A Bit of News
I don’t know if it’s an autism thing or not, but I find it difficult (i.e. immensely infuriating) when I’m expected to tell people the same thing on a loop in different scenarios. When I would come home from uni for the weekend I would dread going into my hometown or a supermarket in case I bumped into anyone I knew who might want to ask me questions about my life away from home. I know it’s what people do, and it’s meant to be polite etc but once I’ve told one or two people the same thing, I get a sort of block in my brain that makes me start shutting down if I have to talk about it anymore. Therefore, I am resorting to waffling on the internet to get a message across in the hopes that a lot of people who know me will read it and, in the unlikely scenario that I’ll see anyone while I’m out and about, I can talk about other things instead…
I genuinely never thought that I’d ever go back to Sunderland, I’ve never been back since I left 6 and a half years ago. That’s not a comment on the city itself, I just have a lot of feelings about my time there from 2013 to 2017 that have made it hard for me to consider even a quick drive through. I’m going to have to get past that though because I’m going back there to do my Masters degree in October!
I’ve mentioned many times before that I wanted to go on to postgraduate study, but I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do or where to do it. In the end, I realised it would make most sense for me to do something Sociology related because my undergraduate degree was in that field (Community and Youth Work Studies) and it’s also something that I enjoy learning about. I started considering my options and decided that I’d go back to Sunderland and study their MSc in Inequality and Society. This time around though, I won’t be moving over there to live while I study; I have chosen to do the course on a part-time basis so I can travel over for one day a week.
It obviously helps that I’ll get an alumni discount on my course fees but that’s not the only reason I chose to go back to the same university. Despite the negative, anxiety inducing things that come to mind when I think of Sunderland, I did have a good time there and I met some wonderful people. One of the main things that I keep getting excited about is going back to Roker and the beach that was a few minutes’ walk away from the flat I lived in for a year after graduating. I went on many lovely dog-spotting walks along the seafront and could feel peaceful even when my mind was not being kind to me.
By the time I start my MSc it will have been just over 7 years since I moved back home to West Cumbria and therefore last stepped foot in Sunderland. When I left, I didn’t do it with the intention of never going back, I just got to the point where it felt impossible that I ever would. I’ve been to Newcastle plenty of times over the last few years, but I never had any issues with Newcastle, I didn’t feel like I always had to be on high alert in case I bumped into someone I really didn’t want to see. In Newcastle I don’t worry that I’ll be walking past places that spark memories of being followed or of times when I’d been forgotten so was walking home with a brave face on. But I think it’s time to make some new memories to blunt the effects of the old ones.
So, if you have any recommendations for stationery (pens, pencil cases, that sort of thing), little wheelie cases, or just general advice on doing a Masters, don’t hesitate to get in touch! And if you live in or near Sunderland and we know each other/are mutuals on Instagram, maybe we can meet up for chatting and cake?
My Top Books of 2022
Happy New Year (plus 1 week) everyone! Once again, I haven’t written anything for months because I let myself believe that no one would want to read what I had to say… Anyway, as is now tradition (at least in my brain) I am bringing you a rundown of my favourite reads from 2022.
My overall reading trend for the year was a bit skewed because I was trying to get through the piles of crime/thrillers that have been passed on to me via my mam’s inadvertent book club (she swaps books with my great-aunt and some of our family friends but only books that we don’t think we’ll read again and not any that have been bought as gifts). It’s an ongoing process but the stacks are somewhat smaller. I did, however, manage to read 42 books which was much better than in 2021, and it surpassed my target of 36. I made an effort to read more non-fiction this year and borrowed quite a few books from the library on the theme of sociology because I *think* I’ve decided that’s what I want to do for a Masters (I need to actually start applying now so any tips would be greatly appreciated!). I also discovered another tracking app called StoryGraph which allowed me to transfer my reading data from GoodReads and has a cool graph section that breaks down your reading stats and makes my little autistic brain buzz! I’m planning to do a full post about StoryGraph so I’ll go into more detail on it then. I’m also fully intending to a series of posts about my favourite authors, the ones that I’ll read anything from.
I won’t go into too much detail for each one of these, otherwise we’ll be here until next year but, in no particular order of favouritism (simply the order I read them during the year) here are my top books of 2022:
Call Down the Hawk – Maggie Stiefvater
I have loved Maggie Stiefvater for probably 13 or 14 years, and I roped my dad into going to Manchester with me in 2013 to get some of my books signed by her when she visited the UK! Call Down the Hawk is the first book in her Dreamer Trilogy which follows on from the events of the Raven Boys series. CDtH felt to me a bit more grown up than all of Maggie’s other books and, as someone who has grown up reading her work, it felt right that that should be the case. I love how all of the fantasy elements in CDtH just seamlessly intertwined with the real world so that it felt like that was just how things were, that it was just common knowledge that people can pull things from their dreams and create chaos or beauty wherever they go.
This was the first book I read last year, and it set my brain on the right track for rediscovering my passion for books and reading!
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
This had been on my TBR for a while after seeing good reviews online. While I found myself wishing there was more to the story and wanting a few extra chapters to round things off, I think the writing style and character development makes it totally worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed the voice of the main character and how, as a child, she was extremely deadpan about things that seem bonkers to someone on the outside looking in.
One of my favourite parts of the book was when Jeanette (the main character who is named after the author, there’s an intro in my copy where she talks about naming characters after herself) receives a handmade night shirt from a family friend except, the neck hole is the same size as the armholes so she has to really yank it to get it over her ears. This results in some hearing issues, but her parents don’t believe that there’s anything wrong even though Jeanette tells them she cannot hear them for weeks. Eventually, another family friend sees her in the street and realises there’s something going on and takes her to the hospital where the ear problem is fixed. For some reason I found this very funny, probably because I love hearing about all the ridiculous incidents people experience as young children that adults tend not to believe because they’re so preposterous but are 100% true.
There are also some serious moments in the book, particularly towards the end, where Jeanette has to deal with her mother’s homophobic views and how she tries to “fix” her with religion that could be triggering for some readers.
Phone at Nine Just to Say You’re Alive – Linda Hart
I picked this up at a second-hand book shop in Carlisle a while ago as research/inspiration for something I’d like to write. Published in 1995, t’s a real-life account of being in a mental health unit from the point of view of someone who actually worked on the ward she was placed on. It looks at the methods used to treat people and makes you wonder how appropriate it was for Linda Hart to be on a ward with previous clients and colleagues. I enjoyed the straightforward way she wrote about her experiences and the vulnerability at having to rely on people who don’t fully understand what’s going on inside your head.
There is mention of suicide and intrusive thoughts so, although there are light moments, it is quite a heavy read.
Drama Queen – Sara Gibbs
I’d seen people from the online neurodivergent community talking about Drama Queen since before it was released so it was a much anticipated read for me. It’s Sara Gibbs’ account of finding out she was autistic at the age of 30 and then looking at events from her life that just make sense now that she knows what’s going on with her brain. Although Sara’s experience of autism is different from mine in many ways (because that’s how it works, if you’ve met one autistic person then you’ve met one autistic person), there were so many times while I was reading that I just felt so seen! I wanted to laugh at some of the things she described not because they were funny, usually they were pretty serious and traumatic, but because they were so relatable to my own childhood experiences.
