens of Autism, I can see all these stumbling blocks, inconsequential things to most people, but insurmountable obstacles to me. I am now able to look back and see how the mask I was forced to wear, a mask I'd only just started to don in the year before we met and welded into place with the guidance, tutelage and admonishments of those who "loved me most" during those years we were together, was slowly, silently strangling me. I had to get out to save my life.

I didn't leave because I stopped loving. I didn't leave because I wanted to be with someone else. I didn't leave because I needed something more convenient. I only left a little because I really wanted a cat… I left because I didn't know what I needed and even if I had, I sure as hell didn't know how to ask for it.

So, even though I've said I'm sorry before, and you've professed to forgive me even though it seemed disingenuous, here it is again, flung out into the ether because I don't want to disrupt your life again. As much as it would buoy my heart to count you among my friends in the world again, I sense that is not your wish at all. To you, the past is the past, what's done is done. I wish my brain could work that way too.

Saying I'm Sorry: Part II (Der Komiker)

The arc of some stories is much longer than others. Some people burst into our world like Halley's Comet, lighting up our sky for a brief but eternally memorable moment once in a lifetime, whereas others pass slowly through the month of our existence like a waxing moon, their nearly imperceptible pull only making itself known just before it slips away forever. One such moon rose my first day of high school.

I don't remember precisely the first words der Komiker said to me, but I can almost guarantee they made me laugh. I do remember the layout of the room and the complete bafflement of most of the students when the Frau launched straight into our first German lesson with "ich heiße Frau Schneider, wie heißt du?", but didn't recognise at the time that my immediate comprehension of her words and pantomime said more about my linguistic skills than the inferred stupidity of my classmates. Much to my delight and our teacher's chagrin, der Komiker sat next to me in our science class and kept me laughing for the rest of the year.

If some kindly person had thought to hand my 14-year-old self a checklist of what to look for as the foundation of a healthy relationship, I might have realised as quickly as I'd understood the Frau that der Komiker was ideal boyfriend material. I always felt relaxed and happy around him, I found everything he did and said fascinating, but I only associated attraction and passion for someone with unrequited yearning, so I failed to recognise the gem I'd stumbled upon. It took me nearly three full years to realise the depths of my feelings for him.

Three years is a long time in the life of a teen. Three years is also a very long time to think someone is your best friend even though you rarely see them outside of school, except for the occasional encounter on your way to or from school, or a shared extracurricular activity. This, to my mind, is one of the greatest travesties of not having my social-emotional challenges recognised decades earlier: I have no idea what it means to actually make a friend.

To my way of thinking, a friend was anyone with whom I could share a pleasant and comfortable conversation, a few laughs, maybe an inside joke or two, on more than one occasion. A best friend was someone who kept coming back over the years and had a shared interest or two. Der Komiker was one of the few who ticked both boxes in those tumultuous high school years.

The summer before our Senior year, I took up a new martial art he'd been studying for many years and it struck me that I really wanted to extend the reach of our friendship. I still had no notion of spending much time with my peers outside of school or coordinated activities, as my time was highly over subscribed with work, study, practice, and extracurricular activities. I thought that sharing a locker would cement our friendship and perhaps facilitate its growth into something more.

The year started out normally enough, I was still dating an older guy from the other side of the state and hadn't fully hatched my long-term locker scheme. I also wasn't around school much anymore, as I was taking the bulk of my classes at the university. As someone for whom flying solo is the norm, it  never dawned on me at the time that this might have been socially isolating for my friend to have a perpetually absentee locker mate. But I don't know what caused the schism.

Schism by Panagiotis Kountouras

Shortly after I broke up with my boyfriend at Thanksgiving, der Komiker lit up on my radar like never before. Maybe I'd finally learned enough about crappy relationships to start cluing into better ones, or maybe he clocked me properly over the head during one of our sparring matches, or perhaps the wind just shifted the right way, but suddenly the moon was shining so brightly I could no longer ignore it. I'm sure my behaviour toward him changed because I wanted the nature of our relationship to change, but I had no idea how to go about it. What I was unaware of, was all the other friendships he'd fostered in lieu of a real one with me. The more I tried to draw him into a state of exclusivity with me, the more strongly I repelled him into their fold.

I don't know if there was one particularly egregious faux pas or just a whole series of muddled social niceties, misunderstandings, and over estimations of our loyalties to one another that tipped the balance, but he eventually cut me off completely. Not only did he stop using our shared locker altogether, but he ceased acknowledging my existence. Instead of a friendly 'hello', I was met only with contemptuous looks from his companions as I passed their tight little knot of friends. He was the last link I had to any kind of social life within my high school and he made it explicitly clear that I was not wanted. I cannot even begin to put words to the degree of pain caused by this ostracisation. When I think back on it, I experience a sense of disconnection with my body the likes of which I can only relate to hovering near-death. It is not pleasant.

