The Wedding Part 1: The Auf Ruf

I’m finally beginning to blog the wedding! I’ll do it over a few days as it’s very long.

Friday 19 May

We had a lot of my family over: aside from Mum, Dad and myself, Sister and Brother-in-law came over with Nephew and Uncle, Aunt and Cousins 1, 2 and 4 came from Israel. I didn’t go to shul (synagogue) this evening, as Sister wanted earlier dinner for Nephew’s sake (although he slept through the whole meal in the end) and I wanted to be in bed early too, to make it easier to get up for shul for my auf ruf (being called to the Torah as a groom) on Shabbat (Sabbath) morning. Sister, BIL and Nephew actually came around a bit before Shabbat to drop some stuff off and Nephew was awake then, so I got a couple of dazzling smiles from him. He’s nearly six months old now and beginning to really pay attention to the world around him.

The dinner was good, but I missed E, who decided to stay with her parents elsewhere (we weren’t sticking to the custom for bride and groom not to see each other for a week before the wedding for various reasons). Afterwards, I read some of The Guide for the Perplexed for a brief period for Torah study then read recreationally for a while before bed.

Saturday 20

I did make it to shul fairly early for my auf ruf. Various relatives got aliyot (called to the Torah) too, which was nice. I did have to put up with a couple of well-intentioned, but painful (to me) jokes. When I got to the bimah (Torah reading platform), the warden said I should smile; I was actually struggling with social anxiety in front of the crowd in the shul and worried I was going to do the wrong thing. And someone else later said it was “about time” I got married. I know people don’t know my neurological and mental health struggles or the difficulties I had finding dates, let alone getting married, but this kind of thing is painful. I guess it does make me wonder if any jokes I make are painful to their recipients; probably.

Lunch was good, but there was a heated discussion of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, the part of the Talmud dealing with ethics) between Uncle and Cousins 2 and 4. That side of the family debate/argue very loudly and passionately and I couldn’t get in and found the intensity of discussion too much, so I went to play with Nephew for a bit.

After lunch I slept for three hours. I woke up with a slight headache. The extended family had all gone, so it was just Mum, Dad and me, which was fortunate (you may remember I tried to stop extended family hanging around all afternoon because I knew I would get peopled out). The headache seemed to be getting better, but then, about half an hour before the end of Shabbat, it turned into a full-blown migraine. I took medicine, but it took ages to work, so after Shabbat I spent a while in my parents’ bedroom (mine was too hot), watching The Twilight Zone and feeling sorry for myself. By the time the migraine went and I could get ready for bed, it was very late. I think I got to bed about 2am, and then woke up briefly about 5.30am before falling asleep again. I did get about six hours sleep, which is the minimum I need to function, and it was reasonably refreshing, so things weren’t too bad.

After The Event

I still haven’t blogged the wedding, and I’m not going to do so tonight. I hope to get to it in the coming days. But I wanted to quickly set down some thoughts from Shavuot, the Jewish festival that just passed (the English word is Pentecost, but that confuses people as it has nothing to do with the Christian Pentecost).

Each day of the two-day festival went much the same: I went to shul (synagogue) in the evening, had dinner with my parents and E, read for a bit with E, then went to bed (I didn’t go to tikkun leil (all-night Torah study). In the morning, E dragged me out of bed (almost literally) and I fought sleep disorder-induced exhaustion and social anxiety to get to shul, very late, but still for a chunk of the service and which I enjoyed once I was there, but ate too much in the kiddush afterwards. After lunch, E and I napped, then on the first day, we went on a long walk and on the second day E and Mum went to a women’s tea and Torah event while I stayed at home and read.

It was enjoyable, and E enjoyed it too, but I felt a bit religiously disconnected. On Shavuot we celebrate receiving the Torah, but as I study Torah every day, it can feel hard to connect it to just one day, particularly as I missed the Torah reading in shul due to over-sleeping. I often go through Jewish festivals feeling I should be feeling some kind of noticeable spiritual feeling or connection. Maybe that’s not how it works, either in general or for me with alexithymia (difficulty recognising and understanding my own emotions).

Lately I feel like I’m juggling a lot of stuff. A lot of this is in the wake of my wedding, but also two years after my autism diagnosis I’m still trying to understand what that means for me, especially for my Jewish life. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’m juggling, or soon will be juggling, practical things like writing wedding thank you notes, finding somewhere to live with E and trying to set up a secondary career as a freelance proofreader and editor. At the same time, I’m trying to find the right balance between the Jewish life I want (which would feature quite a bit of prayer and Torah study) with the wider life I want (doing stuff with E and writing fiction) and balancing that against my various current diagnoses (autism, sleep apnoea, social anxiety, alexithymia).

I used to feel that, with my current and past diagnoses, my life has been a bedieved, something that is only religiously justified after the event. As in, you shouldn’t pray with no intention to concentrate, but, bedieved, after the event, if you prayed and your mind wandered, that would be OK and you shouldn’t repeat the prayers. I felt that the life I was living was not an ideal frum (religious Jewish) life and was only permitted because I was depressed, autistic, living with less religious family, etc, etc.

Now I’m married to E, I very much feel that our marriage is NOT a bedieved, that we are supposed to be together. But if we are supposed to be together, then the things that brought us together were supposed to happen too, which largely means our various diagnoses. Which in turn means that my life wasn’t/isn’t a bedieved. Which means God wants me to live this life, with all the ways it is imperfect from a strictly frum perspective. I don’t quite know what this means for me. I’ve discussed it/am discussing it with my rabbi mentor and also with a rabbi from the Ma’aglei Nefesh rabbinic mental health service, but I feel I’m still finding my way forward between wanting to study Torah and pray, but also wanting (or rather needing) to work and to build my life with E without burning out again, as well as to do things that matter to me and help keep me mentally health, like blogging and fiction writing, and also reading fiction and watching the TV programmes that help me switch off.

It would be nice to have a snappy conclusion here, but I don’t have one. I’m a work in progress and this is a topic I keep returning to here. But maybe I am inching forward; at any rate, being married to E does feel like a big positive change, even if I am not sure exactly what the ramifications are at this stage.

Pre-Wedding Angst

E has gone to spend time with her best friend (the one I saw, but couldn’t hear, in the noisy restaurant earlier in the week) and then to stay with her parents in a rented flat in Fulham until the wedding, not so that we don’t see each other as per Jewish custom (we’re doing photos before the ceremony,  so we will see each other before the wedding anyway) and more to get away from my extended family, who are going to be here for Shabbat, although thankfully not actually staying in the house, just eating here.

***

E is really stressed and not happy about how much is going on, which makes me feel very guilty. I know I’ve been over this a lot, here and elsewhere, but it’s only through going through the wedding experience that I’ve realised how like me E is in terms of dealing (or not dealing) with stress and peopling. I’m so used to being the one who struggles with these things that it didn’t really occur to me that my spouse would be the same, particularly as E is a lot better at masking and peopling than I am. This is further complicated by her having suspected ADHD as well as suspected autism (AuDHD), as that adds a load of character traits that are very unlike me (like very changeable emotions and need for regular diversion) so it’s really hard for me to understand her sometimes. So I do feel guilty for having this celebration, but then again, I’ve done stuff for her that was out of my comfort zone (like our civil wedding celebration), so maybe it balances out. I hope so.

I probably spent too much of my single life reading marriage tips on frum websites. I thought it would help me prepare for marriage, but I’m not sure it did. Those sites talk a lot about compromise as the foundation for marriage, but frame it that compromise is always possible. They don’t talk about what happens if something is really important to one spouse, but really difficult for the other, with no obvious middle ground.

I also do need to read about ADHD and, if I can find anything on it, AuDHD (there doesn’t seem to be much information out there, and until recently the fact that you can have both disorders at once was not recognised by the medical profession) as I need to learn more.

 ***

I feel quite stressed and a bit anxious too, which is unsurprising, about the wedding and about Shabbat with my large and boisterous family, worrying about how much sleep I’ll get tonight and whether I’ll get up in time for shul tomorrow and so on. I was persuaded not to go to shul (synagogue) tonight, even though I wanted to do so, so we could eat earlier, which will benefit me (assuming we actually eat quickly and not just early, which remains to be seen), but was done to help Sister and Nephew rather than me. I have said I don’t want a three-course meal (no soup), as we would usually have on Friday night to finish eating earlier, which Mum initially didn’t agree with. These are both probably the right thing to do, but is just another case of the wedding highlighting my inability to determine when to compromise and what are my legitimate boundaries to enforce.

I feel down and vaguely depressed too, which I know is also normal on reaching a rite of passage, and when I know E is stressed and down, but it’s still hard to deal with and triggers guilt for feeling down when I “should” be happy.

***

My parents’ shul (synagogue), which is now E and my shul, forgot to wish us mazal tov in the weekly newsletter. This is similar to my bar mitzvah, when the newsletter of my shul (a different shul) said I was leining (reading from the Torah) much less than I actually was doing (I leined the whole sedra and haftarah). This kind of thing happens to me a lot. I just hope they remember to call me up tomorrow for my auf ruf and that everything else connected with the wedding goes OK. So far things have mostly gone well. Still, it does reinforce my feelings that I’m mostly forgettable and don’t really belong in the frum world, a world that I’m struggling to get back into post-COVID and post-diagnosis.

An Anthropologist on Mars

We had a quiet Shabbat (Sabbath) at home. I was too exhausted to go to shul (synagogue) last night or this morning. E was too tired too. We slept a lot and read quite a bit (in my case, mostly Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers by Aviva Gottleib Zornberg and more of Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy L. Sayers). We didn’t go for a walk as the weather was grim. I was OK with things, but E wishes she could have got out the house.

I also read some of An Adult with an Autism Diagnosis: A Guide for the Newly Diagnosed by Gillan Drew, which I borrowed from the library on Friday, even though I’m not newly diagnosed. I’m really just skimming it as I know a lot of what’s written in it (and some of what’s written strikes me as questionable). However, there were some metaphors for understanding autism that seemed useful.

One, which originated with Temple Grandin is that an autistic is “an anthropologist on Mars.” That rather than intuitively fitting in to allistic (non-autistic) society, we just watch and study. This is not an entirely new idea to me. What was new to me was the fact that I do this in Jewish society as well.

I have so much book learning about Judaism, Jewish history and Jewish culture that I assumed that I know all about the Jewish world and the frum (religious Jewish) world and that my problems fitting in to them were because of general autistic issues like not knowing how to start conversations or sensory overload in crowded spaces. But I probably don’t really understand much of the way Jewish and frum society works, certainly not in an intuitive way. I’ve never really grasped things like “Jewish geography” or shul politics. I am an anthropologist studying Orthodox Jews as much as an Orthodox Jew living a Jewish life. No wonder so much of my religious life takes place away from the usual centres of community such as the shul and the beit midrash (study hall), being located at home instead.

I wonder if I will ever manage to fit in to the frum community. I did manage to fit in better in the past, but that was when various other things in my life were different, when I had fewer responsibilities, more time and was generally in a different situation (better in some ways, worse in others).

There probably is more to say about this, but I’m too tired to write it tonight.

Emotional Support Humans

It is two weeks to the wedding today. My mood is still all over the place, with some excitement, some anxiety about the final two weeks of preparations and the amount of peopling I’ve committed to doing in the week leading up to the wedding and some anxiety about how E and I will adapt to living together – and especially how we will cope living in my parents’ house for the immediate future.

To be honest, there’s a lot of anxiety right now. Alexithymia (difficulty recognising and understanding my emotions) is actually a big issue here, as I recognise, and get stuck in, negative emotions a lot more than positive ones, so that can skew my feelings about a situation into more negative territory than it’s actually in. It’s probably why I am more conscious of anxious feelings right now rather than excited ones, rather than my actually being more anxious than excited. I guess it’s good to recognise that that can happen. I think I also do a thing whereby I feel something intensely negative (anxiety, despair), so I assume something intensely negative has happened, or is happening, or will happen, even though it doesn’t logically follow, particularly not when your emotions are somewhat crazy like mine (massively skewed towards the negative).

I am a little nervous about the party, even though it’s relatively small (we’re catering for forty-six people including E, myself, the musician and the photographer, but excluding Nephew). I’m more nervous about the meals with my family and E’s family (separately and together) beforehand, as well as with E’s best friend. It will be possible to skip some of those if I’m peopled out, but I am reluctant to do so, as I want to meet the important people in E’s life away from the wedding party, where we won’t be able to talk to anyone for long. I worry a bit about the effect of doing this over several days culminating in the wedding, which I obviously can’t skip, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way around that. It was probably silly of me to expect people to come from all over the world and not see me until the wedding day.

I do hope E enjoys the wedding, even though I know that she may not and that she is really only doing it for me. It is important for me to do it, though.

I think the question of how E and I will learn to live together is the big anxiety, especially how we will negotiate our religious differences. It’s hard for me to sort out which religious practices are important and which are less important, to find where I can compromise. I worry about becoming religiously lax, but I also worry about being too rigid and alienating E. I would like to talk to my rabbi mentor about this before the wedding, but it’s becoming hard to connect.

***

The last few days: on Thursday E and I went on a date night (or late afternoon) in Golders Green  after work. We did a lot of things we both like: browsed a charity shop (and picked up a copy of classic war/fantasy/romance film A Matter of Life and Death on DVD; neither of us have seen it), went to the kosher supermarket (that was more for E than for me), got falafel and ate outside, went home by bus, sitting at the front of the top deck and then watched Doctor Who when we got home. Listening to my voice as we sat on the almost empty upper deck of the bus, I sound a lot happier and more confident when I’m with E than when I’m not.

I managed to get to shul (synagogue) on Friday night, which was a relief, as I’ve been struggling to go lately. Even more surprisingly, E managed to get me up in time to go to shul for some of the Saturday morning service! We got there in time for the special prayers for the King’s coronation. There was alarge Union Jack on the front of the wardens’ box and bunting in the Kiddush hall, with scones at kiddush. In the afternoon it rained and we slept too much. Afterwards I did some Torah study and read some of the Lord Peter Wimsey short story collection I’m currently reading (Lord Peter Views the Body). It’s not as good as the novels.

Today we went out for a walk and ran into some street parties, apparently thrown by frum Jews who wouldn’t go to street parties on Shabbat. Otherwise it was difficult: I was very anxious and low. It helps being around E or even my parents. I guess anything to avoid sitting with my thoughts and catastrophising. E says that we’re each other’s “emotional support humans,” which is probably true.

Baby Snuggles, Headaches and Low Blood Sugar

I’ve been too busy to write for a few days again.

