Please, don't kill the cat.

Nearly a year ago, as my bewildered husband and I wrestled with the beginning stages of the ASD diagnosis process for our eldest daughter and me, we attended a workshop on "Managing Challenging Behaviours" at the behest of his mother. We didn't know what to expect. I was extremely on edge as the only clearly ND parent in the room, feeling like they were coming to get me. Some of what was said was helpful, some felt like a personal affront. I occasionally wanted to scream, "this is too hard!!" and flee the room, but instead, I sat and rocked and wrung my hands together trying to block out the agonising feelings bombarding me from everyone else in the room.

As tough as it was, there were a few pearls of wisdom we took away from that night that proved useful for better understanding our daughter's often bewildering experience of the world. Foremost in my mind, was the notion that curiosity, not compliance or "acceptable"/"normal" behaviour, is the opposite end of the spectrum from anxiety, a state we frequently inhabit in our household. The ASD researcher/speaker encouraged us to watch for curiosity to know when our anxious little creatures were genuinely relaxed so we could capitalise on those moments for understanding how to get them there more often.

I tucked all this under my cap and set to my task of trying to unravel the mystery of my daughter's persistent anxiety without thinking twice about how it applied to me. I recognised that S and I were feeding off one another like a pack of dementors at ground zero, but I couldn't see through the smoke and flames to an exit strategy. I funnelled all my energy into getting her in to see the paediatrician, the child psychologist, the occupational therapist, the speech pathologist, running in circles to get the professional safety net we needed to make necessary changes. What I failed to see, was how much I needed that energy to soothe my own anxiety for both our benefit.

I needed help to get help. It's such a conundrum. It's a juggernaut confounded by my own struggle to seek help, which gets progressively worse the more anxious I am.

Yet, now that the smoke is starting to clear, the sound of reinforcements approaching, I suddenly recognise my own curiosity returning. I find myself able, for the first time in decades, to seek out new ideas and ways of thinking, sit with my thoughts without them mowing me over, weave new threads together into an interesting tapestry of creativity. It's refreshing and, dare I say, fun.

I must give credit where it's due for jolting me out of my mental whirlpool and reminding me I have the ability to write my way through the gripping anxiety, down the slope of ebbing strain, an into fields of frivolity. The Twitter #WritingCommunity has given me this. Motivation to write more better, different voices resonating, creating connections with others sharing similar struggles around the globe, is helping me pause, breathe, think, reflect, write, and find my curiosity again.

Thank you!

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.

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.

The Battles in My Mind

Self care is also not arguing with

people who are committed to

misunderstanding you.

A.A. Akanbi

I saw this quote today and was struck immediately by how much energy I waste in these kind of arguments. These arguments are utterly futile as they generally never even materialise outside my own head. There is no greater waste of brain space.

There are a few people I expend a ridiculous amount of wholly unproductive mental energy on in these imaginary arguments. These people have a few things in common: they are men, they always think they're right, even about things of which they know nothing (like my inner world), arguing with them virtually or in real life creates a vicious cycle of anger and further misunderstanding, which is wholly counterproductive. But I can't stop perseverating on these unresolved conflicts, so I formulate and refine my attack, evidence, and counterpoints over, and over, and over, and over, for days, weeks, months, years, decades, never finding any resolve. I know its futile. I know it solves nothing. I know its exhausting for me and leaves them completely unscathed, which builds resentment and further entrenches the cycle.

I need to lay down my (s)words, pick up my pen, and write away the battles in my mind.