We graduated and went our separate ways without saying goodbye or even the most cursory reparations. I was heart broken. I'd lost my best friend and I didn't think he even cared.

Then something truly horrendous happened. Death puts all things into stark perspective and the sudden and unexpected death of someone who dramatically changed so many young lives leaves people reeling and reconsidering all kinds of things. It was death that reconnected us, if only tangentially, just momentarily, only just enough to see a crack of light in the shroud of confusion over what happened between us. I have never wished so desperately to attend a memorial service and never regretted so deeply not insisting on doing so. But my mother went in place of her children who were both so moulded by the man a vast community gathered to grieve that day, and der Komiker sought her out, "bounded, not walked, across the gym to get to me!" to ask her how I was. She gave him my newly minted email address and he wrote to me.

I had to ask what happened. I had to tell him how much I missed him and how much it hurt that he rejected me. He was deeply sorry, but he wouldn't explain what happened. He brushed it off as a "stupid misunderstanding". If I knew then how horribly that incomplete explanation would haunt me for the rest of my days, I would have begged for more information because I am fundamentally unable to "just let it go."

We had one brief encounter a little over a year later. I transferred to his university for a multitude of reasons and was walking across campus during a quiet period between terms. I can still hear the widely spaced slaps of his enormous feet bounding not walking up behind me in an attempted sneak attack and see him flying through the air as I spun around to catch him in the act. Once again, he'd made me laugh. We only talked briefly and I never saw him again.

On the surface, one could easily argue that nothing ever happened between us, that it was all in my head. Certainly I'd agree that the less platonic feelings were entirely one-sided and I have no problem owning that, but our friendship seemed so very real to me, there was an undeniable falling out, and he showed in the aftermath that he did value my friendship too. But I cannot make sense of what happened. There is such an agonising sense of loss that accompanies every thought of him, even if it is just for the friend I thought I had.

I cannot help but wonder if things would have been different if my neurological differences had been recognised, accepted, and supported back then. How I might have received more instruction on how to make friends and navigate relationships of all kinds. How I might have had the courage to say, "I do not understand why you're doing/saying that, can you please explain," instead of slinking back into my corner of self doubt and loathing assuming I was simply an unloveable soul. This is why I want things to be different for my daughter, I do not want her lost in this sea of confusion that continues to drown her for 20, 30, 40, ?? years. I want her to seek resolution and answers in the moment instead of letting them bang around in her head until she wants to tear them out by any means possible.

I think this is an important component of Autism awareness/acceptance and the mental health risks that accompany neurological differences. Seemingly small or innocuous things that other people can "just get over" can spiral the Autistic/ND brain into a whirlpool of anxiety and depression, suicidal ideation, or worse. It seems like such a small ask to support the ND community with guidance to gaining closure and NTs to recognising how desperately important it is for us to have this whenever possible. Sometimes the littlest things can make the biggest difference.

Saying I'm Sorry: Part I (Master T)

Beautiful watercolour by kiwitachan

I've written previously about how my ASD diagnosis opened a whole new world of self understanding floating in the alphabet soup of personal experiences I never previously recognised as "things". In the year that has passed since the possibility I could be neurodivergent was first floated, I've had the eye-opening experience of connecting with Autistics and other ND folks from around the world. This has provided ample opportunity to discuss commonalities and differences in how we experience the world. While we are all individuals ("I'm not!" one for the Life of Brian fans…), there are some shared experiences that resonate strongly with nearly all Autistics I've had the pleasure of interacting with. One of these is the overwhelming need for closure that tends to trigger endlessly looping thoughts, clinically described as perseveration.

I imagine that all people have niggling thoughts they simply cannot lay to rest from time to time, but many Autistics report having multitudes of thoughts that continue to echo through the vast hallways of their brains endlessly. It is not uncommon for such thoughts to rip us out of a dead sleep and keep us awake for days, interrupt normal daily activities, or sap the joy from our lives. It can be something as simple as a conversation 25 years ago that didn't go the way we expected, or an entire relationship left in shambles that we would give anything to at least understand, if not repair. In an earlier post, I touched on my own desperate desire to rectify past bungled relationships and felt it was time to move on and let those go, but alas, my brain is like a rusted vice grip, so I will endeavour to write my side of the stories in an attempt to lay my ghosts to rest.

