For Nicola Pitt

I was told my ability to visibly move my audiences was rare and how did I hone my skill? The truth is I didn’t. Or did I?  I make people laugh, cry, think. When I remember the child whose voice was lost, whose heart was broken and desperate to tell other people what it was like to be me, I didn’t know what the “it” was. Now I do: I’m autistic, human and do my best.

At the age of 44, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism and I wouldn’t call it a mild form, at least not now. But it was life changing. It explained why I had always felt different. It was more than my terrible childhood. I knew who I was and could start to grow. My youngest son, who had struggled to keep a place in school in his early years, was diagnosed 8 months after me and my eldest son, ten years older than his younger half brother, was diagnosed two years later. My daughter never wanted to go through the diagnostic process. I wanted to change the world.

I gradually came to know the person I was underneath the years of trying to fit in, trying to be the kind of person others would at least like. Shaking hands with that person has been transforming. We hear a lot about being own, authentic, selves but to do that, we have to know who we are. How many of us also try to convey the persona of “successful” in an image heavy world? Is our value counted by the number of “likes” and “shares” we get? Does it depend on whether or not we are trending in #whatever? Is it reliant on the height of our heels or how brightly our cufflinks shine? Is our value in the quality of our showreel?

I cried a lot when I was younger. Desperately, hopelessly and I don’t know why, most of the time. Maybe the world was too confusing. Sometimes I was scared. I thought the bogey man was real and could almost see him, scuttling through the open bedroom door to hide under my bed. I could see dark shadows of evil creatures trying to climb through the window. Mum told us that God could see everything so why wasn’t He scaring those monsters away? Instead of having a kind and loving God, I grew up afraid of the coals of hell he’d pour over me. God was a threat, not a protector and very much like my parents.

As I grew older, I would lie awake at night, shaking with fear. Dad was downstairs, in the room below, going off on another of his drunken rants. My bed was nearest the bedroom door and I was afraid dad would finally lose it completely and storm upstairs to attack us in our beds, as we lay helpless and pinned down by bedclothes. It may have come on the back of one of those other evenings, when my brothers were in bed. Mum and my older sister were in the lounge and dad decided he needed someone to talk to: me. He would take me into the kitchen and I’d sit at the dining table, in the seat furthest from the door. Dad, a very tall man, would occupy the space that blocked my escape, had I not been too terrified to do so. Then he would start. He would flail his arms about manically and reel off stories of his own heroism and how terrible the world was. He told me of the time he was doing National Service and was injured during nerve gas experiments. He ranted about the Cold War we were in and how the world would come to an end when Russia went to nuclear war with America. His voice would rise and fall, he would point to an invisible audience of millions, whispering and then shouting with the passion of a pulpit thumping preacher. All he had was 10 year-old me, weeping into my own arms.

I was his hostage. Folding my arms across the table in front of me and hiding my face, I would sob uncontrollably, waiting for him to finish. Why didn’t he care? Why didn’t he see what he was doing to me? Then I’d have to go to bed, to be embraced by fear and nightmares.

Nothing was safe; nothing. School was torture. I was different. I felt like a walking freak show but thought, if I worked hard and got good marks then maybe the teacher would like me. I was starved of kind words, of warmth and security.

By the time mum finally kicked dad out, when I was 15, he was a desperately ill alcoholic and I was anorexic. All I wanted to do was disappear. The dad of my earlier childhood had long gone, drowned in the bottom of a vodka bottle. My dad, my hero, the one who seemed to understand me when we would spend hours walking the dog and talking of better lives, better worlds, one where the bestselling book he was going to write was going to buy us one of the finest houses in one of the best areas in Nottingham, where we lived.

I tried to do normal people things, like get a job, get married, have children and all the things I thought other people wanted me to do. All I wanted was to be accepted, to receive kindness from someone. But I didn’t like myself and I had no idea who I was, except that person must have been very bad indeed. The nice house, hard working husband and two lovely children were a veneer of normality. I hated myself and still wanted to disappear, so I did. Again, I became ill. The eating disorders I’d been hospitalised for at 15 had never really gone away and by the time I left home, I was anorexic, bulimic and thought my kids would be better off without me. I was almost 31.

Many of the experiences after that time, I describe in my book, “Travelling by Train – the journey of an autistic mother”, which is due to be released in spring 2020.

I was told my ability to visibly move my audiences was rare and how did I hone my skill? The truth is I didn’t. Or did I? I make people laugh, cry, think. When I remember the child whose voice was lost, whose heart was broken and desperate to tell other people what it was like to be me, I didn’t know what the “it” was. Now I do: I’m autistic, human and do my best.