Recovery, Noticing and Managing Fires
Life supportive processing
Seeing my husband on life support after open heart surgery has been a perilous reminder of the fragility of human life and the humanity of healing. A strange form of value-driven reflexivity is sparked by the surrealism of seeing a machine artificially breathe in and out of him. Being autistic, I immersed myself at that moment with him thoroughly and every instant after, experiencing, feeling profound, and processing my way to self-regulate. It was like seeing an out-of-body experience external to his body. His presence was aware but also unaware, but he was able to squeeze my hand so tight on hearing my voice that he nearly broke my hand — the grip of life with nonverbal communication.
A silent I’m alive.
My neurodivergent brain is almost at a mastery for living in the now and deep processing. I enjoy the intensity. Since my major spinal surgery in 2010 and my burnout rehabilitation, I have attempted to do it almost daily.
Vivid existing
Revelation
Reinvention
Reignited without the burn.
Putting out fires and managing the flames within them as they burn
That requires noticing. For me, vivid living and processing. It supports my life.
Following my husband’s life-changing event, in this piece, I’m attempting to illustrate how this is lived out through the eyes of an autistic person and how it supports their life and others. How taking the time to notice helps us to manage fires and recover. It is intensely intimate, intuitive, and beautiful. Descriptively detailed, it has to be that way to access the calm amidst the tumult and extinguish the flames without further burns. Leveraging the emotional intensity laboriously to reflective realigning.
My acceptance is growing, and the fury I mentioned in my last post is waning. I’ve become more in tune with myself because I no longer believe that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. This statement has never appealed to me because, in reality, what didn’t kill me only made me weaker. Temporarily. Still, that fragility furnaced much of my future ability and wasn’t bad. I saw something in the thick of the flames. I noticed a flame within the fire of my recovery, and now that of my husband, and have set about managing it.
As he got increasingly self-sufficient after being taken off life support, I could see the pain in his breath. His chest caught fire, sending flames upward, and the fragility of this vision reminds me of times when my chest hurt because of worry that resulted from loss-related sadness that made it difficult to breathe. To gradually reduce the agony from his fractured, now-slowly-healing sternum rising up and down where stitches tightly hold the skin together inside and externally, I take his hand, and we practice breathing through the nose instead of his natural mouth breathing. Nose breathing is more beneficial to pain management and so much more. He contrasts breathing through his nose and mouth and his autonomic pain perception. He noticed a flame within the fire and manages it. Recovery. I witnessed his delirium and drug-induced hallucinations. The challenging resilience and healing resistance. Although his agony differs from mine and many others, the attitude required to sustain it is the same.
I have moved into my 82-year-old father’s and my childhood home close to the hospital to handle the flames in the current fires. Traffic and motorways are ignitions that can cause the fire to burn out of control due to their rage, impatience, and speed. My father’s fragility brought on by age is another flame to control in the fire, just like my and my husband’s ageing inevitability. Although my father has maintained an “on fire” brain in the correct circumstances to support his independence, his physical strength is now slightly behind. His military experience may have helped him develop the courage, wisdom, and foresight he regularly provides me.
He still does his old marching drills for me daily, and I admire his fortitude. He lights me up without setting me on fire, but I still notice some of his potential fire-igniting flames. My father asks lots of questions. He has 100s of them (for context, he self-identifies as Autistic and arguably ADHD also). I will write about that again as it is self-evident now that I have my diagnosis and why we click so well but then unclick when his potential ADHD brain conflicts with my Autistic one. When I need silence and to process, he asks all his questions together. Sometimes repetitively. It causes sparks to ignite within the fire of my own brain about possible dementia with some of his short-term memory loss.
When I again ask for some silence, he can take it personally. He is super sensitive and intuitive. He wants to be heard, as we all do. A beautiful human being. Another beautiful human being of neurodivergent standing and gentle grounding reminds me it may not be accelerated memory loss, ADHD, or Autism, but just his humanness and anxieties around my husband’s surgery as he is like a son to him — my father’s flames within his fires. My neurodivergent twin soul helped me control the fire after noticing a flame inside it with the potential to keep burning wildly out of control. He knows how to pull me out of this. As a result, I hugged my father, ensured our alternative communications made sense, and assured him that everything would be okay.
Double neurodivergent empathy.
I then notice my father scratch his leg with a broken fingernail. He repeatedly did that eight months ago until he hit a vein in his thin, ageing skin. What followed was like a scene from a horror movie requiring a blood transfusion, a three-week hospital stay, and pneumonia. I almost lost him. I get the nail scissors and ask him to cut his nails. I help him because he can’t cut one cleanly with the angle of the scissors — the complex living and loving relationship between a father and a daughter. Parental father-daughter intricate loving duality. He is part of me; I am part of him. I noticed a flame within the fire and managed it.
Randomly my father’s calm within the flames comes from his Wiki brain. Its abundance of 82 years of facts informs me, after my husband’s open heart surgery, that Christian Barnard was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant operation in 1967. I feel guilty for asking him did he google that as I google it. He is remarkably tech savvy on his Apple devices and so much self-taught. His expression expresses his innocence. He didn’t. He just knew. He has an open heart; it will be an incredibly out-of-control fire to put out and manage when it stops beating.
New, younger neighbours have moved in on both sides of my father’s house. He is currently the road’s oldest neighbour. Every morning as I wake up in the bedroom I used to sleep in as a child and teenager, their small children sob hysterically, as babies and kids tend to do. I solemnly and compassionately congratulate my body on being unable to bear any more children. Currently, that would be another fire to manage. I notice my self-congratulatory smugness. I may dive into that again as part of my continued healing and recovery of our perinatal losses.