Jewish Headstone by Nikodem Nijaki (wikimedia commons)

There is a picture of me horsing around with my first real boyfriend, snapped by my mom one happy afternoon, that clearly depicts my whole-hearted adoration of him. We're on the couch in my living room, playfully punching each other, I'm wearing a ridiculous hat, and we're both laughing through our pretend acts of aggression. I do not need to look at this photo to remember all the details because it is so clearly emblazoned on my brain as one of the few times in four years of high school I was truly happy.

Master T was a year younger than me and at least a foot taller. Even before he got sick, he was a dangerously skinny kid with the proudest Roman nose and a razor sharp sense of humour, which he could instantly turn against any unwitting adversary at the slightest provocation. To me he was a god.

We met through a high school theatre production, he working back stage while I lapped up the limelight. In the years to come, his prowess on the stage would far surpass mine, but that first season, he seemed content to control the curtains and make cutting remarks at the expense of all the actors. I wanted nothing more than for him to like me, but that desire just made me spout the most insipid utterances when I could think of anything to say at all. Somehow, more by sheer will than any degree of finesse, I got him alone and professed my overpowering attraction to him. This led to a delightful make-out session and us 'going out together', which mostly amounted to him occasionally coming to my house for more kissing.

He never invited me to his house and quickly thwarted any suggestion that we go there. He never included me in anything to do with his friends and would nearly always leave me hanging to meet up with them. I wanted him so badly, but as the weeks went on, he became increasingly distracted and intent on drinking with his friends any time alcohol presented itself. My mind raced through these discrete and incomplete pieces of evidence to conclude that 1) I really didn't mean much to him at all, and 2) he was developing a substance abuse problem at the ripe old age of 15. The first conclusion broke my heart, the second was simply terrifying. I'd grown up on a steady diet of stories about a family friend a few years my senior who was a brilliant and beautiful girl being dragged down by her dead-beat, drug addicted boyfriend. These stories fuelled my rapidly spiralling fears that this was the path I had unwittingly stumbled upon and if I didn't change course quickly, I would be "ruined" as she was (N.B. she ended up becoming a doctor).

I resolutely did not want to break up with Master T, the thought of it crushed me. I wanted to talk to him about his drinking, but I lacked the skills to broach such a delicate topic with anyone, especially someone who left me tongue tied and capable of slicing me to ribbons with an unparalleled caustic tongue. I was also of the mind that no one, especially not him, could actually care about me. I honestly believed it would not bother him one scrap if I simply vaporised and let him be. So, I just stopped talking to him and couldn't even bring myself to look at him in passing because it hurt so much. Twenty five years have passed, and the simple act of writing this brings tears to my eyes and an unbearable tightness in my chest. I can still see him coming toward me from the Senior wing as I approached it and just walking right past.

No one knew it at the time, but Master T was incredibly sick. He knew he was in excruciating pain, but he didn't tell anyone, choosing instead to self medicate with whatever alcohol his friends could get their hands on. My inability to deal with confusing and conflicting signals meant I walked away from someone who made my heart sing when he needed more support than ever. This thought still gnaws away at the corners of my brain far more often than I appreciate. Not long after I left him in a lurch, he was admitted to a distinguished hospital with the most advanced case of his disease they'd ever witnessed in someone his age. He required intensive treatment and was partly disabled from the extensive damage. While I know the disease and its effects are in no way my fault, I have never been able to forgive myself for walking away at that critical time in his life, for my inability to sit with someone else's pain rather than run away from the overwhelming effect it has on me.

A year later, another stage production underway, we were foisted together again. Tensions were high, but my feelings for Master T had only intensified. Now it was his turn to drive and as we sat in a darkened parking lot he wanted answers. Answers I didn't have. Answers for something it would take me decades to completely decipher. I was nearly 30 before I discovered my inability to perceive love and affection from others and on the brink of 40 before I understood the interplay between my neurology and environment that generated that devastating flaw.

We got back together during the production run and I was over the moon at this second chance. I wanted to do it better. I wanted so badly to right the wrongs, but he was only in it for retribution. With cold calculation, he threw back the dish I'd unintentionally served and had his revenge. I can still feel my breath wrenched from my body as he delivered the blow, he didn't want to see me anymore. I can see the grass around me wavering as I made my way unsteadily back across the open field where the new high school now stands. The ache was so palpable and pervasive; it would have hurt less if he'd physically beat me.

The only benefit to holding on so clearly to these painful details is using them as raw materials to weave into something new and beautiful. I'm nearly finished writing a novel in which my main character shares many of my challenges, but is more self aware and better supported. Still, she is not immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the scene in which her boyfriend breaks up with her is based directly on this moment of acute agony in my own anthology of pain.

I thought that writing a friendly post-script to our story could stop the perseverating on my grievous error, but I was wrong. While it did bring me great joy to reconnect with Master T online in recent years, and even more so to talk in person, it did not resolve the final chord still hanging in my mind. Our interactions and conversation steered clear of the past, navigating only the safe waters of the present. I thought this would be enough, to feel absolved in a smile and a snarky joke, but without the chance to ever say "I'm sorry I hurt you, and I forgive you for hurting me" the thoughts play on endless repeat, wearing holes in the carpet of my mind.

It's a complicated thing, the past. It's made even more complicated by the way my brain holds so fiercely to things others can lay to rest. I assume Master T never looses a wink of sleep over this briefest moment of our shared ancient history, but for me it's an interminable wobbly tooth that I cannot excise.

Battles In My Mind (Part III): PTSD, PND, ASD, GAD Alphabet Soup and Black Dog Dancing

In Part II of this series, I started my battle story in the middle with the arrival of my second child. As brutal, protracted, and dehumanising as that series of events was, it paled in comparison with the acute trauma of my first birth. When we think about having a baby, it's all teddy bears and nappies, smiling exhausted parents, bottles and boobies, not near-death experiences. I'd heard of PTSD prior to my first pregnancy, but it was something I mistakenly only associated with soldiers returning from the battle fields or perhaps police officers or firefighters, never ever "the happiest day of your life".

I was physically and mentally prepared to give birth. I knew instinctively what my body needed to do, I was not afraid of the pain; my highly experienced midwife had more faith in my ability to birth my baby than any of her previous clients. But things didn't exactly go to plan. We'll never know exactly why my body didn't quite do what it was supposed to, but it's quite likely that a bike accident a decade earlier disrupted the communication along my spine just enough that part of my cervix simply didn't get the message to let go and my big-brained baby got stuck.

I had zero desire to go to hospital, ever. I have a massive phobia of them. The noise, the lights, the intrusive people, the lack of privacy, the GERMS; it's a fucking nightmare. My homebirth was going beautifully until I exhaustedly agreed to have my waters broken after eight hours of full labour. 

There's meconium. I no longer have any option but to go to hospital. More than six years later, I still feel the edges of the floorboards that I clung to, pleading not to be taken into the waiting ambulance, under my fingernails and bare body. I summon every ounce of resolve in my bull-headed self to keep my contractions going during the 25-minute ambulance ride to avoid an emergency Cesarian upon arrival in hell.

Four hours of battle later, with the aid of untold scores of midwives fighting along side me, I let out a tremendous roar (after being nearly silent for the preceding 12 hours) as the doctor unsheathes the scalpel and eject my daughter into the world unaided. The midwives are shocked to see a baby fly out that fast. It is over. She is placed on my belly and crawls to my breast. We lie there united at last. But the nightmare is just about to start…

After a few lovely moments, a couple of photos, a general reprieve, she is taken from me to be weighed and measured. I am stitched and stitched and stitched as well as the surgeon can muster before he mutters something about the rest he can't get to that will have to heal on its own… The happy congratulatory voices become hushed. Doctors sound concerned and new messages start zipping around the room. Something about her respiration, I can't understand, I'm cold, I know she is cold. "She'll be OK, we just need to monitor her resps… Do you want to get up and take a shower?" "Yeah, OK, that would be great…"

I get up, the room swims, there's a lot more blood under me than anyone anticipated. I reach out for the bed, a midwife catches me before I crash to the floor. Someone presses an alarm. The room seethes with strange faces. No one can find a pulse, a vein to pump fluids into, I'm poked full of holes in a futile exercise to find one that is not collapsed, "20 over 80" someone proclaims. My daughter is also slipping, she is plopped into an oxygen cot and my husband rushes manically back and forth between us but I tell him to stay with her because the terror in his eyes scares me too much. He goes to NICU and a steadfast midwife stares deeply into my pupils willing me to stay with her as I start to slip down a very easy slope. I am so incredibly cold. Nothing warms me. I am left completely alone.

I am supposed to be elated, but I am empty. My most precious little person is no longer inside of me and I can't even touch her anymore. I spend an hour listening to other women scream their heads off having short and highly medicated labours whilst I'm trapped alone not knowing where anyone is or how my baby is doing. I can't sleep.

