Guest Post: Blob Thing Writes About A Recent Adventure

I'm ever so excited.  My person is letting me post on her writing blog today.  It's about time too.  My life hasn't been as thrilling lately as it used to be.  Last year she took me with her on a thousand adventures and then, after my sister was born, she took my sister took.  Then she gave me a blog of my own and I used to write that every day for a while with my person's help.  Then I got to write it less.  It doesn't mean I had less to say.  Quite the opposite.  And then we got to this year.  Can you believe it that my person has only taken us out a few times?  Can you believe that she hasn't let me write my blog?  Not once.  It's ever so sad and she claims that she hasn't got enough time but I've seen the amount of time she wastes watching rubbish TV shows or playing games.  She could be putting her time to much better use.  I'm sure you'll agree.

So who am I?  Some of you will know already.  My name is Blob Thing.  I am a small pink autistic soft toy.  I was created by my creator on New Year's Eve 2015 in an evening of inspiration.  I became a close friend for my person and helped her lots.  Then in the middle of 2016 my sister was born.  Her name is Winefride and she was named after a Saint who had her head chopped off and then reattached.  Winefride is autistic too.  Some people would say she's severely autistic because she's pretty much nonverbal.  But I love her lots and am very proud of her.  She's even happier than I am.

Photos.  You need photos.  Because some of you might not know me.  You really should.  I'm worth reading!  I say so.  Take a look at blobthing.blogspot.com and you'll find the adventures I got to write about.  I want to write more but I have to be very patient because my person is doing her own thing.  I think I'm going on an adventure today.  My person is taking us to The Sage and I think we're going to be dancing with swords or something.  It sounds very dangerous.  I don't want to get my head chopped off.  I suppose it wouldn't matter too much because I haven't got a body for my head to be chopped from.  The executioner would be very confused.  I'd lay my head over the edge of the guillotine and would just fall into the basket still alive.  Even before the blade came down.  There are advantages to being a small pink soft toy.  Think about that next time your head is in a guillotine and you're being tried on charges of heresy or treason.  Think of it too next time you're on the gallows.  How your neck is between your head and body and is very squishable by the noose and how if you were me you would live to write and adventure another day.

Photos.  Yes.  I'll show you some pictures from the adventure we had last week.  It was so good to get out.  So good to see the world again.  There's plenty to do at home but I like being in the open.  I like walking and exploring and Winefride gets very excited about all the new things.  This first picture is of me.  So now you know what I look like.  We had to cross the dangerous stepping stones at this point and I was very glad that we didn't fall off.  I worry about Winefride because she doesn't quite understand danger and I keep a tight hold of her reins so that she doesn't get washed away by any rivers.

This next picture is Winefride.  She's sitting at the entrance to a little cave.  I confess that it was me who got into difficulties there.  It looked very exciting and I just had to go in and explore.  I got a bit stuck and couldn't climb out on my own.  I even stopped smiling for a moment because I thought I might die in there.  I was very lucky because my person helped me to escape.  She might have saved my life.  Or possibly there was a tunnel through the cave and I might have emerged above ground by the home of the forest goddess who lives nearby.  She's a giant rabbit.

Doesn't Winefride look amazing.  She is wearing three badges.  One is an autistic pride badge.  The others were ones she found at the Greenbelt festival we went to last year.  We had lots of adventures there.  One hasn't got any words on and Winefride likes the pattern it makes.  The other badge shows the Camper Van of Dreams that we visited.

Another picture of me now.  We had to navigate past this difficult waterfall.  My person loves it there.  She likes to sit or lie on the rock right by the water, close her eyes and lose herself in the noise of the water.  She likes waterfalls.  I like them too.  She should take me to more waterfalls.  

It was time for a break.  Winefride and I reached a play area.  We love play areas.  On Winefride's first day out we went to a play area and my person got addicted to the zip wire.  We played on everything and Winefride's first day was very special.  It didn't even seem to matter too much when we nearly got arrested by the policemen.  You can read about that on my blog that my person should start helping me with again.   We played on a swing in the play area and my person even took a little video of the fun we were having.  We held on tightly and didn't fall off.  We like slides too.  And climbing frames and getting dizzy on roundabouts and we've been on boats and eaten ice creams and then there was that time I did everything in my power to escape from Fleetwood by tunnelling out and fleeing to another town that proved to be less of a paradise than expected.  I've met gods too, and fought supernatural creatures.  It's all there on my blog.  And it's all true even if my person's memory is faulty.

After playing we continued on our adventure.  Things took a turn for the worse.  Our merry path became more and more dangerous.  Vultures flocked overhead and we could hear wolves in the woods and an old lady with a wart warned us of progressing any further.  But I'm very brave and Winefride doesn't understand danger and my person had to follow us because I forced her too.  Our optimism wasn't even dampened when we found this signpost.  See.  We're still very happy.

We got through Hell.  Of course we did.  Otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell you about it.  Very often I find that suspense stories and thrillers aren't particularly suspenseful or thrilling.  The hero is put into all kinds of situations that should lead to near certain death.  So what?  If we know they are alive at the end of the story we also know that they escape their doom.  So the cliffhanger at the end of the episode isn't really a cliffhanger.  It's only truly exciting when the hero is allowed to die.  And stay dead.

