30.07.22

School holidays.

I’m finding the pressure to entertain my child immobilising. It involves decision making, which, if I could help it, I’d never do. Making a decision, particularly when it’s not just for myself, feels very overwhelming. It is even more difficult to come to a decision if there’s someone else’s desires and expectations to be taken into account. That means the decision I make carries more weight, and that is paralyzing.

As a nearly forty-year-old woman with a young son, I have to make decisions frequently. When the usual daily menu of decisions, (meals, activities, rules, chores etc) is disrupted by the school holidays, I spend at least a week transitioning and coming to terms with the higher demand. This sudden increase in demand on my executive functioning is daunting and exhausting in equal measure.

During the holidays, the routine that my son’s school day provides me is gone. There’s no goodbye kiss in the morning, signalling the end of ‘Mam duties’. This means that ‘Mam duties’, (those which require significant masking of my truest self) go on with no end in sight. During the holidays there’s no ‘home time’, so I don’t have a deadline to work towards, meaning I get fewer chores done. I can’t ask my son how school went, to generate a little conversation, so he and I connect less which leads to guilt and sadness on my part, and he invariably picks up on it.

“Are you ok, Mam?”

Generally speaking, I am ok. But there’s this sense of low level disruption that has me feeling on edge and in danger. Things just don’t feel right. My pattern has been disrupted, and despite more than enough sleep, I’m tired.
There’s no meltdown. I’m just quiet. This is that ‘non-verbal’ state that people refer to when they talk of Autism. In me, it doesn’t manifest in being mute or refusing to speak. I just struggle more than usual to find something to say. I guess I’m reducing my output, conserving energy. Coping.

Today, when confronted with a blank diary and an infinite array of potential decisions, I plumped for taking us both to the cinema. There’s a new Thor movie out, and I like the escapism of The Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was confident that my son, being a Marvel lover himself, would be happy with the decision, meaning I didn’t have to worry about a negative outcome. I was out of the woods.

Because it was Saturday, town was busy. A squalling sea of faces and bodies rushing about. People shouting, getting drunk, arguing, jostling. Queues and pushing and loitering and dawdling. An uncontrollable cast of characters, much too close and much too loud.
I couldn’t find a comfortable temperature, either. Too cold for a t-shirt, too hot for a jumper, and unpredictable showers of fat, warm rain. This sensory onslaught only served to bring back my feeling of not right-ness, and by the time we took our seats in the cinema I was ready to murder the child two seats along who kept fiddling with the recline button on his seat.

Bzzzzt. Bzzzzzzzt. Bzzt. Bzzzt.

On high alert, trying my very best to ignore every tiny rustle, chew and shuffle of every person within a ten meter radius, I braced myself for a fraught couple of hours. Thankfully I was saved when the Dolby Atmos test sequence played in 9:1 surround sound. My focus suddenly shifted from the myriad incoming data streams of the auditorium, to the enveloping, booming, vibrating bass and the chasing sound of glass shattering all around me.

I was reset.

Chris Hemsworth’s muscles took care of any residual frustration I was feeling, and the other cinema goers, including the reclining child, were generally well behaved throughout. While watching, there was no need to talk, no need to move, and it was dark. This was my first experience of the cinema since my diagnosis, and I find myself with a fresh appreciation of it.

That’s what this blog is about. By writing regularly I hope to better understand myself in the context of my diagnosis. I hope to be able to identify my various triggers so that I might manage them better. I hope to make peace with ASD, acknowledging that it’s not new; it has always been with me and now, it has a name.

There will be more days like today. There will be worse days and better days too. I’m glad I made the decision to visit here. I’ll be back tomorrow. Unless I decide otherwise.