One of the many profound consequences of my wife’s death is that, at the age of 56, I find myself living alone for the first time in my life. The immediate consequence of this is that it highlights what a large hole in my life has been left by losing my dear wife. The house feels empty, quiet, and without its heart. That is not to say that we were ever noisy people. As my…
When my wife died, I felt a whole range of emotions. But one of my very early thoughts was to recognise that, being autistic and ADHD, I would likely deal with this awful experience differently from many others. I even mentioned this to family members early on, as I did not want to offend anyone by not appearing to react as expected. They were, as usual, extremely understanding and supportive, and told me to just…
As you might imagine, since my wife died last week, I have been doing a lot of thinking. Like many autistic people, I am prone to overthinking at the best of times, and this is far from that. My constant thinking, rethinking, and second-guessing often causes my anxiety to spiral in a vicious circle, and there has been a bit of that going on. Thankfully, I am doing ok right now, but there is one…
I have always struggled with my emotions. They have always felt very alien to me, as if something else was living in me that I cannot control. No matter how hard I try, I cannot shut them out. I understand why that is, and that my emotions are an important part of who I am and necessary for my survival and wellbeing, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it! Experiencing intense grief has…
There is no way to sugarcoat this, and it is not getting any easier to say, because I can still scarcely believe it myself. Just over 48 hours ago, my wife died suddenly, having been reasonably OK just a few hours before. She had been fighting bowel cancer for about six months and was doing really well with immunotherapy. We had had a couple of impromptu hospital visits when she had some severe pain in…
It is a sad fact of modern life that we are surrounded by people who will take advantage of us, given half a chance. Sometimes this is deliberate, like the many scam calls and emails that we all get every day, but often it is unconscious, as others keep expecting a little bit more from us without apparently recognising how much we are already doing, or do not realise the cost to us of meeting…
Yet again, autism is under attack. Setting aside the dubious (to say the least) claims being made about the cause of autism, implicit in the message being given is that autism is a problem to be solved and a sickness to be cured. Autistic people are, apparently, undesirable, and the sooner we are eliminated, the better. Now, don’t get me wrong, being autistic is no bed of roses. There are aspects of myself which are…
We all make many assumptions every day. It is impossible not to. We have busy lives in a complex world, and it is impossible to start every single process or task by going back to first principles. Indeed, much human progress is based on standing on the shoulders of others and building on their work rather than starting from scratch. If every scientist and engineer had to start from nothing, we would still be living…
Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash I cannot believe that I am having to write this. I really thought we had moved to more enlightened times, where diversity and inclusion were high on the agenda just because it was the right thing to do and because it helped everybody, not just those previously disadvantaged and discriminated against. I thought we were finally moving to a situation where people were recognised for what they could do…
I have always been fascinated by the concept of time. While I enjoy physics, I am not nearly clever enough to understand the most recent breakthroughs in this area, but I have always been fascinated by concepts such as moving clocks running slow, and time and space being linked. My current obsession is the suggestion that time exists only in our heads as a way of ordering the world around us, but that one is…