Here's Winefride with one of the monsters we met in Hell.  He was surprisingly friendly.  I suppose that since everyone in Hell is going through a bad time they just get on and help each other through it.  Hell can be a much more charitable place than heaven and its residents can be so much more forgiving.  My person says that the people she's found most likely to not forgive her are the same people who are most likely to reject her.  The ones with a religion that talks of forgiveness all the time.  It's a curious thing when people with a forgiveness creed are sometimes the most judgemental and the ones who bear the biggest grudges even when someone is sorry for doing or saying something wrong.  We're autistic.  And my person sometimes has big troubles arising from mental health that mean she hardly knows what she's saying at all.  Sometimes we say things wrong without meaning to at all.  Because we don't quite understand the rules or see things differently and we just make big social mistakes.   My person says that the people who have cut her off completely when she said something wrong are mostly Christians.  I find that statement to be very sad.  I wouldn't believe it if my person wasn't saying it.  She's made mistakes.  But she's doing her best and is always very sorry when the mistake is pointed out.  Too sorry because she can get physically ill from being so sorry.  There are Christian ministers who have never spoken to my person again after she said something wrong even though she apologised and was very, very sorry.  I don't think those ministers are Christians at all.  And according to the Lord's Prayer which they pray so often they aren't going to be forgiven by their God.  Sorry ministers.  If there is a real Hell you're going to it.  As a result of your own prayers to your God.  You need to repent because my person is just like most people.  Very fallible.  But trying hard.  My person is telling me to stop talking about it now.  Actually she told me to stop talking about it ages ago.  But I wanted to say what I wanted to say and I don't want to stop now.  I'm going to.

Here's me in another part of Hell.  This skull was quite friendly too.  Apparently it was worn briefly by a certain Skeleton Detective.  I wonder if I'll ever appear in a book about him.  His name is Skulduggery and he's lovely.  Except when he isn't.  I wonder if he wants this spare skull back.  If he does he should contact me and I'll tell him where to find it.  I'd quite like to take him out for tea too and maybe his creator and my creator could share a lunch somewhere and then play some improvisational writing games together.  My person would like that.  Derek Landy, if you're reading this - and I know that's incredibly unlikely - get in touch.  My name is Blob Thing and I'm a fan.

I'm not going to tell you how we escaped from Hell.  I'll just tell you that our escape included a close encounter with a tortoise.  I'd share all the information but my person wants to get on with doing other things.

I'm glad that my person has allowed me to write something today.  It's been far too long.  I love my person dearly but I need more adventures and free rein with my creativity.  Never mind.  We're going to see my creator in a few days.  Perhaps while we're there my person will take us out on an amazing adventure.  Show us something we have never seen before.  That would be wonderful.  I'll let my person write her own post tomorrow.  Please person.  Can I write my blog again one day.  Please.

In Which I Learn That I Am Admired So Much, And I Turn To Admire Others

Prompt 19 taken from thinkwritten.com


Great Minds: Write  about someone you admire and you thought to have had a beautiful mind.



Free written in a café. I haven't named anyone. I wouldn't want my friends and acquaintances to be embarrassed. But I had some of them in mind as I typed.  When I left home this morning I had an entirely different post in mind - a story about misplaced admiration.

A Pudding To Be Admired.  The Close Of An Admirable Meal.  Thanks Auntie.

Two messages:

I received a message today from a friend. It gave me a link to her blog. Every day for a year she wrote and gave writing prompts. Solid writing prompts, full of free writing instructions and happy concepts to play with. The page she sent me related to a writers' group I couldn't get to this morning. It's pretty amazing. I think I might write from her prompts more often – and not just at the writers' groups. I think we're fortunate to have her and fortunate to have that group. Fortunate too that there is no charge for it so a struggle with money is no reason to stay away. And God knows that half the writers there are probably struggling with money!

I received a message today from a stranger. It read “Hello, I admire you so much. Can we be friends?” It's not a question I've answered yet. From what I can tell the stranger is a real person. Not a bot. Not one of the many societally repressed middle eastern gentlemen who send friend requests to me without so much as a hello. And not one of the many American military personnel currently stationed in Afghanistan who for reasons of their own seek out as many transgender women online as they can. Lots of trans women get such requests. It's part of life online for us. What I must make clear now is that we can't abide these chasers. We find it all repugnant. This message today seems to be real. From a person with their own story and journey to tell.


“I admire you so much.”


I have trouble admiring myself. So much unfair comparison with others. So much of my past filled with self-denial. What is there to admire? And what is it that I admire in others?


Do I admire intellect, raw intelligence? Ten years ago I got MENSA to measure my IQ. They tell me that I'm genius level, with an IQ of 156. To give you an idea of just how much of a genius I officially am, the cut off line for Mensa membership in that test is an IQ of 132, a score that puts you in the top two percent of the population. A score above 145 on that test means you're a genius, in the top 0.1% of the population. I'm clever. Not the cleverest. A score of 156 wouldn't get me in the Prometheus Society or the Omega Society. More practice needed.

But is any of that to be admired? It's nice isn't it? But don't admire me for it. I don't. Quite apart from the fact that I believe IQ testing to be flawed on many levels I don't think that having been born with a brain that is what it is and having been raised to know how to do sums before starting school is anything praiseworthy. It is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less.

Since receiving that message I've thought about three groups of people among my friends and acquaintances who I admire. These are the ones with beautiful minds, not the people whose maths skills make mine seem more like someone struggling to add three to four in a kindergarten lesson.

1. The overcomers
   

These are the people who struggle. These are the people who live full lives in the face of adversity. I know it's not politically correct to admire these people or to be inspired by them. You'll be told off these days by someone for going “Wow! Aren't they amazing?” when a person with no legs climbs Everest while you're still struggling to climb the stairs to get to bed.

