I am lucky enough to have very rarely felt lonely in my life. I have always been a bit of a loner and struggled to build and maintain friendships without feeling like I was missing out on something by being this way. Yes, there have been times when I have longed for company in a bleak moment, but even then, it was not just any company; it was the knowledge that I was missing someone…
One of the many benefits of receiving my autism diagnosis was the way in which it unlocked explanations of parts of myself that I did not even realise were related to being autistic. For years, I had found it hard to get started on things, even things that I wanted to do. I thought it was just me being lazy or anxious, or that there was something wrong with me. So, I was astonished to…
When you have anxiety, you find things to fear everywhere, all the time. Any uncertainty or unknown can rapidly become a fear that becomes all-consuming if left unchallenged. One of the first strong emotions that I felt when my wife died, therefore, was fear. I was shocked, upset, and in despair, but I also quickly began to fear, both about the immediate future and the arrangements that would need to be made, but also about…
There is a common stereotype of a typical autistic person being a young boy obsessed with trains. I hope that many people now see how misguided this is, but one of the many implicit prejudices in this picture is the idea that there is something wrong or sad with liking trains and knowing a lot about them. Like many stereotypes, this one is vaguely rooted in some form of reality. It is very common for…
I have learnt a lot about grief in the last 3 months. I knew that when my wife died suddenly, I was in for a tough time, but I could not have imagined just how much it has hurt, or how many different feelings and moods I have experienced, some of them unique in my life so far. In an effort to try and make sense of some of this by putting names to feelings,…
Definitions can be hard, complex, and cause arguments! In the UK, a dispute about whether a chocolate and orange snack, known as a Jaffa cake, is a cake or a biscuit ended up being decided in court (because it impacted the liability for sales tax). Definitions can also be widely misapplied and misunderstood. Water, by some measures at least, does not meet the definition of being wet because it has a high surface tension. When…
How many of us, I wonder, would have all the skills and knowledge to survive if we were marooned alone on a desert island? I know that even if I were provided with all the materials and tools to build a shelter, and to hunt and gather my own food, I would struggle hugely. I simply do not have all of those skills or the necessary knowledge. In fact, unless you are a highly trained…
Over the last few days, I have very much enjoyed watching the Winter Olympics. While many of the sports are wildly different from one another, the demeanour of the competitors before and after their events follows an almost universal pattern. Before the event, they are focused, sometimes almost combative, seeking to get “in the zone” to perform at their best. But afterwards, win or lose, the emotion comes pouring out in one way or another.…
It has been several months since my wife died, and I am still grieving deeply. Part of my autistic nature is to research things, especially those which impact me. Among the nuggets I have learned about grieving for someone very close to you is that it is not something with a set timescale, and that, rather than getting through it, you learn to live with and around your grief. That certainly matches my experience so…
It is now 2 months since my wife died. I try not to keep count or to obsess over anniversaries, but it is hard when you have lost such a central part of your life so suddenly. In some ways, it still feels incredibly fresh, perhaps because it was so sudden, but in other ways, I feel like I have aged years in those 2 months. It is also the first time that life has…