A Short One

I have just been out for a walk.

This might not seem like particularly startling news. Especially when I tell you that my walk was just 2 kilometres long and I was out for under 20 minutes (the 2km actually took 18 minutes, 24.7 seconds).

The fact that I know that much detail about my walk (at an average pace of 9:12 per kilometre) will tell those in the know that I didn’t just amble round the block randomly, but I took my Garmin (running watch) and measured time and pace and so on.

I also wore my running shoes. A pair that have done a couple of marathons with me.

All this might seem rather irrelevant, and a slightly strange blog post. Maybe so.

But it is important.

Because it is the start of returning, properly, to life. It is a tiny bit of something approaching “normal” in this huge sea of autism and mental health and newness and unfamiliarity.

Aside from one short run in January, I have not run since November. Granted, I didn’t run today, but I took the first few steps (2043, according to my Garmin) towards it. Back in January I was making a desperate last-ditch attempt to be well enough for my spring marathon (and ultra) season, but I really wasn’t well enough, and quickly gave up.

So now I have abandoned all races until at least the autumn. And I am starting over. And I am making it as easy as possible to start over.

Because at the moment I am still struggling with inertia, massively. I’ll write properly about autistic inertia sometime – it’s the feature that means our brains are very good at persisting with things, often for hours on end, but are terrible at starting and stopping or switching tasks. The effort needed to start something is huge, and takes a lot of energy.

Furthermore, I still have huge anxiety when leaving the flat. My senses are still in overdrive from the burnout. The world is still loud and bright and full of so much information that I feel like my head might explode. Previously I would have used energy to mask these feelings, consciously blocking out the input to my senses – doing so for years has both left me too exhausted to function and has been seriously detrimental to my mental health.

So, in as far as I have any control over things, I am determined now, to be me, and not to use that energy unless I absolutely have to for survival. Furthermore, since the energy to mask ran out I can’t do it. I don’t have the resources to act any more, so I have to live as I am, now acutely aware of my heightened senses, but also no longer making myself be strong, no longer forcing myself to block them consciously, even though they are sometimes overwhelming.

Couple all that with the anxiety I’m still getting just leaving the flat, and you’ll begin to see why going out for a walk was such a big deal today.

And so my strategy was to make this first outing as easy as possible, so that all my energy could be focused on getting out of the flat, dealing with the overwhelming light, sound, smells and so on, and overcoming that initial hurdle of actually starting anything at all.

So no running clothes yet (there’s a sensory issue with fabrics touching my skin which I will have to deal with), and not yet backpacks or belts or other such kit. Daytime clothes, my familiar handbag for keys, phone, and inhaler, but just two relatively easy adjustments to my normal “leaving the flat” gear – my running shoes and my Garmin.

Tiny tiny adjustments. Minimising the “difference”. In order to get out at all soley for the purpose of exercise, without the pressure of an appointment or another person expecting something of me.

And a “workout” so easy that it didn’t tax me physically. I know I can easily walk 2 kilometres, so didn’t have to put that part of it into the pile of obstacles in my brain, didn’t have to factor in a tough training session when persuading myself just to go out at all.

And I took a regular route that I run often, a known 2 kilometres. In the early afternoon when most people would likely be at school or work, and I’d have as little chance of encountering people as possible.

And so it happened. Starting over. Picking up fragments of my old life, the life that fell to pieces when I discovered I was autistic. The life that almost ended in December. The life that I now have to rebuild, differently, readjusting now that I know better what will help me to stay well.

The absence of either job or offspring in my life, coupled with my extreme burnout and wildly fluctuating moods, has meant that there has been very little “normality” of any sort during the last six months. Learning about autism and my being autistic has been fascinating, but I am also worn out by it – my entire life has been consumed by it for months. I need to ease off – my head is full.

It’s time to reclaim just a few bits of “normal” life.

Slowly, gently, with space in between to recover.

A couple of kilometres at a time.