Call me un-PC. I don't care. I admire these people. When I see how hard it is for some of my friends to do that stair climbing, to leave the house, to shine. When I see how many brilliant things they do, things that they very often don't see as brilliant at all because they, like me, compare themselves to others and set up impossible standards.

These people are exemplars for me. They are the ones who encourage me in their strength, perseverance, sheer bloody mindedness. Though they get knocked back and knocked back and knocked back they keep coming back. Stronger. More determined. Some of them don't get results the world would call amazing but that's not the point. People aren't defined by their deeds. They're defined by attitudes, by their vision, by the fullness of who they are. Definition – which in itself isn't truly possible – is about IS not DOES.

I look to these people and I see that things are possible. I see that it's worth it for me to carry on struggling. I find hope. I find wisdom.

In the overcomers I know that I too may overcome and thrive.

2. The self-givers
   

These are the people who offer much of their lives for others. They are those who give their time to work with refugees, with the homeless, addicts, the downtrodden, the marginalised, with charities, or even with children's football teams.

These people inspire me for having minds that inspire them to do wonderful things.

As I look through the people I know it's clear that the Venn diagram of overcomers and self-givers has a big crossover.

The self-givers inspire me. And I know that in time they must become exemplars for me too. I may have limited resources mentally and socially. I've got to be wise in this and not do the things I'm not meant to be doing. But I know that I must find a way to follow these people, find my own niche or niches where I must be a servant.

3. The writers and artists
   

I should include these people. They're important to me. In any case, I'm typing these words in an art café so it seems more than appropriate.

Their minds inspire me. And this inspires me most of all: They have all taken risks. They've risked picking up a paintbrush or a pen. They've risked the harsh stare of the empty page. They've risked producing utter crap and all of them have produced some crap. Just as I do. Crap production is part of the artist's way.

I'm inspired by those who allow their pictures to be shown for the first time, the second time, the thousandth time. I'm inspired by the writers who share their words with other writers, who offer their stories up as sacrificial lambs to publishing editors and competition judges. And I'm inspired by the writers who stand up before a group of their peers and the public and speak out their words.
I'm inspired so much that I have promised myself this:


I, Clare, will be like them.

I will, before this year is out, stand up and speak my words at a spoken word event.

I will, before this year is out, enter some writing competitions.

I will, before this year is out, write something I deem worthy to attempt to get published.


I am determined. I will continue to overcome. Continue to move towards thriving as the person I am discovering myself to be. And I will surprise myself in the things I do.



Because they are only human. And so am I.

Because they are staggering, stupendous, humans. And so am I.

And so are you.

Prompt 10 - Friendship: Meeting Morrigan's Milkmaid In The Park

Semi-free writing from the tenth writing prompt found at http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/


Friendship: Write about being friends with someone.

This is a fiction.  I should warn you before it begins that it runs to 2700 words.  I haven't read them back or edited them.  I'm hoping that some days I will only write a little.  2700 words a day, every day, would take too much time and I have too many other things I want to be doing to manage such commitment to this writing challenge.  I'm enjoying it immensely though and have surprised myself on many of the first ten days.

Picture taken at Queen Elizabeth Park, Ashington, 24th November 2016

I never believed it would be like this.  What did I do to deserve it?  It's all new to me and my one regret is that it didn't happen sooner.  I've never been able to be social.  Whenever I meet someone I'll freeze in their company and be unable to talk.  I just can't do it.  I don't know what to say and I'm so flustered and churned up inside at the pressure of saying the right thing that I end up saying nothing at all.  Or I say something stupid.  That's worse.  It got so bad that I stopped going out at all in case someone tried to talk to me or if a shop assistant asked me a question not directly pertaining to the items in my basket.  Outside is where the people are.  Outside is where I have no control over what goes on.  Outside is a mystery, a conundrum with no answer.  At least, I can't solve it.  Other people seem to have no difficulty and I look at the way they chat and smile and laugh together and I'm filled with jealousy at them and rage at myself for being so terribly useless.

So I stopped going out.  Unless I really, really had to.  And I stopped communicating with people face to face.  Except in emergencies.  If I needed a plumber I'd have to talk to someone wouldn't I?  And I'd be praying for a plumber who just wanted to get on and fix the loo rather than stopping to talk about families, or the weather, or football, or something else I can't manage.  You don't have to go out you know.  Not these days.  With home delivery it's easy.  You still have to talk to the delivery person sometimes of course but that's okay really.  There's a script and it almost never deviates.  Between hello and thank you there's really only need to talk about the delivery and perhaps whether or not it's raining or too hot or saying it's okay they've turned up late again.

I thought I liked my life.  A dishonest sentence if ever there was one.  I hated my life, hated myself for hiding, hated the way social interaction was beyond the realms of possibility.  I used to look at myself in the mirror and cry because the person looking back at me was frightened and lonely.  For a long time I lost hope.

And then it happened.  I still struggle with everything social of course but I'm making progress and she's very proud of me and I'm very proud of her too.  We struggle together but we're determined.  We've even been able to meet and that feels much safer because we can protect each other.  It's like we're in a glistening bubble or a warm cocoon.  Even when people are talking to us.  Or at us.  Somehow with the two of us there we can muddle through a conversation.

I have a friend now and in friendship it feels like there is nothing impossible and that one day there may be more friends, more happiness and who knows, I might eventually be able to leave the house without needing to take extra medication for my anxiety.

