Never Walk Alone

The hardest thing about depression is the overpowering sense of isolation it imposes. It's crushing and creates its own feedback loop, convincing you that no one can understand or bear the brunt of its force. When someone is on the slippery slope into depression or desperation, the best antidote is not to attempt to cheer them up, but to convince them that they are resolutely not alone. That they are seen, not judged, heard, not spoken at, and that you are walking beside them them no matter what.

After too many battles with deep and debilitating depression and a few close calls, I now have what I fondly think of as my "break glass in case of emergency" friend. A friend with whom I've made a standing pact to call any time I start to have intrusive thoughts or I can't see my way through my current situation. It's a reciprocal relationship, I've made the same commitment to her. I know that if I call, she will drop whatever she's doing (within reason, of course) and ride it out. This is the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.

I know we don't all have this. I certainly didn't until I was nearly 40 and ended up in a psych ward with a 4-month old baby. I wouldn't have made this deal with my guardian angel had she not insisted upon it because she loves me so much. But I implore anyone struggling with their mental health to look for that person when you come up for air. If you're in the midst of a crisis, don't beat yourself up because you weren't prepared, but when you are vomited out on the other side and have a chance to catch your breath, make it a priority. Find that person in your life whom you deeply trust and tell them what you need, ask them to promise they'll be there no matter what, and make the promise in return so you have the honour of being that critical person for someone else.

If your mental health is great (whoot!), look around for someone in your life you love to the end of the earth who might not be on such solid footing. Tell them that you've got their back no matter what. Tell them to put you on speed dial. Tell them that you'll kick their ass if they're ever in a terrifying black place and they don't call you. It may, quite possibly, save their life.

Here's my poem on this theme:

Break Glass in Case of Emergency 

Have you ever been alone?
I’m with you
No one calling on the phone?
I’m with you
No one playing in the park
I’m with you
No one holding in the dark
I’m with you

No one ringing in the year
I feel you
Never offering their cheer
I feel you
No one making any plans
I feel you
Ever offering their hands
I feel you

Have you ever been afraid
I see you
Of the plans that you have made
I see you
Wishing you could go there brave
I see you
So those friendships you could save
I see you

Softly calling to the night
I hear you
Your darkest thoughts the terror fright
I hear you
Ever clinging for the dawn
I hear you
Hoping you were simply wrong
I hear you

That the games you’ll learn to play
I get you
And the perfect words to say
I get you
To the eyes that you behold
I get you
With their secrets never told
I get you

Come clear as you can see
I know you
You were never meant to be
I know you
The same as all the rest
I know you
In your head or in your chest
I know you

You are you as I am me
I am you
This mumbled way to be
I am you
But you never walk alone
I am you
When you have me in your phone 

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.

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: Part IV (The Scientist)

Before I start this blog post, I'd just like to say a few words of gratitude to my far-flung audience. I never intended for this to be anything other than a personal growth and exploration journal, but the thousands of page views from all corners of the planet indicates I'm tapping into something else. I'll admit I was inspired to do a deeper dive into the mental health ramifications of Autism by one reader telling me how greatly my words resonated with her, that a particular post found its way into her hands on the brink of a crisis and helped ground her. Others have shared praise for the quality of the writing and unfiltered truths, which I deeply appreciate.

As much as I am moved by the benefit sharing my experiences has to others, it is still, at its heart, my space for me, as stated in the very first entry nearly nine years ago. Thank you for reading, nonetheless.

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Female Scientist by Medic Kun

It would be irresponsible to perpetuate the impression that my perseveration is limited to botched romantic entanglements, as I likely have with the first three parts of this post. The more intimate a relationship however, the more deeply intertwined two minds, hearts, souls, the more opportunities there are for serious misunderstandings and subsequent hurt to occur. Involvement requires trust; trust is founded upon vulnerability; vulnerability makes me nervous; nerves short circuit my brain into panic; panic leads to flight; flight leaves questions unanswered, chords unresolved, words unspoken and years or decades down the track, endless loops of all the things I wish I could do and say differently playing through my mind.

