Rosie - Random Act of kindness day 2024

Random Act of Kindness Day!

Hi everyone.

Here I am again.

I am subtly pretending that I didn’t just pace out my previous blog post because I actually wanted to write about Random Act of Kindness Day and felt I couldn’t without a primer apology for going MIA on everyone – although side-note – at this point I am not actually sure if there is an ‘everyone’ or if Annie is just indulging my brain ramblings – please say hi or ask questions!

Tomorrow is Random Act of Kindness Day, which I think we can all agree is better than Valentine’s Day – also second side note what a week with Pancake Day also!

Valentine’s Day restricts our vocabulary of love to that which sits comfortably on a card and has no space for the non-physical or quieter ways that I express love as a neurodivergent person. I find the falsity and performativity alienating and that’s before we even touch on the sensory overwhelm of the land of scented candles, melting chocolates and aggressive shades of pink. Valentine’s day always makes me feel alone and disconnected. However, I do remember fondly my dad buying me a mug one year – I think he felt sorry for me as I was forever writing love stories based on my childhood idea of love and to this date have never even been asked on a date. As I grew up and was exposed to the overly sexualised popular culture signifying what love and relationships mean I got scared. I get scared that I won’t recognise the sexual connotations of something and be mocked. To be honest, I find the idea of physical relationships repulsive (no offence!) and it brings back flashbacks of all the complicated playground politics of not being able to have friends without being accused of having a crush or the ‘Like for Looks’ or ‘Rate me’ social media games that would repeatedly affirm my freakish nature and unattractiveness. I learned not to think about relationships as they weren’t an option for me. Similarly, I find the monetised demands for affection confusing to understand but I guess ‘Hug me’ is easier to fit on a sweet than ‘If I didn’t have OCD I would make you a cup of tea so that you don’t have to get up and do it yourself’ or ‘If you look sad, I vow to find you an appropriate meme to make you smile.’. However, if your love language is indeed fluffy pink teddy bears and expensive wine then I hope the day was a genuine way of expressing your love to the special people in your life – but remember doing this shouldn’t be dictated by the calendar (or more accurately Hallmark).

Anyway, that was enough of a diversion back to the nicer, if equally superficial, Random Act of Kindness Day.

I guess writing this post is a lesson itself in ‘opposite action’. If you read my last post (thank you) I talked about how I have been struggling to write recently due to some jarring interactions with the neurotypical world that have made acknowledging my neurodivergence feel a bit too raw. Similarly, I have also systematically been dropped from every mental health service I was under – more on that another time. All of this has made me feel pretty low and unsure of myself, questioning if I will ever be able to slot myself into the real world but it has also made me hostile and falling into the trap of feeling like the world is against me.

I struggle with this a lot as I have a quite a clear-cut sense of right and wrong that can sometimes be a too rigid. This is a complicated one though as whilst I want to give people the benefit of the doubt and accept it when people tell me ‘They just don’t understand’ or ‘they didn’t know’, the fact is I still got hurt and repeatedly having to make excuses for others not understanding me positions me as the problem. Most of the time I don’t think people deliberately try to upset me, but does that mean I am

not allowed to be upset? At what point is it not on them to apologise for not understanding as opposed to me apologising for not being the ‘normal’ person they thought they were dealing with? At what point do they have a responsibility to learn? In the moment when I am struggling to make myself understandable and they do something that just seems unfair or makes no sense to me, telling me they just don’t understand makes the gulf between me and the real world feel impossible to overcome. In time, I can cool down and process the situation from their point of view (it would be nice if they did the same but that’s another battle) but in the immediate it just feels like a conspiracy against me, and another set of rules being created and not shared with me. So, against this backdrop I am fighting against the fixation of the world being against me and writing about some of the ‘goodies’ – the people who didn’t know but also didn’t question and who had the humility to realise that their worldview was not the only one and perception to realise that you don’t have to understand someone’s distress to respond to it.

As I started thinking about who I could write about the list filled up a lot quicker than my depression brain thought was possible, so I have had to be selective. As much as being neurodivergent can feel like being on your own island and that you are beaten back every time you try to step out, there are people who try and close the gap and it’s important not to lose sight of that, to try and push the black and white thinking and take risks to be who we are in the hope that some people will stick around.

First goes out to some school teachers who even pre-diagnosis would consult me quietly on seating plans, who didn’t sanction me for having a teasing-stress-routine-change induced outburst but instead gave me the time I needed to calm down and apologise, who let me use my own organising and note-taking system or who let me go home at lunch times and avoid assemblies when it was clear I was at my coping limit. Thank you for giving me the privacy and understanding I needed in the battle to filter out the social strain and unnecessary conventions that impede so many neurodivergent people in accessing education- there are too many who prioritise uniformity over learning.

Similarly, thanks to all the university staff who fielded my 9,000 questions (not including all the email follow-ups!) and held 1 to 1 sessions with me – you genuinely made me feel normal and safe. Having left this space now, I can truly contextualise your generosity amid the millions of deadlines you were under. Here, I also thank the long-suffering administrator who had to handle my repeated ‘official form’ crises and special arrangements requests – we had a rough start, but I think we learned together. Thank you for giving me respect even when we didn’t fully understand each other.

Second goes to (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) healthcare professionals. Thanks go to the agency Health Care Assistant who took an interest and asked me to explain why I was distressed so she would know what to do when she next had an autistic patient, to the student nurse who instead of yelling at me when I got distressed after having been attached for two hours to a machine that wouldn’t stop beeping causing me to scrape my skin off sat with me apologised and who told me that I didn’t have to apologise for being autistic and to the district nurse who is nothing less than an angel and who in COVID-19 waited an hour outside in the snow at my house and then took my bloods in the garden because I was too scared.

Third (and I really can’t believe I’m writing this) goes to mental healthcare professionals. Thank you to the Occupational Therapist who would come find me when the alarms were going off on the inpatient unit when none of the nurses would and who told me in advance of the other patients that she was leaving so I could plan and to the Health Care Assistants who would stay after their shifts so I

could go for my walk or who would sit on the ground with me in silence without questioning or who would even let me in a room so I could scream.

Finally, and most importantly, thank you to the complete strangers who had no specific reason to help me or to know about neurodivergence but who nevertheless wanted to help me in my distress. Thank you to the supermarket worker who overheard me having a breakdown because the only porridge I could eat with my OCD was out of stock and who found us later with some he had found in the stock room, to the stranger who helped me find my way to my medical appointment when they saw me flustered with a map, and to the shop assistant who didn’t bat an eyelid when I asked her to speak to my mum on the phone because I was too nervous to ask where something was.

They claimed they were just doing their jobs.

I thanked these people, but I don’t think they truly know how much their actions meant to me, how much it meant to not be made to feel an inconvenience or ridiculous, how much it meant to be able to say thank you instead of I’m sorry.

I guess the bitter aftertaste to Random Act of Kindness Day is that we need a Random Act of Kindness Day at all. These little adjustments at times (and I am being genuine here) saved my life or otherwise restored my faith that I wasn’t some kind of freak of nature and was connected to the real world. I get told a lot that I expect too much of people, that my ‘reasonable adjustments’ are unreasonable but isn’t forcing me to exist at a permanent disadvantage also unreasonable? Maybe I am too demanding, but I find it a little sad that I have to celebrate these acts as ‘random’ and brand being treated with respect as atypical acts of ‘kindness’ – can’t we be kind every day?

Thoughts?

Speak soon.

Rosie.