It has been a long road in my journey of living independently to finally get to a point where things seem to be more regulated. Even when you think you are doing well, there are still points that you realize that you must learn from and work at understanding your internal signals to prevent the worst from happening, but within time, things get better.

For about three weeks, I have realized that I needed to put some healthier habits into place to be a responsible independent adult. This has been a long journey for me to finally conceptualize the necessity of doing things to take care of my mental health. As much as I have blamed my medications over the past five years for being the issue for not caring for my mental health, it has been equally as much as not practicing and adhering to a routine.

This has been because through a journey of self-discovery amid experiencing a global pandemic that I didn’t realize that I needed to do things necessary to care for myself besides medicine. Many think that being adherent to medicine is a quick fix or its going to solve all your problems. I can certainly tell you that it is not. It is up to the individual themselves to get their needs in line to work for what they need to do to be well and live well independently.

Last week was one of those weeks, while being totally adherent to my medication that I found that it doesn’t solve your struggles. You are going to have many stressors in your life that are going to want to pull you to the side and cause you to not be your best. It is seeing and understanding what those actions were when you are in those challenging times to realize that it is up to you yourself to get things in line and be aware of what you need to do to make sure that things are better the next time.

Over the past few weeks, I have finally understood that all the medications prescribed to me are a must, but it is not the total solution of easy fix to dissolving the issues that you were experiencing. For me, that means that I must sometimes tackle the uncomfortable things that I have to withstand and not give in to the triggering moments that I come across. I am such an intelligent person and the fact that I struggle with things that seem so childish in nature does perplex me, but it doesn’t mean that I cannot work to improve my responses, so I do not react in previous ways.

It is seeing the dangers of how real things could be and how blessed I have been to get through my struggles without any severe consequences. I just wish that I could work better at not getting so escalated that it gets out of hand. It is part of being autistic, but there can be such a struggle with understanding that there are ways of acting that are just not acceptable at my age.

I see on the news and through my social media feeds continuously of autistic youth and adults being escalated and there are often of law enforcement that at many times is not properly equipped to manage the situations and treats the individual improperly and can even result in the individual being a fatality because law enforcement often sees things in a different lens.

When I see instances like this, I think about myself in that situation and how hard that could be on those that support me. I often think of the younger version of myself and how I was. I know I have improved greatly since then, but it often comes to my mind about the reality of the world today and how simple moves can be perceived by others in a different light and the consequences can be quite cumbersome.

Through much reflection this weekend, I realize that I must get my barriers that can cause me to react negatively in line. Yes, autistic people of all ages have meltdowns, but that doesn’t mean that they can learn skills to lessen the severity of them and not make them as challenging as they could be. I have come a long way in the severity of my meltdowns in nearly four decades, but there must be a time when I too must put my foot down and grasp the reality of the luck of the draw by getting things in line and understanding myself.