Oh my God, why on earth did I not think of that?! Telling someone like me ‘not to worry’ about something, is the same as telling someone who’s depressed to just ‘cheer up’ (IMO). It’s unhelpful and clearly there’s something much deeper behind it. You may as well tell me to just stop being autistic whilst you’re at it. I wish I could switch off, and worry about things as they happen. But that’s not how I roll.
I am a ‘what if’ kind of gal, because with the life I’ve lived thus far, the ‘what ifs’ always seem to happen. So I can’t help but be anything other than cautious! Of course, ‘walking’ through life with such caution, comes at a cost – not being able to ‘live in the moment’.
Living in the moment has never been easy for me, as I need a plan or a good schedule in place! Do I enjoy things? Yes, but it’s always to a point, because I’m expecting something to go wrong, because it could go wrong! You could say that I’m a complete control freak… I do think that Being carer for both my mother and sister from a very young age is a huge factor in that.
I actually can remember the first time when I realised (rather abruptly), that I need to be prepared for the worse case scenario… because anything can happen within a split second turning a good time into a bad one! Story time; I was around five years old, my mum became a single parent to both me and my (then) three year old sister. On one hot summers day, we went to catch a bus into the city (for reasons I cannot remember). The bus stop was a little walk away from where we lived.. Holding onto my sister’s ‘special’ pushchair (which was made for her, due to her disabilities – which I also remember it resembling a beach deckchair, with its blue and white stripes – Same material, I swear!), we were walking towards said bus stop and suddenly, my mums eyes glazed over and she had this weird look in her eyes… I knew that look and I knew what was coming! She then says “I don’t feel very well”, in a concerned/worried tone, to which immediately I said “mum, we need to get home” (or words to that effect). The walk felt longer on the way back, as I took over the pushing of my sister, whilst mum was the one holding onto it, as I tried to guide us back home to safety – this is where I had a ‘special button’ I could press, which then connects to this machine, which would then put me straight through to emergency services… we had it put in place when my mum became a single parent, as she had (and obviously still does) severe epilepsy. I just needed to get to that button!
We were almost home, just round the corner in fact, when my mum suddenly stopped and froze. Then her eyes then turned white, as they rolled to the back of her head, then her head tilted up towards the direction of the sun. I remember grabbing her arm with both my hands, using all the strength I had, to try and break/direct her fall. ‘Luckily’, there was a brick wall just behind her/us, which she fell back/up against. She then slowly (It felt like slow motion) slid down it to the ground, as she was going into a seizure. I remember the sound of her jumper, scraping down the bricks as her body stiffened and started to convulse. Thats when I also remember, my sister started to cry, due to the commotion of what was going on behind her ‘buggy’ (pushchair), and probably the fact that I was calling out ‘mum’ rather loudly and repeatedly. I remember that feeling of overwhelming panic and fear, home was just round the corner but I didn’t want to go out of sight from my sister and mum, I was always told to never let them out of my sight. So I ran a few steps forward, so I was just in sight/view of peoples homes, and I screamed for help, as loud as I physically could until someone came out. Which they did. An ambulance was called, and both my sister and I waited at a neighbours house until family arrived to take care of us.
At the time I did what I thought was right, but I actually got told off for screaming the way I did, because it “sounded like something really bad was happening”. And apparently I should’ve just located mums keys, which were somewhere on her person, ran round the corner to home, to press ‘the button’, leaving my mum and sister out there on the path out of my sight. Which apparently it would’ve been ok if I did as it ‘wouldn’t have been for long’. Turned out later on (after mum returned home and checked her belongings), that within me just running a few steps forward, having my back towards them for less than a minute (literally seconds), as I got to the point where I stopped and started screaming for help, some absolute cunt of a person (would you call them a person?) had gone past and swiped my mums purse out from her bag, which hung on the handles of my sisters pushchair. So really, If I went fully out of sight, what else could’ve happened?
That feeling that everyone was disappointed in me, but not understanding why because I did what I thought was best/right at the time, yet a bad thing still happened. I’ll never understand why I was even told about the thief, or told off because I caused a ‘unneeded commotion’ – I was a child, taking on an adults role. I didn’t know what I was doing. But it was from that feeling and moment on (it was also the first time my mum had a seizure in front of me without another adult present!), the need to plan and think about the ‘worse case scenario’ increased and inevitably intensified overtime. Of course I blamed myself for that because if I were to of thought about it a bit more, no one would’ve been mad/disappointed in me. Getting things right the first time would become my forever aim. Such a curse really.
Sling the above with the fact that I’ve been autistic this whole time, it’s no wonder why I worry and overthink at the rate I do. Autistic people are renowned for hyper-fixating, and overthinking. It’s just something our brain does automatically. Like breathing!
The bottom line on this is; if you have an over worrying autistic on your hands, the trick is to not tell them to ‘stop worrying about it..’ because naturally, we can’t! And instead listen to them because they may need some help to rationalise a certain situation. Normally (for me), I’m worrying about the things I have no control over, or problems in which I cannot figure out the solution to. So I sometimes need someone to help me get my thoughts into order, see what I can do/change and what I cannot. Unfortunately, worrying is part of who I am, even without the traumatic past!
I hope this sheds some light onto how you should not dismiss worrying as just ‘going on’ and perhaps wonder why they’re going over the same thing, because usually there’s a lot more behind it!
If you’ve read this far, thank you,
until next time,
T
