Tag Archives: autism

Recent Memories, September 2018, 1

17 Monday Sep 2018

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His hazel eyes gazing up at me, crinkled at the corners, so like mine except for the colour, fringed with thick black lashes that belie the pale, wheaty brown, almost blonde, of his jaw-length hair. “Mommy!” he shrieks delightedly, with enough excitement for a boy half his age, “You PRANKED me!” A simple prank, just waiting until he wasn’t looking and tossing a pillow at him, and well worth the risk of upsetting him; he is literally vibrating with joy, his laughter and excited fidgeting causing him to visibly quiver in front of me.

Her still, watchful stare, huge irises a pale ice blue that used to look as if the colour were bleeding into her sclera–she leans into me, and I realise, after a breathless second, that she is leaning against me for a hug. I cuddle her back, I tell her she’s a sweet girl. “Who does Mommy love?” I ask–it’s been a long time since I felt the mood was right, to ask her that question–I’ve timed it well, she smiles a little, and points at herself, using the thumb of her right hand (is she the only person I know, who regularly points with her non-dominant hand?).

They rely so much on non-verbal cues, and I rely so much on explicit, spelled-out, unchanging instructions. How ironic, that one form my autistic spectrum issues should take, is an obsession with words… and she’s non-verbal (not literally, but in the sense it’s usually used, nowadays) and he chatters on about anything and everything, and it’s funny and engaging and he delights me at least as much as I delight him, but there is very little verbal instruction given, between the pair of them.

Every day is a balancing act, and I feel like I lose my balance so often… but actually, I’m better at walking this tightrope than anyone else I’ve ever seen, with the kids.

My own mother would be excellent, of course. She walked a similar tightrope with me, when I used inflection-less, seemingly sarcastic words without any eye contact at all, and she somehow understood that I wasn’t being snide or sarcastic; I was just saying the words, as if reading them from a page in a book, but not acting them at all.

I’m better at the acting part, now. Sometimes I get the inflections right; how very amusing, in a cosmic joke sort of way, that Gabriel especially and even Naomi, more often than you’d believe–the really autistic members of the household, versus me with my probably Asperger’s or HFA, we’ll know soon enough–that the “more” autistic members of our little family, often give me a better idea of how the words ought to sound.

They’re good mimics, like I was/am. Echolalic, though in Nae’s case, not as much as I was (am…). Scripted language, Gabey uses as much scripted language as I ever did, maybe more, but I think his acting is better than mine was. It helps. It all helps. And when they get it wrong, and I see myself in their mistakes, it’s easier to see how to fix it.

Again, this is one of the most constant sources of amusement in my life: by being so unusual themselves, they have made me almost normal… at least on the outside.

Memories, September 2018, 1

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

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He poked me in the face, that first day. D___ had chuckled at something he had said, and I caught D___’s eye and smiled a little, trying to walk a balance between them, and he poked me–4 or 5 times, just under each eye, not quite hard enough to bruise–and I “slapped” his face (not hard enough to leave any mark, never mind a bruise) and told him that if he ever did it again, we were over.

There was the time we were having a good-natured, playful argument, and he picked up a pizza and “playfully” rubbed it into my face. I stood up, walked silently to the shower, and didn’t speak for several minutes. It was in jest, and he hadn’t struck me; it didn’t count, did it?

The times (plural) he followed me from room to room, shouting at me, and when I refused to engage, he loomed over me, using his extra 9 inches of height and exponentially stronger voice to full advantage. One time, he even admitted he was trying to goad me into hitting him.

The same in the car, the raving at me for anything and everything, too many times. Shouting at me for not being a better navigator, until I was sobbing in helpless fury, while he was driving us somewhere. Handing me his phone despite my protests that I can’t read maps–he never offered to show me how, because he’s rubbish at reading them as well, but his vanity won’t let him admit it–and then snatching it back, shouting, “Don’t touch anything!” when I tried to zoom in, to read the street signs.

The car again, ignoring first my pleas to let me out, and later, my warning that if he didn’t either let me out or stop screaming at me, I’d hit him. Eventually I did–the same way I did it the first time, when he poked me, not leaving any signs I had touched him–and he blacked my eye. It was swollen nearly shut for a week, and purple and green for 2 weeks on top of that.

