It Can Wait

It can wait. Three simple words for over three years were hard to digest. As an autistic person, I experience the common traits of having a mind that is at times in constant overdrive. For two decades, I have been prescribed medication to help wind the brain down for the day and for other symptoms (irritability, aggression, etc.) that are used to help behaviors associated with autism. However, for the past three years, I continually flaunted disaster by skipping doses of this medicine because of my overdrive.

It isn’t something to admit. Gladly, I seem to be on the mend of understanding the fact that being regimented with ALL medications as an autistic person can be with their special interests that medicating one self is equally important. I have flaunted disasters too many times to count. I am grateful to the countless supporters that could have turned a blind eye and terminated my employment or services because of my inability to understand until my therapist could intervene. 

I had experienced this on top of a countrywide shutdown and being forced to vacate my first home in 2020 due to various reasons. I have overcome those things and at times non-compliance got bad and my parents were at the forefront of my sickness. I continually be grateful to my therapist who makes me see the importance and of those times she intervened to divert me from ending up in a psych unit or worse a group home. As I am writing this, I am truly grateful to be where I am today. While it isn’t easy and is still a work in progress, it is WAY better than it was over a year ago!

Everyday with the looming overdrive each evening, it can be hard to shut down for the day without having the desire to. I am slowly accepting the fact that the medicine helps me more than hurts me and that those things I continually fear that I won’t be able to accomplish in enough time in the morning because of morning grogginess, etc. can wait.  It came to me in a portion of a memo with my employer that if one is sick, there is nothing pressing that can’t be pushed back. The same can be said with most of the things I do. 

Accepting such, I am slowly realizing that I don’t have to fear a deadline for getting certain things done. As my own morning routine isn’t timed and there really isn’t a said schedule. It can get done whenever it gets done. I feel too by NOT following the regimen, I fall more off course than on, only doing the bare minimum to get by, struggling to get things done like an up and down crash that never solves itself. 

Being in Mental Health Recovery for over two decades, it is sad that I had to relapse to re-learn that medicine is an essential foundation to my wellbeing. It has made me realize that I need to combat this along with many other issues that I have been masking or putting to the side for some time and face them head on. As a person who has the comorbidities of being auitistic and diagnosed with a host of various mental health diagnoses,fighting the internal battles after relapse is tougher the second round than the first. I am starting to be more cognizant of this by using the tools I am learning in my tool boxes and sensory needs on both fronts and tackling them head on and fighting the tough stuff. No matter how hard the struggles want to knock down the short stack I have built up, I continue to not give up the fight and will do what is right to be in the sound mind and well-rounded person that everyone around me has came to know.