Lightbulb moments...
I remember Mondays, when Mum worked her way down our three-storey house stripping the beds and throwing the sheets to the foot of the ground-floor stairs, where I lay in the tangle of laundry rocking my head from side to side, convinced that if I did it for long enough I would activate the magic needed to get me to Fairyland.
When it first occurred to me that I might be autistic, I raised several objections to the idea. One of them was that I didn't stim. But looking back, it's clear that I did (and still do). I used to rub my head from side to side in bed, making my hair rough and tangled, a classic rhythmic stim, I now realise.
I was an obsessive thumb sucker until I was 10 or 11, and along with the thumb sucking went the ear twiddling - a habit I was never able to break and now one which I accept as part of my sensory profile. For decades I have tried to work out whether it's the feel of the lobe in the ear canal which brings me such satisfaction and soothing, or whether it's the feel of the ear canal around the lobe. I don't have an answer, although I once spotted a Y6 girl twiddling her ears and asked her which it was. She lit up and said, "Oh Miss! I don't know! I've been wondering for years!" Half a century between us vanished into the mist as we shared that moment. I remember twiddling Dad's ears and loving it when they were cold, losing interest once I had warmed them up.
I haven't had many stims over the years I don't think. I sometimes have verbal tics where I have to make Buh sounds with my lips and those are annoying as I can't stop until I've done enough to satisfy the need. I am an inveterate doodler - today I was at a training event and spent much of the day doodling and twiddling my ears - I've given up caring who sees me, and accept it's just something I need to do.
My daughters horrified me a few years ago when they casually mentioned my tendency to spin round in a circle on entering a room. I didn't know what they meant and thought they were winding me up until I caught myself in the act. It really rocked my self-confidence because I had no idea I did it. So I began rifling through memories of interviews and public speaking events, wondering if I had 'Spinny-whizzed' onto the stage.
I don't think I've done it for a long time - but I can't be sure.
Another thing which has suddenly made sense to me is my compulsive reading of number plates and short-term recall of the last few I've seen. When I was really struggling with anxiety a few years ago, I fixated on two of the buses which pass my house, feeling that whenever I saw them I would have a good day. I have no idea why those two. They changed route but sometimes in traffic I will see my dear FXP and suddenly feel a thrill of All Being Right with the world. It's completely irrational but hugely comforting.
I've realised that the church I began attending at 12 was a sensory feast. The smell of wax polish, the quiet hush before a service, the rich aroma of wine at Communion and the wonderful feeling of contributing to the beautiful choral music - a feeling of belonging reinforced by liturgy helping me to know exactly what I was supposed to be doing and saying - no wonder I nailed my colours to the mast so thoroughly.
Everything worked for me there. Had I disliked the smell of the wine, or had the feel of the lowest organ notes rumbling through my tummy disturbed me a tiny bit more, I might never have settled there, never have found a faith. But church soothed me. I loved the smell of my Bible with its leather cover, the sense of peace as I read and prayed at 6 in the morning before the noise of the family began, and of course the belief that God was speaking to me through the words on the page. I felt understood and comforted, soothed and inspired to change.
Looking back, although we were pretty fervent teenagers in that church, I suspect that I took many things much more literally than my peers did.
I can see now that I wasn't quite like my peers in school. I was aware that there were friendship groups I wasn't part of, and couldn't penetrate. It was a bit of a mystery to me and I stopped trying quite early on. I had my friend Piano, my dearest friend Ethel just along the road and a group of friends at Church. School for me was about learning, not so much socialising. For years I tormented myself about not having kept any friends from school. I did reconnect with a few on Facebook and one or two have become online friends. But I still have a huge sense of loss, which is odd because there was never anything there to lose... I suspect a lot of autistic people must have moments of quiet grief for the lives they never quite got to live.
People who know me now would think of me as very sociable, and so I am, but over the last few years as I have given myself permission to unmask, I've realised how much effort it costs me to be that person they see, and I am allowing myself to have a say in my social life rather than plunge into it with a mask on. As a result I'm 'feeling' (I think the inverted commas belong, I'll talk about that another time) more able to not take part in things if they are going to be too emotionally costly. This sounds as if it ought to be simple, but I have very belatedly realised how unaware I am of what's going on inside me, and how many situations I am in as a default rather than an active choice.
As a child, I was part of a family of funny, intelligent people who did a lot of performing at home - music, silly voices, even Scrabble was played for laughs as we recorded various comments made during play (often my Dad bemoaning his vowels or making up silly little verses such as, If I should die, think only this of me: he put down CASTLE, and got a triple C.
And I am a performer. During Lockdown I wrote and recorded over 150 comic videos in the guise of Edna Stevens . I didn't intend to do so many (they took a couple of hours a day) but a couple of friends who had been through very tough times told me how much they helped, so I took it on as my 'War Effort'.
So as I continue along this path of self-discovery, may the lightbulb moments continue to come. Do tell me about yours...
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