British Gas have said that there is no possible way for me to have electricity, unless I contact a DNO and pay to have the electricity meter moved. I apparently can’t have smart meters, because the electricity meter is on the ground floor, behind a locked box, and my gas meter is on the first floor, in my maisonette. I cannot reach the gas meter because it is behind where the washing machine is plumbed into. I cannot access the electricity meter, because it is behind a locked communal door. I asked how the previous person had electricity and they tell me to use the gas card and the electricity key in the meters. One) I can’t access either of the meters and two) the gas card and the electricity key and both of the meters have hundreds of pounds of debt on them. I’m not paying the previous owners debt. I’m not allowed a direct debit meter, because I do not have two children under the age of two years old, nor do I care full time for an elderly relative that is over 75 years old, nor am I diabetic and have medication in the fridge. I just want electricity. I can work around not having gas, I just want electricity.

Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. When I got home from work, I had to phone HMRC because I should be on an emergency tax code, and I should have been for months, because I moved jobs twice last year, but the accountant at work doesn’t know how to. She only works for two hours a week, as she is covering for the accountant who is on maternity leave. I spent over thirty minutes in a queue on the phone, only for the customer service operator to not understand what I was trying to do. All I wanted to do was pay the outstanding tax that I owe. I have er my national insurance number, my full name, my full address, the work place information and she just could not understand what I was trying to do. I kept telling her our accountant can’t put me on the correct tax code, so please can I just pay you the tax that I owe you. She could not understand why I needed to pay the tax that I owe. I got too upset and had to hang up. I get upset on the phone anyway, but this was too much for me.
          Then, I had to make another phone call to British Gas. I spent over forty minutes in the queue to get through to them, only to get transferred through to the wrong department and they cut the call while trying to transfer me.
          Then, I tried to pay my outstanding tax online, but all HMRC’s website does is give you a hyperlink and that hyperlink takes you to another hyperlink and that hyperlink takes you to another hyperlink and you just go on and on and on, until fifteen minutes later, you arrive at the hyperlink that you started on.
          Then, I tried contacting British Gas on their online chat. It took my just over twenty minutes to get down the over 90 people queue, which I thought was quite good, that is until I got through to someone. I have recently purchase a maisonette. The electricity meter is a prepayment meter, which is locked away in a communal cupboard. No resident is allowed to have permanent access to the cupboard. I was previously told that I could have smart meters, which meant moving the current meters and installing smart meters in my maisonette, but I had to get British Gas access tot the current meter to remove it first.  The leaseholder has agreed that I can use the key to have my meter moved. I was trying to contact British Gas to tell them that I now have access tot eh key. The customer service person said that British Gas cannot move a meter without the consent of the DNO.
         How on earth did the pervious owner have electricity?
         I have just been in an online chat with a second person at British Gas and they have said that they only was to have gas and electricity is for the DNO to move the meters. I have been in an online chat with National Grid who sent me to a link for planning application with them. I need to pay for property plans outlining where the gas pipes and electricity cables connect from the main road. I need to thoroughly detail where the meters currently are and where they need to be moved to. I, also, need to get planning permission from the leaseholder to have construction work done and have the whole road dug up. That's never going to happen. I can't even get planning persmisson from them to get a new front door.

 I am paying to stay at mum's because my flat isn't liveable and the neighbours are drilling and hammering on the joining wall to my room at 8:30pm. I hate these people so much. The woman is a mental health social worker, she encourages her teenagers to bang on the walls and cackle and now this. I struggle to cope with noise at the best of times, but if you wake me up, while I am sleeping, let's just say, I know what the mindset of a murderer is like, so just be thankful that I have remorse and guilt.

(edit: it's getting worse at 08:50pm)

Stop Romanticising Autism

I hate how everyone seems to be romanticising autism at the moment. It isn’t a nice thing to have, nor is it a choice. It isn’t something that you can turn on and off, like some popular craze. It is a horrible thing to live with every single day. There is no magic pill that eases symptoms. Earplugs don’t work with sever sensory autism. Noise cancelling headphones barely do much. I do not chose to get stressed and overwhelmed with noise, until I am either frozen to the spot with fear or so drained that even with eight hours sleep, I am still so drained it feels like I never went to sleep.

Real sensory autism is like having a spreadsheet open for every, individual sound, light, smell, temperature/draught, creak, hum, including my heartbeat and breathing, the person next to me’s breathing all open at the same time. Loud sounds, flashing lights or anything attention-seeking is like that spreadsheet is flashing constantly in my brain, using up my CPU. Even when the annoyance stops, I have the residual replaying in my mind – sometimes for over an hour, and if this is a sound, it is usually accompanied by ear ringing.

After the overwhelming thing has stopped, the only way to feel okay again is to go to sleep, and a nap doesn’t count. I need at least eight hours sleep or I do not recover.

Panicking, shortness of breath, paranoia, crying, screaming on the spot uncontrollably if it is incredibly bad (and yes, I have experienced this a couple of times), loss of appetite, severe dehydration, usually accompany it and extreme exhaustion to the point of almost falling asleep on the spot, can happen too. Oh and I found out a few months ago that my fainting is an autism side effect too.

I am currently experiencing an overwhelming episode/sensory overload so bad, due to work, that even after a week since the overload occurred, I am still so tired and drained – and I slept for 11 hours one of the weekend days. And now it has been re-triggered again today.

Autism isn’t just wearing tinted glasses in extreme bright lights, like in supermarkets or wearing headphones to listen to music to dim the noise. Autism isn’t a fashion trend. I hate having to wear my tinted, migraine glasses when I go into a supermarket, in case I faint. I don’t feel comfortable wearing my noise cancelling headphones in loud places, in a desperate attempt to dim the sound just a smidge, so that I don’t become rooted to the spot, too scared to move and possibly scream.

I have learnt so much about how my brain works, what triggers things and how to ease symptoms, over the past five years. I absolutely hate how all of these sensory things affect me in my day to day life. I am not choosing to not like bright lights. I am not choosing to dislike loud noises. I walk nine miles every day, because my autism prevents me from comfortably travelling on the bus. I commuted by bus for two months last year, for two hours a day, and I could not function during my working day, because the experience was too overwhelming for me. I wasn’t magically better once I got off the bus, or even a few minutes later. I don’t walk 4.5 miles every morning and evening because I want to, I do it because I have to.

I know that because I am female, I run the risk of hearing, “Grow up,” or, “Get help,” or some sort of snide, nasty remark, whereas if I was male, people would be praising my words and I would probably be nominated for some sort of blog award. Being autistic and female is the same as being autistic and male. Where I work, I have a colleague and we have a very similar autism. He is currently off sick, because he recognises that he needed a week off, because he has reached a severe point of overwhelm. People praise him for recognising that he needed to step away. When I did this, a little over a year ago, everyone kept speaking down to me, saying that I was being pathetic and couldn’t cope.

I’m not asking for praise or anything stupid like that. I just want the world to stop thinking that it is cool or the next trend to say that you have autism. Yes, I am very pleased to know that this is what I have, because it has helped me make a whole lot of sense as to who I am and why my brain/body reacts the way it does to certain things. It has helped me to cut out people who can’t be supportive. But under no circumstance would I ever choose to have the thing that is wrong with my brain, if I could help it. I hate feeling drained and tired all of the time. I hate getting upset, panicky and frozen over loud noises. If I could take a magic pill and adjust my brain so that I didn’t have to wear noise cancelling headphones and tinted glasses, I would. I’m not proud that I have to do this to survive.

Stop romanticising autism. Stop praising males who have it, but labelling females who do as pathetic and, “She can’t cope.”

 

- Josie -