In my forthcoming memoir, “I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder,” I say that my life is best viewed as a cautionary tale. Now that I’m attempting to promote it, I’d like to add another deterrent example to the mix: Do not release a book in the middle of pandemic. It’s terrible for business, art and mental health.

Interviews and events dry up. You mourn the lost opportunities to celebrate and sell your book and then feel wretchedly guilty for worrying about something so trivial at a time when so many human lives are on the line.

I am loath to try to excavate a silver lining or teachable moment out of a global crisis, but in my earnest moments I do wonder if there is a chance to forge new human connections between different people buried deep in this tragedy and trauma.

People who have taken socialization and belonging for granted are suddenly seeking alternate ways to connect with other people, from leaving notes to previously anonymous neighbours in their windows, to group video catchups with friends, to seeking out writing from perspectives they’ve never considered before.

At a time when everyone’s world feels confusing, potentially dangerous, and isolated, maybe there’s a unique potential to cultivate new understanding and acceptance for autistic people.

That inability to process all of the conflicting information and the subsequent anxiety and terror we’re all feeling now? The desperate desire to do the right thing, but not being able to figure out what that is? The overwhelming longing to be a part of a world that’s completely inaccessible to us? That’s how many autistic people have always felt.

The stakes are vastly different, but as someone who has now experienced both, I can confirm that the fear, the loneliness, and the pain are eerily similar.

Sarah Kurchak, a Toronto writer, was diagnosed with autism at age 27. Her memoir tackles issues from autism parenting culture to love, sex and stereotypes. This chapter is titled: STEP TEN: Discover that GI Joe lied and knowing is not always half the battle.

… When my assessor confirmed that I was autistic, my immediate thought was, Now that we know, we can fix it. When my therapist explained that he didn’t believe in fixing autism, and starting laying out what we could focus on in our sessions instead, I thought, Even better. I’ll therapy and healthy coping mechanism my heart out (and medicate if necessary) and still be me but without all of the depression and anxiety!

It turns out there is no such clear path between A and B when A equals “twenty-seven years of confusion, overloaded senses, trauma and maladjustments recently uncovered as the result of a crisis.”

I had an aptitude for the introspection and self-awareness part of my therapy, but my ability to apply any of what I was discovering or better understanding to my life was sub-optimal. My therapist started to hear a lot of variations of “logically I know that , but …”

Like “logically I know that anyone who would reject me for being myself isn’t worth my time or effort, but I can’t stop desperately trying to court their approval because I am so afraid of being attacked and/ or alone again.” And “logically I know that I will not find any valuable information about self-improvement from gossip boards and that the act of lurking on them is increasing my anxiety and decimating what’s left of my fragile self-esteem, but every time I try to stop, I get anxious that I’m missing valuable information about self-improvement and I’ll become an even more loathsome piece of garbage.”

In the weeks and months that followed my diagnosis, I was able to start identifying the many, many things that I had been doing to obscure my autistic nature. I was surprised to discover just how many hacks I’d developed. And a little shocked when my therapist informed me that they weren’t perfectly common behaviours that everyone does all the time. I logically, but-ed my way through any substantial efforts to alter these habits, too, but I figured talking about them was almost as good.

If I couldn’t improve the quality of my life, I could at least improve the quality of all of those dreadful “but you don’t look autistic” conversations I was getting stuck in.

My ideal script for these engagements looked something this:

Person and Me: (Engaging in pleasant conversation that leads to a place where I feel it would be appropriate and comfortable to say that I’m autistic.)

Me: I’m autistic.

Person: Really? You don’t look autistic.

Me: I’ve been looking at your eyebrows to make it look like I’m actually looking into your eyes this whole time. (Leaving out the part where there’s a good chance that my gaze probably drifted to their teeth at some point, probably got stuck there, and then I had to worry about how I had become fixated on yet another person’s mouth when I try so hard to avoid this particular habit of mine. And worry about whether they’ve noticed that I am staring at their mouth, all while trying to keep up with the conversation and all of my other tricks.)

