Autumn Joy
By Becky Beasley
You are too sensitive for this world, they said. You need to toughen up, repeated again and again. You need to be more forgiving. You need to get over it. I felt weird, as in weirdo, but an angel was what I felt myself to be. Floating in the world, disconnected from others, alienated from the inside of others’ connections to each other. I didn’t understand make-up and girly things. Mum said, stick to boys, girls are bitches. So I did. I got drunk with them, with older ones, men, and they bought me drinks. Being drunk felt better. I felt powerful instead of anxious and shy. I gravitated towards art. I was left-handed. At art school lots of the others were left-handed. I drank with the left-handed ones. And then when they didn’t want to drink with me any more, I drank with anyone who would buy me a drink. I lost my mind along the way. It got very dark. I was six foot under. Three men in white coats at the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital told me it was a good thing I had taken their advice and gone to AA. They told me I had saved my life. Great, I thought, what for? I lived with a man who scared me and I became catatonic. I left and was homeless. My closest friends at that time had a room to rent in their flat and I asked to move in. They said no. So I married a man twenty years older than me who I didn’t like as I was pretty sure at this point that my parents had had enough, my friends didn’t like me and I thought he was kind and smart and I could just do my art and be safe. No-one ever told me not to go ahead although I was confident that no-one else liked him either. I stayed quiet, waiting. The marriage went ahead. I didn’t say a word and neither did anyone else around me at the wedding. I was waiting for someone to step in and help me. It turned out he was cruel and arrogant. When I filed for divorce, I did it entirely alone.
Astray
I always did everything I could. After being diagnosed with endogenous depression at 15, was put on anti-depressants, had therapy, CBT, spent 20 years in AA meetings, did an endless NHS Mindfulness course, read about boundaries and bullies and how to thicken up my skin. Esprit de l’escalier. The spirit of the staircase, the ability to retort. Nope. Still can’t do that. I’d spend years not understanding why my generosity to others wasn’t reciprocated. Friends stayed away when I was at my lowest. I always dropped in the gaps between others’ friendships or groups. I deeply wanted friendship. One day a kind, older male AA friend visited me and we sat on a bench on the seafront in West St Leonards and he said, You are good and kind and generous, Becky. You are living life one handed. You are allowed to be angry and tough and protect yourself. I started trying to work out how to use the other hand. I couldn’t do it.
Ask for help. Call a friend. Reach out for support. I asked for help. I got shouted at. I lost my friends. I got older and older. Years became decades. I fell in love, had a miscarriage and got pregnant at 38. At six months, the Consultant at the Perinatal Mental Health Clinic had a large nurse escort me off the property because I was so distressed and refused drugs. The Consultant at the Perinatal Mental Health Clinic had a large nurse escort me off the property. The Consultant at the Perinatal Mental Health Clinic had a large nurse escort me off the property. I was so distressed. I remember standing outside in the bright sun afterwards crying and wondering how I was going to drive home.
I read a Harvard report that confirmed that acupuncture was as effective for perinatal depression as medication. I found someone who very nervously agreed to give me acupuncture. We had to cut both the Perinatal Mental Health team and my mum off from any contact with me from six months onwards during the pregnancy because of the distress they caused me at each point of contact. I dreaded the hours and hours alone with the baby, unable to be alone, by myself. I presumed everyone with a vocation other than Motherhood or childcare felt more or less the same. It never occurred to me there wouldn’t be anyone to help me out along the way, an hour here, an hour there. It takes a village to raise a child. It’ll be fine. It’ll work out. I thought now I had a baby people would appear, the cliches would prove true. Turns out they didn’t. It is what it is, Steve would say. Mum came for a couple of nights once a month in the first years so I could go teach, but beyond that, Steve and I became marooned.
My studio at the time in West St Leonards – 900 sq foot, which I had plumbed in for my photographic darkroom when I moved in and levelled the sloping floor- had had black mould around the front, sea-facing wall for some years. The landlady and studio manager kept saying they were doing something about it, but the mould persisted. After the baby was born, I paid a woman to help me find a new studio. She spent some days over a few weeks researching and then set up an appointment for me to visit a space on a local Industrial Estate. The guy I met with was a prick. I told him I had a baby and didn’t have long, but he went on and on about himself and at the end I agreed to take on 500 sq ft and we signed a piece of paper. I gave my two months’ notice at my studio. I was relieved. About ten days later the man called to tell me he’d decided not to rent the space. I emailed my studio manager and told him I could no longer move out. I didn’t have a drop of energy to try again to find somewhere. I was stuck. I would just have to stay until the baby was older. I just didn’t have any choice left in the matter. I was shattered. The studio manager told me someone else was interested and they were going to sign the contract for my studio later that week. I said, I can’t move. I have a six month baby and post-natal depression. I physically don’t have the strength to move. I asked to speak with the male artist and we met. I told him calmly why I was not able to move. They said it wasn’t their problem. I expressed more clearly how ill I was and that it just wasn’t possible for me to move and that they really mustn’t sign the contract. I told them they wouldn’t like it either due to the damp and mould. They said it wasn’t their problem. The next day I received an email confirming they had signed the form. I saw the male artist one more time when they wanted access with a decorator. I showed up to let them in, but at that point I couldn’t cope. I broke down on the ground by my pram. I screamed for the decorators to get out of my space. I moved my studio into storage. I later heard that they didn’t stay in the studio long because of the mould.
