WHY I AM OVERWHELMED AT CHRISTMAS

Autistic people are often overwhelmed by Christmas. I don’t love Christmas, for many reasons:

1) too many things change: I lose the sense of my days, and often I can’t even understand what day it is

2) people become too frantic: I absorb this frenzy and I become extremely excited

3) people’s faces change: they make too many smiles, compared to the usual, and I can’t understand if they are really smiling or if they are forcibly smiling

4) I see many people with many friends: I have only 3 friends and they are very far from me, and I feel deeply alone

5) there are too many lights, and too many noises, and too many smells: my mind feels bad, at Christmas, and cannot process all the stimuli

6) there are too many surprises: you never know exactly what will happen

7) there is not a moment of peace in any of the places where I usually do the shopping: the headache is always a constant

8) people want too many social contacts: I can’t manage them all and I am constantly fighting between the idea of ​​rejecting every opportunity and the possibility that people are offended by my refusal

9) people become too nervous: they run, run, run around all day to buy things, and when you meet them, you see that they are worried

10) people delude me that they remember me when, after Christmas, they will forget again. And this makes me deeply sad.

(photo from https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/kiwi-traveller/99769109/my-first-orphans-christmas-why-you-never-really-get-used-to-spend-christmas-far-from-home)