Strong Female Character

For most autistics existing in a world not built for them, anxiety is the baseline and constant background hum that their daily life has to play over.

The idea that meltdowns are manipulative is absurd and a cause of gross misunderstanding between autistics and the rest of the world.

I now understand that an aversion to holidays is extremely common in autistic people – the disruption to routine, the unpredictable nature of travel, the lights and noise of the airport and the extreme temperature change on arrival creates a special kind of sensory hell. Sameness is what I thrived on. I’m told that the appeal of holidays for most people is the novelty and break from the humdrum of everyday life. My family concluded among themselves that I was an arsehole. I didn’t know why I was so unhappy on holidays either, so I had no other option but to agree with them.

I like meeting new people as it means every day is a new opportunity to redeem yourself, to make a fresh start at being seen as a normal woman and practice at it. It's when people get to know you that they realise something seriously off and that's harder to rectify

I was continually over-identifying with fiction to try and find a template for myself and my story.

Just you wait, I thought. I’ll think of something really clever to reply to you in about a decade, just as soon as I replay this scenario in my head dozens of times.

It's uncomfortable that this isn't all good or all bad or a happy ending or a sad ending, but just a mess that everyone muddled through. It's very painful to start loving someone when holding on to the idea of hating them keeps you safe.

Arguably, men made me hate men; stripping just let me see them at their most men-ish.

There's a scene in The Matrix where Neo is programmed with every fighting technique in the world before opening his eyes and saying, 'I know Kung Fu.' There's a similar thing with autistic girls and literature. I had no idea what people were saying. I struggled with socializing, so by reading as widely as possible, I was arming myself with knowledge about people, about how they spoke to each other, learning turns of phrase and metaphor that others - even Erin - recognized.

In my teens and early twenties I frequently had the sense that a madwoman was driving the car of my life while I sat in the back seat observing it and wondering how we ended up here. This was one of those moments.

How were you supposed to know not to mention necrophilia at Christmas dinner?

For all her flaws, my mum never raised me with dysfunctional attitudes to food or made me think I was greedy or not thin enough. She was always clear she disliked me for me.

Every attempt to fit in resulted in me being more weird and more isolated from normal people.

It's very painful to start loving someone when holding on to the idea of hating them keeps you safe.

It was absurd that you could just copy what the other person in your house was doing and it would make life more normal, more stable.

I never understood the appeal of having sex when you're drunk. It's numbing, it's sloppy, and it feels like the alcohol is being used as an excuse to ignore the sex. In my thirties, I wondered if men do this because they're frightened at women laughing at their sexual performance or being better than them. And so they need them to be drunk.

In my teens and early 20's I frequently had a sense that a mad woman was driving the car of my life while I sat in the backseat observing it and wondering how we ended up here.

No one ever asks me about the men. All they ever want to know about is the naked bit.

Trying to kill yourself never pans out the way it does in films. In hospital they do ask you if you meant to kill yourself but it's such a factual box-ticking exercise that to answer with any kind of emotion would be mortifying. There's no 'It was a cry for help' box but there should be. I feel like the doctors and the general public need to raise awareness of how embarrassing most suicide attempts are. When you're in a backless hospital gown with your worst pants on it's really hard to hold your nerve and say, 'I wanted to die?

It's 2022 as I write this and I'm still waiting to find someone I respect to speak openly and in detail about meltdowns. I'm really annoyed that I have to be the one to do this.

It made perfect sense to me that my skin was bursting open in disgusting weeping pustules. The emotions felt volcanic and I'd never been good at communicating that to people in words so now my body was doing it for me.

Though masking is incredibly taxing and causes us a lot of existential turmoil, it’s rewarded and facilitated by neurotypical people. Masking makes autistic people easier to “deal” with.’ —Devon Price, Unmasking Autism

I guess if I enjoyed sex and didn't feel there were any consequences, I was robbing them of the idea that chastity was vital for social approval and a way of being held in high esteem.

It never occurs to doctors when looking for special interests of autistic women that the intensity of their interest can manifest in people, not just things

It’s very painful to start loving someone when holding on to the idea of hating them keeps you safe

Waaaaaah,' I cried as I dried my hair.

A conventionally attractive boyfriend was a generic achievement.

Reading about why stripping is appealing to some autistic women, I realized there was more than one of us. Thinking back over some of my old workmates, there were possibly even loads of us. My pragmatic views made sense: of course I enjoyed a job that was highly tolerant of weirdos, almost impossible to get sacked from, had none of the fluorescent lighting that made most offices or supermarket jobs overwhelming, involved the same routine night after night and the same dumb conversations with men with no tricky social cues to read.