Tuesday 29 July 2014

Walls

I wrote this poem 4 years ago and just found it again. It describes for me almost perfectly how I often feel disconnected from the world then I thought I what I was describing was depression because I had very little understanding of autism and Aspergers.


Walls are closing all around, 
They make it difficult to see, 
Sunshine does not pass them, 
Soon all there is is me. 



You pushed aside a brick, 
I began to hope for sunlight, 
Peered inside and saw me, 
But all you had was torchlight. 



Now your torch is fading, 
Our love cannot survive, 
I can never share your daylight, 
These walls are far too high. 



Walls are closing all around, 
They make me hard to see, 
Alone inside forever, 
Alone inside with me. 

Whirling Thoughts

Last night I had a panic attack. As I started to loose control I decided to quickly type how I was feeling before I was overcome, what follows is likely to be far from grammatically perfect but I thought it would be interesting to read back later.

Today I have been processing the end of a friendship.
It was a very close friendship but I was betrayed in the worst possible way and then had my aspergers diagnosis attacked. I have been trying to work out how to end it for 3 months but finally did about 10 days ago.
Today reading Pretending to be Normal by Liane Holliday I read a chapter about the difficulties aspies face making and maintaining close friendships and it set me off. I have been swinging between fighting tears and numbness all day.
Now sat here at almost 1 AM rocking and twisting my hands, refreshing my facebook feed over and over. My head feel like when you stir liquid and stop and it continues to whoosh around and my chest feels tight. This means I am likely to end up having a panic attack if i try to sleep. Or I will shutdown. My vision keeps blurring and now my stomach hurts. My face is itching and I can feel blood rushing to my cheeks, similar feeling I get after a few alcoholic drinks but I haven't been drinking.

I hate this. I wish months ago I could have let go of that friendship. I wish I wasn't so scared of confronting those who I care about and feel loyalty to. I wish that when faced with a hurtful truth I didn't have to try to understand others appalling actions. I find it almost impossible to believe someone I adore could be so cold. I also can't understand how someone could break such awful moral codes especially because I myself never would. How could someone possibly betray someone as deeply as I have been. And then attack them when they back away? People are so confusing and trying to understand them hurts my head and my heart. I wish people could just be as loyal to me as I am to them. Is that really so much to ask?

Shortly after that my laptop battery died so I decided to try to sleep. I turned the light off and held my favourite soft toy close twisting it's 'hair' between my fingers. I remember feeling adrenaline rush through my body forcing me to sit up in bed and sit cross-legged rocking. The last thing I remember is desperately trying to breathe through the rushing thoughts and trying desperately to cling to something positive, trying not to be afraid of the dark and to stay laying down I remember I was loosing the battle. 
A few hours later I woke up feeling disorientated. I was almost sat up with my quilt bunched up behind me and my legs crossed under me. I was facing my window with the curtains open. I do not remember turning myself into this position nor do I remember opening the curtains. Today my head feels very confused and almost like I cannot focus on my thoughts. I know this is not over. When I feel this way I could shutdown. When I do I feel emotionless for a day or so and just about manage to get the vital tasks done (feeding the kids etc), I will not take in anything I read or watch on the TV and will feel almost like I am in a huge bubble. Either that or I will have a series of night time panic attacks. 
Whatever happens over the next few days I know that this will not be the last time I have to process what has happened. My mind seems incapable of fully processing events where I cannot ever get full closure because I can never fully understand the actions or thoughts of others. I will relive these thoughts time and time again luckily each time the processing will be less traumatic until I finally stop hurting which can take a long time. Moving on is so difficult when  you have an over active brain.

The Love of Dogs


Also posted to Aspie Women Speak on 15th June 2014


Time and time again I read about how much of a positive influence dogs have on those on the Autistic spectrum. There are charities who train service dogs to help make life easier for autistics and their families. A quick google search will lead you to glowing reports of how these dogs can dramatically change the behaviour by reducing bolting and repetitive behaviour and having a  therapeutic calming effect. Service dogs can also make unfamiliar surrounds easier to cope with. However even a typical family dog can have a wonderful effect on the lives of an aspie like me.
Beatie
Earlier this year I had to make the heartbreaking decision to have my 13.5 year old dog put to sleep. Her poor heart and lungs were failing and surgery could not improve (and in fact risked) her life. She was in a lot of pain and clearly very scared. The days leading up to and after her death I felt grief so intense I feared I would never be happy again. Beatie had come into my life when I was 14 years old. I had no friends in school and spent my lunch breaks hiding in the library. I was desperately lonely and needed a friend. She became my best friend. I remember times when I would walk into the kitchen sit on the floor and sob and she would just climb into my lap and sit with me. She never asked for anything more than love and gave it back unconditionally. She was there through a bad relationship and break up. When I moved out at 21 she came with me. She was the only one there with me when I paced the floor in labour with my first child, she was there through the sleepless nights that followed and the long nights alone while my husband was at work. She was a constant in a world that was always changing and letting me down. To lose that and her did and always will leave a hole.

