My Christmas Debt
… I have no spoons
Just a short update, following my last post about loving yet dreading Christmas. It happened. Over the festive period, I ran out of spoons. Worse than that, I was in debt.
Whilst ‘enjoying’ the break, my lovely lady and I watched Penguins of Madagascar. One of those lovely easy to watch films, with charm and humour. Now this might sound strange to you, but this film led to an epiphany.
There is a scene at the end involving a snow globe, where the child gives it a vigorous shake. The octopus inside (seriously!) is bounced around and dazed. It dawned on me, at that moment, that this was how I was feeling.
I felt like someone had shaken me up in a snow globe.
I was not the person I usually am. I was discombobulated (I love that word!) and struggling to keep myself grounded. Everything around me was different, fuzzy, and blurred. I couldn’t get to grip with anything, it was all chaotic and out of my control.
I had simply run out of spoons.
Once you run into a deficit of spoons, things get difficult. In my case, I get irritable, non-verbal, upset, and need to retreat into a safe sensory place. I’m unable able to mask as effectively as I usually can. I want, or rather need, to press the pause button on life.
I eventually had to shut down for a couple of days, slept loads and did very little until I finally found enough spoons to get back my sense of normality.
This annual cycle is just one side of living with autism, unseen except by those close to us.
