At the end of 2012 I was given the ‘Autism spectrum’ diagnosis. I was put in this group of people who had also recently been given their diagnoses and every two weeks we came together with two instructors to be taught on all things autism and how to deal with the way that our brains are wired differently.

Only very prior to that diagnosis I had come down with a very nasty stomach flu that kept my in house and without any stomach contends for longer than I care for. It even got so far that my mom and boyfriend carried me off to the hospital because my body just wasn’t taking in anything, let alone the stuff that it actually needs to work properly. Just when I was on the mend, it started all over and all I could think was ‘Please, God, no’. It turned out that the stomach flu had caused so much mayhem in my body that my thyroid had started working overtime, causing the exact same symptoms. It cost me about a year to get my thyroid back to how it should work.

While I was dealing with all this, someone very close to me started going down, got depressed. And one fine day, even attempted, but stopped, suicide.

At the end of that school year, I was very close to that point myself. Unfortunately, the psychiatrist that was assigned to me couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything for me. So I asked my psychiatrist to sign me up for this agency that can help people with diagnoses similar to my own and who have difficulty coping with life and what it throws at you. My first coach from that agency couldn’t stay with me because things were changing and the coaches now were only allowed to coach people closer to their homes, to cut back on travelling time and expenses. So I was introduced to my second coach at the end of 2013 and in the middle of the last year of my bachelor.

My second coach told me that there was an experimental program at their agency for people like me who have bigger problems than getting their administration in order and making sure that there are regular showers. I should “Sure, sign me up”. The experimental program lasted about three months and gave me and my boyfriend more insight into autism and how it affects me, and how that affects our relationship. Because no autist is the same, and in every autist the ‘symptoms’ appear different, or on a different difficulty level.

Then I finished my bachelor and started my master in Translation, English to Dutch with a specialty in translating literature.

Before the school year started my grandmother had heart troubles, and all sorts of other troubles as she had been ailing for a while. When the school year started for me, I was thrown head first into a pile of assignments and classes and teachers and classmates. I knew a few of the students and teachers from my bachelor classes. Because of the language difficulty, that unfortunately comes with autism, I had an immediate disadvantage. What was more troubling, was that I knew that I had that disadvantage. But when I asked my teachers for help with clarification or the re-phrasing of the assignment, or with more info on the assignment the answer I eventually got was “We need to stand behind the degree that we give you when you pass this master. So that when people see that you have this degree, that they know what it stands for. If we help you, we can no longer stand behind the degree that we give you.” I answered that for the rest of my life I was going to have to ask people for clarification, including my professional life. So why couldn’t I do that here as well? I was referred back to the previous answer.

During the first block my grandmother kept getting worse. Her prognosis kept getting shortened, until it was clear that she probably wouldn’t even last until November. At that point I stayed at home. It takes me about an hour to get to school, by bus and train, and if something happened with my grandmother I wanted to be there quickly, not have to wait until the next train and bus could take me home. I stayed at home for about two and a half weeks. During the last week my grandmother died and her cremation was held. My grandmother died via a form of euthanasia in which she was put to sleep, and kept asleep until her body died. She was put to sleep around noon, I sat with her and my mom, her brother, and my dad, that afternoon until about 8pm when I went home. My mother and her brother stayed with my grandmother. She died early in the morning.

That first block I found out that my language disadvantage really was a disadvantage, but my fear of failing was that even more. I managed to pass the courses in the first block with still two fail marks to my name, for two translations which I thought were really hard and I couldn’t really cipher them out. To me didn’t, and doesn’t, really matter that I wasn’t the only one among my classmates to have troubles with those translations, or that I wasn’t even the only one to have failed them. I only care that I failed them, that I couldn’t understand the assignment and the source text well enough to make a good translation.

I applied for a study buddy with humanitas, a volunteer organisation, which in this case seeks volunteers to help out students who are having a difficult time studying. By the time that I was assigned one, it was actually already too late. The fear of failure had gotten me so deep that even the successes that I did have, they didn’t seem real anymore. It started feeling like pity grades. Where I had awarded myself something for a good mark in block one, I couldn’t even be bothered with good marks in block two. All I could think off was the possibility of bad grades, of not passing this degree in one go.

Even while I was still in my bachelor I had applied for help from this national mental healthcare sort of thing. I had also applied to be declared partially unfit for work. Yesterday we were finally able to carve out what that help would actually entail from the first. For the latter I am now going to court to appeal the appeal, because I don’t really have much mental health records from before I was eighteen, but everyone around me agrees that I am unfit to work a full workweek. The government appears to think that there is still work that I can do full time, I can tell you that there isn’t, because my performance anxiety, costs me so much energy that I can probably work full time for three weeks, if that, and then I’ll be at home sick, because my body refuses to take anymore strain.

So during block two my mental state was going down the drain. Because the psychiatrist with the national mental health care facility only works two days, and both days in a location that was very unpractical to realize from where my classes were, I had opted to let my GP take care of my mental health prescriptions. The first one put me over the toilet in about an hour. I actually that most of that wasn’t even the fault of the medication, but my body was already so strung up from fear and pushing myself past my limits that the feeling of nausea that the medication can give was multiplied to a great deal. But I was taken off those medication and put a different one, while I wasn’t as nauseous as I had been, it still didn’t make me feel great nor did it really seem to go away over time. So on Christmas Eve the GP sent me to an apothecary for a new prescription. I was so out of it on Christmas day that I could hardly talk. But by the time that I could think again, which was on my boyfriend’s birthday, all my thoughts went to the mayor deadlines I had awaiting me after Christmas break and how I had no clue how to make them happen and pass them.

On December 30th I tried to break up with my boyfriend, because I did not want him to have to live with someone with so much problems and issues. He talked me out of it. But by new year’s eve I was ready to put an end to myself. I didn’t, and still don’t, want to be a bother to those around me. And my problems and issues demand that I ask for help, frequently, or have someone help me almost every day. And I don’t want to do that to the people I love. So I just wanted to take myself out of the equation. My mom, dad and boyfriend had a hell of a new year’s eve I can tell you, because the GP that we had seen that day said I should just wait for my medication to kick in past the turning point.

At the end of that week we had people from the crisis service visiting us, because that day my boyfriend had just told me that he couldn’t carry me anymore. He had nothing left to give. I understand his position completely, but at the time that I was already at an alltime low it broke my resolve to wait for the medication to kick in. If even he, the strongest person I know, couldn’t carry me anymore, how could I? Luckily my mom walked in the room just as I was finishing up the phone call and could catch me breaking me down. I had wanted to be put in a mental facility, because I had just lost every will to live. But they told me that being there wouldn’t do anything, so I opted to stay home in stead.

The next day I decided to quit school, work on myself and decide later if I want to go back to school. On Monday my brother collapsed in the store where he works. He was finally sent home last Saturday to heal his severe concussion because his heart was fine again.  Yesterday I had people coming over, my monitor from the national mental health care facility and later on in the day my coach also came over, to talk about what was going to happen next. What was I going to do, how was it all going to be taken care of.

Yesterday was the first day that I saw my autism as an incurable disease. Something that will never go away, and can only be lived with. Where I have to learn from every problem and difficulty that arises. Yesterday I had a bad day and I wished that I had a dr House to look at all my symptoms, put them together into manageable groups of what goes with what and then give me a treatment to solve everything.