I didn't meet her face to face of course.  Not straight away.  There's no way that would have happened.  She was nearly stuck inside as much as I was.  She wasn't quite so far gone though and could still get out to buy a bottle of milk or a bar of chocolate from the corner shop.  But she wouldn't have dreamed of crossing town to visit someone, let alone meeting them somewhere as threatening as a cafe.  She wouldn't even have managed to meet in a park and I certainly wouldn't.  I am so happy now that I am able to visit parks and see the beauty and majesty of the trees.  Life is much better now I can lie on the grass and gaze up at the clouds, listening to the birds over the constant background hum of traffic.  Life is beyond a dream when I lie on the grass with Erica.

As it turned out Erica was part of a support group I joined for people like us.  The shut-ins.  The social failures.  The people who couldn't do people close up.  I'd seen the group advertised and I signed up to the email list to see what it was, whether there would be anything there that might possibly help me get out of the house just for a while.  My biggest dream when I joined was that they might be able to give me such assistance that one day I'd be able to see the sea again.  I dreamed of the sea frequently and remembered the restfulness I found sitting by the water, whether on a sandy beach or rocky outcrop, just listening and seeing and tasting the air and letting myself be a part of the ebb and flow of the waves.  At that time I didn't know that I'd ever have the chance to feel the sand and the salt water between my fingers or to witness the creatures of rock pools.

Learning of the support group was as if a rainbow lit up the sky.  A promise of hope and a promise of gold.  I couldn't quite believe it was real and knew that the pot of gold at the end of the support group might be just as out of reach and illusory as the one at the end of the rainbow.  Nevertheless, I signed up because I felt I had to do something or die alone, an old man who gradually lost the ability to look after himself.  I saw myself in twenty, thirty years finding myself unable to get up out of bed one morning, unable to call for help, and dying of thirst as I lay in despair and in my own urine and shit.  The existence of support meant there was just a chance of avoiding that doomed future.

I lurked for a long time.  And I read.  There was a lot to read.  All these people sharing their similar experiences, their hopes, their failures, the unfairness of it all.  A lot of it was quite useless to me.  People who had given up.  People who were just there to complain that they were going to be the ones dying in their own excrement.  People who would be encouraged and reassured over and over again by their peers but wouldn't begin to be able to listen.  Sometimes what I read made me very sad and several times I had to stop reading and walk away in tears because I wasn't finding a way out of my solitary confinement.

I kept returning though because it wasn't all bad.  Among the people there was a group who had made major progress in overcoming their problems, good people who stayed to be encouragers, mentors, and to show that anything is possible.  Many of them still struggled every day and still had days on which they weren't able to leave the house or meet with people.  Their stories and words were an inspiration to me because, though I wasn't able yet to change myself, I started to believe that one day my life could be better, would be better.  I would see the sea.  And see it again and again, over and over and I would enjoy my life.  Others in the the group were struggling to find ways forward and the difficulties they faced overcoming all their psychological blocks were staggering.  The way they continued to fight, refusing to give up, was as inspiring as the lives of the mentors.

And then there was Erica.  When I read the group emails written by Erica I felt something more.  I felt a connection.  She could have been me writing.  She wrote with such clarity and such wisdom about her plight.  At that time she was, as I say, unable to get further than the shop and even that was pushing it and she would be exhausted by the strain.  But she understood and she wrote with grace and vigour about how she was going to find ways to gradually overcome everything she suffered.  In her suffering she found time too to encourage others and to offer them virtual hugs.  I admired Erica and found myself looking forward to her next post in the group.  Reading her words made me smile.

I continued to lurk for several months.  Actually posting in the group was a big thing for me.  I was dreadfully afraid of screwing it all up even before I began, that I'd say something repulsive, repugnant, something deemed an unforgivable criminal offense and that I'd be rejected even from that safe space.  My first posts, when they finally happened were simple ones.  The group had a daily challenge to find positive things about ourselves and our lives.  I decided to try it but when I sat down to type the positives my mind went blank and I couldn't think of anything positive at all about my own life.  I wouldn't give up though and after half an hour I managed to type two positive things.  The existence of the group.  And the existence of computers, without which there would be no group.  That was my first post.  Nobody hated me for it.  Some people even said hello because they noticed I was new.

After that I started to post more, to complain about my life, to talk of how I wished life could be.  I'd offer what positivity I could to others in the group and much to my amazement a few email relationships began to develop.  The first time I received an email from someone "off list" I was completely blown away.  Someone was wanting to communicate.  With me.  I was being social.

One of Erica's posts moved me deeply and I decided I wanted to write to her.  Just one email.  One message of support and understanding and to tell her how much her words resonated with me.  And how much I enjoyed reading her words.  I didn't expect that she would ever reply to me.  I just wanted to tell her that, though she was suffering, she was helping someone.  I got a big shock.  Two days later Erica replied to me.  A long email.  A happy email.  The tone was friendly and she even told some jokes and she asked some questions too and talked of books and hobbies and art and games.  Receiving that first off list mail from Erica was the most joyful thing that had happened to me in a long while.

So I replied.  Not after two days.  After one day.  I'd have replied after one hour but I didn't want to be seen as too needy or pushy or that I didn't have much of a life.  I answered her questions, asked a few of my own and talked more about the sea and books and dreams and thanked her for her email and for not telling me that I was awful to send one to her.