Sara has written about the experience of late-diagnosis and the impacts it has on our lives in such a way that I wanted everyone to read her book. I bought it for two friends for their birthdays and will continue to recommend it to people for as long as I can in my mission to get neurotypical people to understand the many faces of autism from the point of view of actually autistic people.
Unsettled Ground – Claire Fuller
I read Claire Fuller’s first book, Our Endless Numbered Days, when I was at university and from that moment, I knew that I would read anything that she wrote! Unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten around to doing that until last year when I read another of her books: Unsettled Ground. Her writing style is so beautiful, her characters are wonderful, and she really knows how to make the environment come alive.
Unsettled Ground is very different to Our Endless Numbered Days in terms of the plot but there are a lot of similarities in the main themes. Families and the difficult relationships within them are key to both books as well as the secrets kept by people who the younger characters trusted and how they shaped everyone’s lives through the story.
Her Every Fear and The Kind Worth Killing – Peter Swanson
OK, so I know this is more than one book, but I wanted to group them together as I have very similar feelings about both of them. These books were from the piles on the edges of my shelves from my mam’s accidental book group and I don’t think I would have necessarily chosen them in the bookshop if I was buying them for myself. My mam read them just before the summer holidays and told me she thought I’d enjoy them, so I gave them a go and I’m pleased I did. They were both easy to read and had decent plots and writing. I read them both in less than a week because they were fast paced and didn’t require too much emotional effort on my part.
If I had to choose a favourite of the two, I think I’d have to go with The Kind Worth Killing because, even though she was a murderer, I developed a particular fondness for Lily, the main character. Not to mention the stomach-drop moment right at the end of the book!
Welcome to Your Life – Bethany Rutter
If you’ve been here since fairly early on (I doubt anyone has but you never know), then you’ll have seen me recommending Bethany’s old blog and her books have been in my “top books of …” posts for the last few years. In 2022, she released her first novel aimed at the adult market (as opposed to her others which are from the Young Adult genre) and it was just as good as, if not better than her first two books.
I love reading books with unapologetically fat characters but unfortunately, there aren’t many of those around. Thankfully, Bethany is doing God’s work and bringing us great fat representation!
Little – Edward Carey
Another book on the TBR for a while, I borrowed Little from the library and for some reason just totally blanked the fact that it’s about Madame Tussaud until the last quarter of the book after thinking the whole time that there must be some sort of link (insert face palm emoji here). It took me a while to read but I think that was more to do with me also reading a non-fiction book from the library at the same time rather than it being a comment on the book’s quality.
Little has elements of the gothic, there’s a whole host of strange and wonderful characters, and you just can’t help but want the main character, Little, to come out as a winner in the end.
Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People – Frances Ryan
Another library book, Crippled looks at the state of Britain’s capacity and willingness (or lack thereof) to look after our disabled population and the conditions in which disabled people live even in this day and age. I was already aware of a lot of the harrowing issues the disabled community faces, but this book really drove home the dire situations they’re being forced to exist in because the government and media are intent on demonising them.
I usually struggle to take in information when I’m reading some non-fiction books, especially ones with statistics and that aren’t memoir style, but I found this easy to read and process. I highly recommend that everyone read Crippled no matter what your job is or your standing in society.
The Shape of Darkness – Laura Purcell
Laura Purcell is another author whose work I will always pick up when something new is released. She is a queen of gothic and spooky writing, and I would put The Shape of Darkness up there with The Silent Companions as one of my favourite books by her. It had me second guessing all the way to the end and I still don’t know who I believe in terms of one of the main story arcs.
Solitaire, Radio Silence, and I Was Born for This – Alice Oseman
I’m cheating again here by mentioning multiple books by the same author but it’s my blog and I can do what I want. I read Loveless by Alice Oseman in 2020 when it first came out and knew I would read anything else by her. It then took me 2 years to purchase more of her work because when I go into a bookshop, I get distracted by all the books and very rarely come out with everything I went in for. I finally got around to reading Solitaire, Radio Silence, and I Was Born for This as my final 3 books of 2022. I got excited by the crossovers of characters and the little call-backs to certain details from Solitaire in Radio Silence and I Was Born for This. As a result, I had to go back and read Loveless again as my first book for this year to see if there were more crossovers/call-backs that I obviously didn’t know about the first time I read it (there are).
Generally, Alice Oseman’s writing is beautiful, and all their books have amazing character driven plots where the characters are wonderfully diverse! Even though they’re written for a YA audience, I would recommend that anyone and everyone should read Alice’s books because, not only do they have great representation, but they also feature valuable life lessons that you’re never too old to learn.
Here ends my 2022 book rundown. I hope you enjoyed the journey and added to your TBR along the way. If I don’t post my series of author recommendations soon, please can someone pester me about it because I very much need to get back into writing!
Go forth and read, read, read!
Gemma
Letting Myself Be Me
It’s just over a year since I received my official autism diagnosis. Obviously, I’m still the same person because I’ve always been autistic and having a professional confirm that doesn’t make it any more real or valid however, in the last year and a bit I’ve been letting myself be a truer version of me. I guess it’s because of the ableism in society that I felt I had to have that “official” label before unmasking in more situations, it made me feel that others would want me to verify my autistic-ness in order to behave in a way they consider to be autistic. Even though I (and many others) speak out against the use of functioning labels, I still experience people’s negative views and expectations based on the version of me they see on a regular basis. I still have to hear people saying things like “ah well, those higher on the spectrum usually are like that…” and have people telling me they disagree with my real-life experience of autism when they themselves are not autistic. I’m pushing back against the misconceptions and microaggression as best I can but it does get tiring and disheartening so, if you’re not autistic, we’d really appreciate it if you could listen to us and give some constructive support.
Anyway, let’s run through some of the things I’ve been allowing myself to do (or not as the situation might be) in order to be a brighter version of myself:
Saying no to things that make me uncomfortable/sad/angry and telling people that I am autistic and therefore not comfortable with the thing they just said and/or did – for a long time I would just go along with things other people wanted to do or expected of me because I didn’t want to upset them or cause any hassle. I would also just let people say things that I disagreed with or that made me uncomfortable because I didn’t want them to think I was trying to impede their freedom of speech. That’s not to say I wouldn’t stand up for things I believed in, I just wasn’t great at stating my boundaries. One huge example if this was me continuing to go to laser quest when I was at university even though I didn’t really like it and it make me anxious. I wanted to fit in and to make friends but I would increase the likelihood of burnout. I finished university almost six years ago (absolutely unacceptable tbh!) and I have grown my sense of self and my ability to express my boundaries but in the last year I’ve been making more of an effort to do this.
Finding out what things bring me true joy – for instance, I have been making more of an effort to write things by hand and to write in my notebooks/journals because the action of writing calms me down and I like using my wide array of stationery. I also really like the sound and feeling of notebook pages when they’ve been written on and flicking through a lot of handwritten pages. On the flip side of this, I’ve been making executive decisions regarding the things that I don’t like. In the last year I’ve come to realise that I don’t actually like pears, they often taste like the smell of nail varnish remover and they’re always either too hard or too soft with either no juice or ALL the juice. Not to mention the weird grainy texture.
Using more stimming/sensory soothing when I’m anxious/stressed – I already did stim but I didn’t realise that’s what I was doing. Common stims for me include wriggling my toes and/or fingers, tapping my thumbs along each of my fingertips in a rhythm that gets quicker the more stressed or anxious I am, and fiddling with pens or other things that are to hand. Stimming gives me something to focus on and I’ve started taking one of those hair bobbles that looks like a spring (and which isn’t meant to leave a mark in your hair when you take your ponytail out) with me so I can twist it and run it through my hands rather than just tapping on the table.