I won’t talk about the time we “had sex” that I mostly don’t remember, when I’d had 100 mg of Sertraline, 300 mg of tramadol hydrochloride plus paracetamol and ibuprofen in the 12 hours before going out, and 4 glasses of red wine in 4 hours, but he was perfectly sober… I remember coming to underneath him, which is so unlike me–why wasn’t I on top, especially drunk, disinhibited?–but I do remember flirting with him in the other room, even brushing my foot across his (fully clothed) crotch, and asking someone else if I should have sex with him… I must have consented, even propositioned him, after an entire summer of explaining over and over again that I wanted to be friends and turning down his advances, AND already having fought off the unwelcome advances of another friend, who told me he needed a friend to talk to, led me around the corner from the doormen of the club, and forced his teeth and tongue into my mouth while he held me, struggling, against a brick wall.

I’m sure that if I’d wanted to say no–after repeatedly begging these 2 “good friends” of mine (and longer-term, better friends of each other) to just BE MY FRIEND over the course of several months–I would have done.

I think he thinks I miss him, and that’s why I had to stop talking to him. I think there’s some part of him that thinks I’m not over him… that might be true enough, but not in the way he thinks.

The only thing I’m not over, is how I could have allowed myself to be used, so many times, and still believed all the bullshit he spouted at me. Was I born that naïve, or did I learn it, somehow? All the signs were there, and he wasn’t the first man to work up to blacking my eye, over a period of months/years… I do not know what I will do, if that ever happens to me again.

Sometimes, statistics are true. Some conditions (ASD, in my case) make you so much more vulnerable than you realise, at the time.

A Link to “Supporting Claimants: a practical guide by Jay Watts”

07 Friday Sep 2018

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This is important to me, and it’s excellent advice for health-and-social-care workers in the UK. It is also (am I giving a trigger warning?) harrowing reading, if you have a little imagination and read it thoughtfully.

I periodically fill these forms in for my own beautiful, beloved children–40-odd pages, covered in questions which instruct me, in various ways: “Tell us, as explicitly as possible, how broken and helpless and developmentally stunted your children are. Give us as many grim details as you can, think of everything you and your children just endure bravely, all the things you just accept and try not to dwell on, in your everyday lives… Now describe that all in excruciating, minute detail, and remember to be honest about the emotional strain caused to both you, and your children.”

The respite is never more than a year or two, before they’re asking me to claim again, answer questions by phone, clarify something. I suffer from anxiety and depression anyway; spending hours fixated on the reality of all the struggles my children face… well. It usually takes me a week or more to complete the forms, and at the end of it, I feel as if the government would prefer me to kill myself and my children too, rather than give us money to live on. That’s not hyperbole or the disordered thinking of a depressed mental state: in a rational frame of mind, regularly taking my antidepressants, after a good night’s sleep and some tea and toast, I genuinely believe most high-ranking officials in this government would prefer our deaths–even by murder/suicide–to our continued survival, as long as the blame didn’t fall on them.

I remember the last telephone conversation I had with the DWP. I was asked if my autistic, non-verbal, self-harming, incontinent overnight (both bowel and bladder) 11-year-old could just change her own nappy, and why did I have to be awake in the middle of the night to help her?

When I described her efforts to clean herself, the things she understands (she needs to be clean, she doesn’t want to smell) and the things she doesn’t understand no matter how many times I show her, walk her through it, remind her (how to clean herself properly, how to make sure the poop is disposed of hygienically) when I spoke of how she sometimes grows frustrated and hits herself during self-care tasks, and how the last time I let her clean herself for a few days, to help her learn, to try to give her a little privacy and independence, she got thrush (a yeast infection, we’d call it back home) from repeatedly, clumsily, uncomprehendingly cleaning poop into her vagina, I broke down sobbing.

I cannot imagine how much worse it would be, were I claiming for myself; like most mothers, I’m willing to suffer intrusive questions and beg for mercy and cajole and plead for my children, in a way that I wouldn’t be able to find the energy for, if it were just to help me. I am unsurprised that, in the face of the increasing harassment of disabled people in this country, suicide rates in the disabled population are rising (and have been, since this party took over the government). Anyway. I digress, or at the very least, I’m growing long-winded.

Perhaps I should have just shared the following link without any introduction; I could write another 750 words on this, and still have more to say, so what was even the point of sharing this much; but it seemed important to tell you, and especially my new readers, why I care so much.