I’ve been tapping my right foot against the floor, because I’ve managed to turn most of my repetitive movement patterns into things that non-autistic people also do and are therefore seen as normal expressions of energy/excitement/boredom/nerves. I’ve probably been playing with my hair for the same reason.

The tone of my voice is modelled after my mom’s, although I’ve probably picked up some other subconscious influences from all of the TV shows and movies I watched to try to augment my middlingly developed social skills. The way I talk with my hands is 100 per cent my mom.

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I have no idea if they’re helpful. I don’t think my gestures are in any way connected to what I’m actually saying. But she talks with her hands and people love her, so I started doing it and now it just kind of happens. The structure and content of this conversation were probably culled from similar sources.

I have at least four different tracks running through my brain while we’re talking. One is trying to make sure my fake eye contact makes me look attentive but not creepy. (Omitting the track dedicated to the teeth thing.) One is following our conversation, and trying to process what you’re saying and come up with thematically relevant responses in return. One is making sure that I’m not monopolizing the conversation and that I’m asking you an appropriate number of appropriate questions in return. One is trying to keep me from saying something weird. It’s probably failing.

On top of all that, I’m trying to tune out all of the background noise — including, but not limited to: cars, other conversations, breathing, chewing, possible music being pumped out of a speaker somewhere and buzzing lights — in order to hear what you’re saying.

There’s a lot I’m probably leaving out. I’ll probably realize this at around four a.m. when I’m not sleeping and kick myself, and then not sleep some more because I’m worried that I have failed to successfully illustrate how autistic I am and how hard I have worked to now get to the point where I have to prove that I am all of the things I am trying to spare you from.

Person: That sounds hard.

Me: It can be challenging! (Exits to nearest public washroom that doesn’t smell too much of industrial cleaner or lack thereof and isn’t overrun by constantly howling high-tech hand driers to hang out in a stall and breathe and/or cry into my hands for a while. Or go home to half-consciously stare at a screen, fail to nap and have a good fetal position moment. Or some other amenable time out to allow for recovery from the interaction.)

When I could manage to get it out of my brain and mouth, this rambling awareness campaign had a decent success rate. Covering most of my script over a coffee with one friend led to a relationship heart-to-heart.

“Sometimes when we’re talking, you start looking elsewhere. I thought maybe you were getting bored,” she said.

“I do that because I’m comfortable with you!” I replied. “And because I get really into what we’re talking about and I can follow it better if I’m not worried about eye contact.” We’ve been great ever since.

Other times doing the work described in the script left me too sapped to say it. I had a rough go reviewing films at TIFF 2016 for one of the websites I write for. One of my best friends called me with a medium-level problem on opening night. I was only a third of my way into my first assignment and rapidly approaching my deadline, but I didn’t know how to tell her that. So I let her talk it out, did the best I could to provide that valuable advice I used to give, cried out of deadline panic and an inability to compartmentalize my friend’s emotions, underslept, filed my imperfect review at the last minute and never recovered from that deficit for the rest of the festival.

From then on, everything was too loud. The emotions I was watching onscreen were overwhelming me. I couldn’t navigate crowds or articulate my thoughts. While taking a break at a nearby pub between screenings, I found out that my aunt’s dog had died and openly wept into my salad because I felt so terrible for her.

At the closing brunch, I got chatting with an acquaintance of an acquaintance — and fellow long-term TIFF-goer — about how we both felt more drained this year than usual. I mentioned that I was struggling with some my autism-related issues more than I had in festivals past.

“You’re autistic?” she said, not unkindly. “I never would have known!”

I had the script. I also had a collection of mental and written notes I’d been keeping throughout the festival with the idea of eventually turning the experience into an essay on the amount of work that goes into not looking autistic. But all that came out in the moment was “Oh. OK.”

Excerpted from “I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was this Lousy Anxiety Disorder,” by Sarah Kurchak© 2020. Douglas & McIntyre. Excerpted with permission of the publisher