Re-watching Stath Lets Flats – as you may have read in my previous post, the TV series Stath Lets Flats has been a comforting companion for me since November last year. I’ve watched all three series twice which is something I wouldn’t have done previously; I would have made myself wait until a new series came out (fingers crossed there will be one) and then re-watched the previous series to refresh my memory.
Not pushing myself to finish reading a book I’m not enjoying just for the sake of finishing it – I used to always finish books even if I hated all the characters, the writing was bad, or the story didn’t interest me but now I let myself just not finish them. Some books don’t start out great but get better towards the end so I do give them a chance but if I’m not bonding with the characters (e.g. if they’re extremely rich people who complain about things that are just part of life but they think they shouldn’t have to deal with because they’re rich) or if it’s a long, drawn-out ordeal then I put it down and read something better.
I bought a massive pencil case and organised all of my pens (and I told people about it in a way that you’d usually tell someone about a brand-new sports car or an engagement) – I do enjoy categorising and organising things like books, clothes, and stationery anyway but getting my massive pencil case and putting all of my writing pens and highlighters in it was amazing! I have a section for black pens, one for blue pens, and then sections for my other coloured pens which are grouped based on their type. I love going through the pencil case and finding a pen to use.
I’ve been more open about how my autism affects my day-to-day life – if something is difficult for me, rather than pushing myself to do it, I am honest and say that I might struggle or I might not be able to handle it at all. If I need time out at work, I get up and go for a walk to the toilets where it is quiet and take some deep breaths before returning to class. Instead of promising to go somewhere I know will be busy in order to socialise, I have started saying that this will make me anxious and either arranging to meet somewhere else or at a quieter time.
In general, I’m being kinder to myself and reminding myself that I can only do what I can do.
Just Because You Hate Fat People, It Doesn’t Mean We Have to Hate Ourselves
***Content Warning for fatphobic ideologies/phrases etc. And talk of weight loss***
Maybe it’s not your intention, maybe it is, but when you start talking about your body in a negative light and you tell me you don’t want to gain “too much weight” or that you “will have to stop being so bad” about the food you eat, what I’m hearing is that you don’t want a body like mine. I’m hearing you say that my body is wrong and that I shouldn’t exist in a fat body.
In 2020, when we went into lockdown and people started complaining about all the weight they were going to gain and they shared memes that made jokes of fat bodies and the “consequences” of having a fat body, I posted to my social media explaining that this sort of talk had a negative impact on people who have issues with body image and eating disorders. This led to a Facebook acquaintance telling me that people were allowed to have their opinions and that she personally hadn’t intended to insult anyone with an eating disorder but basically, she was going to carry on using her right to freedom of speech to say negative things about fat bodies. Not long afterwards, she unfriended me which I’m not bothered about but I felt her, and a lot of other people, had been extremely hypocritical about their views on kindness which had been sparked by the suicide of Caroline Flack and the general pandemic. There’s a fine line between “just sharing opinions” and actually saying that you don’t care about the mental health of other people as long as you get to carry on discriminating against them. I don’t want to take away people’s right to say what they want but if you’re not respecting someone’s right to live without discrimination, should you really be saying the things in the first place? I also don’t want those things to be taken seriously by health professionals, teachers, parents, strangers in the street and then used against those of us who exist in fat bodies without harming anyone else.
I understand that we all have issues and hang-ups about our bodies and sometimes we do need to get them out. I also understand that talking about our appearance in negative ways has a negative impact, not only on ourselves but on those around us too. You’re perfectly within your rights to want to change your appearance but I encourage you to think about why you feel the need and to consider how you go about talking to others about the changes you want to make because, for all you know, the people you’re talking to might be struggling and by describing fat as something to be ashamed of, you could be tipping them over the edge. Not only that, there’s no natural reason for you to feel bad about being fat. We’re not born with an instinctive urge to be as thin as humanly possible. We’re not born with an inbuilt proclivity to shame ourselves and others because of the way we look.
So many people focus on health, saying things like “someone with a BMI over X can’t be healthy” or “oh well as long as you’re healthy, that’s the main thing” but what is healthy?!? Let’s skim over the fact that BMI is nonsense and that you can’t tell whether someone is healthy or not just by looking at them and let’s focus on the ableist notion of “health”. Not everyone can be healthy and having perfect health is extremely rare. People have long-term health conditions, they have disabilities that affect their health and weight, does that mean they’re less valuable? (Well given the last two years of the pandemic and not taking into account the needs of disabled people and those with autoimmune diseases, you might actually argue that the wider population doesn’t give two hoots about those with health conditions so long as able-bodied people can have their parties and grand gatherings).
There are so many reasons that someone might be fat: medication, disability, physical health, mental health, poverty, environment, eating disorders. They might just like their body when it’s fat and that’s perfectly acceptable. None of these reasons are anyone else’s business and you don’t get to comment on other people’s weight or ask them why they’re fat or what they’re going to do about it. There’s this widespread notion that if people lose weight, they will definitely want you to praise them on it but this isn’t the case. Just as there are multiple reasons for someone having a fat body, there are multiple reasons that someone might have lost weight. Not everyone wants to talk about it and, speaking especially from my own point of view, being praised for losing weight can cause a lot of anxiety and internalised fatphobia to rear its head. When you say “Oh you look good, have you lost weight?” what I hear is “You look so much better now that you’re less fat. When you were fatter you looked bad”. Again, this might not be your intention but the connotation is always there.
I’ll hold my hands up now and admit that I have bad body image days where I don’t want to exist in this body. That’s not because I think being fat is bad, it’s because I see how easy thinner people have it when they go to the doctors or when they want to just walk into a shop and pick up a pair of trousers or a bra. It’s because I rarely see anyone with a body like mine in the media and therefore, I don’t get to see how clothes might look on my body before I buy them. It’s because I’m sick of sitting in pained silence while those around me berate their own bodies (usually smaller than mine) for behaving in perfectly natural ways around food and emotions and I don’t feel I can say anything for the risk of being seen as the “uptight fat one”.
At the age of 18, I decided to join a weight loss group. It seemed that everyone around me was losing weight and that I should too because I didn’t fit into the acceptable weight range for a “normal” woman and I didn’t particularly fit in with my peers so this was another attempt at becoming “normal”. Let me just point out that I didn’t need to lose any weight and could have carried on my life in that body and nothing bad would have happened as a result. I wasn’t that much heavier than most of my peers but I had a different body shape which meant I looked a bit bigger than they were. Plus, hearing things like “Gemma five bellies” when I was in the bath at a relative’s house at the age of four or five, minding my own business in my perfectly normal child’s body, firmly planted the idea that I needed to lose weight. I massively regret going to the weight loss group and I massively regret falling into that fatphobic mindset. If I had discovered all of the plus sized bloggers I now admire back then, I wouldn’t have gone and I wouldn’t still have the shame and anxiety around my body that I do now.
Obviously, I can only speak for myself and I do have privileges that other people don’t. For instance, I am white, my body is smaller than bodies that are more heavily criticised in the media and day-to-day life, I am not visibly disabled. However, due to the fatphobia I have faced I now become extremely anxious and often angry on a daily basis. I don’t feel I’m allowed to specify my boundaries around talking about weight etc. because I will be told that I am stopping others from sharing their opinions and taking away their right to free speech. This isn’t my intention; I simply want to feel comfortable in my environment and not as though my body is being shamed.