I didn’t go to shul (synagogue) again on Friday night. I probably had the energy, but I was just running late, trying to cram in a lot the day after Pesach (Passover) when I was already exhausted from Yom Tov (the festival). We had a quiet Shabbat (Sabbath): E and I went for a walk and got rained on a little, but not much and we read a bit and I dozed for forty minutes or so. E and I are both looking forward to an ordinary week without extra religious events and in a weird way, I was glad to be back at work, just to be back in a routine again.

I did listen to music briefly on Friday afternoon, just before Shabbat, despite it being the part of the omer (period between Pesach and Shavuot) when frum (religious) Jews observe an element of national mourning, including not listening to music. I did this because I felt I needed to do so to regulate my emotions, which were becoming depressed. I’ve decided I will continue to listen to music if I need to calm myself, even though I’m not sure if it’s technically allowed. (It is permitted to listen to music if suffering from clinical depression or autistic exhaustion, so it might be allowed anyway, I’m not sure.)

I had headache on Saturday night and again on Sunday night, but I did realise that I haven’t woken up with a headache since E has been here, which seems to indicate that she’s good for my stress levels. Despite the headache, I drew up a schedule for the next five weeks, until the wedding (FIVE WEEKS!!!!!!!), which made me a little less stressed, as we’ve mostly got it under control. The big things still to organise are the ring (we’re seeing a jeweller Dad knows through shul on Wednesday to discuss this) and E’s dress (which may not be a traditional wedding dress, for various reasons).

Yesterday afternoon E and I went out with Sister, Brother-in-law and Nephew on Hampstead Heath and then on for coffee at a cafe that was nice, but ridiculously expensive (it was in Hampstead, so what do you expect?). The walk on the Heath was good, but there were a ridiculous number of dogs, including many not on leads. We are all at least mildly dog-phobic (technically Nephew isn’t, but with this family it’s basically only a matter of time). Nephew seems a lot more interested in his surroundings than he was in the past, particularly lights and the abstract painting on the wall of the cafe. E and I both had some baby snuggles, which was good. I caught up a bit with Sister, although any conversation with her or BIL is likely to be interrupted after a minute or two by Nephew. E and I also checked out some charity shops that were surprisingly open on a Sunday, but we weren’t willing to pay Hampstead prices for anything.

When we got home, we opened the wedding presents that had arrived before Pesach. We had been so busy with Pesach stuff that we hadn’t opened them yet. They were what we wanted (obviously, because they were from our wedding list), but I guess crockery and a kettle are never going to seem that fun to me.

Late in the evening, I started feeling faint again. I don’t know if this is low blood sugar or low salt or something else. When I feel faint, I don’t really want to slowly do scientific tests to work it out, I just want to eat and feel better. I felt faint at work today too and again when I got home. I am worrying that I’m hypoglycaemic, but don’t really know what that would entail or have time to research right now. I want to mention it to the doctor, but I have other things to talk to him about and I can’t get an appointment anyway.

Work was incredibly noisy again this morning with workmen outside and inside the building, the former with a loud radio blaring TalkSport again (is there really so much to say about sport 24/7?). The carpet under my desk has now worn away to the underlay. I told J and asked if we could get a new carpet, but he made uncommitted noises and muttered something about needing to replace the whole carpet, not just under my desk, and some of the furniture not being easily movable, so I shelved my radical plan to suggest that the walls could do with a coat of paint too. I guess before COVID I’d have had a stronger argument, but now we get about two visitors a year who don’t work in the building, so the economic argument for not doing anything is strong. I do keep catching my foot on the rim of the circular hole in the carpet, though, so I might see if some health and safety rationale develops.

The afternoon was largely devoted to sticking erratum stickers in prayer books and sorting papers again. When I got home I did a few necessary chores and read a few pages of Children of Dune. It’s still heavy-going and I’m struggling to remember all the plot points, but I’m determined to see what happens and finish it before my wedding. I ate a lot because of low blood sugar/salt/whatever. E is away for work, so I had dinner with my parents, which was probably a mistake, as I was feeling very depleted and peopled out, but I couldn’t find a polite way to say no (and now I’ve just annoyed my Mum by saying this to her when trying to explain why I couldn’t help her with something). I am too exhausted to do anything, so will probably just watch TV. I’m too tired to read, even The Sandman graphic novel that I started recently.

***

There has been Drama on the autism forum again. It’s happening a lot lately. It’s probably not surprising that a community of people who are pretty much defined by having poor social skills, no tact, obsessive focus and logical minds would spend so much time pointing out the (real or perceived) flaws in each others’ religious and political beliefs and opinions, but it is frustrating to watch given that I can mostly stay out of that sort of behaviour. Of course, this sort of thing happens all over the internet every day without neurodivergence. It’s just a shame as there are some people there I like a lot, but it’s getting harder to focus on the signal, not the noise, and it seems that some people I like are around less. This is probably not due to the Drama, as looking at old posts, most people only seem to stay on the forum for a year or two as they get a sense of their autistic identity, then move on.

A Month, A Week and A Day

“We got through Pesach (Passover) and we’re not getting divorced!” This has been E and my cry the last half day. We’re joking, I hasten to add. Pesach had its tough moments, but we never seriously considered divorcing our civil marriage and cancelling our chuppah (religious ceremony). The worst was a disagreement between E and Mum on the one hand and me on the other over the time we could halakhically (according to Jewish law) start the final day of Yom Tov (festival), but that turned out to be mostly a misunderstanding of what we wanted and we resolved it OK. E and I are thinking about how we can do Pesach differently next year, though, so she can enjoy it more.

I think E and I are good about resolving conflicts, but we’re both catastrophisers and worry that one day we won’t be able to do so.

Related to this, but far beyond it, is E’s frustration that the kosher food world in the UK is so much more limited than the USA and more complicated to access, as many kosher foods do not bear a visible hechsher (kosher sign) on the packaging. You have to check on an app or just know what is kosher. I feel sorry for her, as food is important to her, but I’m limited in what I can do to help. It would have been a lot easier if I was the one emigrating, but the health insurance situation and gun culture in the US made that impossible.

Otherwise, Pesach was quiet. I didn’t get to shul (synagogue) at all, which is frustrating, but I think shul has mostly drifted off my radar at the moment. I did a bit of Torah study, mostly The Guide for the Perplexed, and read some of Children of Dune, but both were heavy and I didn’t make a huge amount of progress in terms of pages. I think I need a long break from the Dune series after this volume. E and I went for a walk one day, but came back early as it started raining. The other day we napped and didn’t go out at all.

***

It is thirty-eight days until our chuppah (religious wedding), which works out as a month, a week and a day. I realised the other day that the default position on our chuppah is for it to happen even if there is stuff we run out of time to organise. It would take more effort for it not to happen at this stage than for it to happen. This is reassuring, although part of my brain is still sure that I’m going to fall under a bus or something a few days before it, on the grounds that the universe doesn’t want me to be happy or that my being married violates some fundamental natural law.

***

Something I realised today is that E and I are both bad at emotional regulation, but in different ways. I can’t notice a lot of my emotions; when I do, they tend to be intense, negative (loneliness, depression or anxiety) and last for days if not weeks. E’s emotions are the reverse. Still intense, but much more changeable and over a wider spectrum. She can go from “Life is going to be awful forever” to doing her happy dance in the space of about ten minutes (not exaggerating). Neither of these is good or bad (well, on some level they’re probably both bad, measured against some unattainable neurotypical, mentally healthy ideal), but we need to find a way for us to work with this situation. So far, snuggles seem to be a good way for both of us to regulate and have the added of advantage of being good for the non-dysregulated (at that moment) partner rather than a chore to help the other.

“In an outback dimension, somewhere between mythology and madness, the Doctor seeks truth and beauty at the edge of the world.”

The last few days were relatively uneventful, but I still feel the need to get my thoughts in order before bedtime.

I was pretty exhausted on Friday, but now we’re getting towards spring (without quite feeling there yet), Shabbat (the Sabbath) starts somewhat later and I’m not under such time pressure on Fridays getting ready. This meant I had some time to fiddle around with my phone and iTunes. The good news is that I got all my music onto my phone! The bad news is that it took up almost all my free memory, even after ditching various WhatsApp video and audio files and some apps (games I don’t play) on Thursday. If I want to listen to music on my phone, so I don’t have to carry my iPod and so I can potentially get cordless earpods or noise-cancelling headphones, I will have to select whatever music I want to listen to in advance. This is not the end of the world, and as I do often listen to whole albums (I know, very retro), perhaps not as hard as it might be for some people who listen to random songs from different artistes. I’d just got used to the convenience of having my whole music library with me all the time (!) and being able to play on shuffle through every song I own (even though half the time I get something I don’t want and skip on anyway). And, yes, I know this is pretty much the definition of a twenty-first century, first-world problem. But still.

I went to shul (synagogue), even though I was tired and the weather was bad, although it didn’t actually rain in the periods when I was walking to/from shul. After dinner, I did some Torah study (about half an hour as I’m trying to take time to relax) and reading. I’m going through Children of Dune very slowly. I think I’m getting slightly bored with the Dune “universe” (as we have to say nowadays) and the fact that even the likeable characters get corrupted by power sooner or later, which is realistic, but not much fun. And there are another three books afterwards (many, many more if I read the sequels not written by Frank Herbert, but I have no intention of doing that, just as I haven’t read the Foundation novels not written by Isaac Asimov). I re-read some more Doctor Who comics too.

I did go to bed rather late and also got up very late, and felt exhausted when I did get up (after a disturbing dream). The day was another usual Shabbat mix of sleeping, reading and Torah study, except that I got another stress headache and didn’t do much reading or Torah study as a result, nor did I do much after Shabbat either. These headaches tend to be on my forehead and actually in my eye, which I find a horrible sensation. They tend to come intensely for a minute or two, then go before I can take any medication. I don’t like taking painkillers needlessly (and taking medication for minor ailments on Shabbat is a complicated area anyway), so I tend to wait until these are bad until I take anything, which is not necessarily the best strategy. I hope they will go after the wedding, although that’s still nearly two months to get through. Anyway, this one did get bad enough that I took something, and used a cooling strip too.

After Shabbat, I watched Yes Prime Minister while I waited for medication to kick in, and also read Voyager, perhaps the most strange and haunting of Doctor Who comic strips.

Oh, and a mysterious parcel turned up today, addressed to E and myself. I haven’t opened it yet, as I wanted to ask E if she wants me to wait for Wednesday and open it together. I guess it’s a wedding present, but I’m not sure from whom. It’s domestic mail, so not any of E’s family or friends or my Israeli family. Probably not any of my local friends (not that I have many) or my parents’ local friends as they would have saved themselves £2.85 postage and dropped it round personally. That narrows it down a bit, and I know who I think may have sent it, but not with any certainty.

That’s it, really. I’m going to try to go to bed soon, as I’ve got quite a bit to do tomorrow, for Pesach (Passover) and for the wedding, and we lose an hour tonight due to the clocks going forward (groan). I’m glad that E will be coming here this week, although the week as a whole is going to be hectic, again with Pesach and wedding stuff, as well as work. I’ll be glad when Pesach is over and I can concentrate all my anxiety on the wedding!

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Stressed (and Unable to Think of an Original Title)

I feel very stressed, about wedding stuff, family stuff and Pesach (a month away). I’ll go in chronological order, but I wanted to put that up at the start.

I posted on a Facebook group for people who have medical issues that prevent them keeping Jewish law about my alexithymia (difficulty recognising and understanding my emotions) and the problems that gives me with observing Jewish law (e.g. loving God). People seemed supportive and gave me some suggestions, which was good. Maybe I’ve finally found somewhere I can talk about these issues, which was difficult in non-Jewish support spaces.

I managed to get to shul (synagogue) on Friday night for the first time in weeks! I was tired, but I got there. I didn’t do much Torah study in the evening, though, as I was tired – although, given what I was told by the mental health helpline rabbi, maybe I did too much. It’s hard to gauge. I read a Batman graphic novel (prompted by watching The Batman in the week) and started Children of Dune, the third Dune book, but I didn’t get very far with it.

I did decide that I shouldn’t push myself too hard at the moment to read prose fiction (let alone non-fiction) when I’m feeling stressed about the wedding and Pesach. It’s OK to spend my free time over the next two and a half months watching TV or reading graphic novels, if I’m too stressed to read prose much.

Today was similar, although without shul, just Torah study (getting through the first of this week’s two difficult Torah portions (Vayakhel)) and a bit of reading. I wanted to do a few small (I thought) chores after dinner and get to bed early, but things got out of control, hence blogging to off-load even though I intended not to blog today.

My uncle phoned to say my cousins won’t be coming to my wedding, because it’s too expensive. I think my uncle and aunt are still coming, although there are still some issues to discuss. It’s sad, but I guess I wasn’t expecting them to come, as they’re almost all adults now with other responsibilities, except for the youngest, who is still at school and we already knew he couldn’t come, because he has an exam the next day. My sister was lucky that they were all able to come for her wedding, but that was five years ago when they were all in a different place, metaphorically and, in most cases, literally.

I need to put together a wedding “To Do” list. I have several different and incomplete lists and need to compile them into a master list (and hope I don’t forget anything). I wanted to do this tonight, but I ran out of time, so I’ll have to do it tomorrow.

I was trying (and failing) to clear the decks tonight, with Torah study and the To Do list as tomorrow we’re going to my second-cousin’s house. I have lots of second-cousins, most of whom I’ve never met, but I have two (brother and sister) about my age who my sister and I grew up with. We get together every six months or so, along with my parents, my second-cousins’ mother and her husband, and everyone’s spouses and children (except me, as my spouse (civilly, if not religiously) is in America and we have no children, which is always hard). I do like to go, but I also struggle to find anything to say and deal with the noise and peopling. Wedding planning now gives me a reason to leave early after an hour or an hour and a half and get the bus home, which is probably win-win.

One final stress factor today has been the sleep study I had done in November. I have found the receipt for the return postage of the equipment, so I can prove I returned it. What I can’t find is any paper that says what hospital was supposed to be analysing the results. The postage receipt has an address and postcode, which I googled, but it’s just an office somewhere that receives the equipment, not the hospital that would know where my results are, and I can’t find a phone number for it anyway. I thought they sent me some papers, but if they did, I must have thrown them away, as I can’t find them now. Unfortunately, when it comes to papers, I either keep everything or throw away everything. I find it hard to keep the right things and throw away the right things. I guess I was assuming that everything would go according to plan and the hospital would just send my results. HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As the GP surgery’s receptionist couldn’t find any relevant information on my record, I think my best course of action is to try (try being the operative word) to get an appointment with my GP and find out where he referred me to. Which is a total waste of his time and mine necessitated by NHS incompetence. I still can’t believe some people think the NHS is brilliant and the only problem it has is not enough money.

Purim Part II

The good news: E is coming here on 29 March! Three weeks! Also, the wedding is seventy-five days away!

