I have a neurological condition: further notes on an autistic identity.

A blog post about exploring new language through visual research. 

I’ve written a lot about my autism over the past 4 years, but that’s because discovering you’re autistic late in life can feel like a page-turner. With an introspective disposition and a bent for self-analysis the plot twists keep on coming. I’m glad of this. Who doesn’t love a good story and, let’s face it, there’s nothing more gripping than your own. I don’t minimise the inner struggle for autistic self-knowledge, but dull it isn’t!

Discovering autism can quickly become an identity quest. For a late-diagnosed person the self-image of a lifetime can suddenly feel like a case of mistaken identity – there really are no words to capture the magnitude of this. There follows a process of adaptation for which there is no guidance and little if any formal support.  We must work things out as best we can, and for many of us this can mean a lot of online activity, including reading and writing blogs. Wherein autistic adults are amassing a truly wondrous resource, which also serves to document both an important cultural moment and a movement for social justice. Good times.

Access to a collective autistic wisdom, absent for a lifetime, is a powerful force. Through it we can discover the language and concepts we need to ease our passage towards more congruent identities, but there are no emotional short cuts. Truly understanding and owning autism is something which evolves, I’ve found. Where I was last week is not where I find myself today. In a recent blog post I considered ‘social disability’ as a useful term.  Right now my eureka! is a post-it note on which a version of me seems to have written, I have a neurological condition. The me who wrote it must have been the schoolgirl me trying hard to please at handwriting practice. The note pictured above was written (left-handed) by the artist-advocate me who wants you to know that my neurological condition affects my handwriting. This blog flows directly from my visual research.

My post-it phrase also featured in the blog post about ‘social disability’, but sometimes we bury the lede. I must have written my post-it as an aide memoire. It was waiting for me yesterday on my return from a 12 hour working day (including travel), and today I’ve struggled. This is not ordinary tiredness, this is the ache of overload which I now understand to be neurological at core. So much so that I realise my post-it contains the message I must now front-load, not least to myself.

And with these words I am reminded of all the binaries we seem to peddle in our online lives, in which my lovely post-it could be seen as a pathologising message about autism. This is not my intention, and autism as a cultural identity is something I will also uphold to my final breath – I see no conflict in this duality. I continue to be joyful, and to celebrate my autism unreservedly, but I must develop the means to communicate more effectively about my autistic needs. What’s required is clarity of thought and vision. We can’t truly know what we need until we learn what’s holding us back. It’s all a work in progress.

I’ve worked with many artists and I know how challenging it can be to seek to make autism visible when the narratives surrounding autism remain skewed and contested, but I believe it to be important and fertile ground. For example, I intend to talk and practice more self-care as a result of working on the image above. The act of creating it conjured the idea that one simple thing could have improved my yesterday and can help me in the future. My yellow post-it! I’m now excited to discover what happens when I carry it with me – both literally and metaphorically speaking.

I’m loving this phase of my becoming. My post-it isn’t designed for sympathy, no, no! For me this is a powerful image, brimming with ownership. I’m all for that!

 

 

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