Content Warning: This piece involves depression, self-harm, suicide and eating disorder. Please don’t read it if this will upset or trigger you.
Read moreTag: Mental illness
Bursting Bubble
Got that feeling
Unappealing
'stead of healing
Head is reeling
Down here kneeling
I'm appealing
To the ceiling
Are we dealing
With this rubble
Pressure double
Bursting bubble
Mental trouble
No digression
Just confession
My oppression
Is possession
By depression
Not transgression
I'm no sinner
Story spinner
Smirking grinner
Cheating winner
No, my inner
Light is dimmer
Feelings simmer
Barely glimmer
Feeble shimmer
Drowning swimmer
In salt water
Tears that oughta
Merit quarter
From this slaughter
But I'm fated
To be weighted
Inundated
Subjugated
Dissipated
Terminated
The acid test
Of my distressed
Emotive quest
Are you impressed
Or do you jest
While I attest
And bare my breast
With pain expressed?
Light I'm shining
Through my whining
Underlining
My declining
Disposition
Proposition
Hopeful mission
My ambition
Is transition
To remission
Not attrition
Of cognition
Yonder
Yonder is one of those words that I love for the memories and feelings it evokes. For me it has ties to childhood and family, to places heavy with significance, and to lost loved ones.
Read moreStill Waters – #Autistic December 5/31
Still waters run deep
If I had a penny for every time I heard that phrase growing up…
My school reports are year after year of consistently high academic performance and hopes that I might participate more and develop socially. I was lucky to have a natural inclination and ability for learning: it compensated for and allowed me to “get away with” being socially awkward.
…consistently impressing with her quiet, conscientious approach and with the high standard of all her work.
Form Master, Midsummer Term 1989
A first-class report. […] She is very modest about her ability and must make sure she does not under-sell herself at interview next year.
Form Master, Midsummer Term 1990
Her consistent performances are exceptional. If she can develop her inter-personal skills more fully she will do very well indeed.
Headmaster, Midsummer Term 1991
You see, if I’d not been so capable academically my poor social skills would likely have been seen as more significant. As it was, doing well in my studies meant that my difficulties in other areas were overlooked or glossed over.
I said I was lucky, but the fact is that the highly-structured world of school masked the significant trouble I had navigating an environment like university that relied much more heavily on interactions with other people. My lack of a social network left me isolated and lacking the support I needed, and because I’d not been in any similar situations before I had no idea how to cope.
It left me with deep feelings of failure and shame: everyone had expected me to do well because that is what I had always done. I had tied my own measurement of my worth to that feedback, to those reports of how well I performed.
I let them all down.
I expected to face rejection: after all, I was valued for how well I did and I had just failed. It’s hard to explain how powerful the fear of rejection was, how ashamed I felt of failing.
How worthless I felt.
The echoes of that are still present, still affect me to this day. That was the point at which I shattered into the broken pieces that I work so hard to hold together.
I can mouth the empty words, say that I am worth something, but I don’t believe it. At heart I know I’m a failure: the proof’s there plain to see.
Those still waters, they really do run as deep as they say. And who knows what truly lies beneath that calm surface? For me it’s the wreck of the promise I once showed.
Broken
Day 28 of 30 Days of Poetry
Splintered shards sit.
You see only my ghost,
Afterimage of when I was whole
While my pieces fall silently.
My hands cradle my head,
Keep the lees of my consciousness
From spilling beyond resurrection.
You see only my painted mask,
This skin that is not my own,
This skin I can never cut deep enough
To release the demons inside.
Paying the Price
Day 7 of 30 Days of Poetry
Autistic lives mean pounds and pence,
Abused for profit, hurt en masse:
Trained compliance, no defence
Against their need to make us "pass".
If we're to be good girls and boys
We learn to do as we are told
Or else they'll take away our toys
And leave us lonely in the cold.
Behaviour is our battleground
With eye contact and quiet hands,
Sit still, don't rock, nor make a sound,
Just do whatever he commands.
Obedience might suit you well
But know it's gained by force and threat
Resist the ABA hard sell:
A human child is not a pet.
Instead of mourning something lost
Accept your whole autistic kid
Or you might live to count the cost
While nailing down their coffin lid.
The trauma of coercive "cures"
To make us look like all the rest,
A ticking time-bomb that endures:
Too many of us can attest.
The damage lingers deep inside
Until in later life we find
The cracks it caused have opened wide
And left us with a broken mind.
The Arrogance of Sanity
As a child I used to imagine having a mental breakdown, a bout of insanity as an escape from what on the outside might have seemed a wonderful upbringing but which wordlessly forced me into a shape designed by others. But my mind remained stubbornly rational.
Read moreOverwhelmed
I want to sink my sharp nails
Deep into my pale flesh,
Tear the skin from my face
And scream defiance
To my pain
In my mind’s eye
I see black storm clouds
Ripped by steel lightning
And raining blood
I dream
Of the silence
Of death
Emptiness waits
With gentle, open arms
The Hidden Cost of Behaviourist Therapies
Earlier this year a research paper was published that reports shocking rates of Post-Traumatic Stress and mental health problems among autistic people who have undergone ABA. Read more
My Broken Mind
I suffer from depression. From time to time my mood drops and I find it almost impossible to motivate myself to do anything. These spells can last anything from a few hours to several months.
I’ve taken medication for it in the past. It doesn’t cure it, it just alters my brain chemistry to even out the peaks and troughs in my emotional state.
You see, a mental illness like depression is rather like a physical illness such as arthritis. Medication can alleviate symptoms, and it can flare up or go into remission for a while. Things you do and your environment can affect it.
But there’s one important difference between a physical illness and a mental one: too many people see mental illness as something unwholesome, a taint on the person affected. This stigma causes prejudice and abuse.
It’s used as an excuse for firing people from their jobs, for isolating them socially. All these things inflict further harm.
Then there’s the ableist responses, common to any invisible disability (yes, a mental illness is a disability: it affects your ability to function in a variety of different ways). I’ve been told to “get over it”, to “make an effort”, to be thankful “there’s nothing really wrong wth me”.
In a way there is nothing “wrong” with me. There’s nothing shameful in suffering from a mental illness: it’s not a judgement on my character. I just have depression. My mind is not completely healthy.
It’s long past time that mental illness was seen in the same terms as physical illness: as something requiring support, not judgement.
So instead of avoiding someone who is mentally ill, instead of fearing, abusing and harming them, be a friend to them. Support them and help them with some of the day-to-day things that they’re not able to cope with. Let them know they’re not on their own.
Mental illness can be isolating. It’s hard to ask for help, to approach people, and when we do the last thing we need is to be ignored or turned away. So don’t. Be there. Be a friend. Support those with mental illness.
Thank you.
My Autistic Dance 