Soliloquy

I'm not great with words. Not like some of the people I know. I'm semi-dyslexic (which you may have picked up on from the glaring mistakes in some of my writing), and I envy the writers who make eloquence look so easy.

So I speak in pictures.

They may not always make sense, even to me, but some shout loud and clear.

I have been talking a lot about autism and my recent diagnosis, online . It's been a life-affirming and grief-bringing process, and writing about it helps. I can't write the feeling very well, but a picture sprang to mind the other day. It was initially called Solo, and then I changed the name when I realised that one of the main ways in which I cope and stay functional (ish) is that I talk to myself a lot. This is my soul-feeling of what it was like to be an undiagnosed autistic for so many years. A bit like a lifetime of feeling someone has told a joke I don't get, and everyone's laughing but me, and how lonely that felt.

This is not about self-pity, even though it may seem so. I am SO relieved I now know why I felt that way that, unsurprisingly, words fail me. - Niki McQueen