The article I’m linking you to isn’t about some hypothetical, pitiable, but ultimately distant human beings I’ll never have to look at. It’s my own sweet babies, their futures, what would happen to them if something happened to me, it’s about the system that would swallow them up and maybe, maybe look after them–and maybe leave them to their own devices, scared and unsafe and unable to properly clean themselves, each of them a constant fire risk, a risk to themselves when their ungovernable, autistic meltdown rages send them into a fury of self-harm, of dashing their heads against walls, of my little boy trying to hurl himself down the stairs, because (as an actual example) there was an unskippable ad (commercial) that interrupted his favourite YouTube channel.

It is so hard to keep them safe, clean, fed, even when I am with them 24 hours a day. It is natural that I live in a state of recurrent terror of what would happen to them, if I were no longer here; how could they navigate the welfare system, themselves?

http://asylummagazine.org/2018/08/supporting-claimants-a-practical-guide-by-jay-watts/

Mental Health Update, August 2018, 6

30 Thursday Aug 2018

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A little dip is to be expected; school starts again soon; ringing about transport (where is the letter we should have received a week ago?) new uniforms, new shoes, and psyching myself up to actually wake before 7:30 each morning, all take their toll.

My sweet babies, my darlings. They’re nervous about going back, as well. Summer flew past so quickly this year, and they lost me for a fortnight of it. Guilt will not help me to parent them any more successfully–rather, it is almost certainly a hindrance.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

The playground, today. Gabe’s friend remembering us despite the long break, and walking us home, after delighting Gabriel with his antics for the best part of an hour. (What does it say when another child remarks on my boy’s energy levels? He is so ALIVE, he is so beautiful.)

My precious, tempestuous girl, so far into puberty and adolescence now, so much a teenager in every way but actual years, wanting Squeezy, and letting me comfort her.

Being a 12-year-old girl is hard–I know, I remember, I can even now be tripped up by the things that happened when I was her age–I wish I didn’t empathise *quite* so much, some days. I worry that my empathy is sometimes excessive, and makes it worse for both of us… and yet. She let me do Squeezy, today. She let me help, when she was distressed, and she always has, really. Perhaps I’m not so terrible at being her mother.

It is typically easier with Gabriel, provided I have the energy to engage fully… but it’s just as rewarding, special, important, to interact with Naomi. I’m not trying to convince myself of that–I know it, in a way I know few other things–but I worry. If she ever finds this blog, what will she think?

The main thing I know of both my children, is that I love them more than my own life. Do they know it, though?

How many times have I said “worry” (or obliquely referred to my anxiety) in this one post? I should’ve made time for an entry yesterday, mayhap.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Go do a mindfulness. Don’t try to get out of your head–that’s where you live, and don’t you know it–but you can try for a little equanimity inside your head. Think (but not too deeply) about 2-3 weeks ago, and be grateful. This is imperfect, but it’s so much better than it was, and it will get even better again.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

At this point in time, a little dip is to be expected.

Mental Health Update, August 2018, 5

27 Monday Aug 2018

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Better again, today, overall. The shadow of How I Felt Yesterday And The Day Before and the Day Before That, etc, is humming a sly, mocking tune under its breath, and I will have to stop and listen at some point (I know by now that it will trip me up, if I go too long without acknowledging what it has to say) but for now, I am safe. For now, I can breathe a little, and just take a day or two to feel like “myself”–the myself that is, for the most part, relatively content.

One good thing, I will write One Good Thing: Naomi and Gabriel, the play-acted scene where Spin was arrested. I imagine that makes no sense to anyone who wasn’t there; but I *was* there, and it’s worth a lot of misery and heartache and even some terror, just to hear them playing together.

You see, Amanda? You see. I am willing you to see.

Things always get worse, again–you won’t feel this peaceful forever–but then, they always get better, again.

Did you think, when she was 4 and had lost all her words, and he was 2 and had never so much as babbled “da” or “ma” that they would act out a scene, using full sentences and different voices and laughing with joy at each other’s antics? You didn’t dare hope, and yet, here it is.

It is objectively good, that your children enjoy each other’s company. Even when *you* don’t feel it, even when you’re too lost in your own despairing ruminations and unrelenting terrors to feel anything but pain, their relationship is A Good Thing.

And today, you lucky girl, you *could* feel it.