I didn’t blog yesterday. Purim was a mix of good and bad, but I didn’t have the time or energy to blog. I went to shul (synagogue) for Shacharit (Morning Prayers) and the daytime reading of the Megillah (the Book of Esther). As usual, it was a lot less noisy and faster than the evening reading. I was a bit late for volunteering as it took me longer than I expected to eat breakfast and do one or two other things at home. I was glad I went, as we were very understaffed, with several people on holiday and at least one doing Purim stuff elsewhere. We had extra Purim food during the coffee break and were given some mishloach manot (gifts of food) to take home too. I mostly listened to the conversation between volunteers and paid staff. I wanted to join in, but as is often the case, I struggled to find an entrance point or to be heard.

Afterwards I went to Golders Green as I knew my parents were going to see Sister and Nephew so decided to eat my Purim seudah (festive meal) at a cafe that does a tuna cheese melt that I really like and which I rarely get a chance to eat now that I only eat meat and fish on Shabbat and Yom Tov (Sabbath and festivals). One of the other volunteers got the same bus. I would have liked to read, but I was polite and made small talk, difficult though I find that. It turns out that her best friend since childhood works in the same shul where my office is.

The tuna cheese melt was very good, but I struggled with the noise in the cafe. It wasn’t very busy, but I struggle with noise more since COVID, and I found the “background” music intrusive. The journey home took about an hour and a half when it should have taken an hour at most because of bad traffic. It seems like every major road in Barnet is being dug up simultaneously. It’s probably to use all the council’s money up before the end of the financial year in April, otherwise the budget will get cut next year.

I wanted to relax after a couple of intensive days by watching a film (The Batman), but I was distracted by eating, emailing, speaking to Sister on the phone (and hearing Nephew, who now gurgles, in the background) and having strong emotions prompted by an Intimate Judaism Facebook post, which led to my spending an hour emailing them about it (not an angry post, I should clarify). Because of all this, I only watched half of The Batman, although at nearly three hours long, it’s arguably too much to take in one go anyway. I’ve still got half an hour left. It’s pretty good, although not as good as the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy. I’m annoyed that everyone in Gotham City mumbles, as I keep having rewind to hear important dialogue. If my parents borrow the DVD, I’m going to recommend they put the subtitles up (which they do a lot anyway).

Today was mostly spent with wedding stuff, aside from a useful therapy session. Wedding preparation is going slowly. I do one thing, but it leads to another thing to do that I didn’t expect. But I am getting there and, as I said, E will be here soon and things will seem a lot better then.

***

I don’t want to be political, but I want to comment tangentially on the Gary Linekar/immigration/Nazi Germany controversy. I feel like everything people don’t like politically gets compared to Nazi Germany these days and it’s overkill (except the thing that should most be compared to Nazi Germany, but is largely ignored, i.e. China’s concentration camps). Perhaps people don’t actually know any other historical events to compare things to. That’s why no one says, “This society is like Ancien Regime France” or “We could be facing another Defenestration of Prague” (although there probably are politicians I would like to throw out a window onto a dung heap). Also, I note that the people making these comparisons are rarely Jewish; one wonders what would happen if a white person compared something to the American South in the era of slavery or segregation. I think public the response would be rather different.

Bandwidth

I was too exhausted to go to shul (synagogue) again on Friday night. I was wondering if I “give in” to exhaustion too easily these days, as I’ve often struggled to go to shul, particularly in the winter, but forced myself to do so and been fine once there. Then I remembered there was a choir this week and decided I definitely couldn’t cope with that, so I stayed at home.

Mum and Dad wanted to talk a lot about the wedding over dinner, which I didn’t really want, but couldn’t really stop them. I can’t even remember what we concluded in the end, although we didn’t decide anything without E’s approval. Afterwards, I wanted to do some Torah study, but I remembered being told by the mental health helpline rabbi that I shouldn’t overdo things and increase my exhaustion and anxiety, so I just read Judges: The Peril of Possession (on the biblical book Shoftim/Judges) for a while. It put Shimshon (Samson) in a light in which I had never really seen him before, as a Jew rebelling against the concept of Jewish distinctiveness and his own mission. To be honest, I’ve never connected with Shimshon, but he was more relatable here, though still pretty much a failure.

I had the intermittent headaches I’ve been getting for the last couple of weeks over Shabbat. They last for a few seconds, then go away again and come back seconds or minutes later. This doesn’t sound so bad and they aren’t too intense, but it’s hard to know whether to take medication for them when they come and go. They are always in one of the same two places, either on the left side of my forehead or in my right eye. My Mum cheerfully suggested I should ask the doctor for an MRI as I may have a brain tumour! (Yes, health anxiety is an issue in this house.) I think I should wait until the wedding anxiety calms down before I think about that, unless they become more intense or frequent, not least because I had an eye test a few weeks ago and the optician didn’t see anything wrong. I did take painkillers tonight, as the pain in my eye was distracting.

Because of the headache and the rabbi’s advice I did almost no Torah study today. I read a short essay by Dr Tanya White about theodicy and Iyov/Job which I had printed before Shabbat (Sabbath) and a couple of short essays on the weekly Torah portion. I had wanted to read more of The Guide for the Perplexed or the very long opening section of the coming week’s Torah portion, but my head/eye hurt too much and then once the medication kicked it, it was too late.

I did quite a lot of recreational reading, so I’ve nearly finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I did some wedding and non-wedding related chores this evening, but not much. I feel a bit bad about wasting the time, but I probably do need some less-intense time. I wish I could have used it in a more structured way, but I got distracted by stuff online (AKA procrastination).

***

I’m wondering if I should set aside five or ten minutes a day for novel research reading. Not so much because I would achieve much in that time, but just to feel like I’m setting aside time for it and that it is still “in play.” I still regularly jot down ideas for it, so it is in play on some level, but this would feel more structured and might act as a reminder that in a couple of months I will have less stress and more time.

***

Something slightly weird happened on Friday that I don’t want to go into here, but now I feel vaguely bad for ever stopping following blogs, even though there is obviously no obligation to read someone’s blog indefinitely and people have stopped following mine. Possibly I’m over-thinking again.

***

I feel this blog has got very autism-centred. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, but I used to like it when I could include digressions on politics or literature. I just haven’t had much time/energy/brainpower/bandwidth/spoons/whatever you want to call it for that lately.

Wedding Anxiety, Religious Anxiety

I feel quite stressed and anxious, partly about the wedding, partly aware that E is struggling with things at the moment and I can’t help her. I’ve contemplated jumping on a plane just to give her a hug, but she said not to, and, for reasons I won’t go into here, it might actually make her situation worse, in practical terms, if I did, so I just have to wait. It’s very frustrating. I guess now I know how my parents felt for years when I was struggling with depression/burnout and they couldn’t do anything for me.

Once I get to that point, my thoughts start to spiral out of control worrying about how two people with so many diagnosed and suspected neurodivergence/mental illness “issues” between them, and such an insecure income as a result, can actually be happy, particularly when my parents aren’t able to help any more, practically and financially. At least we’ll be together, that counts for a lot. It’s scary, though.

Other than wedding/marriage/future stuff, I’m worried about Purim, the minor Jewish festival coming up in about a week and a half. I’m actually more worried about Purim than Pesach at the moment. Pesach is a more major festival a month later that triggered my religious OCD much more than Purim in the past, but I think that’s under control now. Purim triggers a lot of things, like OCD, social anxiety, perhaps autistic sensory issues, social overwhelm and so on as well as feeling like a loser for having no (local) friends. Ugh.

***

In terms of the last few days… on Thursday I had to do the Very Scary Task at work. I think I’m getting better at it, but it’s still hard and I get flustered and confused on the phone, especially if J isn’t around. On the plus side, I did get to go out to the Post Office and do some shopping which at least broke the day up a bit. I spent the afternoon doing a very boring printing and scanning job that is not yet finished. After work I went to Sainsbury’s and was so distracted and confused that I nearly left my food behind. I also collected my glasses with new lenses and left my spare pair so the new lens prescription can be put in them. I have to remember to wear the spares on our wedding day otherwise my glasses will turn tinted from the sunlight/camera flash (the everyday glasses have reaction lenses, but the spares don’t).

I was exhausted again on Friday. I probably would have been OK if I could have had a mental health day (autism day?), but even minor Shabbat (Sabbath) preparation finishes me off on Fridays recently. I felt too exhausted to go to shul (synagogue) again, which upset me a bit. I feel as if I’m drifting away from the Jewish community, while still believing and practising Judaism privately, and the Purim anxiety is a part of this. I don’t want to do it, but it’s what my mental/autistic health seems to demand right now and I feel that if I go away, the community won’t come after me they way they would for someone more involved and connected. I’ve never really felt fully a part of the community, except maybe for two or three years in the shul I grew up in, before we moved. Three years out of nearly forty is not a good record.

My uncle is here for the weekend. We had a good time at dinner, but there are aspects of the family dynamic that I find uncomfortable. I mentioned the other day that E and Nephew joining the family has changed the family dynamic, which it has, but there’s been another, more subtle, shift for a decade or more that I don’t feel comfortable with, but it’s not really my place to do anything about it. The problem is that I get sucked in and say things that I later regret. Speaking of which, I said something completely different (unrelated to family stuff) that I immediately regretted for religious reasons. I am trying not to beat myself up about it and accept it was a slip of the tongue, but I expect myself to be perfect.

I had a headache that got bad enough that I took tablets for it on Shabbat (the rules about taking medication for minor ailments on Shabbat are complicated. In the past I was very strict with myself; now, as in other things, I’m trying to tell myself that sometimes it’s more religious to be more lenient. It’s hard, though). I lay on the bed for a bit after dinner because of the headache. Lying down made it worse, but I propped myself up by the headboard and covered myself with my weighted blanket and adjusted the Shabbat lamp so there was only a little light.

After a while the headache went and I wanted to do some Torah study before it got too late. Like last week, as it was late, I went for depth over length of time, studying some Talmud (reviewing the page I’m on) and a chapter of Shoftim (Judges). It took about forty minutes in total. After that, I read for fun for a bit, finishing Greenmantle and starting Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban before going to bed.

Today was more of the same, really, until Shabbat ended and the anxieties I mentioned above kicked in.

***

I worry that I over-shared on the Orthodox Conundrum blog Facebook group on Friday. There was  a thread about Orthodox men not wanting to date women who study more Talmud than them, or better than them, and I asked if the reverse is also true, wondering if I got set up on so few dates in the Orthodox community because I didn’t go to yeshivah (rabbinical seminary). To be fair, there were plenty of other plausible explanations for my lack of dates, but, as you know, I’m paranoid that my failure to go to yeshivah or to study Talmud at a high level marks me as a “bad (frum/religious) Jew” even though I know that the idea of universal male yeshivah study or Talmud study for all but an elite is a product of not much more than the last century, not the entirety of Jewish history.

Perhaps relatedly, on Friday night/Saturday morning, I dreamt I was back in school. I had done my BA and MA, but, somehow, not my A-levels, so I had to come back to do them, but I was in the middle of burnout again and felt I couldn’t finish the course. Of course, I probably did have burnout when I did my A-levels, but it was mild compared with the burnouts during my BA and MA. I think the dream is about me trying to come to terms with not being the academic success that my achievements at school led me to think I would be, particularly in terms of secular academia, but also in terms of the frum community, where so many people seem to be able to study Talmud at a much higher level than me and where this seems to count more than other types of religious knowledge and perhaps even than being a good person in some circles.

***

It turned out that I did not copy all my music (or my non-classical music) to my phone. I need to delete some phone apps and try again…

Getting Better All the Time

I got up about 10.30am today, which was earlier than I expected, as I thought I would be exhausted after yesterday. However, I wasted what I had of the morning as I was too exhausted for anything other than internet stuff. I’m not sure if I’m going to go to shul (synagogue). I want to and I don’t feel exhausted to the point of illness, as I have on recent Fridays, but I do still feel exhausted, am getting the “headrush”-type feeling I associate with autistic exhaustion and I am at least trying to notice the signals my body is sending me and not try to push through them in the belief that “doing something” is always better than “doing nothing” (relaxing/reading/watching TV or literally just lying still and recuperating from the noise and busyness of the world).

I had a Pesach anxiety dream last night, but it was a “can we make Pesach in time?” dream, not a Pesach OCD dream, which was good.

It feels like my life is getting better lately, but not uniformly. I don’t think any of it is getting worse.

Good Things

Getting fully married soon is good. Wedding planning is eating up a lot of energy, with less for cooking and housework and none for writing, but I can live with that for a few more months.

Volunteering has become my main social activity. I don’t say much, but do occasionally make a funny remark and people laugh. It’s good being around people. It’s slightly awkward that they’re all twenty years or more older than me and retired (hence time for volunteering), but it means I’m not comparing myself to them. I don’t expect people of my parents’ generation to be living lives like mine. I often get on better with older people anyway.

Work is difficult, but bearable and at least my boss seems to tolerate my mistakes. I do worry that he secretly thinks I’m an idiot, but I’m trying not to care.

I’m trying to give myself more breaks and more relaxation time (at home, not yet at work), as indicated by my remarks about possibly missing shul today. It’s hard. As I said in a comment today on Paula’s blog, since my teenage years, I’ve found it hard to set aside more than half an hour or so at a time for reading fiction or TV; it feels too much like “wasting” time that should be spent on something “productive.” Yet not relaxing means I can sucked into hours of internet procrastination instead (much of it designed to make me feel angry and threatened), because of the addictive “junk food” nature of internet links (“Just one more”).

Getting There

I have a lot to do still regarding proofreading. I want to set up profiles on more sites and chase the person I worked for to get a review, although I think it’s probably too late (I’ve been focused on the wedding). I know I have a lot to do to build my brand before this becomes a significant revenue stream and it does seem that it will take a long time to do, maybe never.

I am accepting that my novel(s) may not ever get published. I would like to write more despite this, even if it’s just for E. I still need to type up notes for my new novel, plus research and actually write the thing. Unfortunately, this all takes time, time I don’t currently have. However, I enjoy just thinking about it, so that’s good!

I feel like I fit in a bit better on the autism forum and am connecting with some people, although it can be hard, especially when I try not spend too long on there. I do wonder how some people can say that they feel an affinity with all autistics and no allistics, which seems very strange and stereotyping (and possibly an example of autistic black and white thinking). I find autistics, even high-functioning ones, to be as varied in personality and interests as any other cross-section of the population, albeit with certain traits or interests that come up perhaps a bit more than in general society.

There is sometimes drama on the forum, but I try to stay out of it. It can be hard to work out what I should post there and what on my blog. I definitely feel that the Jewish aspect of my autism is not really recognised there and there is still some Impostor Syndrome regarding traits that others have that I don’t, whether it’s the fact that I have some ability to make small talk (even though I don’t like it and it’s draining) or the fact that I increasingly think I like reasonably bright light and strong contrasts rather than preferring muted lights as most autistics prefer. Again, the fact that many people on the forum assume their experience is universal for autistics is probably not surprising when you consider that difficulty with perspective-taking is a classic autistic trait.

