CW – trauma event after the autumn leaves paragraph

It’s the little things that evoke such strong feelings in me at the moment, and the strangest little things. Some of these feelings sit easily in my heart and soul, whilst others are literally experienced as a large painful lump in my throat. I initially thought that I might have a recurrence of my totally removed thyroid cancer, until someone else told me how they experienced their grief as a lump in their neck/throat. Jane would have told me not to be so silly and then spent half an hour explaining to me why it was so unlikely that my thyroid would grow back, having been totally removed.

My autism helps me to keep my life in neat little boxes most of the time. My whole self is kept in these boxes and I move from one to another depending on context, much like some people have a different handbag for different outfits. For me, my autism also compartmentalizes experiences, memories and a huge amount of information. I imagine my brain like a giant filing cabinet (Mary Poppins could fit a lamppost in her bag, so I can have a metaphorical giant filing cabinet in my head). Some of the filing cabinets are locked and others are familiar and well loved.

The intensity of feelings moment to moment has rendered my boxes and filing cabinets not quite redundant, more too slow to file or box each experience as it occurs. This is both freeing and uncomfortable. It has enabled me to be less contained and far more expressive, but also left me bereft and lost at times.

This morning, it was cold. I got up, fed the dog, Chico, and then went back to bed. Chico snuggled up, taking up as much of the bed as he could and went back to sleep. A while later he woke up and decided to jump up and down all over me and then lick my face. I just felt like he wanted to play so I stuck my hand out of the duvet, which made him leap around even more excitedly. I had a moment of joy in the simple interaction, which was repeated later in the park as he leapt around in the autumn leaves.

The contrast with the horror I experienced today as I watched a car hit a cyclist, the bike fall to the ground and the cyclist arc through the air and then tumble down. I stopped, parked and rushed over to help, forgetting that I can’t do anything because it wasn’t me that was the Dr. The car had also stopped, the cyclist got up, was able to walk and talk fine and said he was ok. I went back to the car and bawled. If Dr Jane had been there she would have insisted on checking him out. I did strongly suggest he go to his GP to get checked out… To see why Dr Jane would have helped see this article from The Press in New Zealand. Arohanui Jane.