Moving: Autistic Edition

 The mess of boxes and uncertainty of belongings are a true horror if you're autistic.

Ah, moving day!

You've spent your days anxiously awaiting when you can unpack all your belongings and set foot in a new place. The boxes are carried over. The anticipitation is killing you. You ascend Box Mountain, opening the first box... and task paralysis sets in! Second box — overwhelm! Third box — decision fatigue! You can't possibly do this! You put on an audiobook — a familiar world to drown out the unfamiliarity of your own. The words wash over you. 

By box ??? you've found a rhythm. There are piles of stuff everywhere. You navigate through stacked books, cutlery, china, clothing, accessories, dog treats and stray handymen. Social interaction and being perceived at the same time? Marvelous... 

Just what you asked for when you're staggering out of bed at 645 in the morning trying to find the one box with your clothes in it... That ever presistent fear of perceivement increases when handyman #5 has to install something and your tidy box system tower is moved. Your tidily assembled stuff on shelves is moved. Dust or dirt left on your meticilously cleaned shelves. Other people see your disorganization. Or you need to hold off on organizing because there is a delay and the kitchen/bathroom/cupboard/hallway still is unfinished. Panic rising slowly. You hide someplace else, but you're needed to find or explain something, when you'd rather go through your piles in peace.

Which is what your nights are for, evidently. Who needs sleep, when you have peaceful night hours to yourself?

By Day ??? you've finally found some semblance of spacial and inner peace. Your stuff no longer spills into quite so many areas, you can see patches of flooring, dust and debris. A life you were meant to lead, were you organized and neurotypical and owned just a few less books. Or a few less plates, cutlery, keffiyehs, paintings, notebooks or amassed blue glassware. Whatever the item, one should own it with pride. Allow it to find its place in the new home you're tentatively moving into.

Disorganization and stuff with nowhere to go is one of many issues for autistic people, at least in my own experience. We wish for tidy and clean spaces, yet our executive dysfunction (want to act, brain stuck in task traffic jam) gets the better of us and we collapse after having cleaned but a few measely shelves. We abhor changes and what is moving but one big change in which your stuff is packed in boxes and you are tossed about in uncertain waters and wait? Your routine, belongings and life are put on hold, to better a future, but there is still a wait and uncertainty involved. Will anything break during the move? Will you discover you have outgrown your books, your clothing, your belongings all together? Will the condiments you rely on to make safe food have expired if the storage period lasts more than a year?

Moving house isn't easy, regardless of your neurotype. Scholars like Luke Beardon has delved into the autistic unease around transitions (especially in school systems), arguing it is unfriendly (see his relevant blog post “Transition Time” from 2016 for further reading). Even though he addresses change in an educational space, the change between classes during the day, the discomfort presists. Change in any and all capacity reminds us that autistic distress is often preventable, not intrinsic. 

Autistic people thrive when their environment and routines remain unchanged; moving house challenges that. It fundamentally restructures vital routines, sensory inputs and emotional landscapes; my exhaustion, irritability or emotional fragility following years of domestic unmooring and finally attaining a safe anchorage is a natural response. I am overwhelmed and exhausted from a never-ending change of abode and routines, even if I now have moved house in the last time for a while. 

Small ruptures in routine are detrimental, such as not having chai four days in a row due to electronic delay. Or expecting something done that has been put on hold, and you have to make due with work-arounds or placeholders.  Routines dissolve like honey in milk, sensory anchors vanish and what once felt known and safe becomes eerily unfamiliar. The house has my belongings in it; my dogs have begun to settle down; I am slowly making it mine, but the piles upon piles of unsorted belongings with yet no place to go stresses me out. The fridge hums in a new disruptive pitch; the low droning ventilator creaks by, fogging up my hearing; my own yet unsorted messes, saddling me with yet more cognitive stress. New light angles, new floor textures, new smells, sounds, sensations and perceived stability — everything jumbles my mind.

I have looked forward to moving house since forever, but the fact remains that it is a stressful venture, both moving out and moving in; which often takes up to half a year to settle properly.

Sources

Beardon, Luke. “Transition Time”. Blog. May 18th 2016. [https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/autism/2016/05/18/transition-time/]