Still Struggling

Religious life is still hard. Going to shul is draining and I don’t always have kavannah (concentrate) well there. Davening (praying) at home can actually be much better on that score. Shacharit (Morning Prayers) are a lost cause, but the other services can be better, although I’ve got a long way still to go.

I am doing quite a bit of Torah study most days, and fairly difficult stuff at the moment, not fluff (Talmud, The Guide for the Perplexed, Aviva Gottleib Zornberg’s Torah essays which combine traditional Jewish thought with contemporary literary criticism, philosophy and psychology). Even so, I feel like I should do more, although maybe I don’t need to.

I am also aware that I’m going to have to compromise religiously with E when we get married, but I’m trying to keep in perspective the fact that the compromises will largely be on chumrot (stringencies) or, if not, will be for the purpose of shalom bayit (domestic harmony), which is a legitimate halakhic (Jewish legal) concern that can counter-balance some laws, even some biblical ones. I also think that E and I will grow together religiously in ways that I can’t manage alone e.g. I think she will help me get back to going to shul on Shabbat mornings and take more of a role in the community. I am also trying to stay aware that I can legitimately make compromises with myself over religious engagement because of my autism e.g. less shul attendance, pressuring myself less to daven, or daven with kavannah or study Torah when exhausted. I find it hard not to strictly “follow the rules,” (which may not always be actual halakhah, but the customs or even whims of the community) which may be another autistic thing and not halakhically necessary.

I do worry a bit about how E and I will cope if we have children, as we would like, given our respective “issues,” but I think first we need to see how we cope as a couple!

I do still have some Impostor Syndrome in different areas, particularly with my Judaism, but also feeling I’m not autistic “enough” or not coping with life “enough,” but I guess things are getting better overall.

More Overwhelm and More Wedding Thoughts

It’s late and I’m tired and I have volunteering in the morning, but I need to offload some thoughts.

I feel overwhelmed at the moment, particularly at work, but also generally. We are now closer to E and my wedding than to last Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Even so, it seems too far away still, but also scarily close when I consider what still has to be done.

I mentioned that I sent a “Save the Date” email yesterday. I checked my email at work and found I had a number of responses. Strangely, my immediate response was anxiety. I am not sure why. I guess it was a feeling of expectation, that people expect certain things now (the wedding, I mean). But when I got home and steeled myself to read the responses, I was pleased that so many people seem to be happy for us, particularly people that I am not so close to (my Dad’s cousin; my sister’s parents-in-law). I was particularly pleased that one friend who I haven’t seen since before COVID said he intends to come, as not only he is the other side of the country, but he and his sister are basically full-time carers for their parents and I wasn’t sure he would be able to get away. Despite this, there’s a part of my mind that says something regarding the wedding will go wrong. I’m trying not to think about it, but it’s there.

I was still feeling overwhelmed at work today, even though there was less to do than last week and I didn’t have to use the phone at all. J asked me to proofread a very important letter. I felt proud at spotting various errors and proving my worth (so to speak), but then I felt anxious that he might feel bad. It feels like a lose-lose situation sometimes.

I stayed for Mincah and Ma’ariv (Afternoon and Evening Prayers) in the shul (synagogue). Someone who had come to say Kaddish (a prayer said by mourners and on the anniversary of a death, not actually a prayer for the dead, but people think it is) said he wouldn’t be back until next year. My initial reaction was annoyance that he expected there to be a minyan (prayer quorum) so he could say Kaddish, but he doesn’t care about making a minyan for other people or even because (gasp!) Jews are supposed to pray communally and a community should have three daily prayer services. But then I felt guilty because I used to be a regular “minyan man,” going to shul for two or even all three of the daily services every day, but social anxiety, autistic issues and COVID have meant that I haven’t done that for the better part of a decade. I wonder if I will ever get back to it.

***

I seem to be connecting with people better on the autism forum, but I get scared of saying the wrong thing. Some people are struggling and I want to help, but I don’t always know how. Likewise, blog friends are struggling, people on Facebook and above all E is really struggling at the moment with wedding and moving stress. I’ve offered to jump on a plane to see her, but she says there’s no point at the moment. E and I speak daily (except Friday and Saturday because of Shabbat) and text all the time (except Shabbat) and she knows she can say what she wants and I’ll listen. It’s harder to gauge how much to try to help other people, how much just seems weird or intrusive, or what I can even realistically do that is helpful and not patronising. I worry in particular about people (I was going to say women, but really nowadays it’s people) thinking I’m coming on to them or something awful like that. And I also need to look after my health and my own feelings of overwhelm! But I worry about people. It’s not true that autistics are not empathetic.

***

A comment I left on one of those “trying to help” posts that I need to internalise myself:

In terms of “roles,” I’m increasingly of the view that the individualistic Western view of an atomised self is wrong, or at least over-stressed. We are ourselves *in our relationships with others* as much as by ourselves. If you’re a good brother, husband, shul member (etc.) please give yourself credit for it! Our selves are a complex balance between individuality and relationships. And, yes, I’m talking to myself here as much as to you, as I’m bad at remembering this.

Overwhelm (Again)

It’s been a quiet few days, so I haven’t posted. I had a headache on and off on Friday, not a bad one, but a persistent one despite medication. That contributed to my not going to shul (synagogue) in the evening, combined with the usual end of week exhaustion.

Shabbat (the Sabbath) was quiet. I did some difficult religious study: a bit more of The Guide for the Perplexed, focusing on an argument for the existence of God (largely irrelevant now, as based on an Aristotlean worldview that is no longer held); a complex Talmudic section that I will have to go over again to have any kind of chance of understanding it; and an interesting, if depressing, article I had printed out from Rabbi Jonny Solomon about the lack of interiority and spirituality in the Modern Orthodox community.

The fire alarm went off on Saturday morning. Rather disturbingly, even though it’s right outside our rooms, neither Mum nor I woke up, although I had a weird dream about the fire alarm going off. Dad at least woke up. Still, even though I knew I’m a heavy sleeper, it’s disturbing that it failed to wake us. What if there had been a real fire? I’ve never been so worried about not being woke…

I didn’t get much response on the piece I posted on the autism forum about being Jewish and autistic, just two comments, plus the first commenter responded to the second one. There was one interesting comment where the commenter said they’re autistic, queer and blind and that while there are a lot of queer people in the autistic community, they feel their blindness separates them from everyone else in a fundamental way and suggested that’s similar to how I feel about being Jewish. It’s not a perfect analogy (I don’t see my Judaism as a disability), but I suspect there’s a lot of truth to it in terms of feeling fundamentally different and unknown, even unknowable, in a community that prides itself on its tolerance. I guess it feels that some things, while not intolerable, are inconceivable to outsiders.

On the plus side, a couple of people friended me on the autism site, including the person I tried to friend weeks ago.

I woke up at 9.45am today (Sunday) and got up rather than going back to sleep, mostly because I was too hungry to sleep. It was good to get up a bit earlier, even if I spent a long time online before getting dressed. I feel I wasted the day, although I did manage to do several things, and I was fighting against low mood/depressive and anxious feelings for much of the time.

I did some Torah study. Unfortunately, it’s a very difficult parsha (portion) this week, mostly legal, with complicated and unclear syntax in many places and, to make matters worse, lots of places where Jewish law rules completely differently to the apparent literal meaning of the text, while still basing itself on it. I also managed to quickly put together a “Save the date” note on Canva (I hope to send it out before bed) and went for a walk. I didn’t manage anything else, although I would have liked to have done so, but maybe that’s enough for a depressed and anxious day.

***

E set up an online countdown timer to our wedding.  I look at it quite a lot. I’m glad we’re down to double digits in terms of days now, but ninety-eight days is still nearly three months. I miss E a lot. She’s hoping to get some idea of when she’s coming to the UK soon. It will be good when we’re in the same house, even if we aren’t sharing a bedroom/bed.

***

I’ve managed to fix the wedding Dalek, at least for now, but I worry it’s going to be too fragile to take to the wedding. Sigh.

***

I posted the following on the autism forum.

I struggle to advocate for myself in the workplace. I have to deal with things like using multiple documents at once or doing things with multiple steps which is hard with executive functioning issues. I have lists of what to do, but I still make mistakes sometimes, not least because I don’t always remember to look at the lists. I also have to make and take phone calls occasionally. Periodically, there are days when I have to make a lot of important and very difficult phone calls, which means dealing with social anxiety, spoken word processing issues, telephone issues and problems talking to people and remembering the correct responses or even problem solving on the spot. That doesn’t happen too often, thankfully, but it did last week.

I feel uncomfortable with this aspect of the job, but I’ve had long periods of unemployment and don’t want to risk losing this job, which in other ways is good (relatively high pay considering the hours and workload; a very understanding and laid-back boss). When I try to think of possible adjustments, autistic rigidity kicks in and I feel like there are no adjustments I can ask for that would be both reasonable and useful. I don’t feel that asking not to use the phone is not [1] reasonable, given my contract. I actually don’t know what reasonable adjustments I would like, I just know that I feel a certain level of depression and anxiety in the workplace, not to mention feelings of inadequacy and overwhelm. I just feel I have to deal with it somehow or lose the job.

I would be grateful for any possible suggestions.

[1] I actually missed out the crucial word “not” in the forum post and couldn’t work out how to edit it! I had to add a comment to clarify.

Sainthood Is Not In Your Future

I woke up at 5am with a headache. I took some tablets and watched James Bond for a bit. This probably wasn’t ideal headache viewing, even with the volume low (although it wasn’t a very bad headache, just an annoying one), but the DVD was in the machine still and I didn’t want to lose where I was up to. After fifteen minutes or so (OK, after the speedboat chase finished), the headache had gone so I went back to bed. I couldn’t sleep, but I stayed in bed resting until it was time to get up, about 6.15am.

Despite this, the morning at work was OK. J was supposed to have a meeting elsewhere in the building at lunchtime, but the chairman had asked to switch to Zoom as he was unwell. This had several knock-on effects, the most significant being that J had to be in our office for the meeting. As the meeting was confidential, that meant I had to be out of the office. I needed to go to the bank anyway, but when I returned, I ended up sitting around reading and messing around on my phone upstairs, waiting for J to text me that the meeting was over and I could come back.

I don’t know if this disturbed my workflow or mindset, but I seemed to make a lot of mistakes in the afternoon. I got into a mistake-self-doubt vicious circle, with mistakes leading to self-doubt leading to more mistakes and so on.

After work, I davened (prayed) in the shul (synagogue) where I work and I got annoyed by a lot of things that really I shouldn’t have been annoyed about, such as the shaliach tzibbur (prayer leader) reading much too fast (what I call Nusach Turkey, when what comes out is not words, but gobble gobble gobble gobble), people messing about on their phones during the service, mourners saying the Sephardi Kaddish (you should use the nusach (liturgy) of the shul where you are davening, not your own nusach, but few people seem to be aware of this law) and a devar Torah (Torah thought) that went on far too long to bear the rather trite moral it concluded with (if we’re going in the right direction, God will remove all obstacles in our path, apparently).I felt bad for being annoyed and distracted by all of these. Not all of them are even against halakhah (Jewish Law) and I can only blame my autism for my annoyance inasmuch as it makes me rule-obsessed. Nevertheless, I felt that I hadn’t connected with God. Whether I should blame other people or my own sensibilities, I don’t know, but I felt frustrated rather than spiritually connected.

***

Lately I’ve been using a phrase from the Kotzker Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk) as a sort of affirmation/meditation: “Don’t look furtively outside yourself, don’t look furtively into others, don’t keep yourself in mind.” I understand this to mean (1) focus on what your inner self is calling on you to do, not what other people tell you or expect of you; (2) don’t judge others or compare yourself to them; (3) if this sounds narcissistic, remember that the motive for action is to help others, not yourself. I have had a little bit of success with this in reducing comparison thoughts.

Today in A Fire Burns in Kotsk [sic], I read, “’a pious person doesn’t have God in mind because he’s always full of doubts. Perhaps he didn’t pronounce a word properly, perhaps he didn’t wash his hands, his skullcap isn’t back far enough on his head… Meanwhile, he forgets the larger truth; he forgets about the final redemption.’” A Fire Burns in Kotsk is fiction, but many of the aphorisms quoted are genuine. I am not sure how genuine this is.

It makes me think that I should have read this when I was struggling with religious OCD, because that’s what it seems to describe. But it’s relevant now as I struggle to find a way to balance the level of halakhic observance I would like with the level E is comfortable with. More than that, we want to balance the level of observance we would like with a degree of spirituality and connection to God rather than rote ritual. (Lately I have had better kavannah (mindfulness) in davening (prayer), but I am not sure how.)

***

On one of the Jewish autism Facebook groups I’m on, someone asked why he’s always beating himself up. I wasn’t sure that I understood him correctly (he posted a whole long thing that I didn’t follow), but I posted the following response:

I don’t know if this is what you mean, but I can only work part-time. I’m in a job I’m over-qualified for, but which I routinely mess up. My peers are in better jobs and actual *careers*. I constantly beat myself up for this perceived failure as well as for not doing what I could/should/would like to be doing both religiously and regarding everything else (exercise, housework, writing etc.). As for *why* I’m like this, I think it’s mostly childhood stuff, some of which has nothing to do with autism and some of it is somewhat related to autism, particularly being bullied a lot for being “weird” and a geek, which left me thinking that if I could find the “perfect” way to behave, I would be accepted, or at the very least I would merge into the background and be invisible. So, I beat myself up in the belief that this will cause me to improve myself and become my best possible self, which is the only ethically/religiously/socially acceptable outcome, except that this strategy doesn’t actually work and not only do I fail, I feel miserable for failing too.

It occurred to me afterwards that maybe the inspirational stories told in the frum (religious Jewish) community about great rabbis and tzaddikim (saintly people) are counter-productive. Maybe allistics (non-autistics) hear, “Wow, what a great story, that inspires me to want to be better,” whereas autistics, who tend to lack nuance and can be overly literal, think, “Wow, what a great story, I have to be on that saintly level!” But sainthood is not attainable for most people, and striving for it can end in disaster.

There were actually some positive responses to this in the form of conversation, which was nice, as often on Facebook I just get likes, which I like, but which are not really the kind of social interaction I wanted to get when I rejoined FB.

It’s All Here Tonight: Wedding, Baby, Work, Social Interactions, Judaism

Today was busy, so busy that it feels more like a couple of days than just one.

