the heretic genetic algorithm

Two band quotes.

I was diagnosed with autism last year. I discovered autism, it discovered me. Whatever. But fairly regularly people will ask me what difference a diagnosis has made to me.

It gives me the grace to accept who I am.

I can't make any purposeful positive change without that. And I accept that too.

That...idea...that mental holding of something tricky. I'm embracing that. I took my kitty for surgery yesterday (a whole 'nother post) and it was stressful and high on admin. I tried to take the easiest road and do a direct charge to pet insurance, but there was a stinking administrative charge. Which I did not grok until payment and collection time. I was waving my arms randomly, when some bitch walks past behind me and tells me, it is on the paperwork yaknow?

And I felt really inadequate. In the past I would have accepted that yeah, I'm pretty retarded with forms. They just form a swimmy blur every time I look at them. When I did expend energy to pick it out, yes. The admin charge is a sentence in bold font.

In two A4 sheets of packed 10 point font of defensive gibberish. And that's the form, I get it. But it isn't exactly user friendly and to be honest, I think that's a them problem.

I think I have some combination of distracted menopausal mum aspect that means some dickish much younger people assume I'm stupid. I'm not. I just gave up on active engagement with a noisy complicated outside world that drains me. My spoons are my own personal currency that I get to choose to use. And "being autistic" cements that.

One thing I really love about this is how much my daughter has my fucking back. She's 15 and a bit of an arse, but she utterly defends my right to be who I am right now.

An example. We went for burritos recently. I love burritos but the ordering process turns my brain to beige. When it came to pay, I wanted to scan my loyalty card and the till scanner was being awful. The lil male douche behind the till kept mansplaining how to scan a QR code to me. And I think he probably misinterpreted me wrestling with feeling like I wanted to punch him with actual genuine confusion about hwo the scan The Thing.

Suddenly the vibe changed. He came round from the till, looked at the scanner, wiped it clean and scanned my card for me. He didn't apologise, but he seemed bent over. Incidentally, I really pity the women who work for him.

What changed?

I just got this weird sense that some 6 foot strip of brick shithouse was becoming pissed at her mum being patronised and had loomed over my left shoulder to stare him down.

I love that she calls me out on shit, but utterly has my back

Today I keep myself safe, still and calm. This morning I quietly count my blessings in the number of heads, the messy beds, the normal grumpy stumble into the day. I am so very aware that there are some today who now don't have this.

And I try to act normal and not to cry.

My child while be 10 years old in just 10 days. A decade of two new people working it out together. This is the most dangerous thing I've ever done, will ever do. This taking my heart out of me and putting it into another to set it flying into my world.

I have never been so vulnerable. And the world has never seemed so unsafe.

When I was a teen, my father didn't let me go to gigs in the neighbouring town in case... I don't know what, actually. Boys, maybe. Almost certainly the same scary unnameable monsters that all parents try to shove down deep in the queasy pits of their stomachs. Now those monsters seem more real - there are kids that won't come home from that gig last night. Kids whose parents gulped down those nameless fears and now cry broken glass tears.

I always swore I'd be braver than my parents and let my kid do those normal teenage things.

Now being a better parent than those before you comes with real terror and risk. And I have seen what losing a child does to you - I saw the light go out in my grandfather's eyes at my father's funeral. All he could do was keep himself still and calm - safety had gone. It put my own grief sharply into place.

A father loses a child. A child loses her father. My child never knows his grandfather. And I remember watching Nick Cave and his wife try to make mystic sense of misty nothings, and swear they will revenge themselves with happiness.

I only pray that we can all be that brave <3

And this prayer I wrote for Ben so that one day when I'm not here, he knows how I thought when I was un-mum. Today, it feels timely in so many ways:

Spurn Point