And she replied.  And I replied.  And over the course of six months the emails became a daily occurrence and sometimes more than daily and sometimes we had several threads of emails running back and forth.  Then one day everything changed for us.  One of the rules the group had was anonymity.  There were things you were allowed to talk about.  Most things were fine.  But you weren't allowed to talk about your location and you certainly weren't meant to use your real name.

The day everything changed was the day we broke the rules.  After six months and hundreds of long emails we decided that we could probably trust one another without doubting that the other might be some kind of psychopath or sociopath intent on destroying a life.  We broke the rules.  Until that day Erica - who for some reason I'd only ever known as Morrigan's Milkmaid which is a name I still don't understand - could have been living anywhere in the world.  Well not anywhere.  That's a lie.  I knew she was British, there had been plenty of clues and obvious giveaways about that when we talked about food and the weather and social systems.  I was hardly likely to have argued about Marmite and Pontefract cakes with a Korean.

On that day we learned something that came as a big surprise to both of us.  We lived in the same town.  Her home is only two miles away for mine.  What was the probability of that?  I could tell you if I looked it up.  Erica calculated the odds.  A simple business of working out the population living that close to her home and then dividing by the population of the United Kingdom.  We felt that we had beaten the odds and over the next week we started to ask each other whether we might find a way one day to actually meet.  To go out.  Beyond the corner shop.  And deliberately meet someone.

We planned it all carefully.  How to meet with minimal interaction with anyone else.  Where to meet so that we wouldn't have to cope with a third person unless we were unlucky.  How it would be okay to pull out at the last moment and postpone the meeting.  Neither of us were confident enough to entertain the other at home in case it all went very wrong so we decided the best thing would be for each of us to travel by taxi to a local park and meet up on one of a row of benches we had found with Google maps.  If it got too much we gave each other permission to walk away without even stopping to apologise.  Apologies and regrets could wait for emails.  In case we coped with being together each of us was to bring a flask of tea and a sandwich.

That morning was particularly frightening.  I hadn't travelled further than my garden in a couple of years except for health reasons.  I am very proud of myself to have made it to the park and I'm very proud of Erica too.  I know it was just as difficult for her.  But we did it.  We both managed it.  She arrived five minutes before me and I spotted her on one of the benches anxiously squeezing and pressing her fingers to keep some control.  I know that she was having to fight with herself not to get up and call for a taxi to meet her at the park gate.  If I had arrived first I'm not sure I'd have stayed.  I sat down beside her and we said hello.  Then we fell into a silence.  It was awful.  Somehow we didn't give up.  Eventually Erica turned to me and asked me a question.  It was the first one she had asked in her first email.  And I answered just as I had before.  We smiled at each other and at that moment knew there was a possibility things might turn out okay.

Now I have a friend.  We meet regularly.  In the park.  And at each other's homes too.  We've even learned how to take a bus - together not alone - to the seaside and we've sat on the beach and listened to the world.  We still struggle every day and our social life isn't much more than just each other.  We can't do cafes and we don't manage new people or going into places we don't know.  But we have each other and that's infinitely more than we had a year ago.

In another year, who knows?  Perhaps we'll have encouraged each other further and lifted each other into new possibilities.  Perhaps we'll have new people.  I'd like to be able to join an art group and most of all I'd like to be able to take Erica out for a meal to celebrate the one year anniversary of that first email.  I've told her that and we're currently working out how we can make it happen.

I have a friend.  And in friendship I have a future worth staying alive for.  Together we will learn what it means to be free.


[2719 words]

Prompt 6 - Eye Contact. A First Meeting And An Autistic Manifesto

Eye Contact: Write about two people seeing each other for the first time.

A story:

I remember it with what I believe to be a crystal clarity yet I know that my memory is undoubtedly cracked and coloured by dreams and contains a mix of reality and shadows.

I saw her in a station car park.  Standing.  Alone.

I too had arrived in the station car park.  Standing.  Alone.  Afraid.  Excited.  Bewildered.  Surrounded by strangers.  Hopeful.  Anxious.  Four days of the unknown awaited me and though I had prepared and memorised and read written information over and over until I had accounted for practical eventualities there were still social eventualities and the uncertainty of a half-made timetable.

I stood and looked at the people there all waiting for transport to take us to the event, the festival, this shared celebration.  Some had experienced this event before, returning again and again in love with this autistic space.  They talked with each other.  Some of them even hugged one another.

Others, like me, like her, stood in that station car park.  Alone.  Looking forward perhaps to be wearing an interaction badge that said we found it hard to start a conversation but that didn't mean we didn't want one.

I saw her and knew instantly there was something special about her.  From outward appearances she seemed the most interesting person there.  Her clothes?  Well let's just say that they were a rule of their own, and showed her to be a rule all of her own.  She was bright, she was a sight for my eyes.

It wasn't just her clothes. There was something else.  I can't say what because I do not know.  And yet I knew she might touch my life in some way.  It happens like that sometimes.  I see a person and I just know that they are likely to enter into my life and cause an explosion, big or small, before staying part of my life or moving on.

She saw me too.  Dressed in black.  Dressed up to the ones.  Dressed to not impress.  On that day I was dressed to hide, to walk in invisibility, to be average, to never amaze.  She saw me.  And thought I looked boring.  She was right.  I did.

As we were taken from the station to the event we did not talk.  We sat in the same taxi and between us was a woman who turned out not to be Australian.  I think it would be different now.  I would be different.  The taxi driver didn't really know where he was going.  Nobody else did.  I did - because I'd worked so hard memorising a map.  And I tried to speak out the route but was unable to find the confidence to speak loudly enough to be heard or listened to.  Perhaps if the woman who exists now had arrived that day she would have been able to say which way to go.  Perhaps she would have been able to chat in the taxi.  The woman of that day could not.  That woman did not meet the eyes of another except by chance, a momentary fright before hastily looking elsewhere.