Posting More; My Son, 1

15 Tuesday May 2018

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It looks as if I’m posting a bit more, these days; I can live with that. The day will come when I actually finish one of my half-completed/barely-started novels, and I’ll want to have an audience standing by *wink, but I’m semi-serious*

I thought I’d talk about my son, today; I can hear him in the other room, shouting excitedly and unreservedly about what’s happening on the Wii, rarely making the clearest, most linear sense, but always manufacturing joy as if it’s a thing that can be bottled; and he’s so loud and so animated that, if he keeps it up too long, the neighbours will likely bang on the wall.

I don’t care, to be honest…. the kids have lived in this house their entire lives, not counting weekends at their dad’s, and none of my neighbours has once asked me if I needed help raising 2 autistic kids (including during the period after I asked their dad to leave, and I was juggling a 10-month-old and almost-3-year-old with severe autism by myself, 5-6 days a week, on 3-4 hours of sleep a night…) bang on the walls, you small-minded, compassionless wretches.

Despite living next door and sharing a wall with us (terraced housing) you weren’t there, when my babies were actual babies, were you? You don’t remember a thing from when my 2 were tiny, and it was all I could do to keep them happy and healthy and safe. But *I* still remember that my Gabriel didn’t make a single purposeful sound (no babbling, no nothing, other than laughing or crying) until he was 3-years-old, and that his first “word” was, “1, 2, 3.” In a week, Gabriel could count to 10 and read the numbers. A week after that, he said, “Issa a dack. Wah wah wah.”

When he spoke for the first time, we thought it was a genuine miracle, befitting a child with an angel’s name… after all, by then, his sister (aged 5, at the time) had stopped speaking altogether; to this day, I believe it was only his determination to interact with her, that got her to begin trying to speak, again. (Nearly 12 now, she’s still functionally non-verbal, and far, far behind even her peers with complex needs, when it comes to spoken language–without my son’s encouragement, I very much doubt if she would speak at all. She didn’t, for the best part of 2 years, age 3 to age 5.)

That’s Gabriel, though. Whatever my feelings about the almost ludicrously fundamentalist way I was raised, the idea that I was right to name him after an angel persists. Even now, almost 10 years old, he is made of weather that’s mostly sunshine, full of bounce and energy and enthusiasm, and even when his skies are stormy, all he wants is to feel better, to be helped, to be better himself.

For my daughter, he can get her to smile and play when no one else can. I didn’t mean to have him be her caretaker; but it’s a role he seems happy to fulfil, and she reciprocates in the ways that she can. *She* might get cross with him, but woe betide anyone who tries to hurt her little brother… she finds her voice then, if the words still elude her.

For me, he’s everything that made parenting a little lighter. She was every profound and worthy and solemn feeling I’d ever had, rolled into one; he was no less deeply loved, but those same feelings were lit from within, by the light he generates simply by being himself. Between the pair of them, my light and my shade, my extrovert and my introvert, my morning sun and my evening star, they have taught me how to be a mother.

One Post a Month–My Daughter

26 Thursday Apr 2018

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Look at my blog. I haven’t looked in any depth, but I feel sure I’ve noticed this trend on numerous occasions, and it certainly holds true for this month and last month.

What is it that makes things seem so much sharper (things past or present, or future worries) in this week of the month, every single month? I have very regular periods… I’m guessing it’s therefore something to do with my menstrual cycle. For whatever reason, at this point in the month, I feel more creative, but also more sensitive. I’m actually not hugely productive; I’m too busy trying to quietly deal with all the stuff that hurts me all the time, but is worse this week.

Tonight, I was lucky. My daughter (I’ve got to stop calling her my little girl–she’ll be 12 soon, and autism or no autism, she’s becoming a woman so fast the changes are more visible each month) was hysterically upset, self-harming, and saying she hated us all and wanted to live somewhere else… but she calmed down relatively quickly. I asked her to lie down in my bed, turned the big light off, and rubbed her back and shoulders and then her head (which she’d been hitting) as I suggested ways to make her feel better. I told her some stories about what she was like as a baby (she loves that, for now at least) and after a while, she felt safe again and went back to her room. Later, she came back to sit with me, and I wrote her some limericks (not THAT kind of limerick; a child-friendly limerick about her toy goat, another about her brother’s toy goat, another about her dad’s cat, etc) and it was glorious to see that she understood what I meant when I explained about an A, A, B, B, A rhyme scheme.

I don’t have any particular expectation that she’ll remember anything about rhyme schemes tomorrow, or be able to sound out one herself, even with prompting; but I don’t have any expectation that she won’t, either. She is the queen of keeping herself to herself, especially if she thinks she might have to demonstrate her learning before an audience (a prospect which visibly terrifies her) and so, as with so many things in our lives, we’ll have to wait and see.

