Burnt Out Autistic Blogger

What I Wish I Could Say:

Dear teachers, friends, and family,

I am having a bad sensory day.

I am struggling with my mental health.

I am too anxious to go outside.

I am overwhelmed and what you are asking of me is beyond my capacity at the moment.

What I Had To Say:

I have to reschedule because ...

I’m so sorry, ______ has come up.

I’m caught up with _______ .

I just don’t feel up to it.

I can’t get ready that fast.

I have to miss my lecture because ________.

I have to miss your party because _________.

I need an extension on this deadline because _________.

I would be very grateful if you could please grant me an extension because _________.

As an Autistic Adult, I am extremely averse to lying. I’m not talking about white lies or lies you have to tell to keep yourself safe or jokes. I’ve had to mask and study neurotypical behaviour all my life so I know (kinda) how to do those things. That is another topic.

I am talking about the kind of lying that physically hurts me. The kind I just know in my heart is not true and saying it out loud sends pain shooting in all directions. Laughing helps and so does faking confidence. If I can’t laugh when I am lying, I have to resist the urge to stim or get away quickly and process it in some other way before I shutdown or meltdown. I had to torture myself for years to hide. I am dealing with extreme burnout at this point. My hair is falling out from the stress. I constantly feel like I am running out of time, literally, as I miss deadline upon deadline and also metaphorically. I’ve always been called an “old soul” and “wise beyond my years” by friends and family but I don’t think anyone realises the true repercussions of having to grow up way too quickly. It ages your mind and your spirit too.

I also don’t think people realise that there is a reason I am like this. I have super sensitive hearing and most of the time all the sounds are all jumbled up and make no sense BUT as a kid, I heard a lot of things I probably wasn’t supposed to from adults and other kids talking behind my back (literally). I also learned to give minimal facial reactions because people were always looking at me like ???

At the time I did not know that when people are insecure or feeling a bad way about themselves, they take it out on others. So I internalised it and began collecting data about what others thought of me and analysing it.

It’s what I spent most of my time in classrooms doing because the fluorescent tube lights, the weird gazes I could feel on me and all that noise meant I was mostly never able to learn in real time and constantly played catch up with self study. Either that or I was far, far away in my safe haven I had carefully constructed in my imagination where words did not hurt and everything was soft like clouds.

I can’t remember where I read or heard this but it goes like this: If you hear too many things you are not supposed to when you are a child, you grow older quicker. Sorry if I’m not writing as well as I used to. It’s hard to articulate words and text and speech atm.

I’m also finding it difficult to comply with the norms of social media. I feel like the weird kid on the playground again. Everything is too loud. Everyone has something urgent to say and not enough people are listening to them. There’s a format you should follow if you want to get results but I have only ever been able to share the way I do and I don’t think I want to change just to fit Instagrammable standards. That’s the tragedy, isn’t it? People do tell you what is wrong. In their own way. In the immortal words of TSwizzle, I GAVE SO MANY SIGNS. Exile is an actual masterpiece and I will fight you on that. Now it’s in my head for the rest of the day, thanks folks.

But anyway, for all you neurotypicals who can’t tell, this is me trying to communicate without bringing you down. But I am feeling down so 🤷🏽‍♀️