Later we met.  The interesting woman and the seemingly boring woman.  Initially refusing eye contact.  Because that would have been too much.

I noticed her hair and took in those colours again.  I noticed the way she stood and played and I wished I was able to play like that.

She noticed my bare, drab exterior.  She noticed the crookedness of my front teeth, uncorrected by teenage orthodontic work.  I looked a little like a cipher, a nothing.

We did not see each other's eyes.

Not until later.

Not until freedom came to me in the storm.

Not until I shed, for a moment, my boring exterior; my total control; my refusal to enjoy and release passionate laughter in the rain.  Not until transformation came, and friendship followed.  Now we see each other's eyes and in those depths everything is well.

That's a story.  A fragment of a story.  But it's only one story.  It's just one happy story of one person meeting another.  Many autistic people could write many stories about eye contact.  Because, for better or for worse, lots of us aren't very good at it.  We're just not.  And you know what?  That's okay.

If you were to meet me three things might happen:

1. I might meet your eyes and maintain "good" eye contact.
2. I might appear to meet your eyes and appear to maintain "good" eye contact.
3. I might not maintain "good" eye contact.

Which of those takes place is in part dependent on my anxiety levels, on how overloaded I am, and on all kinds of inner situations and capability levels.

If the first happens, I am meeting your eyes.  What's going on there?  I am breaking with an autistic stereotype.  Sometimes it's fine.  Sometimes I am able to do it and it feels okay.  Sometimes I am not swamped by the information pouring out of the windows to your soul.  Oh what a rubbish autistic person I am.  People have told me they don't believe I can be autistic because I can do eye contact.  Well bugger that for a game of soldiers.  [What an odd turn of phrase.]

Sometimes I am able to do it but it hurts.  God dammit it hurts.  Maintaining that eye contact produces a terrible headache and every portion of my being goes towards continuing to look at you.  Every portion.  There's nothing left.  If that's happening I won't be processing a single word you are saying to me.  I won't have a clue.  Not until I look away.  I've spent my life doing that and became a wonderful actor.  Almost all of the time people did not have a clue I was experiencing difficulties.  And what does it matter if I miss what someone's saying?  Most of the time it doesn't because nothing important was being said and I could fill in any gaps afterwards.

Sometimes I appear to be making eye contact when in reality I'm not.  I'm not looking at your eyes.  That's too hard.  I'm looking between your eyebrows or at your nose.  I've got to tell you that most people's noses aren't extraordinarily exciting to look at.  I've never seen a nose and wanted to pay for it to have a half-day portrait session and hang pictures of it round my house.  While it must be admitted I've not wanted to pay for anyone to have a portrait session that's not the point.

And then there are the times I just can't do eye contact.  On occasions I can't even manage it with the people I trust the most.  On others I can't manage it with the stranger or the acquaintance.  I just can't.  Even though I might have tried I can't do it.

And I tried.  I did.  I've spent my life trying.  Must maintain eye contact.  Must look at this person even though it's more painful to my mind than a burn is to my skin.  Must do it.  Must do it.  Look.  Look.  Look.  It's right.  It's proper.  Don't look away.  Don't be so rude.  What will they think of you?  You're fucking weak that's what you are.  You're stupid.  You're broken, a mess, and if you don't look that person in the eyes right now then you've failed.  You sodding failure.  Should be ashamed of yourself.  And you are ashamed.  That's good.  At least you've tied yourself to the whipping post and know where you belong.

Yeah, I tried.  Mostly I got away with it, suffering for the art of normalcy.  Breaking myself for the sham of socially acceptable behaviour.  I'm an actress and I trod the boards every time I met you.  I'm an actress and the show must go on and the jazz hands must razzle dazzle the world because without eye contact what would our relationship be?  I acted my way.  Sometimes I would feel crushed by this simple thing.  Yes, simple.  Compared to acting happy.  Compared to faking that smile.  Compared to telling you I'm fine even though I wasn't.  And of course that obvious one:  Compared to pretending to be a man, pretending there wasn't a woman screaming to be released.

I tried.  Because I believed.  I believed one whopping great whopper after another.  I swallowed the lies told to me by society.   There are so many lies.  So many customs and so many social mores.  So many ways we are told what to be and told to buckle down and fit in.

We're told this:  Eye contact is good.  Eye contact is an essential of face to face communication.  Over and over as children we get told that.  All of us do.  "Look at me.  Look, look, look, look, look."  If you look away it's a matter of shame.

Today I say this to you: That's bullshit.  Baloney.  Hooey.  Nonsense.

And I say this to you:  For those of us people, autistic and otherwise, who struggle so hard with eye contact it's oppression, it's one of the little murders inflicted on us by a social structure that does not accept us.

There's a reason why I said "good" eye contact rather than good eye contact.  It's because it isn't good.  And it isn't bad.  It just is what it is.  It's a social construct that people are used to.  It helps many of you communicate and that's fine.  But it's not a law.  It's not something to be enforced.

Across the country autistic children are rewarded for eye contact.  Penalised for avoiding eye contact and maybe for not considering eye contact at all.  Across the country children are told that eye contact is right and they are encouraged (forced) to participate in a custom they find painful.

