For the longest time I wanted to make others change or do things in order to please me and bring me the comfort that I desired in things without knowing or understanding that things can be much better if I would allow myself to understand and accept things as they are in the current moment and allow myself to accept them for what they are, then allowing myself to be satisfied with things the way that they are and not wanting things to go back to the way that they were because of unwillingness to accept things for what they are now.

When things change for autistic people in big ways as they have in the past few years, it ca be difficult to accept changes, especially when you have a deep comfort in them without seeing that they were the same things that was draining your emotional energy and causing so much conflict and desire to flee from parts of the situation that you wanted to keep at the same time you wanted to avoid.

It was not seeing that the thing that you wanted forever to avoid because you have been led to fear would also be the thing that would make you a little more independent and be what you would need to move forward past what you not only found comfort in for several decades, but at the same time had just as much conflict with it. It was knowing that letting go of the theory of making parts of that come back, but the residual traumatic responses would not let it go nor understanding the reality that it was behind some of my meltdowns.

Now that it has been over a year since some of the more complicating changes to my life, I am in a much better position than I was even  a year ago when these changes were either just initiated or in the process of happening. Part of that was understandable but another part was in accepting that I was autistic and what came with that was some challenges that were hard to overcome, but eventually I learned to accept things for what they were because I knew they had to be, and they are also the things that saved my life.

Even as life is different for me in many ways, I had to teach myself a lot of how to get through the challenges I was experiencing by deploying coping strategies and healthy defense mechanisms in order to not react to the things that I could not control because there is a deeper threshold of expectations. I also now understand that I am my best self when I do what I need to do to take care of my mental health and that has been a long and challenging discovery for me to understand. Although there was some parts of when I didn’t take care of myself that I liked, in the end, I am much more pleasant and able to take care of myself along with understanding different or unexpected situations when I am able to take care of myself.

I am deserving of myself and knowing that things are going to be what they are for the present moment has allowed me to breathe and accept things for what they are without being frustrated at what was or wanting others to feel my pain or change things because I think they should. I am in a good position mentally and I don’t want to change that because I know that it is beneficial for me to be in a good position mentally, therefore I do what I need to do to be and stay well.