If I did feel comfortable setting my boundaries out loud (because it’s much easier to do it in writing, online where people probably won’t read it), I would say:
I don’t want to talk about weight.
I don’t want to talk about dieting.
I don’t actually want to talk about food anymore because, something that has the potential to bring joy, instils feelings of shame.
Finally, I would say: just because you hate fate people, it doesn’t mean we have to hate ourselves.
Let’s Talk About Stath Lets Flats
***Possible Spoilers***
I could make this a very short post by simply saying “it’s great” or “Stath Lets Flats is wonderful and you should watch it” but obviously I’m not going to do that and instead I will wax lyrical about it for a while.
If you’re not aware of Stath Lets Flats (that’s a lot to type so I’ll just call it SLF), it’s a comedy on Channel 4 (available to watch on All4 but this is in no way affiliated with them, I’m just writing this because I love SLF) about a Greek-Cypriot man called Stath who lets flats in London at his dad’s letting agency. The agency is called Michael and Eagle because, when it was set up, Vasos (Stath’s dad) had a friend called Michael who had a dog called Eagle; it isn’t a particularly upmarket lettings agency and this is emphasised by the agency next door which deals with much posher properties and clients. The show focuses on the life of Stath, his father Vasos, and sister Sophie as well as the other employees of Michael and Eagle: Al, Dean, and Carole. We are also introduced to lettings agents from other companies, tenants, and Sophie’s best friend Katia.
It’s quite hard to do SLF any justice with a basic description like that, I feel like I would need to go into great depth on each episode to really justify my love for the show because a programme about lettings agents isn’t a lot of people’s idea of a good time. To be honest, I put off watching it for ages because I thought the humour was going to be like that in The Inbetweeners which I don’t like but I’ve watched all three series of SLF twice since November last year. It is generally just a good, pure programme that you don’t have to do a lot of active thinking about while you’re watching.
With a lot of things that I watch, I often stop after a series or two because too much is changing and I get anxious about all the differences. SLF has a comforting quality with no big shocks or overly intense scenes so I think it’s a nice watch for autistic people who like programmes where the characters are mostly reliable and where there aren’t a lot of new characters/leaving characters. I would say that the biggest change/surprise happens at the end of series two and beginning of series three but it doesn’t particularly change the dynamics within the character relationships and it doesn’t alter the basic format of the show.
Although some might accuse SLF of being silly, it does have some deeper themes running through it. For instance, the acknowledgement and criticism of the lack of affordable property to rent in and around London (and many other places to be honest). There is also ongoing character development for Stath who, although he is a bit of a prat sometimes, is trying to be a better person while struggling with the direction his life is going in and the realities of his friends and family moving on while he feels stuck where he is.
I particularly enjoyed the fact that there isn’t a lot of “proper” swearing, it means they had to be more creative with the script as opposed to just chucking in f-bombs everywhere and it’s always a surprise when you expect someone to curse and then they a more innocent version but with the same gusto as the cursing would have had. For instance, “I’m just saying it would be a piece of very easy!”
I would have to say that my favourite character is Sophie, Stath’s sister. Stath and Sophie are played by in-real-life brother and sister, Jamie and Natasia Demetriou which gives them a better on-screen chemistry in my humble opinion. Sophie is quite innocent and sees the best in people. She becomes bolder as the series progress and has some great one-liners.
On the other hand, I’d say my least favourite character is Sophie’s best friend Katia. I think she’s unnecessarily mean to Sophie (and everyone else) and she’s extremely dramatic which I find irritating. Saying that, I do think Katia provides a good contrast to Sophie’s character and makes her more likeable as you feel some sympathy towards Sophie when she’s being bossed around by Katia.
So, to round off this big Stath Lets Flats recommendation, here are some of my top favourite quotes/scenes:
- In series three, Stath and the other lettings agents have some issues with tenants accusing them of being bad people (not completely inaccurate in my experience), so Stath, Sophie, Dean, Al, and Vasos go on a Greek YouTube Channel based in London to try to save their reputation. There is a green screen background to make it look like the London skyline is behind them except Vasos is wearing a fleece/jumper that is the exact same shade of green as the green screen… As you can see in the below image, this makes Vasos’s body disappear and what’s not funny about the floating head of a middle-aged, heavily moustachioed, Greek man?
- Michael and Eagle have a squatter issue which Carole goes to try and sort out by herself. When Stath finds out he chases her because the last time Al went on his own to a squatter, they were “striking” him. When Stath and Carole get to the flat, the squatter won’t let them in but they manage to get the door open and Stath pushes his way into the hallway where he declares that the flat absolutely stinks. The squatter keeps refusing to leave and there’s some back and forth between him, Stath and Carole until Stath calls him a “smelly boy!”. You’re probably asking yourself why this is in my list of best bits because I’ve done such a shockingly bad job of describing it; it’s simply the way Stath says “you smelly boy!” rather than swearing at him or using over-complicated combinations of words. The squatter is also stumped for a moment at the straightforward insult. (I couldn’t find a meme or still for this one so you’ll just have to watch SLF to really appreciate it).
- Sophie is often portrayed as quite a light, airy character but she has moments of real depth and is funny without meaning to be. On one occasion, she is persuaded to do some stand-up comedy by Al who thinks she’s absolutely hilarious all of the time. Sophie gets on the pub stage and tells a genuinely funny story/joke about trousers. Afterwards, they end up staying in the youth hostel across the road from the pub (Al lives in Birmingham and gets the Megabus to and from work in London everyday) where Al and Sophie are still chatting and laughing while the other customers are sleeping. Al is so overjoyed he says to Sophie “I just don’t know where you get your ideas from!” to which Sophie, very seriously, replies “From my bum!”.
- “That’s an absolute crooner!” – Stath often gets English phrases and words mixed up (it’s not his first language so totally understandable) and, along with “don’t eat the house, you’ll get a drippy tummy!”, “that’s an absolute crooner!” is one of my favourites.
- In an early episode, we see a tenant at various points in the day asking someone from the office to go and get the pigeon out of his house. He’s pretty furious that no one has managed to get the bird out yet and, in the end, Stath goes around to try to sort it for him. At first, Stath goes into the man’s loft and is startled by the pigeon which flies straight past him and into the wider home environment. Now, personally I would have just opened all the doors and windows to try to get it out but Stath and the man proceed to chase the pigeon with a plastic bag (Stath has the bag, it’s not a pigeon with a bag). After smashing all of the televisions in the house, the bird finally flies out of the back door.
- “Are you a kid?” *nods* “He knows himself!” – pretty straightforward really; Stath asks a young boy if he is a kid, the boy nods, Stath tells the boy’s father that the boy has a good grasp on his self-awareness.
- “I better go cheese those walls” – At the end of series two, there’s a bit of a disaster which leads to Michael and Eagle losing their office space at the beginning of series three. When the team finally find somewhere to run the business, it’s in need of some decorating. Al takes it upon himself to do some painting with paint the colour of cheese. After a conversation that leaves him feeling a bit deflated, Al announces “I better go cheese those walls”. Again, I have done a terrible job of explaining this but now, whenever anyone mentions painting or walls in general, I have this quote in my head.