I thought daily of suicide and working out how to do it without hurting my family. After a few years, in 2019, I worked it out. I was ready. Every month, in the week before my period, I was ready. The rest of the month it wasn’t quite as clear cut. I went and saw Yuko, a local acupuncturist and she told me it was hormonal. Hormonal? This was the first time anyone has ever spoken to me about my hormones. It was my 44th birthday. I started tracking my cycle and noticed the premenstrual exacerbation of my suicidal ideation and planning. I became fascinated. I studied. I screened for Premenstrual Disphoric Disorder (PMDD) and mapped precisely into its diagnostic matrix. I read everything available. It affects one in twenty women, but if you asked your GP in 2019 they’ll say, What’s PMDD? I told everyone I met. I helped lots of women. I read I should take an advocate with me to every appointment. One mum friend came once and I never heard from her again. Another mum friend stuck by me. I taught my GP about PMDD and she referred me to Gynaecology. We went to the appointment; me, Steve, the mum friend with a clip board¹ and all my books on PMDD. She said, If I’d read the referral letter before this appointment, I’d have made it a double, but as it is we have ten minutes. You know more than me, so I’ll need three months to read up. I told her a referral to the Female Hormone Clinic at the Maudsley would be best as they had set up a specialist clinic in the last few years. I waited three months and she asked my GP to refer me to the clinic. The funds were declined by the local council. I waited a year for a second appointment, letters coming through the door every couple of months deferring the appointment further and further into the future. I wrote to the MP for the first time on behalf of a black male friend who was stopped by police every time he went to do the shopping for him sheltering mum during lock down. I was angry about that. After writing once I realized how easy it was and decided to write about the gynaecologist who had taken my meeting so casually when my life was at risk and let my appointment disappear into Neverneverland. I wrote and they replied and I replied and got results. It felt good. The gynaecologist called me herself the week the MP wrote to her. She left a voice-message.
I self-diagnosed with autism in November 2020 aged 45. I found a profiling document late one night and read the story of my life². Nothing was left out. I was autistic. I cried with joy.
My University told me to get a diagnosis as there was nothing they could do to make reasonable adjustments without one. The waiting list for the NHS ASD diagnosis is 2-5 years for an adult woman – we are their lowest priority. I got a recommendation for a private diagnosis from a man with a proven track record of diagnosing adult women, something you can’t guarantee with the NHS. Most diagnosticians can’t do this as women mask so well, having learnt- unbeknown to ourselves- from about the age of eight to hide ourselves. It cost £870 and on the 4th February 2021 I received a formal diagnosis of autism³.
¹The mum friend is Kat who runs the brilliant women’s health Facebook group, Kat’s Journey to Healthy Living https://www.facebook.com/groups/986211718223811/
²The profiling document is here: Moving towards an adult female profile of Autism
³Dr Max Zoettl is the psychiatrist expert in diagnosing adult women with autism. http://www.drmaxzoettl.co.uk/
Every day since has been filled with – amongst many inevitable emotions of loss, sadness, anger – the immense joy of being more and more myself and the daily unfolding of answers to every unanswered question of my life. I love being autistic because it simply means being myself- impossible in a neurotypically-aligned world without diagnosis. The diagnostic terms and tools are still primitive because neurodiversity is so extraordinary. In the future all these diversions will simply be understood as individual sensitivities, but for now ASD will do. I have an IQ of 127. I can’t do housework or put my clean clothes piles away. I don’t really like to feed myself during the day. I am fascinated by certain things, but am utterly uninterested in others. I don’t like small talk. I deliver monologues on my special interests to everyone I meet: PMDD, negligence in Women’s Healthcare and undiagnosed autism in adult women are my recent additional special interests. My longest special interest has always been art and I received the highest award for art in the UK in 2018⁴. I can’t do school drop off and pick up because it makes me too ill (from overwhelm) to work. Now I drop my son to reception away from the crowds and collect him after-hours from the quiet after school club. Although I’d rather be alone at the studio, I also now feel great joy in picking him up each afternoon. I know now that I’ll always prefer to be alone most of the time, but I’m also a wonderful, increasingly eccentric and unorthodox mother who Tom loves more than anyone else on Earth.
⁴ https://www.phf.org.uk/artist/becky-beasley/