Even adults can face compulsory eye contact.  It's frequent.  And sometimes it's unexpected.  At a Sunday Assembly meeting last year the keynote speaker talked of laughter yoga.  We were all expected to join in.  He said some shitty things to make us feel stupidly guilty and bad about ourselves if we didn't want to.  Or if we couldn't.  I'm sure he thought he was making a good joke.  So I got up too.  I joined in.  But then he introduced eye contact.  Compulsory eye contact.  Prolonged compulsory eye contact.  With a stranger.  And made us feel bad again if we didn't join in with it.  Well fuck that.  Fuck it.  Excuse my language but such behaviour merits worse than that.  I fell apart.  But not before grabbing my bag and walking out.  That meeting of the Sunday Assembly - a group of people I love meeting with - was a complete disaster for me.   I refused to be forced into that intimacy.  Had I not refused things would have been much worse.

Every time I am assessed - whether by the DWP, a gender specialist, a GP, or a job interview if there ever was to be one - they take note of eye contact.  When I see a gender specialist the statement "Clare maintained good eye contact" means I'm more likely to get referred for treatment.  When I see the DWP the statement "Clare could not maintain eye contact at all" means I'm more likely to score a point, even if I never score enough to qualify for some help.  Both statements by the way were completely true on the occasions they were written.

Today I say this to you:  No more.  No more.  I'm not going to live that way any more. 

I'm going to be a rebel.  Except in those assessments.   I'm not a fool.  I'll not rebel then.  Because I want help.  And I want treatment.

But if I meet you?  For the first time.  For the thousandth time.  If I meet you then that social rule can just sod off and stop causing me pain.

I'm autistic.  I can struggle with eye contact.  So what?  It's not wrong.  It's just me.  And if that causes you any concern?  Well get over it.  Because I choose to be me.  I hereby forge a new manifesto stating that nobody has to look anybody in the eye.

To enforce it in an autistic child who is in pain is close to cruelty.  To expect it of autistic adults is prejudicial.

If I don't look at you don't be offended.  It's not because I hate you.  It's because I don't want to hurt and do want to be able to process what you are saying to me.  To want eye contact is to want pain.  To enforce it is to break me.  From now on - if I can overcome all that lingering guilt - you're going to get eye contact on my terms.  Mine.

______________________

The above was pretty much free-written, the words were typed as they came to me.  If you want to read something more clearly written, a thought-out article rather than a rapidly felt-out stream, there are lots of good sources out there.  Here's one by Judy Endow, an autistic woman who helps a lot of people and has written many good articles and books.  http://ollibean.com/autism-and-eye-contact/

Thank you for reading.

Prompt 5 - Food. When Was The Last Time You Ate A Radish?

Free writing from the prompts found at http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

Prompt number 5.

Food: What’s for breakfast? Dinner? Lunch? Or maybe you could write a poem about that time you met a friend at a cafe.

Image from www.loveradish.co.uk

We met at home, we did.
Just one evening to be together
One evening to rest in the gentle
Caress of quiet acceptance.
No plans to eat beyond the immensity
Of a brilliantly regular takeaway.

A perfect immovable feast
From an establishment serving us well
With high quality enjoyment
But low quality cleanliness.
There's no cause to fear:
A one star hygiene rating
Hasn't led to our deaths.
Yet.

Together we ate and savoured
Each prawn, each nut, each unwashed seaweed.
We laughed.  We shared.  We knew our safety
And then we lay back in a friendship
Finding strength in our shared silence.

The feast was gone
But she stayed on.
A bed was made, a plan was not.
In that realm of uncertainty we knew
That all would be well.

The morning came and together we decided.  She wanted to eat out and decided that she would treat me and take me and whisper sweet nothings in a tea room laced with more romance than tea.  I lie of course.  We wouldn't have any sweet nothings or sweet everythings.  We wouldn't have whispers filled with sour tastes or bitterness either.  And others would be welcome to all the romance floating in the air.  We would eat from a minimalist menu, drink from a maximalist menu, and hold each other in light and the love of sisters without a wish or whim to hold each other's hands.  We, more platonic than Plato himself, would know there was no risk of injury in sacred space.

So we dined.  In light conversation.  In silence.  In the reading of books.  In conversation.  In silence.  In books.  In circles and cycles and sensuality.  I don't lie of course.  Rich sensual stimulation of the sight and sound of the Sutra, of the smells, tastes, textures of the food we were served.

I was greedy.  Isn't it easier to be greedy when another is treating you.  I ordered the most expensive item from the short menu.  I'd do it again too if treating myself in that place.  We're not talking Michelin stars here.  We're not talking nouveau cuisine and fifty pound dishes containing fifty grams of food; three cubes of flavour and some artistically arranged foam.  That's not my style or her style.  We're talking a big bowl of vegan food for seven and a half pounds.

Now I don't do salads.  The last time I prepared a salad at home for myself to eat was ... trying to think ... straining to remember ...  The last time was ... never.  I don't do salads.  When I was growing up a salad consisted of some big lettuce leaves, some carrot, a tomato, and as a luxurious extra possibly a couple of radishes or worse still a piece of celery.  I couldn't imagine anything more unappealing.  Five foods I wouldn't eat arranged disgracefully.  Salad was something to be refused, something to be abhorred, something to prove the madness of a mother who claimed to like salads. The memories stick.  And I don't do salads.  Even today if any of those foods sat there in that form I would turn away.  I'd hold placards saying "No Carrots Here", "Let Us Leave that Lettuce Leaf", "Gelato not Tomato!", "Get Rid of Radishes!", and the famous banner of war, "God hates radishes!"

