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It’s just under a month until my first christmas as a diagnosed PDAer. Christmas is a time many PDAers, especially the kids find difficult – it’s full of demands! I don’t recall that being a problem for me, I was always quite excited to get gifts (which can sometimes pose a problem for PDA children due to representing uncertainty in what will be received).

I do recall that in my teen years some Christmasses felt like a lot of pressure to pretend to be happy when I was really very unhappy. I find Christmas when you’re not in the mood to be quite difficult, so now I tend to make an effort to get into the spirit of things to lessen that. I like buying people gifts, the decorations, and some of the traditions. I do tend to feel a sense of ‘this again, already’ though. A Christmas at the end of every year feels like a ‘lot’. It never feels that long since the last Christmas to be doing all the same routines again.

This Christmas will be a little bit special as it’s my first with my own flat to decorate. I’ll admit, I’ve already done so, because I needed cheering up at the end of the last week and my little tree arrived. It’s only small, 4 feet tall and artificial… but it’s my first Christmas tree of my own. I’m planning to keep it to use as a secondary tree in years to come, because I do love real trees. For now, in my little supported living flat though, it does nicely.

Time flies when you’re not an inpatient at a psychiatric ward. These past seven months have passed an awful lot quicker than the preceding seven months stuck as an inpatient. It feels so good to be moving forward with my life.. I’d say again, but really for the first time in years.

After my first manic episode in 2015, I lost a lot of functioning. I attempted to return to university, but didn’t really cope. I wasn’t cooking for myself properly anymore, became very isolated, wasn’t able to sit my exams. Eventually I moved back home with my parents, until the 2020 lockdowns, becoming very depressed. In 2020, I moved to a shared house, but still wasn’t really functioning. I was more just existing. My quality of life was very poor.

So I’m very glad that the one thing I managed to communicate in the first hospital last year was that I wanted supported living. The doctor there dismissed the idea saying, surely I’m too independent for that. Thankfully, at the second hospital, an OT did a activities of daily living assessment and that proved that I needed supported accommodation. The funding was secured, and my CPN found me the place where I live now.

I’ve come a long way in the seven months of living here. I’ve started work for the first time in my life, as a SEN teaching assistant. I absolutely adore that work, it’s great to work with autistic kids. I’ve recently started attending social groups in a city I can reach by train. I had been quite worried that I wasn’t making social connections outside of the scheme, meaning that when I moved on I’d still be very isolated and lonely. So my keyworker helped me find some groups, and I’ve been making an effort to go to them. Tonight’s was a geek meetup, which is perfect for me.

I’m also making a little progress when it comes to maintaining my flat. It helps that I’m motivated to have a nice space to decorate for christmas at the moment. I’ve decided that I’m going to store my clothes in bags for life in my bedroom, so they aren’t taking up space in the living room anymore. I don’t feel able to put laundry away in drawers at the moment, so having a designated place for laundry bags to live helps keep things under control. It was reading ‘How to Keep House While Drowning’ that gave me the idea. It validated that I needed an adapted system that worked for me, rather than ‘the proper way to do things’. I also cleaned out my hoover, disentangling things that had got tangled and preventing it from suctioning.

I’m hoping that within the next seven months I’ll have made even more progress. Who knows, I might be allowed to own a kitty.