Personal reflection on my Final Year project piece

Dave, who I mention in the piece, is my supervisor and has been just brilliant. I had been at home, absorbed in learning an extract of the Kaddish in Hebrew when I received an email from our course leader, Sue, saying I had not submitted the personal reflection or a CV I needed for this module. Yet they gave me a chance to write one and get in by Monday. This was Friday lunchtime and I work all weekend. The task looked and felt impossible. I threw this together on the train from Long Eaton to Sheffield and back and got my best ever mark for it (78%). Here it is, in full.

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In his poem Buttercup Days, AAMilne wrote:

What has she got in that little brown head?
Wonderful thoughts which can never be said...

This is probably the best appraisal of an autistic mind I have come across. Succinct and unambiguous.

My original idea had been to write about aliens and autism and life on the periphery of society; to discover whether or not there could be anything to substantiate the belief of some people that aliens have visited earth and deposited various offspring among the human populace.

Following a much anxiety and procrastination, Dave and I decided my project would be on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Asperger’s syndrome. His suggestion was, in fact, Gary McKinnnon but we thought it a good idea to widen it. It was a traumatic personal journey which uncovered even more aspects of a difficult life to acknowledge.

My intention, in consultation with my supervisor, was to write a balance of first hand insights with other printed material, which I felt I achieved without becoming self indulgent. The outtakes were fairly epic in proportion to the submitted piece but there is an awful lot to filter in my ‘little brown head’.

Living in a foreign culture and speaking an alien tongue is pretty hard going but what I have most of all hoped for is that one, elusive, piece of work; that wonderful window through which everyone will suddenly be able to see and understand an autistic mind in all its rainbow glory.

Gary McKinnon epitomises everyone’s dread of being left stranded, abandoned and misunderstood. Up Shit Creek without a paddle, to use a vernacular expression. Simon Baron-Cohen threw a life line, recognising McKinnon’s autistic traits during a television interview and he has been doing his utmost to help this man since. So have many other people but those of us care about individuals and their right to be heard and understood can only sign petitions, write to Members of Parliament, and hope.

I tried to explain the reason behind autistic ‘strong interests’ and how they can become obsessive. This does not necessarily mean OCD, which I discovered during my research. It seems to be whatever is going on in little brown autistic heads that turns obsession into obsessive compulsive disorder. Egodystonic thoughts, as Tony Attwood called them. It hardly expresses the terror and rigid fear these not-so-wonderful thoughts bring with them. Even though my mentor quite liked what I’d written and a friend complimented it when I put it on my blog; even when I submitted a pitch to Communication, the magazine of the National Autistic Society and they expressed an interest in publishing it, I felt I had ‘bombed’. Nothing seemed to adequately capture and tame that wild firework display of thoughts and emotions.
Then to go through the trauma of checking, rechecking, sweating, crying and swearing over it, it was handed in. But I was so focused on the piece of work itself I either forgot or did not notice the personal reflection and CV, which also needed to be completed and handed in. Very fortunately, the teaching staff gave me the chance to write and submit it, which is where I am now, clutching at oars from the man in Shit Creek Paddle Store. Crying all over again at the two fighting factions in my head. One is the voice of my mother, whose blazing furnace of a mouth was telling me I’m no good and will never amount to anything. The other fights that furious, angry, fire with water, an ocean of affirmation that allows us to stuff up and yet be given a chance.

This is why I understand Gary McKinnon. His raging obsession burned so hard and furious he was incapable of seeing all those other really important issues surrounding his hunt for alien life and free energy.

Maybe Gary McKinnon’s mute shout will be heard and he will be freed.

One day, perhaps, those ‘wonderful thoughts’ of Buttercup Days, which are locked inside the glass wall of my mind, separating our worlds, will find a window and be adequately able to communicate.