There’s something ironic in the fact that one of the few sentences my daughter can utter, even in extremes of despair or stress when other words have vanished from her grasp, is a vehement and slightly guttural, “I HATE waiting!” Oh, Naomi. I know you do, baby. I know. And we’ve been waiting all your life, to see if you’ll catch up to other kids, to see what your diagnosis will be, to see if you’ll ever talk again, to see how many of the words might eventually find their way back to you.

No. That’s wrong. I won’t take her successes away from her–the words didn’t just fly back of their own accord, she went out and searched for them, and found all the ones she lost and some more besides. If she has fewer words at her disposal than most 5-year-olds, and fewer still when she’s in distress, that’s still thousands of words more than she had when she was 3, when ALL the words had disappeared. But I digress.

Lucky. I am so, so lucky. She and her brother have been my joy for so long, even with all the worry and fear and heartache being a mother causes, I can’t remember what joy was from before they got here. Did I ever truly feel it? Maybe as a very small child, when it was mostly just me, my own mother, my baby sister, and our dog (Pepper) and our cat (Miss Molly) and my dad was mostly not there, but sometimes there, and he didn’t *always* shout at Mama, and sometimes my Mimi (my dad’s mom) would let me come over and she would feed me a whole bowl of blueberries, deliciously cold from the fridge and sprinkled with sugar, and I knew I was her favourite grandchild and that everyone who met me loved me and thought I was clever and special.

But since those days–which came to an abrupt halt the summer I was 3–the truest joy I have felt began with the birth of my children. From the moment she arrived, I have loved Naomi more than I thought it was possible to love another human being, and I genuinely thought I loved my parents and siblings and close friends with all of my heart… I was wrong. I didn’t know. Naomi taught me unconditional love, and I am so lucky for having her.

If I could change one thing in the whole world, though, I would make it so that *she* could be the one who feels lucky… and I don’t have any way to do that. I guess she’ll have to keep waiting.

Pregnancy…?

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

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So.

I’m now married, and just like that (not remotely “just like that”) I’m kinda sorta okay basically planning to have a 3rd child.

You may be able to ascertain from this statement, that I have 2 children already. Or, if you’ve ever read my blog before, you might know this fact already. You may also be aware that both of my children–one girl, one boy–are autistic, that my girl is the more severely affected, and since my kids’ diagnoses, I’ve more or less accepted the fact that I’m probably on the spectrum as well.

I’m also married to the son of an engineer; I almost never do this, but there’s some interesting reading on that subject:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1362361397011010

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/autism-experiment-reveals-people-in-technical-professions-are-more-likely-to-have-autistic-traits-a6719956.html

Click to access f49917d08fc12d8f8b85a8708017a11046a1.pdf

So. So, so, so.

Do I just *want* another autistic child? You must be asking yourself that question; I know I would be, in your place. The answer (answers, even) could be explained in many different ways, with a lot more background detail, but here’s the summation:

I want more kids–I want to have a child with the love of my life–and if said child happens to be autistic, well, it’s not like I’m ill-equipped to deal with that eventuality. Experts by experience, that’s the en vogue term, I believe… I’ve been doing this for over 11 years now (34 years, if we’re counting my obvious-in-hindsight experiences of social ostracization and issues with Theory of Mind, growing up and as a young adult). If experience can make you an expert, I am one.

And my kids go to a great school; they’re offering parents a chance to come take some workshops in sensory skills, basic Makaton, Numicon, etc etc etc, over the next couple of months, so in a few weeks, I could be even more skilled at parenting autistic kids… and. Even if I weren’t, I mean, I’m autistic myself. I’m seeing this in a pretty black/white way, and I’ve come down on the side of, “better another autistic kid, than no kid with the love of my life/no mini-husband/no one last chance to do it better, now that I understand the likely challenges we’ll face”.

I think I’ve made up my mind. If you know many autistic folk, or just one autistic person reasonably well, you’ll know what that means.

I’ll post as soon as I know I’m pregnant, alright?

And for my next post, I’ll talk about coming off my meds in preparation for gestation (look at that, it’s an approximate rhyme). Sounds fun, right?

Y’all wish me luck.

