Shelter from the shitstorm- on autism, mental illness, and finding hope in a crisis

I write to you today from the comfort of the sort of blue, easily wipeable chairs that you only find in hospital (or hospital-adjacent) settings. I am in what they call a place of safety. It is a building where mental health nurses watch you, bring cups of tea and morsels of hospital food, occasionally take you into a different room for ‘a little chat’, and then, when you are deemed safe enough, you leave. I am grateful for the care although somewhat begrudge the fact that I need it. I keep trying to remind myself that there is nothing shameful about being dependent on others. We are all alive due to the chance collision of people who cared- nurses, porters, friends, midwives, parents, doctors, and so on. I am a medical student, so see evidence that humanity gets stronger the more we care for each other daily. I might need looking after for the moment and, yes, my brain is screaming at me that I don’t deserve the care but my thoughts are just a background hum; they have no power if I don’t listen (or so the nurses tell me).

 

But why am I here? Well, in the immediate sense, I am here because this morning my housemate found me distressed, in crisis, and about to do something dangerous. We made a mutual decision that I wouldn’t be safe at home and so we called around. She had to drive me to a location an hour away (something else that I am immensely grateful for) because lots of other people needed a place of safety in my area today, and, frankly, they got there first. Staffing may have also played a role, but I am no expert on how the NHS is staffed.  If you are asking that question in the longer-term sense, I guess I am here because I am a mentally unwell, late-diagnosed autistic woman and, in my case at least, this has caused a vulnerability to incredibly bleak mental states. 

 

 When I look back on how my mental illness developed, once again I am met with a chance collision but, instead of a chance collision of care, I see a chance collision of crap. I am first met with a little girl who couldn’t stand the noise of the hand dryers in public toilets, the noises of the arcade, or the feeling of facial hair rubbing against her cheek when her family tried to show affection. She followed rules to the letter and got anxious when they were broken. She was loved but, at the same time, was told every day in a covert way that she was too much, too sensitive, and too weird to accommodate. As she got older, it continued and spread into school where the only place she felt worthy was when she was getting good marks in exams because they were proof that maybe, just maybe, she might have something to offer the world. On the way, she learnt the art of masking because, even though people still didn’t like her very much when she masked, they didn’t actively bully her. Yet, underneath the nerdy exterior, she was profoundly lonely. Over time, the daily, niggling pain of not fitting in got harder to conceal until she moved to university and the mask broke. Regrettably, by this point, the mask was so firmly glued to her body that it smashed her into pieces too. Tiny, sharp, suicidal pieces.

 

I would like to make it clear that no individual person or situation is to blame for my development of mental illness. Humans tend to overestimate the contributions of individuals and underestimate societal factors. I had a loving family and teachers who did their best to care for me but, through no fault of their own, they could not recognize me as autistic. The kids that bullied me and ostracized me were just that: kids. They were all under the thumb of a society that viewed the autistic child as white, male, train-obsessed, and minimally masking. This is, however, at least beginning to change. We see evidence of this in the media with shows like Heartbreak High, a Kind of Spark, and even the new advert for the stain remover Vanish depicting an autistic experience that looks at least somewhat like mine. We see evidence for this in research with a shifting focus towards environmental factors and away from attempting to change the autistic person. We see more and more autistic people being given a platform to share their experiences. Put simply, the groundwork is being laid for spaces where we autistic people don’t need to chip away at ourselves to fit in but can inhabit our whole, true, beautiful selves.

 

This morning I could not see any of that hope and, truthfully, I am still finding it hard to grip tightly enough to stop myself from collapsing back down into that dense black hole that nearly engulfed me. I do know this though: in a couple of hours my friend will pick me up in her car and I will be alive because of a culture of caring. If I can add something back to that culture, be a shelter from the shitstorm, maybe that’s something I can hold onto.