As I turn around to leave my father’s driveway to go to the hospital, I catch a glimpse of my dog’s irritated but hopeful face through the front room window. My dad’s drive is softly being encroached upon by wildflowers planted by the next-door neighbours, whose crying children wake me. As parents putting out their children’s fires and managing their wellbeing in the flames, I silently wish them strength. I see how beautiful the wildflowers are. After witnessing my husband’s artificially supported life’s fragility and darkness, I see life in colour. Recovery. My dog Wendy will sit there, anxiously awaiting my return. She will no longer patiently wait for me in either of our front room windows one day, just another fire to put out. This reality is taken for granted with pained grace.
Rival consoles are on a Spotify loop. It is today’s drive to the hospital processing compositional tune.
I notice a mother smiling at me softly while holding her two children’s hands as I gently bring my car to a halt so they can cross safely. She was honouring her instinctive maternal safety. The tie-dye colours of my tracksuit are identical to one of her daughter’s cardigans. I often wear it.
Respecting the safety of my sensory system.
I am honouring my sensory internal safety. Instinctively.
Construction workers turn the stop-and-go signs at the following set of inoperable traffic signals. They are also alert to, in sync with, and managing fires to avoid putting out possible flames. While listening to my third Spotify loop of this repeatedly contemplative journey to the hospital, I remind myself that life is now stop and go, red and green. I impulsively stop at a shopping centre to get some takeaway coffee. I realise this isn’t like me because I usually have a clear strategy to follow when dealing with fires, but today, I’m thinking more deeply that you only live once, right? Try some conscious impulsivity. It won’t kill you, right, or maybe it might. A black and white cat brushes with affection against the car bumpers in the car park. The cat ignores my “What’s up, pussycat?” I love cats. This cat looks like it has no fires to manage. This cat is its own lucky cat charm. After all, they have nine lives. However, given the state of the world today, with history repeating itself with an escalating vengeance that renders humanity helpless, I’m not sure if I would want nine lives. It’s enough to have one life and one-second opportunity.
While waiting for coffee, two middle-aged women discuss their recent heart investigations. “I wore a Holter monitor for a full day. At rest, my heart rate was 100 bpm.” Jeez, I think to myself, that’s a little high. I hope her doctor looks into it more. Two much younger women in the coffee line cannot control their pre-Ibiza vacation joy. I allowed myself to share some of their youthful enthusiasm while fearing it. Despite midlife’s struggle, I take 47 graciously and with gratitude. Actually, dammit, I believe I once more smugly self-compassionately congratulated myself. I notice I am getting more smug in my ageing self. Or is it alignment based on values?
In a store window, I notice a candle shaped like an ass. I buy it as a reminder that some days, it’s beneficial not to give a damn. Yeah, many days this week I couldn’t be arsed. It’s a fine ass candle too. Yet again, in my smugly, compassionately congratulatory self, I notice in the shop window that I don’t have a badass either at 47 after years of self-berating of my butt. What if only it could be more petite and more perky? My ass is bigger now and more robust. The glutes I needed to maintain my post-operative spine were rebuilt in more than nine years of strength training. Anything worth having and holding onto, like asses, is not built overnight. Within the flames, another fire was put out. One that emerged triumphant.
Recovery.
Fires managed.
I notice how everything has been cut in half in clothing store windows and on the clothes that pass me in the Saturday shopping centre craziness. Have many clothes companies run out of raw materials? Partial attire. We are constantly urged to expose our bodies, minds, and hearts. Open hearts. But probably not fully informed on the dangers of complete exposure, mentally and physically. Protective masking. I’m reminded of the days when I was far younger. I was exposed to far more than I could manage and revealed so much more of myself than I could handle. I see that a lot in society now, nothing has changed; in fact, it has imploded to elicit perhaps lower levels of managing the fires within those flames. Maybe I am just getting old. The grateful smug congratulates herself again while she postulates.
I am then reminded of the times I exposed much more of myself that I finally could handle in my 40s.
I noticed that the flames in both of these fires were too intensely hyperfocused and dysregulated at times, with the capacity to diminish and intensify despite being characterised as dually strong and deficit-driven. Determined duality. Regulation. I’ll write about it again in time.
I set my coffee cup on the roof of my car and fumble in my handbag for my car keys. A wasp curiously investigates my red lipstick-laden coffee cup.
I hate handbags.
I hate wasps.
Rival consoles still looped console me. I divert once more to my husband’s parents’ house from my restarted hospital drive. I’m not at all like this. Several hasty detours. With kindness and parental worry, tea and cream cakes are served. Sweet demeanour. British in-laws are here. Their shoes are taken off. In my blue Converse, fully covered feet on my mother-in-law’s cream carpet, I observe both naked and sock-footed individuals with fascination. My mother-in-law reassures them there is no need to remove their shoes. Almost suffering trauma at my pathological demand avoidance of shoe removal, I message my neurodivergent twin soul mentioned above who does similar practices. He happens to be British too. I hate feet. I joke, cynically, that the patriarchy must be to blame. Some British people treat their homes like palaces. We occupy them. They occupied us. Stark contrasts in our culture that inspires satire. My mother-in-law overly encourages them to drink tea, they remove their shoes. We accept it. I mean, no offence. Get off the fence. I take note of one of the barefoot Brits’ immaculately groomed toes. The very concept of my own toes’ nakedness makes me cringe. I listen to their accents from London and Essex.
Reposition
Loops on Spotify.
Pitstop.
This wildly remarkable autistic divergence. Perhaps…
Pathological
Demand
Avoidance
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