- “I dropped my energy drink!” – If you know me then you’ll know that one of my favourite things is jumping out on my brother around the house. Don’t ask me why, it just it. Anyway, in one episode, Sophie creates a short video which is just her jumping out and scaring Stath around the house and always when he’s in the process of drinking an energy drink. Stath’s reactions are always pretty dramatic and accompanied by him shouting “Sophie, my energy drink”.
- Vasos and his partner Steven, are trying out their new printer in the kitchen and Steven a sheet of A4 paper with “Vasos” printed over and over in different sizes and fonts. Vasos responds in a very pure yet bonkers way, he says “My name, so many times! Steven, my God, how did I deserve this?”
So, if I haven’t completely ruined SLF with my awful descriptions of my favourite bits then I fully encourage you to get yourself over to All4 and start watching it now! Then let me know what you think afterwards.
Creative Accountability
I’ve talked about how I struggle to actually write anything in previous blog posts and that is still very much the case. I feel like I have to do things properly and perfectly or I needn’t bother doing them at all. I also tell myself that there’s no point writing anything because a) it’ll be rubbish, b) no one will want to read it and c) if I’m not writing it for a specific purpose then it’s useless. It wasn’t until I watched Fiona Thomas’s Instagram story a few days ago that it dawned on me why I’m like this (at least partially). Fiona is a blogger and author who “hosts courses and workshops to help people get into writing” and I’ve followed her online for a while. My lightbulb moment came the other day when she was talking about one of her clients who said they realised why they did so much creative writing while they were still in education: someone was giving them a grade and there was a sense of academic motivation. I totally get that!
These days there’s no one holding me accountable for my writing so I don’t feel like there’s any demand for me to produce something. I’m the boss of me and I’m not particularly strict, I break my own rules all of the time. I can’t even use rewards as motivation because I’m the one in charge of the rewards and I end up thinking “well, I could do all of that work to get a new book/haircut/biscuit but I could also just have the book/haircut/biscuit now” and then I just don’t make myself do the difficult thing because I’m too afraid of failure.
When I was still at school and sixth form, I would write a lot because it was relevant to my studies and I enjoyed being good at something that my more popular peers weren’t. Plus, I wanted validation from the teachers I liked the most (Hi Mrs Saunders and the rest of the English department). My social skills were lacking in real life but I could create alternate worlds where that didn’t matter and where I could be articulate and interesting without having to do much of the legwork face-to-face.
Seeing Fiona’s Instagram story reminded me of the buzz I got as a teenager when someone said something positive about my writing or when I won writing competitions; I thought about how I would just write something because I thought it might be good, not because I wanted it to be absolutely perfect, and then I would show it to my teacher and she’d tell me I could use it for my coursework because it was definitely coursework standard. There was the demand for my creativity so I supplied the finished product. When I went to university, my creative writing tapered off somewhat but I channelled that energy into writing assignments. The buzz came from hitting (and going over) my word target, ticking off the assignment criteria, and feeling the little booklets of my words as I handed in the physical copy at the library.
My blog became a thing towards the end of my second year as a way to express my views because, as with school, I struggled to say things out loud in the ways I wanted people to hear them. It was also a passive-aggressive open letter to the people who annoyed me but let’s not get into that right now… I felt compelled to blog because I thought it was a good way to keep the writing instinct going and hopefully one day I would find the motivation to actually write a book, or several. Over time, maybe a few months or maybe overnight I don’t really remember now, the doubt jumped on me and I stopped having a tangible reason to write. Where I once wrote a blog post every week, I was only writing once every few months and my fiction writing was all hypothetical plots in my head. I’ve lost the passion that made me create stories that bounced around in my head just because I could create them. As with most of the things I want to do in my life, I’m put off by the idea that someone else is doing it better than me so why would anyone be interested in what I have to offer?
Another social media lightbulb moment came when I saw a post about giving yourself permission to be bad at things. The original post was referring to all the new skills and hobbies people have taken up over the last two years and how there’s this pressure to be good at them straight away but it doesn’t matter. It literally doesn’t matter if you suck at a new hobby because it’s meant to be fun! I had to take a moment to digest that because it had genuinely never occurred to me that I could do something without worrying whether I was going to be good at it. For me, the only option was to be a tip-top crocheter or knitter or storyteller.
I’ve been thinking back to when I used to blog a lot and how much sweet, sweet serotonin it gave me and I really want to get it back. I definitely believe that you shouldn’t stop doing something just because other people might not like it or because someone else is doing it better (unless it’s murder or other such crimes, you should definitely stop doing those things). Therefore, I’m going to start writing again! I’m going to write because I like to do it, because I like the sound of the keyboard as I’m typing, and because little Gemma wanted to be a writer and who am I to let her down?
My Top 10 Books of 2021
***Spoilers Included***
(Let’s just skim over the fact that I haven’t posted anything on my blog since June and enjoy some mini book reviews in the form of a top 10…)
This year has been a bit iffy in terms of my reading habits for several reasons, the main one being that I’ve had the almost permanent feeling that I had to be doing something tangible like making things and therefore, I haven’t been able to concentrate for very long. As per usual, I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to do EVERYTHING which then resulted in doing hardly anything because I got so overwhelmed by all the things I wanted to do. This is also why I haven’t written anything in so long.
Anyway, in no particular order other than the order of the photos I’ve saved of the book covers, here are my top 10 books of the 27 I read this year:
A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
This was actually the last book I read in 2021 and although there was some unfortunate fatphobic language going on in certain parts, I enjoyed the story overall. A Man Called Ove is a book that people have mentioned to me over the years as being a must read but for whatever reason I kept putting it off. I bought my copy in the Oxfam bookshop in Carlisle a couple of years ago and decided to pick it up in December as I thought it might be useful research for a book I’ve been planning which also features an older/middle-aged character as I do tend to read books with slightly younger characters.
The premise of the book is that Ove, a 59-year-old man is struggling with the death of his wife 6 months ago and has recently been told his job is no longer necessary which means Ove now has nothing to do with his time. A new family moves in next door and Ove treats them with his usual cynicism and distaste which is also how he treats everyone in his residential area. We’re made to believe that Ove is a selfish old man however, parts of his past are revealed and we see why he comes across like this and come to realise this isn’t the case at all. The new family, especially the woman Parvaneh, bring Ove round to a more tolerant way of thinking and he gains new reasons to stay alive (oh yeah, there’s no warning at the beginning of the book that Ove is going to be trying to kill himself in different ways for a good portion of the story).
Personally, I would go so far as to say the character is coded as autistic without us ever actually being told this is the case. I could certainly identify with some of his thinking patterns and reasoning, particularly his need for structure and following of rules. I wouldn’t say this book is without fault but I think as a whole it is well structured, uses interesting language, and was definitely an emotional rollercoaster.
Our House – Louise Candlish
Another charity shop find (a lot of my books are nowadays) which I didn’t initially expect to be featuring in my top 10 but it took me by surprise.
It is told from the point of view of a husband and wife who are now separated because of the husband’s extra-marital affairs. We get the husband’s side of the story via his suicide note which he has typed and emailed to the police force dealing with the case of his house being sold without his wife’s knowledge (we learn pretty early on that the husband was involved in this). The wife’s side of the story is told via a podcast transcript as well as some third person, “present day” chapters. I had trouble empathising with the characters in some places as they were stereotypically middle class, complaining about their finances yet still living in a multi-million-pound home in London but once you get past that the story is gripping and I thought about the ending for a while after I’d finished, wondering what it meant for the other characters involved and how the story would continue if the author decided to do a follow-up.