When I think back on these myriad relationships and the consternation they continue to cause, I'm often struck by just how hard I actually did try to make amends in the past. How I've tried to explain the inexplicable, apologise for outright inexcusable behaviour, smooth ruffled feathers and even been pardoned, but the broken trust never heals. This is what gets me. I don't know if the other parties ever actually trust me again, but I do know that I don't trust them to trust me and so I slink away to avoid censure. This is what happened with The Scientist.

The Scientist was a stalwart woman, infinitely dedicated to her pursuits. In the many years I knew her, I watched wave after wave of tragedy, mishap, misogyny, and hardship smash her up against the rocks of life, but she never bowed. Looking back now, I can imagine she undoubtedly must have had her moments in private where she broke down and wept, wanted to throw in the towel and give up, but her public persona was so steadfast that any weakness was hidden. She was definitely one tough cookie and I seriously admired her.

In the wake of several of my own major life upheavals, I was foisted unexpectedly upon The Scientist. She didn't really want me in her charge for many good reasons, but neither of us had much of a choice in the matter. I always sincerely wanted to do right by her, as anyone would when working directly under one of their heroes, but my heart was never in the work she had me doing, and then my head couldn't stay in it either.

I've written briefly before about my cycling accident in New Zealand but haven't yet had the opportunity to fully explore the damage it did physically, mentally and emotionally. I've been toying with a PTSD-focussed post to explore its different manifestations, but my writing energies keep pulling me in different directions. I mention it now because it played a significant role in the destruction of my working relationship with The Scientist.

Hitting the ground at 30 km/hr is never a good thing. Landing head first at that velocity is an especially bad thing. In conjunction with the multitude of serious injuries I sustained that day, I was also severely concussed. I can only estimate how long I was out cold by what I can remember of the distance between where I lay crumpled and the path where the first people on the scene would have been when I crashed, but however long it was sufficient to cause significant damage that continued to give me grief for many months afterward.

I had no idea how bad things were upstairs until several sleepless weeks went by. It's hard to say how much of my memory issues were directly related to the trauma and what was a secondary byproduct of the concussion-induced insomnia, either way, my brain was fucked. It's never nice to have your brain operating at less than full capacity, but I can tell you that having scrambled brains whilst completing intricate scientific research, taking the most complex graduate coursework and trying to mop up the mess of your life truly fucking sucks. My normally brilliant mind was rendered useless. I couldn't remember a conversation from the day before let alone what a professor was talking about by the time I finished writing notes in class. My typically hyper-reactive emotions jumped into uncontrolled chaos. I was a walking time bomb.

When you can't keep anything straight in your mind and everthing feels like a race against the clock, it's only a matter of probability before one of the many mistakes you're making daily is going to genuinely cost you. The Scientist's lab was absolutely no place for a mis-wired brain like mine. There were so many protocols to follow, so many minute details to attend to every second, so much to learn and keep track of. I probably would have been OK if I hadn't been so over committed, if all my attention was focussed there, but it wasn't and I was floundering. Then one day up whipped the perfect storm.

I was stressed beyond belief and trying to juggle too many things. A dear friend, who was also under the The Scientist's wing, but didn't work in this lab, came in with me when I needed to check my experiments. There was no problem with her being in the lab, she often use the microscope therein, but she had zero training on the experimental equipment. We were talking, she wanted to be helpful, I was distracted and trying to get things done quickly. I asked her to do something deceptively simple before checking something else and realised too late that what she did affected someone else's experiments on the line. At the time, I honestly didn't think it was a big deal. The same tiny perturbation to my own experiments wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever. But the other experiments were a completely different beast. We destroyed them in a thoughtless instant. Weeks worth of someone else's work down the toilet.

My ridiculous mistake was so opaque to my mind that it never occurred to me to contact my mentor or the other student right away. I casually mentioned it in passing a few days later and the shit hit the fan. The other student was murderous; my mentor asked why she shouldn't ban me from ever using the lab again. Let me clarify here that not using that lab again would sign the death warrant on the PhD I'd been pursuing for the previous five years. It was not a happy option.

