Second door on the left,
Blue House,
The Under, Oz

14/03/2021

Dearest,

I hope you’re doing ok. The world still feels very unstable after all the *everything* of the last few years. I wish there was an easy way to make things feel less awful.

I’ve had to stop looking at facebook for the moment. I saw a trainwreck in a group I thought was safe where an Autistic woman got absolutely dogpiled and trashed. And one of the admins then made a follow up post where she further trashed her. It looked like it was a really complicated situation where an Autistic person poorly explained themself (as we are wont to do) and then, rather than being approached with compassion and curiosity, was utterly torn to pieces. I was so paralysed by fear I didn’t know how to react, and days later I still don’t know. I feel horribly guilty that I didn’t stand up for her, but I am pretty confident I would also have been misunderstood and attacked. Someone actually said “Don’t pretend you don’t understand. We know you understand.” Fuck. And someone who seemed to be an Autism Mom ™ saying it’s people like her that make it harder for her kids (VOMIT). But I was so stressed out reading it that I don’t know how much I misunderstood, or if I missed something really egregious. Part of me wants to go back and read through it again, but it made me feel so utterly vile the first time and I just don’t think I can put myself through that again.

Today I’m having a total social media free day and trying to catch up on some things I’ve let slip. I sat my exam last week, at last. It is AMAZING how light I feel. It’s like the knowledge that it was hanging over my head prevented me from fully committing to other things. Also, I did really well considering I took the unit so long ago. So now I just need to make it through my thesis. I can do that right?

Of course, my day was going along swimmingly, and then I got an email that completely threw me for a loop. I’m going to have to go and deal with it, because I can’t think about anything else right now. I’m so sorry darling. I’ll try to write again soon.