I went to volunteering in the morning. I tried to make myself speak to people a bit more. I’m not sure how well I did, but I did try to sit with them when we had coffee. Initially I had ended up at the other end of the table to everyone else, but after a while I moved to sit with the others. I also asked to be put on the WhatsApp group. And we were given nice thick, warm fleeces with the organisation’s logo on it. They’re bright purple (the organisation’s colour) which is a bit more vibrant than my usual taste, but they look nice and were very warm.

Afterwards, I went with my parents to a potential wedding venue nearby. It was more or less ideal.  Nothing is ever perfect, but this was 99% perfect. As well as having the features we want, it’s relatively local, in an area I’m familiar with (I used to work down the road) which is probably good from an autistic point of view (dislike of the unknown), plus Sister and Brother-in-law live nearby, which will make it easier for them to bring Nephew. There are other venues that may be as good, but as E and I want to get married quickly, there doesn’t seem to be much point in looking at them, particularly as they would probably be not quite as good overall. So now the next step is to find a caterer that can do one of the dates we would like, then confirm with the rabbi and book the wedding!

A few emotional/autistic things that came out of this: I felt Mum and Dad drowned me out a bit when we were talking the site manager (I don’t know what her real title is, but that will do for here). I don’t mean that in a critical way, but they are quite loud personalities and I struggled to be heard, both literally and metaphorically. I needed their moral support there or I would have just frozen up, but it is my wedding and I felt that I wasn’t saying much. It doesn’t help that I notice they have a way of switching from “serious” to “joking” and back again in conversations of this kind that I just can’t do. I can do that with people I know well and trust, but not with a total stranger I only met ten minutes previously. I get stuck in “serious” then feel awkward when everyone else starts joking.

I am excited about the wedding, but I don’t think it shows much. When I was with my parents, I did feel a little excited, but it was only when I discussed it over Skype with E that I really felt it, although it probably still didn’t show much. I don’t know how much of that is just my personality and how much is alexithymia (difficulty feeling and understanding my own emotions). When we had the civil wedding last August, E’s mother filmed us when we were pronounced married. E starts bouncing up and down with a big smile on her face, whereas I look a bit confused and then hug her. When my cousin saw the video, she said I looked like I was happy, but didn’t know what to do, which is basically true. I don’t really know what to do with my emotions sometimes and it’s mostly the positive ones I struggle with, perhaps because I experience them less frequently or maybe because I feel there’s more social expectation around them.

After that we went to Sister and Brother-in-law’s house nearby. BIL was at work. We ate lunch and chatted to Sister for a bit, then she went to do work elsewhere in the house while we looked after Nephew. I held him a couple of times and helped feed and wind him (E thought it was funny when I said I winded him, so I guess it’s not an American usage. I mean to I tried to get him to burp). I ducked out of changing him this time. I am still a somewhat nervous uncle not used to babies, but I am becoming a bit more confident with him. I shook slightly while holding him, but not much, which is probably a sign of growing confidence. Nephew often has a somewhat startled expression, like he’s surprised to see the world’s still there, and is not entirely happy about it. Sister says at his age (not yet two months), he can’t focus on things that aren’t near his face. He did seem to make intense eye contact with me for a while, though.

Sister showed us the book she bought him. It’s made of fabric and is about farm animals. It reads, “Dog. Sheep. Cow,” with relevant pictures. I said I was impressed by the unexpected twist ending…

As if that wasn’t enough for one day, I have some paid proofreading work! It’s not much, and my rate is artificially low at the moment (well below minimum wage), but I hope that will generate reviews. It’s a slightly strange request for reasons that I don’t want to go into here, but it seems to be legitimate, but it’s left me with vague unease. I hope it really is legitimate.

***

A few days ago I emailed a rabbinic email helpline for people in the Orthodox Jewish community who have mental health issues. You can email a rabbi for advice on halakhah (Jewish law) as it pertains to mental health. The rabbis on the helpline have mental health training, unlike most communal rabbis. I asked about the way my autism leads to frequent exhaustion and difficulty in religious situations that are also social situations, and also how to cope with any religious obligations when feeling autistically exhausted. Autism isn’t a mental illness, but I felt out of other options for the kind of halakhic support I wanted.

I heard back from the helpline yesterday. The rabbi said that as autism is a spectrum and manifests in different people in different ways, so too halakhic adjustments can vary. From what I described, he felt I should not push myself to go to shul (synagogue) when exhausted or push myself to any social interaction related to a mitzvah (commandment) when I feel incapable and not to feel pressure regarding mitzvot generally. He said I could email him with more details of my situation for a more specific response. He also suggested davening (praying) at the same time as my shul even if I don’t feel able to go there, which is an idea I have heard before and tried to do during the first COVID lockdown, but drifted out of the habit of doing. I might try to go back to it, at least some times. The idea is that if you pray at the same time as the community, your prayer is still with them, even if you aren’t in the same building.

I’m not sure what I think of reply. It’s good that the rabbi told me that I shouldn’t force myself to do things that are just making me exhausted or burnt out. It’s not very specific, but I don’t really have very specific questions at the moment, just a general feeling of overwhelm at everything that’s expected of me religiously. I guess I feel that there’s a lot of grey area there inasmuch as it boils down to “Do what you feel able to do and don’t worry about the rest.” That’s probably my fault (“fault” isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean) because I didn’t ask very specific questions, but I worry it will just shift my worries from “Do I need to do more religiously?” to “Am I exhausted enough that I don’t need to do more religiously?” which might not be much of an improvement. I’m going to think about what they wrote and maybe write back if I can think of a more specific question.

Halfway There Day

Yesterday was my half-birthday, for those of you who take note of such things. I don’t really see any significance, but my oldest friend was born on 19 January and another friend on 20 January, so the date leaps out at me. I am now closer to my fortieth birthday than my thirty-ninth, which vaguely troubles me, although it shouldn’t.

I also worked out that if E and I get one of the two wedding dates we’re currently aiming at, both in the second half of May, we’re more or less halfway now between the civil wedding last August and the chuppah (religious wedding). We should have more of an idea this week if that’s a realistic date.

***

This week was the baby blessing week for Nephew. I couldn’t go in the end because of difficulty finding somewhere suitable to stay. I was OK home alone. I didn’t go to shul (synagogue) on Friday night because I felt too tired, which was a shame and vaguely troubling in terms of how frequently it seems to be happening. The house was cold and I have chapped hands again, but otherwise things were fine.

I did some Torah study: Talmud and The Guide to the Perplexed, which is currently full of stuff about the Aristotlean view of the universe as a series of living spheres, one inside the other, definitely not made of atoms and definitely not containing any vacuum. It’s interesting from a historical point of view, but this bit is not really relevant to modern day theology. Hopefully it will get back to more relevant stuff (from a contemporary perspective) soon.

I finished reading Dune yesterday. I intend to go on to the second book, Dune Messiah. It was a good book, but hard to get into, and weirdly structured.

I slept too long as usual, about twelve or thirteen hours at night. I still went back to bed after lunch today, more because I was cold than tired. I think I drifted into that state of mind between sleeping and wakefulness and was late for seudah (the third Shabbat meal).

It was a struggle to do things after Shabbat. It always is, as I feel lethargic, even at 5.30pm. I did manage to tidy up and do a bit of Torah study. I did a little novel planning too. I would have done more, but I had a headache for a while.

***

I tried to friend someone on the autism forum a while back. We have some things in common (librarians, Doctor Who fans). He didn’t respond to the friending and accompanying message, but has chatted with me on threads since then. He’s got other friends. Friending doesn’t really do anything other than allow direct messaging, but I do feel weirdly unliked from only having two friends, both people who are not there any more and who didn’t stay on the forum long. But I’m nervous about friending people (in general and after this). I wonder if the friend request didn’t go through properly to this person and if I should send it again, or if that would make things worse if he was deliberately not responding to me.

I also wonder if it’s worth friending other people. I would be open to making friends on the site, which would realistically only happen if I friended people, but I don’t see it as essential. Still, I wonder what to do. I feel really self-conscious about being the only (open) Jew on the site, but can’t stop mentioning it. I don’t think anyone is antisemitic, but a lot of people have funny ideas about Jews, particularly if they haven’t met any (which is feasible as Jews make up about a half of per cent of the UK population, largely concentrated in just a couple of cities).

Same Old Scene

I struggled a bit with Shabbat (the Sabbath) again. I got to shul (synagogue) on Friday night despite feeling very tired. I found dinner with my parents exhausting. I know “selective mutism” is something a lot of autistics suffer from. I don’t really experience it, but I have noticed that when autistically exhausted from peopling (rather than just tired), I can become monosyllabic. By the end of dinner, I was communicating in gestures more than speech. It wasn’t conscious. It’s a bit frightening.

I fell asleep for an hour after dinner and then was too tired to move for an hour after that, so I didn’t do as much reading as I would have liked. I spent an hour reading The Guide for the Perplexed, but only managed a few pages as it was based on Medieval neo-Aristotlean philosophy which I didn’t really understand so I made slow progress. I’m not sure how much relevance those passages really have for contemporary Jewish thought. I also wonder how they were understood in Early Modern and Modern Eastern Europe, although not many people would have been reading it there – not many rabbis, let alone laymen. The Kotzker Rebbe is supposed to have said of the Guide that “If you are wise, it is a guide; if not, you will be perplexed,” which is probably true. I read a few pages of A Fire Burns in Kotsk and a couple of chapters of Dune, but not much else.

I slept late again this morning. Mum and Dad were out for lunch, so I ate by myself, reading the latest Doctor Who Magazine. I’m not at all optimistic about the return of Russell T Davies, David Tennant, Catherine Tate and others, or the deal with Disney. I worry it’s just a return to the worst aspects of Davies and Tennant’s first run, with added Big Business. As when Davies was showrunner previously, DWM is now full of coy preview articles that tease the new episodes without giving anything away, which I just find irritating. I don’t like spoilers, but just being told endlessly that the next series is going to be amazing when I’m not going to see it for a year or more is annoying, even if I wasn’t convinced that it won’t be amazing. I skim DWM more and more.

I dozed off for a bit after Minchah and ate seudah (the third Shabbat meal) after sunset, which is not ideal. I was too tired to do very much at all in the afternoon, although I did some Torah study (Shoftim/Judges in Hebrew and with a modern commentary) after Shabbat and also some work on the plan for my novel, but I mostly got distracted and procrastinated online. I think the beginning of my book is quite good, but after about chapter five, when the plot really kicks in, I run out of incident and jokes, which is not good for a satirical thriller. I’m not totally out of ideas, but there are definitely fewer as it goes on. I sort of want to just start writing (I feel like an athlete with muscles tensed to run, but unable to go yet), but I want to do more research to generate more ideas, both external research (reading relevant books) and internal research (thinking about my characters and how their world works). I’m feeling pessimistic about this actually resulting in a readable full-length novel, but I’m trying to tell myself I’m working for my own amusement. Then I read stuff online, as I did tonight, where people are saying, “We want more positive frum characters in books and TV” and I want to do something towards that, even though I think setting out to produce a “positive” image of the frum community would backfire badly (and this book is much lower than previous ones in frum content). I think/hope once I actually start that will generate more ideas. As I’ve said before, I’m a bit of a “pantser” in that some of my best ideas come up once I’ve begun writing, but it’s uncomfortable to bet on that.

***

I thought quite a bit about that post on the autism forum about connecting with people (where a lot of people said they connect with animals and soft toys more easily than they connect with neurotypicals) and also the lukewarm response to my post on the Facebook group about being autistic in the frum (religious Jewish) community. I feel it’s not really an option from me to cut myself off from other Jews or other people in general. I feel a specific religious commandment to try to love other Jews and people in general. Plus, I do feel connected to other Jews, whether I like it or not. I’ve been angry for days at the new Israeli government and I know that’s because I identify as an Orthodox Jew, and if other Orthodox Jews are corrupt, self-serving, racist or homophobic, I feel that my identity is attacked. If nothing else, people will assume I’m the same. So there is a connection there whether I like it or not.

I do wish I knew how to move forward with my life, whether that involves the frum community, the autistic community or both, or whether it involves my writing or proofreading or something else. I do know that, realistically, I should wait until I’m married before really doing anything new, but it’s so hard waiting without knowing when that will be or even when E’s visa will arrive. It feels SO HARD waiting and being separated.

I watched an episode of The Simpsons tonight where Homer complains he hasn’t done anything with his life at the grand old age of thirty-nine. That’s how old I am! At least he has a full-time job, three kids and a wife who he actually gets to live with! I am nowhere near as fat and I’m not bald (not even thinning) so that’s something.

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!

I have heard that we have a fixed amount of self-control. You can practise self-control to increase the amount you have over time, but at any moment there are limits to how much is open to you (I wonder if this is still considered valid or if it’s one of those social psychology findings that’s been found to be unrepeatable).

I feel like I’ve been struggling with self-control for the last few months, in terms of eating more junk (not a huge amount, but I really would like to lose some weight, even if my weight gain was from medication) and going to bed later. Probably buying books too. I think I’m using up all my self-control waiting for E’s visa to arrive and lose control on other areas. Have I mentioned that I miss E?

***

I’ve been in my job for over two years and I still can’t use the phones properly. When someone calls, the call automatically goes through to the phone on J’s desk. Only if he’s using that does the phone on my desk ring. This means that if the phone rings while he’s out, I have to hurry over to his desk, answer the phone and then often transfer it back to my phone so I can do stuff on my computer for the caller. Except, as happened today, I still can’t get the hang of how to transfer calls. I cut someone off twice; the third time, she gave me her number and asked me to call her back, which was embarrassing.

My phone doesn’t work properly anyway and we were going to experiment with moving the phones around. I’m in without J next Tuesday, so I might play around with them, but I’m worried we’ll end up with my phone as the default and I’ll have to take all the calls. I guess it will be good exposure therapy for my phone anxiety, but most of the calls are for J and I worry I would cut them off transferring to him.

***

I led Ma’ariv (Evening Prayers) in shul (synagogue) today. I didn’t really shake, but I was glad we were in the small Beit HaMidrash and not the larger main shul so I didn’t have to project my voice.

***

I feel that I’m being drawn slowly towards autism activism in the frum (religious Jewish) community without knowing what to do or how to do it and without feeling that I have the time, energy or skill-set to do it. I also feel the word “activist” is overused. Every journalist, writer, artist, musician and academic claims to be an “activist” these days. As they said on the Deep Meaningful Conversations podcast I listened to the other day about Sarah Schinerer, sharing something on social media does not make you an activist!

Dare I say it, I think the world might be in a better shape if there were fewer people being active and more being still and thinking. Don’t just do something, stand there.