Update: Marriage Soon

15 Sunday Oct 2017

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Before I talk about my new guy, a little background:

At the start of this year, I was with a guy who blacked my eye the week before Christmas, who continually made snide comments about my children, who regularly believed the very worst interpretations of my actions, who shouted at me and belittled me virtually every time I had the audacity to disagree with him… I remember lying on his couch, so many afternoons in January and February (because I was too lonely and unhappy to lie in the bed with him at night, so I was trying to get sleep during the day, sometimes skipping lectures at uni to do so) and listening to this song on repeat:

All I wanted, was someone who made me feel that way–someone who would feel that way about me. It sounds macabre, but this was the only song that would settle me, late last year/early this year. It was the only adequate lullaby, for sadness like mine… and you can call that maudlin purple prose if you want, because it is maudlin purple prose–it’s also true.

Then–I swear to all the gods that ever were–in February, on Valentine’s Day no less, my stepdad killed himself. Fella-who-hates-my-kids came to the States to hold my hand and whatnot, and he *loved* my sister’s (neurotypical, or near enough) kids. It just drove the point home, in a way I could no longer ignore–kid-hater didn’t hate ALL kids, he just hated MINE.

Because they’re autistic. Like that’s *their* fault.

I had no idea what to do, or how to feel, to be honest with you. But I came home from the States feeling closer to filling my pockets full of stones and walking into the ocean than I have in years. I spent 2 weeks, again, listening to the Death Cab song on repeat, pining for my kids while I was at uni, and trying not to think about the asshole lying in bed in the other room.

Then–at some friends’ Stag and Hen Night–a miracle occurred.

Mood Diary–A Recent Entry!

12 Thursday Jun 2014

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This started out as a mood diary entry from a couple of days ago, but once I got into the swing of it, I altered it a little for public consumption.

The fact that I even need to *do* a Mood Diary tells me a lot about how this individual affects me; I’ve been regulating my moods without the help of a diary for over a year, now. (By the by–I originally began using the diary not long after “meeting” this guy… again, this tells me a lot. Anyways, the entry:

Mood–a 4, maybe. Alternating between wanting to cry, and wanting to strangle someone with my bare hands.

Mostly the latter, to be fair.

I’ve just been advised (by someone who continually paints me as the villain of his entire life, up to the point of blaming me–someone he’s only ever “met” online–for his poor performance at university, his insomnia, his mood swings, etc etc) not to give in to Karpman Drama Triangles, in which he’s cast as the perpetrator, I as the victim, and my fella as the rescuer/hero.

It’s the hypocrisy that gets me with him, every time.

How can someone who’s blamed me for everything from their life-long insomnia to their recent academic performance actually have the gall to accuse me of casting them as a scapegoat?

In fairness, he has an ASD; and since he refuses to talk about it, get coping strategies for it, or even acknowledge it (even to his healthcare providers) I understand that his mind blindness and lack of self-awareness will be at crazy heights. Additionally, his skills at projection are unparalleled–there’s nothing he won’t accuse someone of, if he’s done it himself. And I get it, at least in theory; if you won’t even glance at yourself, there’s no way you can notice the details of what you look like or how you behave. In practice… I don’t get how anyone can be so blind.

Me, I look at him, and I see what I could have become, if I refused to take responsibility for my actions, refused to accept my own social awkwardness, refused to acknowledge that sometimes I get the wrong end of the stick (and if I were blisteringly, eternally angry about my situation, AND thought it was someone’s fault but never mine)… the one good thing about meeting this person is, and always has been, that he illustrates very clearly the potential flaws in my personality, and gives me excellent examples of how not to behave.

(And after this point, I’d realized I was going to post:)

That, and sometimes he’s so ridiculous, you can’t help but laugh at him. My sense of humour has saved me from despair more times than I can count.

Anyways, I think I’ll be posting about this guy a few more times. In the interests of protecting his privacy (he once threatened to sue someone because they’d told me he has an ASD) I’m going to give him a pseudonym. Henceforth, in my blog, he shall be known as “Peevin’ Larvae”.

That’s because he’s always peeved about something, and he’s emotionally stunted, ergo, a larva; but he has mood swings so often, the plural makes more sense. So. Peevin’ Larvae. More on him to come soon… I might do a comic strip, if I can figure out a way to condense one of his 2-page-long monologues into 4 or 5 sentences.

And if I learn how to draw. Lol.

PS In a Karpman Drama Triangle, I’d cast myself as the rescuer, just for the record. It’s something I’m working on.

http://coachingsupervisionacademy.com/thought-leadership/the-karpman-drama-triangle/