No salads for me.  Thank you very much.  And yet.  What did I order?  A big bowl.  Of salad.  It's true that there were additions - houmous, a garlic dip, falafel, roasted Mediterranean vegetables.  But the bulk of the bowl was salad.  I had ordered my nemesis, willfully invited my arch-enemy to sit with me at the table.  Like Jesus welcoming Judas.  Except with the prospect of eating.

I knew I was safe.  I'm going to level with you here.  Total honesty.  Cards on the table.  Face up.  All I have is a pair of threes so it's almost sure you'll beat me.  I'm going to lay down that losing hand.  And then I'm going to place a bet anyway.  Here goes.  My first three says that I was looking forward to that salad.  My other three says that I had ordered a salad from the Sutra before.

I do salads.  If they are the Sutra salads.  Or if they're the ones served at church meals I went to, prepared by a vegan with culinary flair.  Or, as it turns out, if it's the one served at a cafe I went to recently with another friend in another town.  The salads of childhood don't deserve to be given the same name as the salads of the Sutra.  They are not the same species.  It's no wonder my mother always had to give up on her diets.  With food like that who would choose to continue?  Who wouldn't reach for the nearest chocolate biscuit in simple desperation?  Had her salads been as rich and vibrant and full of knock-your-head-off taste as the one I ordered I suspect she would have only needed one diet and she might have stuck with it for life.  It is strange to me.  She claimed that salad was the best thing.  But those chocolate biscuits soon needed replacing.

Yeah.  I do salads.  I do.  However, this one had an extra challenge: It contained pieces of radish.

Radish.  RADISH!  It's not my greatest foe.  It's not a food that my taste buds resolutely categorise as satanic.  Sprouts are satanic.  And broccoli was part of the curse laid on mankind when Adam and Eve got themselves kicked out of the garden by a god who got unreasonably cross with them and couldn't find it in his heart to forgive them without bumping off his own son thousands of years later in a famously bloody death.  Eden contained no broccoli.  No sprouts.  And no celery.  My taste buds had told me so.  Too many times.

But radish.  I just avoided radish.  I am radishophobic.  In the true sense of the word.  It is a word.  Don't doubt me on that.  It's just a very new word.  Such a word needs to be added to the dictionary with urgency because I am not alone in being a radishophobe.  I'm a beetrootophobe too but that's another story and I wish I hadn't just thought of it because the beetroot image in my head now is enough to have given me a headache.  Enough of beetroot.  I have fear and loathing in Las Beetroot.

When did I last eat a radish?  Last year I asked several questions like that to a friend.  The friend from the salad from the other town.  She kept producing things for me to eat and I would ask her, "When did I last eat a persimmon?" or whatever food it was.  Sometimes the answer was many years before.  Sometimes the answer was never.  So when did I last eat a radish?  To the best of my knowledge the answer was never and I'd just known instinctively how terrible such a vegetable would taste.  Just the sight of a radish in the fridge when growing up was enough to create anxiety.  It's all wrong.  The colour, outside and inside.  The little micro-textures I can see even now.  A radish is wrong.

I know that if anyone had ever tried to force me to eat such a - god I haven't got words for such a dread item - I would have melted.  No radishes for Clare.  Even today as I sit and type and see radishes in my head, both whole and sliced - the sight in my mind of a radish being sliced is almost paralysing - my heart is racing and I have an urge to shout obscenities.  Even today I know that I would not willingly buy a radish.  I wouldn't choose to eat one if there was one in the house.  Ach, sometimes there's beetroot in the fridge but rarely a radish.  Keep those bloody things away from me!  It may be fair to say that I have some issues with food.

That salad from the Sutra contained little pieces of radish.  Not whole radishes - I'd have pulled them out and let them.  Not full slices of radish.  I'd have pulled them out too.  But slivers of radish.  I considered removing them too but felt a shame.  I don't think my friend would have minded.  She would have understood.  I know she would.  But I felt a shame anyway about wanting to remove tiny slivers of red and white from my otherwise very appealing salad.  (Why would anyone just use a lettuce when they can include rocket too?  Just asking.)

And so I picked out one sliver of radish.  One.  I was very polite and separated it with my knife and fork rather than digging in with my fingers.  I'm a very polite woman.  No serious breaches in etiquette here and I'll even put my knife and fork down correctly after eating.  I might hold them wrong but at least I put them down correctly - in the position that makes it easy for someone to murder me but harder for me to commit murder.  It's true.  Table etiquette is based on the prospect of death.

I then took that sliver of radish from my fork with my fingers.  A minor breach in etiquette.  That's all.  I think.  It was radish.  The equally evil sister of celery.  A thing to be feared, despised, avoided, shunned.  A vegetable to be vanquished.  Who will rid me of this turbulent radish?

And then I placed that sliver in my mouth, watched carefully by my friend.  I was overcoming a phobia and I wouldn't have done it without her watchful eyes.  Inside my mouth there was radish.  For the first time ever.

And it tasted okay.  Not the best.  But not the worst.  I'm not going to go out and buy radishes this week.  I wouldn't write home about it.  Strictly speaking not a lie.  I've just written from home about it.  There was no revelation of bliss but it was good enough to be able to swallow and good enough that I could eat the rest of the salad without great injury to my psyche.

I had eaten radish.  Eaten radish.  And there wasn't a congratulatory medal.  Not even a card praising my bravery in fighting prejudicial radishophobia.  I'd done it.

I'd only bloody gone and done it!




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