***

I was thinking a bit about spirituality and alexithymia (inability to recognise or understand one’s own emotions, which I have). I struggle to define, understand or experience spirituality. Maybe it’s a nebulous, abstract concept that many autistics would struggle with. Maybe it’s because I didn’t go to yeshivah (rabbinical seminary) and meet super-spiritual religious leaders who could give me experiential proof of it. Or maybe alexithymia stops me recognising when I experience spirituality or simchah (joy) e.g. simchah shel mitzvah (the joy of performing a religious commandment) or simchah shel Yom Tov (the joy of a festival). I feel my religious life is performed without joy, yet it doesn’t exactly feel “joyless” in a painful way, so maybe I’m feeling something I can’t recognise.

It doesn’t help that the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world sees spirituality in withdrawal from the wider world, while Modern Orthodoxy sees spirituality in bringing Jewish values to the wider world. I prefer the latter, but perhaps this is harder to notice and feel; it’s certainly in many ways harder to do. (This is the fundamental internal conflict of the Jewish people, the conflict between Leah and Rachel, which is later the conflict between Yosef and Yehudah (Joseph and Judah) and then between the Southern Kingdom of Yehudah and Northern Kingdom of Yisrael (Israel), but I don’t have time to elaborate.)

***

On the autism forum, someone asked who or what we identify with. Almost everyone who responded put animals or nature, then the marginalised and disadvantaged. Most people responding felt that they struggled to connect with most other human beings.

I think my response will not be popular:

The short answer is “Almost no one.” The longer answer:

As Franz Kafka said, “I have hardly anything in common with myself”.

1. My wife. She is genuinely the only person who really “gets” me and is on the same wavelength, so I can unmask with her.
2. Intellectuals, particularly ones who are dead, eccentric and/or Jewish, most especially those who were probably neurodiverse or mentally ill.
3. Lonely people. I would say “marginalised” etc., but it sounds awkward.
4. Children (but only quiet, well-behaved ones).
5. I do genuinely try to care about everyone and feel obligation to care for them.

I don’t feel any connection with animals. They often frighten me. I find them unpredictable, especially dogs. I didn’t have any pets (except fish) as a child, plus I’ve been attacked by dogs and by a duck and twice had apples stolen from my hands from goats, so maybe that’s it.

I should really have put “Other Jews” in there before “everyone,” but I didn’t want to get into an argument about whether it’s OK to care about some people more than others (Judaism says it’s human nature to extend compassion outwards from the family to the community to the nation to the world, but lots of people would disagree).

I suspect there is a part of me that wants not to fit in, that looks for difference and existential incomprehension instead of finding common ground. I never feel more Jewish than when with non-Jews or less autistic than when with other autistics. I need to find a way to move past this if I want to make close friends.

***

Ugh, I’ve been online too long and now it’s midnight and I’m exhausted (QED regarding staying up late due to poor self-control). It will be good when E comes to the UK and at least some of my life can move offline.

Leadership

I spent most of my time at work today stuffing about 300 invoices into envelopes, sealing them, putting stamps on them and posting them. I also processed six credit card payments over the phone and dealt calmly with a phone call from someone who was angry over some stuff that she really should not have been angry about. I did at least get to listen to some podcasts while stuffing envelopes. I had forgotten I would be stuffing envelopes, so hadn’t saved up podcasts, which meant I listened to some that had been sitting on my iPod for a while, unloved.

One podcast that was more interesting than I thought it would be was about Sarah Schenerer, who founded the Bais Yaakov network of Jewish girls’ schools in twentieth century Poland (it’s now a global network). I didn’t realise that she had so little support for her school initially or that she was a divorcee. It was mentioned in the podcast that Jewish men define themselves by the yeshivah they went to. This was not exactly news to me, but did make me feel an outcast again.

The podcast also said that we should all be trying to be leaders. Rabbi Sacks z”tzl used to say this a lot too. I’ve never felt like a leader and wouldn’t know how to be one. The podcast said that, if nothing else, we should be leaders in our families. I am not sure I know how to do that either, although if ‘leadership’ in this context means ‘encouraging others to have more of a Jewish identity and/or religious observance,’ then I suppose I’ve done that without really knowing how.

Interestingly, my rabbi mentor said something similar on Sunday, not about leadership, but about my writing being a “gift” and part of my mission in the world (I can’t remember if he used the word “mission,” but that was the idea). As I think I said the other day, he explicitly said I should take time from Torah study and other religious requirements to devote to my writing, although I’m not sure how much exactly to take. It is reassuring, and flattering to know that he feels that way about my writing, although naturally I feel that I’m not all that gifted and that my current writing is far from anything that might be considered Jewishly relevant.

I’m still thinking about what I can do for frum (religious Jewish autistics/neurodivergents/misfits in general). I’m still struggling to find anything that is both practical and within my capabilities. I also wonder if, beyond a certain age, these people either find a way of settling in the community or they leave (or get forced out) and that’s why I can’t find them.

***

Today was a fast day (the fast of Tevet). As I was at work, I went to shul (synagogue) for Minchah and Ma’ariv (Afternoon and Evening Services). I had not been to a fast day Minchah for so long, from general shul avoidance and specific fast day avoidance (I’m not allowed to fast on the minor fasts for medical reasons, but I don’t want that to become obvious if they try to call me to the Torah and I have to turn it down), that I could not remember what extra prayers we say. This is not good.

***

When I got to the Tube station on the way home, the down escalator was broken, but I didn’t realise this until I was on it and there was a crowd behind me, so I had to walk down on it. The staircase might have been easier, especially as I got stuck behind someone walking slowly with a stick and someone else carrying a bulky case. About five years ago I nearly had a panic attack/meltdown on a very long staircase at Kings Cross Tube Station and ever since I’ve been nervous of walking down the long stairs on the Tube. I get fear of heights-type feelings if I look too far down or over-think things. I just try to look at my feet and keep going at a steady speed, neither too fast nor too slow, but it’s hard when stuck in a slow moving queue of descending people. I did manage it, but I’m wondering if I should start walking down the stairs even when the escalator is working as a kind of exposure therapy.

***

I didn’t have such a stressful day, but foolishly went into the charity shop on the way home, ostensibly because it would get me out of the rain for a few minutes. The result was buying one of Dominic Sandbrook’s history books, State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974. It was only £2 for a hardback that looks very interesting! The money is not an issue; time (to read) and space (to store it) are. Sigh. And this, when I’m intending to buy a load of books for novel research soon. I think I need to find some books to donate to the charity shop in return; I already have a couple of ideas.

***

I had some more ideas for my novel today. It’s strange that I can spend an hour trying to think up ideas and getting nowhere and then, when I’m working and not trying to think about writing, they just keep coming.

Last Shabbat of 2022

I didn’t blog on Thursday night. I was tired and didn’t have much to say. Work was OK, but I ended up staying late, partly working, but mostly because we couldn’t get a minyan (prayer quorum) for Minchah (Afternoon Service) in the shul (synagogue), so after waiting quarter of an hour, the rabbi said we should daven (pray) privately, which we did, but then someone else turned up to complete the minyan and the rabbi made us do Minchah again, plus Ma’ariv (Evening Prayers). I’m not sure what the ratio of time spent hanging around to time spent davening was.

On Friday I was exhausted again and missed shul. I felt bad about that, but I’m not really sure what else I could have done. My parents were out for dinner and I enjoyed the time by myself, but felt a bit lonely. I also realised I had forgotten to take my medication on Thursday night and Friday morning. My parents assumed that’s why I was so tired, but I think it’s just autistic exhaustion.

I did forty-five minutes of Talmud study and read a bit of Dune. I couldn’t stop thinking about the post I want to write on the Orthodox Conundrum group about being autistic in the frum world. It was not appropriate to think about writing on Shabbat (the Sabbath), but I couldn’t stop, which I guess is the autistic “monotropic focus” at work. I thought I had something worth writing by the end of the evening, but I either forgot some of it or I was overly optimistic about it, as when I tried to write it this evening, after Shabbat, it was just waffle. It doesn’t help that I don’t know what I want to say, beyond feeling a need to make excuses for my poor community involvement (which I should not do) or to express vague anger and resentment at the way my religious life has gone (again, not a good idea). And my comment discussion here with JYP a few days ago has shown that I have absolutely no idea of what practical steps anyone could take to make the community more welcoming to me, let alone anyone else, and I suspect different autistics would react in different ways anyway.

Today I did some more reading of The Guide to the Perplexed, but not much else. I only managed about half an hour of the Guide as I’m still tired and trying to do other things. I’m not sure how sensible it is for me to read the Guide with no formal training in philosophy or Medieval intellectual history. I’m not sure how much I understand, and I’m not sure how much of what I understand is still considered philosophically valid. However, I am enjoying it, but I feel I shouldn’t be spending Torah study time on something I enjoy, but don’t really understand. On the other hand, I persevered with Talmud study and now understand more of it, and enjoy it more too.

I was still tired and didn’t go with Dad to shul for Ma’ariv. He went as he has yortzeit (death anniversary) for his mother tonight and tomorrow, so he wanted to say Kaddish.

I spent an hour working on my novel plan this evening. It still feels like doing a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded in the dark, but I feel like I’m making slow progress. I do still worry about my proposed satirical science fiction thriller not being funny, original or thrilling, but I guess I won’t know until I actually start writing in earnest. It will be hard to keep it relevant if it takes years to write. I still have planning issues and I want to try to use some flow diagrams to map out how the novel should unfold. I’ve got the beginning and the end, it’s getting from one to the other that is the hard bit. I need to keep reminding myself that I’m doing this for fun and that I should enjoy it, as it’s not that likely that it will ever get published.

I probably shouldn’t write too much about my novel, but I have been meaning for a while to clarify what I’ve said about it being an anti-woke satire. When I say ‘woke,’ I don’t mean it as a synonym for ‘progressive.’ I don’t have a problem with progressives and even share some of the same worries albeit not always the same solutions. When I say ‘woke,’ I mean a type of progressivism combined with anger, self-righteousness and often hypocrisy of one kind or another. To me, that’s something else entirely from progressive politics, more a kind of virtue signalling ego trip, particularly when carried out by faceless corporations that try to appear woke while behaving appallingly (Amazon, Ben and Jerry’s). And, yes, I intend to satirise the similar tendency at the opposite end of the political spectrum, right-wing populism (which recently has been worrying me more, although I find it less funny). I want to satirise trends and maybe institutions, but not people. Even before writing, one character has gone from someone I wanted to satirise to someone I feel empathy for.

After that, I was going to watch Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, the all-female Ghostbusters reboot from 2016, but decided I’d rather read Dune. I finished the first part of the novel, but I’m not sure I want to read more tonight, but I’m not sure what I’d rather do instead either.

***

Carol Anne commented on an old post where the rabbi of my shul (the one I’ve now stopped going to) offered to share the article I wrote on being autistic in the frum (religious Jewish) community on the shul WhatsApp group. I said I would think about it, but I actually forgot to get back to him. It was probably for the best, as I left that shul, but it does make me think what I could/should do about this (this = finding a place for me in the Orthodox Jewish world, but I suppose it could also be trying to make the frum community more accepting of autistics).

The post I posted on the autism forum about masking and code-switching didn’t get much of a response, and what it did get, I found confusing and hard to understand. Possibly I shouldn’t assume I can really let people see the world the way I do.

***

It’s been a difficult year in many ways. I spent so much of it waiting to get married to E and we’re still not fully married. However, we are at least civilly married, even if we’re still separated by the Atlantic. Also, Nephew was born. That makes two new family members for clan Luftmentsch! On the downside, Mum and Sister both spent time in hospital, Mum with her heart attack and Sister with pregnancy issues in the spring (as well as when she actually gave birth this December) and I’m still a bit worried that Mum will have another heart attack. Pesach time was very stressful, with Sister in hospital immediately beforehand and Mum in hospital soon afterwards. Even more tragically, my parents’ friends’ son died, as did Ashley. It’s probably not sensible to divide years into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ years, as if every day was the same, but this does seem to have been a particularly varied one, so many good and bad things.

First Drafts

I had a dull day at work without J, who is on annual leave (I’d say holiday, but he’s at home, using up unused holiday days before they expire on 31 January). I had to make a phone call which I handled badly, or at least not as well as I would have liked. Other than that, it was mostly sorting old papers again, but at least I’m making some progress with it, however slight. Tomorrow I need to go to the bank before the end of the month, which is usually the highlight of my working month, except in January when I usually go multiple times as people send so many membership fee cheques in (some people still write cheques, particularly as our members tend towards the elderly and technophobe).

After waiting fifteen minutes and having the rabbi make some phone calls, we got a minyan (prayer quorum) for Minchah (Afternoon Prayers), but someone had to leave at the end so we couldn’t daven Ma’ariv (say Evening Prayers) and had to do that at home instead. It’s hardly the worst problem ever, but it was frustrating. The minyan is usually made up of people who work in offices locally, as there isn’t much of a local Jewish population, and at the moment many people are on holiday.

***

As usual, I read a Torah study book on the Tube in to work, but I skimmed How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by science fiction author Orson Scott Card at lunch and on the way home. A lot of it is intuitive, or related to types of science fiction I have no intention of writing (at the moment), and much of the rest I suspect I picked up from another book he wrote about writing technique. I’ve never been sure how much you can teach writing, or any art. I guess there’s a part which is technique, which can probably be taught as a craft, and another part that is raw talent that has to be honed by actually writing, if you’re lucky enough to have it.

One thing that did interest me was the idea that you might need to do a first draft to try out ideas and then rewrite it into something completely different. This was shocking to me, as my English teacher at school used to insist that a first draft was 99% of the final product. Talking of a “rough draft” was even worse, and anyone saying that to him would be told, “Rough is what the doggie says.” Similarly, Steven Moffat, the greatest of the Doctor Who new series writers and showrunners (in my humble, but controversial, opinion) says that a first draft is most of the work; the subsequent drafts are just polish. And who am I to argue with the author of Blink and Heaven Sent?

It’s a strange concept for me to get my head around: a draft that I go into knowing very little of it will survive into later drafts is just not how I have written up until now (although part of me wants to perform a drastic re-write on my first novel one day). I can see that it makes sense for science fiction or fantasy in a way that it might not with more realistic fiction. With these genres, as well as the usual plot and characterisation common to all fiction, there’s a lot of literal world-building to test, finding rules for an environment and for pseudo-science or magic that are consistent and don’t cheat the reader or make things too easy for the hero. I can see it might be easier doing that on paper than in your head, but it is a paradigm shift for me, even if I was already tentatively going down that path.

A related question is research. I want my book to involve virtual reality (like Meta), but realise I know very little about actual contemporary virtual reality to extrapolate from. My instinct is to search bookshops for non-fiction about it as well as famous science fiction books like Neuromancer and other classics from the cyberpunk sub-genre (I’ve read the seminar cyberpunk short story Johnny Mnemonic. But don’t mention The Matrix or I’ll scream. It’s an over-rated pile of Philip K. Dick fanfic). But maybe it’s better to just write at this stage and look at other people’s thoughts (real-world and fiction) after I’ve got something down on paper. That will also save my bank balance and give me more time to read the BIG PILE OF OTHER BOOKS I’ve acquired lately.

