Tag: mental health

After the dim spiral I had been on in the previous months, which I now recognise as a mixture of depression, and anxiety, and the last sputterings of autistic burnout, this show was exactly what I needed to see.

The next week (or so) has been bequeathed from hell to challenge me. 

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.

You are important to us because you are Leia Organa. But you are more important to me because you are Carrie Fisher. 

The definition of success seems to depend very much on the frame that you’re looking at it through. And the frame of my ‘success’ is the neurotypical gaze. 

I don’t remember much of my childhood. Is this an ‘autism’ thing, or an ‘everyone else experiences this but I can’t read or replicate their bullshit’ thing?

I have a major personal conundrum: I enjoy spending time with people I like, but I have a severely limited supply of social energy to do so.

When neurotypical people talk about anxiety, they’re not willing to talk about the other, less sympathetic, manifestations.

It seems appropriate, on this World Mental Health Day, to admit that I’m struggling.

I accept that this isn’t the kind of grandiose statement the great poets of our time will write songs about. But it is a huge, empowering revelation for me.