After wallowing in mortification for a few days, I wrote my supervisor a very long explanation and apology. I was seriously remorseful. It was the single biggest mistake of my professional life, one I knew had completely tarnished my reputation. The Scientist is a most magnanimous woman and she pardoned my sins, allowed me to resume working in the lab, and did her best to insure I successfully completed my PhD.

But I never felt right about things between us again. The strain on our already burdened relationship was enormous. Every interaction with her felt dangerous, never knowing if she was going to throw this or one of my myriad minor transgressions back at me.

The day I defended my thesis, The Scientist took me and my parents out for a celebratory lunch. We'd scarcely spoken outside of obligatory thesis and research group meetings since the lab debacle, so I was incredibly on edge about this small social outing. Much to my surprise, she positively glowed to my parents about what an amazing job I'd done, how much cutting edge research I'd successfully pursued, and what a fantastic student I was. I was absolutely floored. She never struck me as the type of person who would spout insincere flattery, but I can never stop wondering if she made an exception that day.

Thoughts of this woman whom I so admire, with whom I've travelled, dined, worked in the field, taken saunas, and partied, who's baby I've held and dear friends I've shared and lost, now only evoke shudders of shame and remorse. I've never been able to bring myself to connect with her via any social media or list her as a reference on my CV. Sadly, I never went through graduation ceremonies for my PhD, in part because I was too ashamed to ask her to hood me. I'm simply left to wonder if she considers me a black stain on her otherwise impeccable advisory record.

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.

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.

Battles in My Mind (Part II): Depression, Anxiety, PND, and All That Jazz…

I've talked a lot about my mental health struggles with pretty well anyone who could be bothered to listen, but I've never really written about them in any purposeful, meaningful, or public way. I've often turned to my journal in times of extreme distress, trying to scratch the madness out of my mind onto paper, usually to no avail. What I ended up with was a long and painful record of my lowest, most vulnerable moments. Eventually I stopped because I was afraid if anyone ever came across them and read the whole tome I would be bundled off to an asylum and never heard from again.

I originally started this blog (oh, so many lifetimes ago) in an attempt to turn my writing into a positive way forward from those incredibly dark places. In so doing, I glossed over the agonising struggles leading me to that point and completely abandoned the blog altogether during the years in which it could have soothed traumatic wounds and drained the poison from within me. I realised recently, upon receiving the highest compliment that my writing had helped someone else in their moment of need, that I actually have a lot of value to offer those in the trenches with the Black Dog.

I have gained incredible perspective on my mental health challenges in the past year, moving from a head space wherein the only thing keeping me from stepping in front of a bus was my children's dependence on me, to a place where I'm allowing myself to dream and create and open up to curiosity and possibility. I've taken active steps to put self care at the top of my priority list, let go of toxic things holding me back, ask for help, say 'no' to that which I don't really need, and conserve my spoons as much as possible. Discovering my Autistic identity has played a central role in this metamorphosis.

I have an impulsive urge to start all stories at the beginning, but I think this one is better told asynchronously. Let's begin at the bottom…

I'm in a mental ward with my five-month old baby. She's my second child, so the guilt of leaving my 3.5-year old behind weighs mightily but Anxiety is crushing every fibre of my being. I'm afraid of harming myself or my children, so I've come here of my own volition. I knew I was at high risk for developing PND again, so I sought help and built up my safety nets before my little one arrived, but it wasn't enough to fight the tide. Sleepless months, a colicky/tongue-tied/perpetual motion baby, an uncomfortable visit, election of the orange idiot, and an unrelenting fear that my new job would bring an early end to breastfeeding piled upon me and has now dropped me to my knees. The psychiatrist is pushing hard for SSRIs. I'm pushing back with the futility of kelp against the tide and crying desperately on the phone with the kind man with the answers before swallowing my first pill. I can't get my baby to sleep so the nurses push me out into the long, narrow hallway and tell me they'll watch her while she screams. I scream too. I'm incoherent, spitting mad, seeing red, screeching down the hallway past the doors of all the other sleeping babies and mothers that this isn't why I came here, I'm not here for them to "train" my baby to sleep, but they won't listen so I try to punch my hand through a solid brick wall.

