Queerly Autistic

As women, we are taught that we must shoulder the emotional burden of being okay. As autistic women, the burden of okayness becomes even heavier. We are always okay. Except when we aren’t.

My mum is and always has been my safe place to fall. And as I get older, I’m becoming more and more aware that some day I won’t have her there. 

I feel like an imposter in my own neurotype. And, in a room full of people I know I belong with, I find myself thinking: but what if I don’t?

He goes through so much and is still the happiest creature. It’s like we were meant to find each other. We both struggle. And we know how to look after each other. 

But why, oh why, was I locked in a toilet doing my ‘calming down’ checklist in the middle of the afternoon? Two words: forced socialisation. 

I’m 26 now, and I still smack myself in the legs when the world gets too much. Do you really want to take that risk? 

Seeing Norbert Neurotypical – with his banking job and his wife and his baby and his mortgage and his vegetable couscous lunch – just makes me feel like a fraud playing at being an adult .

I will not stand by and watch the bastardisation of a word that is part of my very definition.

Let 2018 be the year that Autistic anger burns bright . Let it be the year in which they can’t pretend they can’t hear us any more. 

I’m still nervous about the global political climate, I’m still full of emotional turmoil, and I’m still going to be blogging about both of those things.