Hearing the word ‘autistic’ helped me finally heal

I am dramatic. Cold. Rude. Repetitive. Anxious. Selfish. Shy. I carried these words like pebbles in my pockets for so long.

I’m here because I had nowhere else to go. Doors had long closed. Paths had petered out. People had grown weary. I, too, had begun to abandon myself. Source: Getty Images/Janiecbros

I step into the sting of Sydney heat – fried frangipanis and the snap of gums. It’s too hot. My feet are squished into sandals like sausages, my ankles already pooling.

We’d driven up from the coolness of the country. Bribed the kids into the car with enough sticky treats to make their eyes bulge. “Seriously, Mum? All this?”

I used to live here. I worked, while I still could. The kids laugh, imagining me all those lives ago, selecting my first (and only) “lawyer’s suit”, blushing when the sales assistant tried to compliment my choice: “Donkey is such a great colour.”

For a while, I’d studied hard. Brimmed with promise. But I’d floundered at the practice, rifling through files, trying to untangle traumas and compress complexity into legalese. I became distracted by the barristers’ robes flapping like crows, the way a client smelled when shamed. I was often teary or jittery. My bowels growled every time I entered a courtroom or took a meeting. Anxiety tightened my voice to a squeak.

I became distracted by the barristers’ robes flapping like crows, the way a client smelled when shamed

We get back into the car and drive along a windy road that curves up round the coast, arriving at a grim industrial complex. I wave off my family with bravado. “Good luck!” they sing out.

Although I’ve been emailed directions to the office, I wander about, dizzy and disoriented. All is squinty-bright. Cement, glass, pillars, metal handrails, cavernous foyers behind hissing doors. When I stumble across the right space, my stomach bites. I can smell the receptionist’s feet. It’s not her fault, it’s my incessant sensitivities – the same ones that made me dry-retch when taking instructions from clients in the cells below court, the perspex dividing us smeared with fluids and fight.

I’m here because I had nowhere else to go. Doors had long closed. Paths had petered out. People had grown weary. I, too, had begun to abandon myself.

My assessor holds a clipboard and smiles broadly. I see teeth and sense earnestness.

Our discussion takes place in a windowless room. Her questions span hours, yet seem to hold years. She asks things I hadn’t realised were things. Words spin softly, then certain moments are pulled into the light, holding something new.

I’m here because I had nowhere else to go. People had grown weary. I, too, had begun to abandon myself

She listens as I describe “milktongue” – its curdle and its cream. I confess that some words, some names even, are so repellent I must swallow down the sick.

I sense she isn’t laughing behind her eyes, so I explain through a flush of tears that sometimes it’s been the grace of a word, line, poem or lyric that has helped me not yet die.

We speak of “the patterns”, which can be so excruciating to witness and endure that they make life stretch out lonely and long.

I admit that although I love the beat, pulse and hum of life, I have never seemed to quite fit in.

Should I also tell her that everything aches? That my skin is seared, my head so heavy it might tip and spill? I am muddled, upside-down, never sure what I’m meant to say or do.

I explain that sounds hit me across the head. Other times they bludgeon from behind. Bright colours trumpet so loud I shield my ears. Light pierces. Clothing chokes, tags scratch, sheets strangle. Smells draw their reeking rag across my face with such intensity that I can sense a woman menstruating from the metallic tang.

She seems to want to know. She doesn’t flinch or grimace. All the words that have been stored in me for decades are now spilling out. Obsessions. Collections. Lists. Fears and distresses. Doctors. Supermarkets. Going somewhere new. The glut of grief.

Yet, just as places, people, words, smells, sounds, textures and tastes repel, they also enthral. I can spend hours by the sea, my hair whipping my face. A week’s pay on a cardigan so soft I can’t bear not to buy it just to brush it against my cheek. The shelter of books. The way I am brought to my knees by the smell of sky before rain, the cry of a black cockatoo or a perfect plum.

The author with her children. Source: Supplied

I am weird. Annoying. Overly sensitive. Dramatic. Nuts. I am arrogant. Obnoxious. Aloof. A snob. I am cold. Anxious. Bossy. Intense. Awkward. Selfish. Shy. I am aggressive. Rude. Repetitive. Something about me is off.

These are the words I carried like pebbles in my pockets for so long. For stoning myself. For weighing me down.

She listens, then says she would like to offer something new. A word, just one, that might make the others hush.

She clears her throat.

I don’t know it yet, but this word will slowly heal me. In time, it will help me shed this too-tight skin and claim my kin.

In time, [this word] will help me shed this too-tight skin and claim my kin

When I finally emerge from the building, it is late afternoon. The sky is stuffed with cloud and the air is thick. A line of ants busy past my toes, knowing rain is near.

The car pulls up, three little bodies in the back calling out, “How’d you go?” My husband opens the door and welcomes me in.

Soon there are showers and the sudden cloudburst makes the children squeal. All the way home, soft and snug in my lap, nestles this word with wings.

For it seems I, too, am autistic.

 

World Autism Awareness Day is on April 2.

This is an edited extract of an entry to the 2022 SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition.