Limitations

Advice often seems
To tell me
To consider
“The positives”
And to focus on
What I
CAN
Do.

If I’m honest
This strategy
Isn’t always
Terribly helpful.

I’m perfectly well aware
Of my strengths
And achievements.
They’ve been pointed out to me
Many times
Over the years
(Because people seem to like
This sort of
“Feel good”
Stuff,
I think).

I don’t need this information
Again and again.
I already have it.

What I am finding
MUCH
MORE
HELPFUL

MUCH
MORE
HELPFUL

(Twice,
And capitals,
For emphasis)

Is to learn
What my
LIMITATIONS
Are.

I have been told
All my life
About working hard
And succeeding.

But the things
That I
CAN’T do
Have rarely been
Considered

Or have been ignored
Or have been thought
To be the result
Of me being lazy
Or wilful.

So,

I have continued
To blame myself
For my failures.

I have struggled
To learn strategies
To compensate
For my difficulties

I have never learnt
How to ask
Other people
To help me.

(Because I have always been told
To focus on my abilities
And strengths
And how strong
I am).

If I’m honest (again)
Then allowing myself
To admit
What I CAN’T do
Is a sweet blessed relief.

To learn that I am disabled
Means that I’m not bad and lazy.
It’s Not. My. Fault.

To focus on my struggles
Means I can start
To work out
How to cope.

To drop the “strong” act
Means that I have permission
To ask for help.

(And it’s even OK
To admit
That there are things
I will give up
Even TRYING to do
Because they use
Too much energy
For me).

It is relief.
Really really big
Relief.

After 4 decades
Of trying
To live up
To the high expectations
That so many people
Have had.

Can I stop now?
Please?

Can I give up the quest
To be impressive,
High-achieving,
Sparkling,
Witty,
Attractive?

And just be me.

Not impressive.
Not special.

Just me.

And allow myself
To consider not my strengths
(Because I’ve done that
For too long
Because that’s what people
Have told me to do)
But the things I cannot do
The things I need support to do
The things I find difficult
And the problems I have.

Because I need to do that.
I need to learn
I need to discover
What I CAN’T do,
What I’ve been faking
All these years,
And where I have been
Pretending
To be capable
And where that pretending
Has damaged me.

I need this time.
I need this space.
I need to be allowed
To be weak
And to learn
How that is
For the first time in my life.

Because that is new to me

It was never part of my mask

Or my plan

Or any plan anybody else
Had for me.

I was never taught
How to give up
Or to let go
Or to rest
Or to relax

Or to accept
That there are things
I cannot do

And that it’s OK
To stop trying
To be strong.

I believe
That only
Once I have examined
My weaknesses,
Accepted them,
And worked out
What to do about them,

Will I know
What my true strengths
Really are.

Formageddon The Sequel

There was an original Formageddon (my term for the feeling of gradual apocalypse in my head when faced with questionnaires and forms to complete) back in October 2016 when I was referred for the first autism assessment. But I wasn’t blogging back then, not confident enough to be publicly autistic. Too frightened, too afraid to even mention it without a formal diagnosis. Maybe I’ll write the entire “Formageddon” experience up properly sometime, but, for now, I’m about to plunge into Formageddon The Sequel.

For the original Formageddon I spent a huge amount of time working on something called the RAADS-R (Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised) and my husband interviewed my mother by phone in order to complete an SCQ (Social Communication Questionnaire). The hospital have never given me scores for these forms, neither were they even mentioned at the assessment, which, after the amount of work I spent completing them and explaining what the real truth was where the questions were badly phrased or imprecise or simply nonsensical, I found rather dismaying.

And now, with the second referral to the second place, I have received a whole load more forms to do. Two pages of “Developmental Questions” that mean we will need to call my mother again (some I know she can’t answer, because we’ve already asked and she doesn’t remember), one called simply the AQ (Autism-spectrum Quotient) which I recognise as the “internet quiz” mentioned in The Discovery, and one called The Cambridge Behaviour Scale, which has 60 questions, many of which will require extra explanation like the RAADS-R did.

I am not filled with joy at the thought of this task. I am exhausted by all this, low on energy, almost beginning to suffer from a sort of “autism fatigue” (I have been obsessively learning everything I can about autism for 5 months now) and I deeply hate dredging up stuff about my childhood – a period of time I’d hoped I’d closed the door on forever when I grew up and left school and home.

I’m also trying to use energy to salvage what I can of my present life. I’m still vaguely trying to save my Open University maths study, which is rapidly falling apart. I want to go running, play my viola, spend time with the animals. Almost anything other than go through another load of Kafkaesque questions that I already know will annoy the hell out of me and trigger all sorts of stuff I really don’t want triggered. And what I desperately need to do, more than anything, is to rest and recuperate, not sit at the computer making myself feel ill.

But the only way I will get another assessment, and maybe a diagnosis, and any closure to this whole diagnostic nightmare, is to go through these damn things, and is to sit, once more, anxious and frustrated, trying to go through this whole process all over again. As seems to be the way, in order to get help I have to make myself feel bad.

Doing it once was stressful enough, doing it again feels even more so, especially when the result might then be another really stressful difficult assessment with an inconclusive ending that leaves me feeling invalidated and suicidal.

This is taking every scrap of my willpower. I feel weary.