Rat Queens Volume One, Sass and Sorcery – Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch
This year I got back into comics/graphic novels and definitely want to add to my collection. Rat Queens obviously earned a place on my shelf because of the rat mention and I’ve been meaning to read it for the last few years. This definitely isn’t for children or the fain-hearted! The actual story line isn’t about rats, as Goodreads states it is all about the Rat Queens who are
“…a pack of booze-guzzling, death-dealing battle maidens-for-hire and they’re in the business of killing all the god’s creatures for profit. Meet Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric and Betty the Hippy Smidgen Thief.
This modern spin on an old school genre is a violent, monster-killing epic that is like Buffy meets Tank Girl in a Lord of the Rings world on crack!”
I loved the art work and how it supported the progression of the story. It works better as a comic than it would as a novel because I think you need to see the characters and their detailed expressions as well as how the action unfolds; for me this genre is hard to get my head around in written form but I can follow it much better in comic/graphic novel form.
Such a Fun Age – Kiley Reid
Everyone should read Such a Fun Age because it’s such a nice book. Everyone who is white should definitely read it to be reminded of how their white privilege makes their lives easier on a daily basis. If you haven’t already started to look critically at your white privilege then you might find this a difficult book to enjoy but if you’re open to feeling uncomfortable about such reflections then you’ll really feel the impact of this book.
It really highlights how performative activism can do more damage than good and how, as white people, we might think we’re doing the right things but we often forget to listen to those we’re claiming to help.
The Binding – Bridget Collins
As with a lot of the books I read this year, I started The Binding and read bits here and there until one week when I consumed most of it in a few days. This wasn’t a reflection on the book itself, more on my brain’s willingness to let me relax. You know from previous book reviews and round-ups that I like my gothic books and this had some gothic undertones. I also like books about books and how they influence people’s lives so I was very interested in the way books are used/portrayed in The Binding. The relationships in the book were well written and I enjoyed the use of unreliable narrators (although, I’ve been thinking about unreliable narrators a lot recently and surely all first-person narrators are unreliable?). Not to give too much away but I was also pleased that there was some LGBT+ representation.
As far as I can remember, I was mostly pleased with the ending of the book in that it ended in a way I hoped it would. I’ve also just had a look at what I said about it on my Instagram after I’d finished reading it and I had mentioned not reading it much before bed because I knew I would get emotionally involved with the characters and the storyline had my mind whirring so I would have wanted to keep reading all night.
The Confession – Jessie Burton
Another book with some good LGBT+ representation. I’ve now put Jessie Burton on my favourite authors list because the way she tells stories and creates characters is just wonderful. I’m not sure if I’d choose this or The Muse as my favourite book of hers because they’re both full of emotion, tension, and mystery. The Confession goes between the 1980s and 2017 and tells the story of a mother and daughter who have never really known each other. Rose, the daughter, finds her way into the life of her mother’s old lover/girlfriend and assumes a different identity in an attempt to find out about the woman her mother loved and the woman her mother was. I did think Elise, Rose’s mother, was a bit flaky and selfish so I didn’t like her much but that’s because she has been written so well by Burton.
This was one of those books that made me want to sit down and write something because I want to be at least on the way to being as good as Jessie Burton.
The Midnight Library – Matt Haig
I was reluctant to read anything by Matt Haig because I’ve heard such mixed things about him in general and I spent a lot of time trying to decide how I felt about The Midnight Library. It is an interesting and gripping story but I struggle with the whole “what if…?” concept, it usually sends me spiralling into the Eternal Pit of Doom. Since reading this, I have spent more time than usual wondering what might have happened in my life if I had changed one small thing and I’ll admit that I’ve been getting hung up on it a lot and not in a good way. You might now be wondering why I’m including this in my top 10 and you’d be justified in that wondering. However, I think it is worth a read if you’re in the right frame of mind. It made me realise that even if I had chosen a different path in life, there’d be no guarantee that I’d be any happier than I am now. Of course, we all wonder what could have been (I know my family have had to think about this a lot since July) but it’s important not to get so bogged down by it that you stop enjoying the life you have right now.
On the one hand, the ending was predictable but on the other hand, I found it quite comforting that the main character made the choice that she did.
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend – Katarina Bivald
I never would have heard of this book if it hadn’t been recommended and subsequently lent to me by a friend which is a shame really because it’s a good and pure book. It’s another book about books which gave it plus points straight away and although the time-line and some of the events might not be entirely plausible, I didn’t mind because it’s just one of those books that’s nice to be in. I didn’t have to think too hard about what was happening or have to fight to keep track of what was going on. I do enjoy stories that boggle my mind but sometimes I want to read things like The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend Because they’re relatively straightforward and enjoyable.
I will admit that, even now, my brain wants to call this book “The Readers of Broken Wind Recommend” instead.
The Life I Left Behind – Colette McBeth
This is another book that I didn’t expect to be featuring on my top 10, mainly because it was one that had been passed on to my mam by someone and was in among other crime/thriller books that all looked like those generic, mass-produced stories you get in supermarkets (yes, I know that’s very judgemental of me and I’m sorry for it). Obviously, I was pleasantly surprised by it and take back everything I thought about it before I read it.
The story is told by two victims, one alive and one dead. Both were attacked in the same way and left in the same way with the same necklace in their hands, six years apart. Mel, the first victim survived but doesn’t remember anything about her attack and was convinced by impatient police that the perpetrator was a friend and neighbour. Eve, the second victim does not survive but she knows the man who was arrested in the first case was innocent and she was trying to prove it after meeting him coincidentally after his release from prison.
I did have two suspects in mind while reading the book and up until the last few chapters I was convinced it was my first option but I won’t say who I thought it was in case you want to read it and don’t want too many spoilers. Like with several of the other books on this list, I know this one isn’t perfect and some people might have a lot more criticisms than I have but I think that The Life I left Behind is a decent book that had me wondering about it while I wasn’t reading and it had some good examples of gaslighting and agoraphobic behaviour.
We Know You Know (also published as Stone Mothers) – Erin Kelly
I don’t think I’ve read anything by Erin Kelly that I didn’t like and We Know You Know confirmed this opinion. This book does a great job of addressing mental health, class and wealth/poverty, relationships, and the ways people (particularly women) were treated within mental health institutions. As with Kelly’s other books (well the ones I’ve read anyway), the settings and characters are well thought out and you’re made to think about how stories change depending on who is telling them.
I still think The Poison Tree is my favourite Erin Kelly book but this one is now a close second.
Honourable Mentions:
Normal People – Sally Rooney: Pretty much anyone I’ve spoken to about Normal People has raved about how good it is and as a result I was left a bit puzzled at the end. To be completely honest, I didn’t think all that much happened. I think the things that did happen felt more like sub-plot things and the main plot things had been left out. That being said though, the writing style was brilliant! I thought the way that Rooney created the characters and told their stories was incredibly effective and her use of language was beautiful and I’ll definitely read more by her.
Supper Club – Lara Williams: this was the first book I read in 2021 and I had mixed feelings about it. I enjoyed the concept of rebellion against diet culture and patriarchy but there was definitely the undertone of it having been written by a thin woman using fatness and eating in a way that a fat woman might not (if that makes any sense).