When I can finally go to her, I can only just put my hand on her tiny relaxed body for a few moments. It's absolutely heartbreaking. I've been waiting to hold her in my arms and nuzzle that little neck for nine months and now I'm not even sure she knows I'm here. She has no needs now as the tubes have replaced me. I'm told to go get some sleep. But sleep doesn't come. I feel like I'm going crazy. After a few days they hesitantly discharge us because the doctor can see I'm too anxious in this place, but the midwife comes every day to check both of us. Less than 24 hours later we're re-admitted to emergency because my little one is fighting a lung infection. All focus is on her and no one worries about me.

Another week in hospital. I rage and scream when my roommate's visitors think it's cool to have a smoke prior to entering the maternity ward where I stew with my IV-antibiotic-fed newborn fighting for her life. I've earned massive cred with the midwives on this ward for what I fought through, so they quickly pull strings to get me a private room. I'm in pain, but trying to maintain a brave face. I'm still not sleeping, but neither is my baby, so it appears normal.

But the sleepless weeks turn into months. Even when someone else looks after her and tells me to sleep, I can't. I'm 100% on edge all the time. I cry nearly as much as she does. We travel a lot because it's so much easier to just keep moving.

One night, several months later, when she has finally started sleeping for at least a few hours at a time, my husband and I decide to watch a movie. It's a light-hearted comedy about four couples having babies. It's silly and ridiculous and we laugh a lot. Until suddenly, it's not. One of the mothers has a problem in labour and the doctors hit the Code Blue alarm. The same one I had. My smile instantly dissolves, my head spins, and I feel like I'm going to vomit. I try to get out of the room but collapse on the floor and feel like I'm dying. My whole body seizes up. I have no idea what's happening. I'm terrified. I'm heaving and sobbing. I can't make it stop. My husband holds me, lets me cry, is completely baffled with me; I have to get up to feed the baby.

Shortly thereafter I read an article in a breastfeeding magazine about the 1% of births that lead to PTSD. The description and explanation make everything click. I start to get some help and counselling. The regular counsellor is at a loss of what to do to help me so she sends me to someone who teaches me a tapping and eye tracking technique to use whenever I have a trigger. It works a treat, but doesn't stop the insomnia. I'm also severely depressed, but ardently refuse to fill the prescription for SSRIs the doctor implores me to take.

Looking back on my life, I know I've suffered multiple severe depressive episodes. I have contemplated suicide more times than I like to admit. Now, understanding myself through the lens of Autism, I see the patterns of sensory overload, people overload, new environments/experiences, anxiety, and insufficient time for my special interests that built up to each. Had I known then what I know now, I would have advocated for my own needs, removed the forks and conserved the spoons. I wouldn't have felt so ridiculous about my need for quieter spaces, fewer smells, a particular piece of fabric to rub.

Arriving on the scene wholly unprepared for parenthood unravels a lot of people. It is a triggering event for many ND women that suddenly sets them on a path toward self-awareness and/or diagnosis. But I crash landed into it with the triple threat of zero experience around children under 10, undiagnosed ASD, and PTSD. It has taken a long time, but I'm learning to forgive myself for being so completely fucked up those first two years of my daughter's life.

Learning to see depression and anxiety through a kinder, softer lens finds its corollary in the Black Dog Project. I came across this beautiful endeavour to break the stigma around adopting black dogs, who are perceived as more aggressive, as I was searching for images for this post. I love what they're doing and it reminds me to be kinder and more compassionate to myself when I'm fighting poor mental health.

Depression in all its forms is crushing. There is so much stigma, so many misconceptions, so little compassion that it takes a lot to even write anonymously about it. My mother once told my older brother I was being treated for depression, to which he scoffed, "what does she have to be unhappy about?" Depression is NOT about just being unhappy or dissatisfied (although those are some of the symptoms). For me, it comes from being out of my depth, pushing myself too hard, insomnia, isolation, sensory/people overwhelm, and the anxiety that ensues. I genuinely NEED time to self regulate, let my mind wander, control my environment, move, move, and move. When these needs are not met for whatever unfortunate combination of reasons, my mind goes into hyperdrive, it WILL NOT STOP. Yes, there are drugs that help, but they have unpleasant side effects and we still don't have any controlled long-term human studies to know if they're safe for continued use. I prefer to at least attempt to manage this brutal condition via non-chemical means because I do not want to be a living lab experiment.

There are so many people out there suffering in silence about their depression and anxiety. You can show you support them by brandishing a Black Dog logo or posting a sign in your office/shop/classroom. Dancing With the Black Dog is a registered charity.