A passage on passing, masking, and burnout from a great #ActuallyAutistic #OwnVoices book, “On The Edge of Gone”.

The thought hits me out of nowhere. I gasp for breath, tears suddenly right there, pressing behind my eyes, and I no longer know what I’m doing here. I don’t know why I ever thought I could be here. I’m not the kind of person who can sit at her tab all day and smile and work and chitchat. I’m not Dr. Meijer. I’m not Els’s colleagues at the university.

Sometimes I think I could be, and that I have a hard time because I’m lazy, and that the way I’m suddenly staring at the plant in the corner for twenty minutes straight and seeing how many leaves are on a twig and how many twigs are on a branch and if any branches break the pattern – that that’s me looking for excuses. I’ll think that the only difference between me and the rest of the world is that I have no goddamn discipline, and that all of this is in my head, and if I tried, I could fit in and be the productive little cog I ache to be.

I’m not like those kids at the shelter, the ones playing. Not really; not anymore. Maybe I’m not different at all, my autism is just bullshit, and all I am is a failure. I should do more than I am. I should be more than I am.

But if what my head feels like now truly is what other people feel all the time— if everybody I see on the street or on TV really manages this day in, day out –

They can’t be.

The world can’t be that hard.

Source: On The Edge of Gone

Via: GUEST POST – Amy Pond, mental health and me | DoWntime

This is a book about an autistic girl, written by an autistic woman. This is the first book I’ve ever read in my entire life that is about someone like me, someone I really, deeply related to. It’s the first book I’ve ever read with an autistic protagonist that isn’t about autism. It’s about the end of the world, and it just happens to be told through an autistic person experiencing that. And it’s authentic, because this wasn’t written by someone who has studied autism, or who has a child with autism, but by someone who has autism. And this is the first book I’ve ever read that’s like that. I’m sure there are more books like it, but not many. Oh, there’s a wealth of books about autism, often written by parents of autistic children, often incredibly harmful books. Books that treat autism as a disease, that treat autistic people as something other, something not quite human. They treat us as if we don’t have a voice.

Do you know how tiring that is?

On The Edge of Gone made me cry, not because it was a sad book, but because I felt a little bit less alone. I felt seen. I felt like someone understood. A neurotypical person might read On The Edge of Gone and not understand. Or rather, they won’t feel it, not the way autistic people do. Or some autistic people, anyway. We come in many shapes and colours, after all. Not everyone experiences this. But I think that for a lot of us, it will resonate. I know that it did for me. And even if you haven’t experienced what the protagonist of Corinne Duyvis’s novel has, that doesn’t mean you can’t empathise with her. You might not be able to feel what she feels, but you can feel for her. Even if she isn’t ‘normal’.

Source: GUEST POST – Amy Pond, mental health and me | DoWntime