The timing for losing Beatie could not have been much worse as I was just beginning my assessments for aspergers and I felt that she had understood me without having to use words, something humans just cannot do. I realised I needed dogs in my life but I couldn’t bring myself to replace her and timing was not right to get a puppy. My solution was to look into volunteering at a local animal rescue and specifically work with the dogs. I went to visit the centre and decided to work one day a week. The following week I started my first day and cannot believe how quickly the day passed. I came home caked in mud, stinking of dogs with a huge grin plastered on my face. Being around those dogs and doing my bit for them while they waited to find someone who would love them forever is just what I needed. One dog though stood out and I spent the next 5 weeks desperate to see him again and couldn’t resist saying hello and stroking his ear every time I passed him.
AmosWhen I first lay eyes on Amos something connected. I couldn’t resist his puppy dog eyes and how he leaned against the bars when I stroked him. Each week I headed to him first to say hello and hated saying goodbye. Now people often say to me ‘Don’t you want to take them all home?’ I can say with certainty that I don’t I think they are all great but I don’t become attached because I feel each dog will find a family right for them. As the weeks went by I became more and more attached to him I kept saying ‘If I could take him home I would, but not sure how he would be with the kids.’ After 5 weeks my husband decided to speak  to the rescue owner about meeting Amos himself and then him meeting the girls. I went into research mode and realised lurchers made great family pets due to their laid back nature and not needing huge long walks. Amos was still young so he would also enjoy playing with the girls. Turns out I was right his meeting with the girls went better than expected and he soon moved in.
10386970_614632215299524_1697944607689440306_o11 weeks on and he has become a wonderful companion. I have found his calm, or perhaps lazy nature very settling and enjoy him lying with me in the evening and stroking his soft fur or floppy ears. I have had some really sad days recently and he still hasn’t failed to make me smile with a goofy sleepy face, trying to navigate his lanky legs at high-speed around the garden or just by knowing I found him when we needed each other. He has brought the family together and there is far more laughter in the house. We also go out every day because we have to, before I struggled to get up at weekends and was happy to not battle my daughter (who also has ASD) to get dressed. Being out in the fresh air is great for me and I enjoy walks with just the two of us and actually enjoy talking to other dog walkers, because they just want to talk about dogs and that I can handle. The thing I most enjoy about Amos being in my life is how he shows just how much he loves me without ever having to say so. He jumps up at the window to watch me leave he even cries a little. When I come home his tail is always wagging and he jumps up to greet me. Such simple easy signs that tell me ‘I love you, I am grateful to have you in my life, please don’t leave.’ Many times in my life I have felt so unwanted and rejected and I constantly fear that other people will desert me. Dogs don’t make me feel that way at all they give a companionship that is unconditional and selfless.    


Adult Diagnosis

Also posted to Aspie Women Speak on 27th May 2014

A week ago I sat in a room with my Psychiatrist and listened to her tell me that she agrees that I fit the criteria for Aspergers Syndrome. I can’t remember much of what was said after that because all I wanted to hear were those words. I had spent months leading up to that day. From the moment I told my husband I was going to seek a diagnosis to the day I visited my GP to the day I had an assessment. I still thought I was wrong and I was somehow broken by a life of disappointment and rejection from others. Leading up to my feedback appointment my nights were filled with panic attacks and little sleep.
I was so full of panic thinking that I may be told that I am not an Aspie that I hadn’t prepared myself for being told that I am.  I thought I would feel a total wash of relief and vindication and that I would stop hating myself for all my flaws. Instead panic set in. I could only see all the mistakes I had made, all the misjudgements and all the time I had felt so totally alien to the rest of the world. I dreaded the rest of my life being just the same. I felt total despair at the sheer misery I feared lay ahead of me now that I realised I couldn’t be ‘fixed’.
One of the misconceptions of autistics is that they do not want friends and are happy alone, don’t get me wrong a lot of Aspies enjoy their own company and I do too, however that is not the same as the loneliness imposed on so many of us. The loneliness I feel when I sit in a busy room and I do not now how to join in or start a conversation, when I see others going to events I am not invited to, when others laugh and joke and I never seem to be in on the joke but worst of all the loneliness I have imposed on myself because years of rejection makes me back out of chances to make friends.  That loneliness is the thing I fear most for my future.
It is so hard to look ahead and not be afraid, yet to deal with fear I try to plan ahead. For now I have to try to live in the now and not allow my thoughts drift while I try to find where aspergers fits into my life.