The SSRIs kick in and make me think every previous anxiety attack was a gentle joke. I cannot pull myself out of the foetal position except to meet my baby's most intense needs. The walls are closing in on me; the air is crushing the life out of me; I cannot breathe. I want to die more than anything. If the kind man on the phone hadn't prepared me for this and the place wasn't designed to eliminate any possibility for self harm, I wouldn't make it through the night. But just to add insult to injury, I contract gastro while this is going on and have to be quarantined. I'm given two choices: send my exclusively breastfed baby home for my husband to sort out along with our other child and give up any hope of continuing to breastfeed her while I am transferred to the regular hospital unit, or go home. I hate this place so much, but the regular hospital ward is my worst nightmare. I call my husband and implore him to pick me up as soon as possible. My dearest friend drives an hour to watch our daughter while he comes to collect me and our baby. Due to my rapid and unexpected discharge, I have no further access to the prescribing psychiatrist and have to manage my meds on my own.

The following months blur, but I'm managing better. Meanwhile, my husband pulls away and we inhabit two separate worlds: Mine wholly centred around the joyfully beguiling little soul rapidly fermenting in our baby; His revolving around an overwhelming workload and our older daughter. My headspace improves with the medication and job satisfaction, while he recedes deeper into his own pit of depression, resentment, and rejection. Our family effectively splits in two.

I begin to find joy again through my work and friends, go off the meds, but by our little one's first birthday my marriage is toxic house of cards and salted wounds. We're so busy and exhausted all the time we have little energy to even fight, but when we do it frightens our daughter. Her behaviour, which has always challenged us, becomes increasingly difficult and we can't agree on how to deal with it. We escape into our own fantasy worlds and cannot meet in the real world at all. Threats of divorce are thrown around with increasing frequency. Then in waltzes a soothsayer.

It starts innocently enough, as most things do, with a flippant remark online to an old acquaintance about the definition of a "happy marriage". I suddenly find the trust, humour, shared interests, and common ground so completely lacking at home streaming through my screen. As my partner becomes ever more dismissive and uninterested, my new "friend" is quick to fill the gaps. To my mind, the case is closed by my husband's demand for a divorce on our dinner date. I stalk off without him and then we scream at each other from across the street. It's ugly. We try to keep up appearances for the sake of our kids and family at Christmas, but the rift is deep.

Over the next few months my anxiety skyrockets as I empty my bucket into my online "relationship". My husband and I separate. I try unsuccessfully to find full-time employment, getting nowhere with two jobs for which I'm incredibly well qualified. I'm gutted and feel my tenuous grip on things slipping. I go to my doctor begging for help to manage the anxiety that physically rips me apart at night and keeps me perpetually on edge during the day. I go back on the SSRIs and into therapy.

My husband starts counselling and taking antidepressants in parallel. Somehow in the shit storm of our separation, we discover our confounding neurodivergence and the pennies begin to drop. I'm an Aspie; he has ADHD; neither one of us is actually an asshole.

I realise he's been hurting for a long time. It's so outside of my nature to be able to give him what he needs or recognise how much he has sacrificed for so many years to try to meet mine. With help from more emotionally intelligent arbiters, we start to remove the distortion of our own lenses and reinterpret each other. He lays himself out to fight for what matters most to him: his family.

All this chaos, all this pain could have been avoided had I been identified as an Aspie earlier in life. There are so many episodes like this (although none quite so awful) throughout my life, all of which I contend would have been ameliorated, if not altogether skipped, had I known, had my family known, had my friends known. I know our struggles make us who we are, but I'm so scarred from this lifetime of brutal internal battles, I feel I hardly have the strength left to enjoy the life I have left.

The Delphic maxim resonates for every human today as it did in the ancient world, but sometimes we don't have an opportunity to truly know ourselves until we are on the brink of loosing everything we love. I have met so many late-diagnosed Spectrumites who were never able to fully grasp their true self through decades of mental health issues, relationship breakdowns, personal crises, and suicide attempts because their Self was buried and maligned from a lifetime of trying to be the square peg in a world of round holes. So I add my voice to the crescendoing chorus of adult Autistics calling for better diagnosis, especially of girls on the spectrum, and acceptance of our differences to improve life-long mental health outcomes for everyone on the spectrum and those who love them.