Whatever happened in 2017 must have been a continuation of the previous year, well, that goes without saying I guess? I'm pretty sure that I must have either joined the adult autism charity in this year or 2016 - actually, I think that it may have been late 2016, so I'll amend that particular blog entry. I know from my email records that the first meeting I attended of my borough's Autism Partnership Board (APB) in November 2017. I found it an odd concept and something which promised much but delivered very little in retrospect.
So - an adult charity this time eh? How did it differ from the children's groups? Well, let's just say it wasn't an easy group to mix in with. I'm pretty high functioning and therefore find it difficult to gauge the level of conversation so those with a learning disability can understand what on earth I am saying. I don't struggle with guys like my brother-in-law because I'm used to him and he's pretty non-verbal anyway. Some of the attendees were lovely though and really welcoming. The Chair, let's call her Janey, was a bit odd though - incredibly self-assured and opinionated without having any academic background to her supposed professionalism.
So, in late 2017 I tried another adult autism charity and got involved with the running of it. It didn't work and I left in summer 2018 around the same time my beloved family cat, Tilly, was put to sleep. I also sought a diagnosis of bipolar during this time but it was decided that I was unipolar in January 2019.
In September 2019 I was shouted out in the reception area of the Civic Offices by the woman who runs the adult autism charity. The background to this furore was that, as co-chair, I wanted to attend the charity's training course which was aimed at council employees who had direct contact with clients on the spectrum, but because of beef the previous year, the woman thought that I was a spy and started shouting at me. This made me almost burst into tears but I managed to get through the training course. I reported this behaviour to the council and they spoke to the charity woman a few days later. The charity woman never turned up to another autism partnership board meeting ever again and her sidekick left too.
I cannot really recall much else; during 2020 COVID-19 happened and the Board didn't meet for about six months until they got their act together and arranged a meet via Microsoft Teams. This meeting lasted for far too long as there was six months of stuff to deal with. People started leaving the Board, it got smaller and smaller and the same old stuff kept coming up month after month. I started feeling more and more sick about attending, even remotely.
In 2020 I also joined another adult autism charity in another borough; they meet via Zoom or Skype and have a virtual pub night on there every month. I quite enjoyed meeting new people and trying to suss out who everyone was. I attended sporadically during 2020. In early 2021 I developed clinical depression as a result of re-applying for my Personal Independence Payment (PIP) but I still attended, keeping a low profile and learning about the other members. When my mood switched to hyper from late June/early July onwards I was much more bombastic within the group and started to make enemies. I won't bore you, but I wanted to organise some mental health support for adults on the spectrum and I was going to undertake it with the help of this charity and one in my resident borough. I joined the committee as a volunteer and bad stuff started to happen. One of them was via one of those people whom I won't go into any more detail about and the other was, well, dealing with other people on the spectrum - I just cannot.
It all ended in tears yet again - I've gone now and quite frankly, wish to rescind my autism diagnosis.