Crooked House – Christobel Kent: I try not to read reviews on Goodreads until after I’ve finished a book (or at all really) because then I end up feeling like my opinions are wrong. This is one of the books that I’m especially pleased I didn’t read the reviews of because they mostly seemed negative and I disagree with those negative reviews. It’s a generally decent book and I enjoyed what Kent did with the characters and how the main character finds out the truth about her past.
Here ends my list. I welcome you to recommend further reading based on the books I’ve mentioned here, despite having more books than my bookshelves can hold, I’m always on the lookout for more.
Happy reading in 2022,
Gemma
10 Things Not to Say When Someone Tells You They’re Autistic
Trigger/Content Warning: heavy themes of ableism in the phrases listed.
It’s taken me ages to finish this post because I kept getting so angry thinking about my own experiences of these sorts of comments, both before and after I knew I was autistic, that I had to take long breaks between writing the sections. All of these things I’ve either heard someone saying about someone else or had said directly to me. While it’s OK to ask questions to get a better understanding, remember you can do some research from reliable sources rather than assuming an autistic person has to be your own personal encyclopedia. There’s also a high likelihood that autistic people will have had to deal with variations of these statements in the form of teasing and bullying so be mindful of this (although the best option is to just not say these things).
Of course, you might not realise what you’re saying is problematic but if an autistic person points it out, you don’t then get to go on about how you’re just not used to saying the better phrase or that you read something that mentioned “mild autism” so that’s what you’re going to say or that you grew up in a different time. You should listen to the autistic person and take notice of what they’re saying. It can be hard to see past all of the stereotypes in the media but there are books written by autistic people, there are autistic social media influencers and YouTubers putting out content, so we’re out there talking, you just have to listen.
Let’s get on with the list. I touched on a few of them in my previous post but I’ll go into a bit more depth here…
- “You don’t look autistic”
Firstly, what does autistic look like? It isn’t only the white, male, middle class, mega mind character like Sheldon Cooper and it is hardly ever Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man. Yes, some autistic people have an exceptionally high IQ, can remember very specific information in great detail, or they might display savant-like talents but we’re not all like that and those who have these characteristics are few and far between. Like I said at the end of my last post, once you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person so even if you met someone with a distinctive look who happened to be autistic, you’d have a hard time finding someone else who looked exactly the same.
Perhaps people who say “you don’t look autistic” actually mean “you’re not carrying a big sign declaring your autism so I can’t believe you”. There’s a certain Catch 22 about any invisible disability or illness in that, if you try to mask your symptoms people don’t believe you but then if you don’t mask your symptoms then people think you’re acting up for attention or just pretending. Even if they do think you “look autistic” then you’ve still got to fit into their very narrow idea of what that should be.
- “Oh, we’re all on the spectrum somewhere”
No. No. No. The below screenshots put into words very well my feelings on this:
If you identify with a lot of the characteristics of autism then it might be worth asking for an assessment but just having one or two, for instance liking a routine and being a picky eater, won’t make you autistic. It’s another way of devaluing our experiences, similar to saying “oh well everyone feels sad sometimes” to someone with clinical depression. Also, if we were all on the spectrum there would be no such thing as autism because everyone would have the same sorts of difficulties so there would be no notable difference.
- “Don’t you mean you have autism?”
Always check with the actually autistic person but, for the most part, the autistic community would rather be people who are autistic rather than someone who has autism. It isn’t an illness or disease, it’s part of who we are. The majority of the community are proudly autistic and in a way, telling us it’s something we have is like telling us it’s something to be ashamed of. This is also one of those things that people respond to by saying “well I’m so used to saying…” which isn’t helpful if you’re not willing to listen to us. You wouldn’t tell a blind person “Stop saying you are blind and start telling people you are someone with blindness” would you? Well actually, I don’t know, you might do that but if you think you would then just think about it for a while and decide whether it’s an appropriate thing to do.
- Anything tho do with functioning labels
Functioning labels are ableist AF and we would really appreciate it if you stopped using them! This goes for other disabilities, chronic illnesses, and mental health issues too. As a neurotypical, non-disabled person you don’t get to decide how well someone functions in certain situations based on your idea of what is “normal”.
Even in medical/clinical settings, the use of functioning labels is being stopped because doctors and other such professionals are starting to realise that they aren’t useful and are actually really damaging to the autistic community. If you put an expectation onto someone based on how they cope and behave in a certain situation and then judge them on this narrow perspective, you’re not giving them the chance to exist outside of that expectation. Also, just because someone excels in a few areas of their life or because they struggle with something that you can manage with ease, it doesn’t mean that they’re high or low functioning. To paraphrase Walt Whitman: We all contain multitudes. I, for one, would be categorised as “high functioning” by a lot of people because I mask most of my autistic traits however, there are times when I feel completely out of my depth and cannot function adequately for the situation. For instance, I really struggle with communicating with people (even ones I’ve known for a long time) and when I’m in town or a supermarket, unless I’m with my mam and/or dad I can’t hold a conversation outside of the context of being in the shop because I don’t know what to say, I haven’t planned for having a conversation, I’ve only prepared myself to go in, get what I want and then leave. I can talk to the cashier but only really the pre-expected script that always happens when you’re paying for the things you’re buying. I also really struggle to function in social situations that I haven’t planned and which involve more than one other person. If you took these elements and isolated them from the rest of me you might think “well actually, they might be lower on the functioning spectrum”.
- “X has an autistic son and she’s told me all about it”/”Y has a son who has autism so I’ll ask her about this thing you’ve just told me your experience of”
This really just comes back to LISTENING TO AUTISTIC PEOPLE and believing our experiences. I know some people who have “Expert by Experience” in their email signatures because they have lived as an autistic person all their lives so surely this makes them an expert? If we can call someone a specialist or an expert after they’ve completed one or two courses then surely we can give autistic people the same respect when they’ve lived years and years with the condition.
- “So are you really good at Maths/Science/Music then?”
Just like neurotypical people, autistics are good at different things. We don’t all like science or maths so we can’t be expected to be good at them. Some autistic people are good at those things but some are amazing at languages, art, dancing, or embroidery. Some of us are just average at a lot of things because we take up new hobbies regularly then become fixated on a new one so the last thing is left behind. I think there’s also this expectation that being autistic means you have to have a learning difficulty/disability too so when someone is exceptionally good at a certain subject, they’re held in a much higher regard.
Not everyone who is autistic has a learning difficulty just as not everyone with a learning difficult is autistic.
- “But you can make eye contact/have a conversation”
Yes, being autistic usually means struggling with eye contact but it is mostly assumed that this has to mean not making any eye contact. In reality, some autistic people can and like making eye contact, they might make too much. It’s also true that we struggle with communication but a lot of us are very chatty in the right circumstances (although don’t put too much importance on small talk because, well, what’s the point? Why talk about the weather or ask how someone is if you’re not actually interested in the in-depth answer we’re going to give?)
We’re always told we have to look someone in the eye to show we’re listening and taking in what they’re saying as well as showing that we’re telling the truth. How many times have you heard or said “look me in the eye and tell me that…”? I don’t know about you but I listen with my ears. Not looking at you when we’re talking actually makes it easier for me to process what you’re telling me, it’s one of the reasons I get on so well with the blind student I support; he doesn’t expect me to always be looking in his eyes and he obviously can’t look into mine so I don’t have to worry about whether I’m doing it right, whether I’m making too much or too little eye contact with him, and I can carry on doing the task I’m working on and get my words out properly while I do it. That being said, I do look at people’s faces and eyes when they’re doing the talking because that’s what I’ve always been told to do. As soon as it’s my turn to talk I usually look around the room or down at my hands which I also use to support the meaning I’m trying to convey. When I was younger I had some hearing problems so I relied heavily on lip-reading and now I still do this to make sure the shapes someone is making with their mouth match the sounds I’m getting through my ears.
