I Think it’s really over.

I Think it’s really over.

Sometime around a month ago I wrote a piece called Autistic burnout I bid you good day. It was the day I sat in a cafe waiting to interview for a new employment position. Well let’s be honest an employment position.

I talked a lot about the process I had been through in working out that I had been in burnout, and some stuff about that, and the sense of actually coming out of it. And, I think importantly, being in a place where I could take personal action in declaring it over, as it were, bidding it good day.

It was the end of February 2013, the day I walked out of the office of my last real job. I’ve worked out that’s pretty much 4 years and a quarter of time. It’s a long time to be out of work. The longest in my life if you ignore childhood of course.

It’s been quite the ride really. An emotional roller coaster to say the least. At the time that I ended that job, I was in the midst of seriously investigating whether I was or was not autistic. It had been on my mind for some time, I have two identified children, my partner felt I was and would happily tell me and others it was the case. Not in a negative way, just a factual way.

At times if I was struggling with stuff, to work stuff out, my partner would say maybe it is just your Aspergers stuff. This was pre 2013 and pre DSM5 so yes she did use the word Aspergers.

By the time I ended my job with what can only described accurately as an autistic meltdown, I had investigated a number of things read, spoken with psychologists I trusted, adults I knew had been diagnosed, I had taken every online test I could find. The consistent thing was, that everything was pointing to the very likely reality that I was indeed autistic.

I left that office in a very emotional meltdowny state. What followed was a bunch of phone calls and communications with my former boss, which swung on a pendulum of telling me how I was imperative to be part of the team through to bullying me into coming to have coffee and swinging on to threatening me with legal action for daring to call out their tactics as bullying. Well I called it bullying then, and no doubt it was, but I suspect gaslighting me is a more apt description.

I recall awaking to a phone message the following morning with a claim I had hacked the website. I had of course done no such thing.

It was a tumultuous time that marked the beginning of this four year period of unemployment. A four year period of burnout that seemed to be unable to be beaten.

I truly had come to a point of what I thought was no return. That my prospects of a career, of any real work, were beyond me. I had pretty much given up. It just seemed being a visible trans autistic woman advocating publicly placed me in a place that was somehow beyond being employable.

Things change, delightfully so. So much has happened in those four years. They have been really hard in many ways. As I sit here and think about them I am slightly amused, interested, amazed at how this period has been bookended by two events. I am sure I could find other significant things, but these seem to stand out to me in this moment as significant.

The first, less than a week after walking out of that office for the last time, that moment of standing my ground and refusing to be bullied into admitting things I had never done, was finding myself attending an autism diagnosis assessment session.

It was in essence that moment where legitimacy began. That moment, though I didn’t get the results for sometime after that, where I had an answer, the beliefs I formed were not somehow wrong, weird, strange, ridiculous and for want of a better word excuses for not managing myself in the world.

There was as I mentioned a time delay from assessment to results. This was largely due to not having employment and needing to find the funds to actually pay for the assessment. This nevertheless was simply a marking time between completion and results. A strange time, a time of flipping and flopping between absolute certainly it was all in my mind and I had made this whole being autistic thing up, and an inner knowing that it was true, as it has turned out to be.

When I did finally get my results I felt an instant sense of relief. I instantly knew myself better than I ever had, not that my self knowledge and insight had changed, but it had been legitimised. Strangely enough, especially given that I had been very much a proponent of a “Different Not Less” attitude with my children, where I felt a sense of grief, a sense of guilt and a difficulty accepting myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t accept my diagnosis, I knew it was right, but that I had a sense that it did make me less, it made me to blame, the difficulties of my children were suddenly, irrevocably, absolutely my fault.

Thankfully this was a reasonably short period of time and after some months, I launched myself into the online adult autistic community. I learned of many groups, I found my tribe online.

Having this tribe, these people like me, that I could relate to like no others I had ever been able to relate was instructive and supportive in negotiating a period of time that has in many ways been the most difficult of my life.

The second bookend experience, was the experience of being a part of the project team in the running of the AutismCRC Research Academy 2 over weekend just past. Over about the last year, a bunch of us have worked together to bring autistic adults and researchers together in an autistic space. A space where they could learn about research, talk about research, pull apart and put back together research questions.

I recall standing, delivering my content before my tribe and being somewhat petrified, that what I had to say was of no consequence. My fears were groundless and a number of my tribe were greatly appreciative of my words.

The Research academy was an amazing event. Lives were changed in immeasurable ways. Researchers, Board Members, CEO CFO alongside autistic adults as peers, as equals, working together, thinking together, laughing together, playing together.

So much has happened in my life over these last four years. I have learned so much about myself, discovered so much about my community and my autistic culture.

In a sense, I stumbled out of my last job as searching, out of control in a way, nearly diagnosed autistic person. I enter my new job, walking in proudly. Proudly wearing my autism, my transness, in reality myself as I enter a new sector, a new company, a new industry a new kind of everything. But I do it unashamedly as me.

What they see is what they get. And they chose it. It still seems somewhat astounding and amazing that they did, but they did. Throughout the process I was me, I didn’t hide my autism, my transness, none of it.

These hard four years, years that included much joy, much loss, many instructive experiences and absolutely difficult times is finished.

On Monday I walk into my new career, at the door I dust off the disappointment of the past, the failings of the past, the mucking things up in so many ways because I had no clue about my own autistic reality. I walk in those doors dressed and visible wearing my autistic reality with insight and understanding that I didn’t have, an ability to advocate for myself, in order that the work I do will not just be the best for me, but the best for my employers.

These four years I have learned so much, I have changed so much, I have embraced myself in a way I never dreamed possible, and I have this sense that all of that, all of it has been leading to this moment.

I guess you could say I am, like many of my tribe, a late bloomer. But bloom I will, you can bet your blooming life on it.