As usual I’m writing this blog in advance as I typically write when the feeling takes me or if I have something important I need to say. Today I’m writing it just after midnight, the early hours of Saturday 2nd May as my partner snores beside me and my kitty happily sleeps in front of the warm radiator. As Friday 8th May approaches I know my mind will be chaotic because every 8th May, in my heart, my grandma dies all over again.
It will be 15 years but it always feels like yesterday to me as I have never learnt how to cope with emotion. I have never been shown and never been taught. I gave up on counselling after losing trust in the people who were meant to help me (one because she fell asleep during a session, another because he didn’t appear to listen and gave vague advice that sounded more like he was reading my horoscope).
I haven’t yet learnt the ability to move on and this has made me cling to grief like a harmful safety blanket. Even as I type tears stream down my face and my heart feels like it is breaking all over again. Sadness fills me up but I don’t know how to expel it.
Grief isn’t the only feeling I don’t cope with, I don’t really know how to deal with any emotion as I usually feel them in extreme ways. I’m never a little sad, I’m depressed. I’m never a little happy, I’m ecstatic. These feelings and emotions are overwhelming and they can change as quickly as clicking your fingers. I’ve often been very excited over something and the smallest dent to that excitement will make me plummet into despair.
Currently, I can’t get any help with dealing with these things as my gp needs to have received my diagnosis report first, even though I have had my copy for three weeks now. Their hands are tied with giving me any help without diagnosis (officially).
For now that means I am left to try and get through my life day by day, surviving and not yet living.
Adult With Autism 