- “Well how come you have empathy and compassion?”
A huge misconception of autism is that it means no compassion or empathy. A large proportion of autistic people actually have too much empathy but we just don’t know how to show it. We can be so overwhelmed by the feeling that we start to shut down which results in everyone else assuming that we’re cold and unfeeling. This sort of links back to what I was saying about the functioning labels as well, just because we’re not showing our empathy/compassion/other emotions in a way that neurotypicals deems as “normal” it doesn’t mean that we’re not feeling them. You’be probably seen a variation of that (cliched) inspirational quote about judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree even though it has so many other talents, well judging an autistic person on non-autistic behaviour is similarly unfair.
- “There was none of this autism stuff when I was younger”
Bullshit! As the below meme says, just because you didn’t see something before it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. I’ve never seen a blue whale but I know they’re bloody real! In our current point in time, science is doing pretty well and therefore scientists are able to diagnose more things, they can prove the existence of more things, so it only makes sense that there are more cases of autism because professionals are more able to accurately identify and diagnose it. The same thing goes for people who say “being LGBTQ+ is fashionable these days, people just jump on the bandwagon” NO NO NO. In theory (not always in practice because people are shits) it’s safer and more acceptable to come out as part of the LGBTQ+ community than it used to be, so of course you’re hearing of more LGBTQ+ people because they don’t have to hide it quite as much.
- Continuing to talk at us as if we don’t already know the facts/statistics you’re telling or assuming we can’t advocate for ourselves because we’re autistic.
I told someone I was autistic and rather than thinking “Gemma must know more about her own lived experience than I do” they told me facts and statistics about the diagnostic process that I knew because I had literally just been through the process. They also asked me what “type” of diagnosis I had, whether it was “high functioning”, Asperger’s, or ASD. Even though I’d already pointed out that functioning labels aren’t used any more, they didn’t seem willing to listen or take this on board and I pointed out that Asperger’s isn’t really used any more because Hans Asperger was a big ol’ Nazi.
I’ve had similar experiences where people have been making generalisations or they’ve been talking about autism as if I didn’t know anything about it and when I’ve pointed out that I am autistic they’ve continued to assume that I can’t possibly know as much as them or that I must be wrong because I haven’t read the resources they have.
I know I’ve been quite brusque about all of these things and you may be thinking “it’s her autism”. This is partially true, I’m not masking for the comfort of others who might think this is all rather passive aggressive (or straight up aggressive). It not just that though, I want to be straight to the point and serious about this sort of stuff because I want people to take notice. I don’t want to be seen as brusque anyway, if a neurotypical person stood up for the autistic community they’d be seen as “brave” and they’d probably be taken more seriously. I don’t want to be “brave” either because that’s patronising. I just want to be taken seriously and for the stereotypes around autism to be broken.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. It’s been a bit of a long and rambling one. I really do appreciate all of the support my last post got!
Thank you,
Gemma
Before We Carry On, There’s Something I want to Tell You: An Open Letter to Anyone Who Has Ever Known Me
Dear family, friends, people who have been my friends, those who know who I am but haven’t met me, and anyone who actually reads my blog,
I don’t feel that it will be possible for me to continue writing my blog without addressing a very large element of who I am. There are things I want to write about but it’s tricky to do so without acknowledging it; I find I have to dance around the edges and sometimes I just don’t bother blogging because what I want to say would give it away. I’ve had time to think about whether I want everyone to know and, while I’m still a bit scared of what certain people will say, I’m not willing to hide such a huge part of me, to mask myself for the comfort of others. If people want to see me in a negative light after reading this then that’s their problem.
I am here to tell you that I am autistic.
This might not come as a surprise to some of you, for others it will make you question everything you’ve ever thought about me. I don’t want you to say I don’t “look” autistic because what does autistic even look like? Sheldon Cooper or Rain Man? I don’t want you to feel sorry for me or to see me as a child. I most certainly don’t want to hear you say “oh well, everyone is on the spectrum somewhere” because they’re not! (More on that at a later date).
I got an official diagnosis earlier this year having been on the waiting list for 3 years (the national average waiting time) but I’ve suspected I was autistic since I was 16 or 17. When the doctor/psychologist told me I was definitely autistic I felt an immense relief and happiness because, in the best possible way, I had an explanation for why I am the way I am. Everything I’ve experienced so far seems to be in clearer focus, with more context. All of my strengths and weaknesses make more sense, and now I understand why working in a call centre wasn’t for me or why the sound of people eating makes me furious.
There’ll be some of you doubting this and thinking “well she had a conversation with me once and she looked at me”, or “she’s been to university and has a job”, or even “she has a sense of humour and empathy so how can she be autistic?!?” so let me something I heard last week that really resonated with me:
Just because someone is very academically able, highly verbal, and they can hold down a job, it doesn’t mean their autism has any less impact than that of the stereotypical ‘autistic’ person.
People have this idea that autistic people have to be either high or low functioning but who gets to say which category we fit into? Neurotypicals that’s who. How well I function in your society isn’t something you get to put a label on because for one, it’s ableist AF and for two, just because I appear to be making the right noises and doing the right thing with my expression it doesn’t mean I’m managing well. When I was in university I would go out and be “social” but while everyone else was chatting away and building friendships, I was struggling to keep up, trying to figure out how everyone else knew how and when to respond, and I became so exhausted by the interactions that I would be pleased to get back to my room in halls and not speak to anyone for a day or two. As far as I’m aware, no one really noticed on these social outings that I wasn’t coping because I would nod along and grasp small slithers of conversation where I felt I could contribute something relevant then go back to treading the fast-moving waters.
For 26 years I’ve become an expert in masking which means that I consciously and subconsciously hide the intrinsically autistic behaviours that neurotypicals/society deem unacceptable and I act like a “normal” person. In the last few months I’ve been trying to undo this but it will take a while to do a factory reset on myself and of course, there are always going to be things that I have to keep masking because I don’t want to be rude; for instance, I’ll have to partake in a lot more small-talk, I still can’t really shout at people for breathing or eating too loudly, and I don’t think anyone will appreciate me telling them I can’t trust their pet because they smell wrong.
Some of you might be thinking “but Gemma, shouldn’t you say you have autism not that you are autistic?!?” and to that I’m also saying no! At the end of the day it’s always down to the autistic person but most of us would rather be referred to as autistic rather than as having autism. It’s not something that we catch and then can be cured of like a cold and it’s just something we’re born with. It is who we are. Without autism I wouldn’t be the person that I am, it affects every aspect of my life.
Like I said at the beginning, I wanted to open up about this because I want to start writing more about my experiences and maybe even be of some help to other people going through similar experiences. I know I don’t have to explain myself to anyone and I know that no matter how much I tell people, some will still have their fixed view of autistic people and now they will apply that to me. I also know that it’s not solely the job of autistic people to educate neurotypicals so, while I’m happy to answer any questions you may have, I do encourage you to do your own research and look at things written by autistic people not just things written about us.
Remember, once you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person!
Kind Regards,
Gemma
One Page At A Time 