***

The baby blessing has come up again. This is the family event Sister and Brother-in-Law are planning for next month, with attendance at their shul (synagogue), at the communal refreshments afterwards and two big family meals, a week before another family/social event my parents are planning for Dad’s seventieth birthday. This has made me anxious on multiple levels, some religious, some autism- and mental health-related.

The latest issue is that the hotel where we would have to stay has electronic locks, which would be problematic on Shabbat (the Sabbath) when electricity can’t be used. When I was in New York, the staff at the hotel I stayed at were used to religious Jews asking (or more usually hinting, as it’s not really permitted to ask non-Jews to perform work on Shabbat) to have doors opened for them, but this might not be the case here and they might see it as suspicious behaviour.

Even beside that, I still feel deeply negative and anxious about the whole thing, doubly so as I feel I have no right to express my discomfort, whether from religious or autistic/socially anxious reasons, even though I worry what kind of state I will be in by the end of January if I go through all this, which I feel is a legitimate worry and not me being difficult.

Then there is the fact that, at the moment, it looks like I would have to go through these events without E, which just feels so painful now and I don’t know how much anyone in my family understands that.

***

I was thinking today about not achieving the level of halakhic (Jewish law)observance that I wanted or expected I would have by now. This is partly because E and I are now growing together and religious growth needs to be at a pace that both of us can bear, and I’m OK with that, but, even beyond that, I have been relying on leniencies in some areas or relaxing my standards for a while now, as I’ve mentioned before. As I said the other day, I think it’s hard being frum (Jewishly observant) with mental health issues, neurodiversity, less frum relatives and without feeling integrated into a supportive community, let alone juggling all of these. I hate to use ‘privilege’ language, but I increasingly feel that being fully halakhically observant is a privilege. It’s not something all Jews can attain, even if they want to, but as a community we are not accepting of that.

As I thought about it, I realised that I am disabled, but for twenty years I was trying to be frum without knowing I was disabled, not knowing that there were legitimate leniencies I could rely on (sometimes I knew I could rely on things because of depression or living with less frum parents, but I did not know about autism). It’s a strange situation to be in, to become retroactively aware that you were disabled all your life. I doubt it happens to many people; I would think usually disability announces itself very clearly! It’s something I haven’t really come to terms with.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, beyond my reiterated desire to say something to other frum people about this, but not knowing what I want to say or who I want to say it to or how I want to say it and being afraid of the reaction I would get for essentially justifying my non-observance of halakhah.

Post-Shabbat Slump

I was really exhausted on Friday and felt very burnt out again, a bit ill and incapable of doing much. I did my usual pre-Shabbat (Sabbath) chores, but then lay down on my bed for an hour instead of going to shul (synagogue). I guess it’s a kind of “autistic shutdown,” where I get overloaded and have to lie still in quiet for a while. I’m not sure why they seem to be more common than they used to be, or why I don’t remember getting them as a child.

I did some Torah study last night and read a bit more of Dune, although I’m going slowly with it. I guess it’s the kind of book that demands to be read slowly: little plot (I’m 100 pages in, about a quarter of the way, and very little has actually happened), but lots of description and science fictional detail. I’m enjoying it, but I don’t think it will be a favourite story as it seems to be for many people. It is frustrating that the volume, The Great Dune Trilogy, is too heavy and bulky to take to work, as I do a lot of my reading during lunch and on the Tube. I’m always in a hurry to read books and it’s frustrating me that, because of size and complexity (among other things), it’s going to take me ages to read The Great Dune Trilogy and also The Guide to the Perplexed (see below). There isn’t a lot I can do about it, though. Some books are just slow reads, because of size, content and style.

I think I woke up a couple of times in the night. About 6.30am I woke up and contemplated getting up, but I decided that even if I did get up, I wouldn’t go to shul. This is where I’ve got to with my social anxiety post-COVID, sadly. In the end I fell asleep again and slept through the morning.

I lay down for two twenty minute periods this afternoon too, although I’m not sure whether they were mini-shutdowns. Other than that, I haven’t done much else other than Torah study (about fifty minutes reading The Guide of the Perplexed) and watching Ghostbusters II, the neglected first sequel, although I did send a couple of overdue emails. I’m feeling a post-Shabbat slump. I had a slight headache earlier, which didn’t help much.

I don’t celebrate Christmas or New Years and when I initially planned to watch Ghostbusters II, I’d forgotten that it’s a seasonal film, although it’s only slightly seasonal (the climax of the film takes place on New Years’ Eve, which necessitates Christmas decorations being visible in some earlier scenes, but no one really says much about it). Unlike the first film, it’s not really a comedy being more of a family fantasy/mild horror film with occasional funny lines, although I appreciated the line about spoilt middle class children being “Ungrateful yuppie larvae.” There’s also a lot less smoking than the first film, which may be another sign of aiming more for a family audience. Incidentally, nowadays the river of evil slime that feeds off anger and hate is called Twitter.

One Autistic and a Baby

I went to bed late again last night with little downtime. This is a problem at Chanukah, as a key part of relaxation for me is watching TV in my room while eating dinner, but during Chanukah I tend to eat with my family at the dining room table where we can see the Chanukah candles. This is not religiously required, but somehow it seems wrong not to do it, even though it’s not an old tradition for us, just something we’ve started doing in the last few years. To make matters worse, I find eating with my parents extra draining. So I feel like I haven’t had much downtime for the last few days.

I did go to volunteering. I feel comfortable enough there now to make a slightly teasing joke to one of the other volunteers; he responded in kind a while later. I felt a bit awkward, though. Perhaps because of my history of being bullied as a child, I feel uncomfortable when people tease me, even when I know it’s meant in a friendly way, or perhaps it was just that it took me a minute for me to understand the joke (it hinged on my having red hair, but I feel that my hair is brown with bits of red in it, which isn’t the same). We had jam donuts with our coffee as it’s Chanukah. I ate one, even though I usually avoid the biscuits during the coffee break (to lose weight) and even though I knew I would have another one in the evening. Chanukah is not really a time for dieting.

Afterwards I went to Golders Green for lunch. Years ago, I used to periodically find myself needing to eat lunch in Golders Green and I used to go to a particular cafe where they served a tuna melt that I really liked. I hadn’t had it for years, not least because nowadays I’m semi-vegetarian and only eat fish and meat on Shabbat and Yom Tov (Sabbaths and festivals). As these are mostly days when one can’t eat in restaurants, I don’t eat the tuna melt. However, I do eat fish on Chanukah, when work is permitted (as it’s a minor festival – yes, even though it’s perhaps the best-known Jewish festival, Chanukah ranks low in the official pecking order), so I decided to make a special trip to eat it.

I was rather stunned when I got there by how crowded and noisy it was, but I decided to go in nonetheless. I certainly wonder how I coped with such noise and overload in the past. I really think that, before lockdown and before my autism diagnosis, I didn’t notice how much things like this stressed me out, or, if I noticed, I suppressed my feelings as silly or childish. I did very much notice my feelings today, but I really wanted the tuna melt and coming back wasn’t really an option, so I braved it. It was worth it. I’d forgotten how big the slices of bread are that they use for the sandwich. Very filling.

On the bus, I listened to the latest Orthodox Conundrum podcast on The REAL History of Chanukah… And Why It Matters Today, which I would definitely recommend to all religious Jews (regardless of denomination) and anyone who thinks they know the Chanukah story. It was really good, so good that I immediately recommended it to E, who texted me later to agree how good it was. If you only listen to one podcast this Chanukah…

I came home exhausted, but not for very long, as we (me and my parents) went out to see my sister, brother-in-law and nephew. Nephew was asleep when we got there, so we lit Chanukah candles or at least Sister and BIL did – I was prepared to compromise on this occasion and light there and blow them out when it came time to go (which I think you can do if they’ve burnt for half an hour), but my Dad for once was the machmir (strict) one who wanted to light and home and let the lights burn themselves out.

More donuts were consumed, this time chocolate-filled.

After a while, Sister and BIL decided to wake Nephew as he needed to feed. I got to hold him for longer this time. I sat on the sofa, where I was more comfortable and supported. I shook a little, but my parents didn’t notice, and I felt more comfortable with him. I did struggle to know what to say to him, but my Mum said I was fine and the photos people took of me holding him show me looking relaxed. He is still a very little thing, and very sleepy. I did feel good holding him, though.

My sister is suddenly very maternal, which is not a side to her that I’d seen before. She’s already got a unique term of endearment for Nephew, although maybe that’s not surprising, because as a child she was always making up words.

When my Mum was holding Nephew, she said to him that she was going to come on Tuesdays to help Sister and that she would see him too. Nephew reacted to this news with what can only be described as a look of sheer horror, or it would have been, if a three week old baby could understand what someone is saying to him. It was very funny.

One thing we did speak about was the baby blessing for my nephew, which is back on the agenda. Sister and BIL want to do it at the end of January, as a combined baby blessing/Kiddush (refreshments) in shul to thank the community for their help/family birthday celebration for Sister. This would be a week or so before another party, this time for my Dad’s seventieth birthday. I am not entirely happy about all this, although I have agreed to at least to try to go to all these things. Even aside from my discomfort about davening (praying)at a non-Orthodox shul (synagogue) (nothing against non-Orthodox shuls, it’s just not right for me), which I can get around (daven at home on Friday night, daven early on Shabbat morning and then go to shul afterwards), it’s a LOT of peopling in a week and especially over that Shabbat, doubtless with little recovery time. It can be hard doing things with Sister and BIL, as I’m very conscious that they are further on in life than me (married, child, much more financially secure than E and I are likely to be in the foreseeable future, accepted and given a role in their shul community) and at the moment it’s even harder, as doing family things without E just seems so painfully wrong, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And I find family events can be hard anyway, as I can’t always work out how to join in the conversation.

I do feel a bit nervous about all this, although I realise that I really just have to do it somehow, that I shouldn’t try to make it about me, and that there are many worse things in life. But these things are stressful to me, much more so than for an allistic (non-autistic) person.

Speaking of nervous, I’m a bit nervous of tomorrow, when I feel I have a lot to do: Torah study, novel stuff (I know I’m on hold with it, but I have a few ideas I want to type up anyway), go for a walk (much neglected lately), renew my library ticket, try to move forward with setting myself up as a freelance proof-reader (which I’ve been procrastinating about too much)… All this coming from not having relaxed properly tonight (and instead having procrastinated online…).

Plus, I have to be alone in the house with the cleaner for a couple of hours. I really don’t like doing this, as it’s against Jewish law for two unrelated people of opposite sexes to be alone together (yichud), but having flagrantly broken this with E, I feel I can’t protest, even though I intended my breaking of the halakhah to be specifically because of our relationship and not a general abandonment of yichud.

I have now woken up and feel I ought to try to do a little more Torah study now I have the energy, even though it’s 11.15pm (there’s a lot of guilt here for internet procrastination instead of Torah or real relaxation).

“There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive.”

I don’t have much to say, but feel the urge to write something…

I had an OK Shabbat. I decided it was too icy to risk going to shul (synagogue). It was probably the right decision, but I feel bad. I’ve been completely out of the shul-going habit since COVID, and I’m very far from where I was seven or eight years ago, when I was going to shul two or three times every day. Days like this don’t help. I did some Torah study, including getting back into The Guide for the Perplexed and (after Shabbat) Shoftim (The Book of Judges). I did OK with the quite difficult Hebrew vocabulary of Devorah’s (Deborah’s) song. I did spend too long asleep and then spent another hour after lunch in bed with my eyes shut. I don’t know why I do this, except that I seem to need to, on some level. I suspect it’s an autistic recovery thing, although the only thing I can be recovering from is eating with my parents, unless it’s the week in general.

I’ve been thinking a lot about politics lately and feeling I don’t fit anywhere on the political spectrum. That wouldn’t bother me so much, except that I’m trying to write a satirical novel and can’t work out if it’s an advantage or disadvantage to be able to see both sides of an issue. Nowadays it seems that if you want to be taken seriously as a writer on anything political, you have to be totally unable to see anyone else’s viewpoint and, ideally, to insist that anyone who disagrees with you is a Fascist. Also to insist that everything is everyone’s fault, but your own. Well, maybe it really is someone else’s fault, but at some point you have to take responsibility for your own life regardless of your circumstances and try to make a difference by engaging constructively with other people. Or maybe I’m too self-critical to blame Society for everything wrong in my life.

I’m still struggling to know what to do with my writing. E says that she can see improvements in my fiction from my first novel to my second (the one on hold because it was upsetting me). It’s also hard to stop thinking about writing, even though I’m trying to pause for a fortnight or so until the end of the year as my thoughts were getting to intense. I guess I feel that if I’m going to be able to make money from writing (a very, very big if), I need to do it soon, so I can help support the family when E and I are fully married or at least by the time we have children. That’s pretty unlikely to happen at this stage. It looks like we’re going to be dependent on parent money for quite a while, which saddens me, not least because of my comments about taking responsibility.

I’ve only been on Facebook for a month or two, and I have few friends or groups I’ve joined, but my feed is already full of junk, mostly adverts and other groups FB is trying to get me to join. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve made a mistake. I am enjoying being on the Orthodox Conundrum group, but I’ve had no real interactions with people, so it seems unlikely I will make friends and I worry I’m just voicing my “issues” the way I did at Hevria.

I watched Ghostbusters again this evening. It’s my favourite film. I am actually revisiting the first two films because I’m hoping to watch the recent Ghostbusters: Afterlife soon (which I missed in the cinema as I’ve been too scared to go since COVID), but it was probably a good choice as I was feeling down. I always find funny lines I’ve forgotten since my last viewing, although I could probably recite chunks of the film more or less off by heart. I enjoyed it, but seeing something written, acted, directed and even scored so perfectly made me despair of ever producing any good art. Aren’t films supposed to get worse when you’ve seen them ten times? Neil Gaiman says that we read so much more than we write that we’re super-critical of our own writing, which is probably true, and applies to all stories, not just books.

I should probably go to bed now. This post is short, but I kept procrastinating online, so I spent over an hour or so writing it. Unfortunately, I’ve now discovered that every Dilbert cartoon since it started in 1989 is online…

Excursions, No Alarms

I started reading Dune a few days ago and read it to relax before bed yesterday evening rather than watching Doctor Who. It’s good, but not an easy read. There is a glossary of fictional words at the back, but I don’t like to keep turning to it and disrupting the flow of the novel, instead using it just for what seem like key words and working out the rest from context or just letting them go. The world-building is extremely complex, more so than anything I could write. This is positive, but intimidating. The fact that the book (the first three Dune novels in one volume) is too big to take to read on public transport means that it will take twice as long to read as the average novel even without the complexity, as I usually do a lot of my reading on public transport.

