How a meltdown feels

Assault

Caught in an explosion of feeling I lose my name.
I see snatches of peace, parts of initials, someone is speaking making the air tremble.
Straining my ears against the glare of the world, the cacophony of bird song, tapping of shoes, keyboards, phones, noises, I hear my feelings roaring.
I identify the maelstrom through which I am working is the thunderclap of misunderstood emotion.
An explosion of feeling that erodes my soul.
When it's beautiful I am one with world, to bring me back from the skies and singing too quickly by beeping a horn is brutal and cuts like a knife.
When it's ugly when my child is crying or hurt, I cower underneath black clouds and can see no way out, panicking and churning the swirls of air to find my way out.

Yesterday my child was in danger, today my whole body has erupted in the joy she is safe, and the fear of the maybe's., the what if's and the what will be's?

Who knew that feelings were body wide, soul wide, did not merely make one feel, but made one be. Simply be one solitary thing, but then another comes colliding with the first, a sound is heard,a smell glimpsed, associations are made, randomly, sensibly, the eyes are full and stretched to brimming with the everything of it all.

Call me back, help me label it.
Set it free, set me free.

Fancy some shoes?

“Where would I find enough leather
To cover the entire surface of the earth?
But with leather soles beneath my feet,
It’s as if the whole world has been covered.” 
― Śāntideva

Shantideva was an ancient Buddhist Saint.  I think he has a point don't you?  It's autism awareness day/month and there's the usual dialogue between awareness and acceptance. Both are important, and we all need to practice both - not just for autism, but heart disease, mental illness, cancer, ME, miscarriage, abuse survivors and a million, million other things we as humans are prey too.

What would be really great as well as the acceptance campaigns, would be our own offerings of not knowing, failing to understand but trying to anyway, listening to others and our judgements, and doing our best to notice but move past the latter. As an autistic adult I feel it's imperative to offer both my successes and my failures as part of my autism "story".  There is great happiness in being autistic, great love to be found in the most unusual of places, great peace and clarity in just being.  I want to offer it all rather than just showing the rocking child in the corner - these are snapshots of a life, not the whole of it.

Awareness is wonderful, so is acceptance. Will we find a world covered in leather, or will we take a step first and meet people coming the other way?

These times are special, they inspire awe.
When death is close do we not breathe clearer an with more joy?
Does not every second become more precious?
When life is stripped away, love is revealed.

Sadness and joy. Spending time with my mum in hospital, who is recovering from life threatening gut perforation. She can't speak much as she is still on a lot of morphine.  For the first time ever I am able to have a conversation without worrying about getting it right, wrong, shouted at etc.  So sad I will never have this again.  Joyful to be able to feel that pure love that a child feels for it's parents, when all the abuse is swept away. Bittersweet to realise mum's path is that of severe mental health and that all the interventions over the years haven't managed to shift it. What a life, what is a life without happiness?

Theory of Mind

Deborah comforted a boy at her birthday party who was upset. She next to him and quietly stroked him, visibly calming him  Is that's not theory of mind, I dont know what is.  She's not yet 7, I vividly remember developing my own TOM when I was 10 and it would have taken me years longer to do that.  In awe.