I got up later than I intended this morning and was tired. I miss sleeping on E’s sofa, where my sleep seemed more refreshing than in my bed in London, although it was probably more proximity to E and the absence of work in New York that made the difference. On which note, I’m still waiting for my sleep study results.

This morning, instead of going to volunteering, I went for my appointment with the psychiatrist to speak about reducing my medications. Except when I got there, I was told there was no record of my parents changing the appointment date (from 9 January) while I was away. They said something about a doctor having left and I wondered if someone was going to see me out of hours from kindness. The receptionist said appointments for new referrals (which I am, having been discharged years ago) are at 9.30am and 1.00pm and never at 12.00pm which was when mine was supposed to be. It’s yet another awful NHS incident. I hope I never have to see a proctologist on the NHS, as I don’t think an NHS employee could find their backside with both hands. I do at least still have my 9 January appointment, but I’m annoyed to miss volunteering, especially as I will be missing two or three consecutive sessions in a few weeks as I’ll have to rearrange my work days around the winter bank holidays and then so that I can go to the 9 January appointment.

I came home for lunch and went out again as I had a blood test in the afternoon. That at least went OK, except that when the needle went in, I suddenly got a stabbing pain in my forearm, a couple of inches below where the needle was, which continued until after the blood had been taken. I’m not sure what caused this (psychosomatic?). By this stage, the snow had largely turned to ice and I slipped twice on the way to and from the hospital, but didn’t fall over. I went into some charity shops. I bought the complete BBC Chronicles of Narnia on DVD for £4 as I knew that E wants to watch it. I also picked up the DVD of Donnie Darko, as it’s a film I vaguely feel I should watch and there seems to be a copy in every single charity shop in the country, like the universe wants me to buy it. I nearly bought Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate, which I sort of want to read, but I decided my reading list is long enough, and my mood low enough, as it is right now without adding a thousand page book about the Battle of Stalingrad.

My Torah study today was mostly listening to the latest Orthodox Conundrum podcast while walking to and from different appointments. It was on Rabbi Sacks’ Jewish philosophy, with Dr Tanya White and Rabbi Dr Samuel Lebens, two of my favourite contemporary Jewish educators. They spoke about Rabbi Sacks’ communitarianism. This appeals to me, but I struggle to be community-minded with social anxiety and autism, which impair socialising. Then again, I do volunteer, and I do a job that is inherently socially worthwhile, even though my role is mostly paperwork. Is this enough? I don’t know. I do feel disconnected from shul (synagogue) and real world contact with other religious Jews, especially since COVID. Am I wholly or partially exempt because of my “issues”? I don’t know. Maybe there isn’t an easy answer. It did occur to me that I study Torah from a Jewish perspective, through Jewish texts and commentaries rather than just from my own thoughts, so that’s a kind of communal connection, albeit more with dead people than living ones.

I worked on plotting my novel. However, I feel frustrated by having to do so much planning, and that so much of it is so difficult. I do feel that my satirical dystopian thriller is likely to be a failure as a satire, as science fiction and as a thriller, but I do want to persevere with it for myself, if only to see how it turns out. I do feel at the moment that I will probably never be a published fiction writer, but I’m trying to accept that. It’s frustrating as I feel the things I want to say exceed my ability to say them. I’ve been told I’m a good writer on more than one occasion, but there’s good writers and there’s good writers. My sister used to be a talented amateur artist, and my parents have three of her paintings on the wall, but I don’t know if she could sell any of them, certainly not for enough to justify the time spent on them, which was probably a lot less than the time I would spend writing a novel. I do feel a little envious that my parents’ friends can see and admire the paintings whereas my writing is harder to casually show off (although one of my parents’ friends did buy and apparently read and enjoy my non-fiction Doctor Who book).

That said, I do feel a sort of general pessimism at the moment, some worry and frustration about when E’s visa will come and general feelings of inadequacy. A couple of conversations, in blogs and the real world, lately have hinged on the idea of how one copes with feeling inadequate compared with other people’s achievements, which in my sake would include people with children, successful careers and comfort and respect in where they stand in the Jewish community. I try not to be bitter or envious, but it is hard sometimes knowing that to some extent I’ve been set up to fail by my autistic genes and my childhood and adolescent experiences. However, there really is very little I can do about it at the moment, so I try not to think about it too much. I also wish I knew why I was here on Earth so I could get some sense of whether I’m doing what I’m supposed to do or not, but there’s no real way of knowing.

I also feel vaguely nervous about chatan (marriage) class tomorrow without really being sure why except for it being a late night before a work day, and the embarrassment if the teacher offers me a lift home again – not driving is another thing to feel inadequate about. I suppose a lot of it comes from feeling I know a lot of what I’m being taught, but I’m too shy to make that clear, and also that I struggle to contribute to the class, in both cases because of social anxiety and autistic communication issues.

Exhaustion and Leaving Home

On Thursday evening E was out for Thanksgiving, so we Skyped early, as soon as I got home from work, and for less time than usual. This did at least allow me more time for writing in the evening. I had a fairly unhurried evening and finished reading Accidental Presidents.

This didn’t stop me being completely exhausted again on Friday. I dreamt I was running late for Shabbat (the Sabbath), and when I woke up, I was. Tintin was in the dream too for some reason.

I dealt with an annoying NHS issue (yet another one). I had to phone to confirm that I would take the psychiatrist appointment they offered me, which would mean changing work days and probably missing volunteering that week, all because I was worried that if I didn’t take it, I would have to wait until February or later for another appointment. I also told them that I had noticed that both the letters they sent me recently had a letter for someone else at the bottom. It was actually another letter on another sheet, but I assume it was at the bottom of the file if it ended up on two different letters. At first they thought I was saying the letter was addressed to the wrong person and asked how I ended up with it, but I hope I clarified that my address was correct, they just added someone else’s details at the bottom, a breach of data protection. It’s like they haven’t got enough ways to mess stuff up in the natural order of things, so they have to invite new things to mess up. (They also spelt my very common first name wrong on both letters too, but I’ll graciously let that slide.) Now I’m worried they’re going to hold on to the words “mistake” and “address” and assume my address is wrong and send the letters somewhere else, probably to the person whose letter was sent with mine. That letter was about an appointment over a year ago, so goodness knows if that person heard in time. I’m imagining that letter and confidential information being sent out to random people for over a year now.

I did my pre-Shabbat chores in time and went to shul (synagogue). I was pretty exhausted by the time shul ended, but I waited for Dad and then walked home slowly with him and his friend, when I should have just gone home immediately. I was exhausted enough when I got home that I lay down for half an hour before dinner, which wasn’t particularly good. I did about an hour of heavy Torah study (Talmud and The Guide for the Perplexed), but it took more than an hour to do it, as I kept having to stop for breaks. Because of this, I had little time for recreational reading.

I started reading Science Fiction: The Best of 2001, an anthology I picked up in a second-hand bookshop last time I was in New York (that’s 2001 the year, not the Stanley Kubrick film/Arthur C. Clarke novel), but the first story was one of those stories that starts in mitten drinnen (that’s Yiddish for in medias res) with no indication of where or when the story is set, what all the technology mentioned does, who the protagonist is and so on. That’s not a problem per se, but I was too tired to cope with it, so I stopped after a couple of pages and had an earlyish night (with disturbing dreams).

Recent events have made me feel that I am (finally) ready to leave home. It’s just too much masking and coping with my parents’ conversation being so different to mine as some other things I won’t go into here. It occurred to me that some of my thoughts about being different and no one being interested in what I have to say come from growing up with my family as much as from school experiences. I seem to be able to talk to E and my friends OK.

I nearly fell asleep after lunch as I lay down for forty minutes or so. I probably would have fallen asleep had I not known that I had limited time to daven Minchah (say Afternoon Prayers) and eat seudah shlishit (the third Sabbath meal, which is very much a token thing at this time of year as it’s so soon after lunch). I did a little Torah study, but tried not to push myself too hard. That said, after Shabbat was over, I spent hours doing various chores, so I didn’t get time to relax again (or to write), although I do have less to worry about doing tomorrow now other than packing. I probably do prioritise doing chores and important-seeming things over relaxing, which is probably bad for autistic exhaustion. I do wonder what will happen if I can’t improve my energy levels after marriage.

I was going to write some reflections here on the medical and social models of disability and why I think they break down with autism, but I’m too tired now. It’s pretty much midnight, so I ought to go to bed.

Demons

I feel rather down today. Shabbat (the Sabbath) started OK. The good news I had yesterday was a job agency wanting to put my name forward for a librarian job. I need to update my CV and say yes. So that put me in a good mindset. I coped with shul (synagogue) despite the SHOUTING chazzan (cantor). I did some Torah study, including Talmud study after dinner, but ran out of time to do much recreational reading.

Today was much worse. Mum and Dad were out for lunch, which inevitably meant my getting up and getting dressed even later than usual. I spent a lot of time today in bed with the duvet and weighted blanket wrapped around me, trying to feel calm and comforted. I had lunch by myself, which was fine (I read about the last days of Franklin Roosevelt and the surprising unpreparedness of Harry Truman in Accidental Presidents), but across the day as a whole, my mood went down, with some loneliness, low mood (depression-low, although hopefully not lasting long enough to be depression) and missing E and fear that I’m not going to get that good new job as I haven’t worked in the library sector properly for years and have all kinds of gaps on my CV. I didn’t do much Torah study, and then Shabbat was over just after 5pm. And I have a headache that is resisting medication.

***

After Shabbat, I checked email and worried I’d upset someone with my political views. I would much rather hide my thoughts than express myself and risk upsetting people with different views. I suspect this is not considered acceptable these days of extreme individualism and self-expression, but maybe it would be better if more people did it. However, I see things that are wrong in the world, and I want to protest. I don’t really think most people can actually change the world (another unacceptable view), so I’d rather keep my friends, but there is a “demon” inside me (metaphorically; I’m neither a kabbalist nor a psychotic) that makes me want to write “edgy” or “provocative” things in whichever community I find myself, whether sexual material in the Orthodox world or anti-woke material in the wider UK mediascape where the Left does indeed have a monopoly on satire. Not that I really think of myself as “right-wing” (ugh) or even “conservative” in the way most people use the term. Maybe I just want to be sui generis. Either way, if I write anything I feel I’ll offend people. But I desperately need to write and am suffering from not being able to do so right now!

(As an aside, I had a friend at secondary school who was very clever, but also very lazy and badly behaved. He loved to mock or joke around. In retrospect, he may have been neurodiverse himself. I suddenly find myself wondering if this is how he felt, wanting to say stuff just because “Everyone” says you shouldn’t say it?)

There is a further problem that my satirical novel is not really ready to start writing yet. It probably needs a whole new plot (I haven’t had either time or courage to look at my notes). I may need to do research, although I’m in two minds about that. It’s not going to be detailed, realistic satire like Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, but dystopian-science fiction-black comedy, inspired by things like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Gulliver’s Travels, lots of Philip K. Dick novels, maybe the Blade Runner films, Brazil (the Terry Gilliam film), V for Vendetta (the style, but not the content), The Prisoner and Doctor Who stories like The Macra Terror, The Happiness Patrol and The Beast Below.

***

My biggest negative thought recently (going on for some weeks now, but particularly the last two days), is feeling that my autism has stopped me from being socialised into the frum (religious Jewish) community. There’s a LOT I could say here, but I’ll mention that autism, and related social anxiety stemming from autism-related bullying, made me skip all the experiences that socialise teenagers in the Anglo-Jewish community into the Jewish and frum worlds:  shul youth services, youth movements, Israel tour and yeshivah (not going to yeshivah was because of a whole bunch of reasons mostly unrelated to autism, but I think autism would have made it damaging for me if I had gone). I then had a weird relationship with the Jewish Society at university, until my breakdown/burnout when I moved away from it. I then struggled to find a way into the community as a young adult (twenties and thirties) dealing with depression, social anxiety and undiagnosed autism, feeling that I wasn’t able to talk to people at social events and increasingly reluctant to try.

I’ve never had many frum friends, although I have a couple. I find it hard to socialise at Kiddush and other community social events, because there’s too much background noise so I can’t hear words properly. I used to leave kiddush after five minutes or so; then someone criticised me for that, and for not going to shul much in the morning (which is due to social anxiety and possibly a sleep disorder). Then COVID hit, and I got my autism diagnosis. Whether it’s an effect of COVID and being isolated for so long, or of being diagnosed and more conscious of my needs, or just of getting older (there is anecdotal evidence undiagnosed autistics’ tolerance for noise and people declines with age), I now find being in big rooms with lots of people (or even just a few people) being noisy very difficult and am less inclined to put myself into those situations. But it’s hard to be part of the frum world without going to shul regularly, particularly for a man.

Lately, I find it harder and harder to go to shul, because of the noise and people. I think this fuels my social anxiety. There have been times during my burnout when I’ve stopped going to shul completely, which I suspect was autism-influenced, although it was before my diagnosis. Of course, there was a period of several years when I went to shul daily, or several times a day, led services and gave drashot (Torah classes) and I would like to move back towards being in that place, but I think it was the result of a number of circumstances that are hard to replicate now. I wish I could make lightning strike twice in this area, but I’m not sure how.

I honestly don’t know what I could do to make things better for me, though. I spoke to a rabbi about it over a year ago and I think he was frustrated that I didn’t have any practical suggestions for change, but I find it hard to think what would make things easier for me, let alone how to make them materialise.

I would like to post this somewhere, but I don’t know where. I think the autism forum would not understand it, and might use it to make anti-religious points. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to post it to the Orthodox Conundrum group. The Jewish autism groups I belong to are small and don’t post much, and I haven’t really introduced myself on them, so I’m scared what the result would be of posting out of the blue.

***

This doesn’t really fit anywhere in this post, but Virgin Atlantic got back to me and I don’t think they can offer me any help at the airport beyond the sunflower “invisible disabilities” lanyard and their own invisible disabilities sign. Again, I want things to be different, and maybe they could be, but if I can’t articulate them, they won’t happen.

***

I feel like I wasted the whole evening writing this post, and I still didn’t really express what I want to say. It’s horrible not really knowing what I feel half the time, let alone being able to put it into words (when I’m supposedly hyper-literate and good with words).

Sigh. Politics is a bore, autism is a bore, writing is not a bore, but feeling impelled to write things that I am more than a little suspicious of myself is a bore. And headaches are a bore.

Going to watch Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life for a bit, then interrupt and try to do some of the chores I set for myself to do tonight and which I haven’t started yet, if I can, then finish the film and try not to go to bed too late.