by Jane Burn, 23rd September, 2023
Image description: This is a photograph which shows at the bottom, a green, cream and gold large Victorian vase with curly handles on the sides. It has a pattern of red, pink and peach roses transferred upon it. It is flanked on either side by two piles of books of various titles, almost as tall as itself. In the background is white wallpaper with a pattern of blue and pink budgerigars upon it. There is a painting on the wall, which shows a blue woman with a red heart and a gold halo.
There comes a time, every now and then, when you have to face up to something about yourself. Of course, being a person with autism, it can take me a very long time to realise there might be a something to be faced, and even longer again to decipher how this something might be addressed.
Often, it is easier to bypass these difficult scenarios by settling back into one of those fascinating, absorbing grooves in which I find myself most comfortable. You might not suspect that I am, more often than not, hiding in plain ‘sight’.
Often, I find myself internalising ableism.
……………………………………..I’m like this because I’m unable to control myself.
……………………………………..I’m failing because I simply am not good enought.
……………………………………..I can’t get a grip on things becasue I’m utterly rubbish at life
(if you requre, find more info here and here – two of the many, many places out there where you can read more upon this subject. I hope this helps you on your search-journey).
I blame myself for just about everything that goes wrong, or that I cannot seem to achieve.
The people that are involved in my life (through education, social media, poetry, family, friends etc.) are aware that my greatest ambition for the last five years has been to become a PhD candidate. The road has been paved with obstacle after obstacle – I am a person with autism; socioeconomic status; the fact that I had been out of education for almost 30 years; I didn’t have an MA; I could barely scrape up the necessary academic confidence; too many people had a problem taking me seriously, or accepting I might have a place among them; I had only recently received my NHS diagnosis and the years that lengthy process took had left its own set of issues behind in my head and heart.
I overcame one of them with help from an amazing benefactor – I got an MA.
I thought I had overcome another of them – although I left on a high, winning the 2022 award for best overall performance and gaining a distinction, my small store of new-found academic confidence soon dwindled, as I discovered the path to a PhD was certainly not paved with easy-going stones.
Myself and my proposal were called……………………………………………problematic.
I was told that…………………………………………………….nobody had chosen to work with me.
My neurodiversity was cited as a reason.…………….I did not align with preexisting work.
It only took a few months to reduce me to a very poor mental state. I did something
I hated myself for (hated myself even more for). I decided to give up.
I have always been unfilteredly honest (probably many, many times unknowlingly to my detriment), and I have spoken on social media about my ongoing trials and tribulations. A few very kind people looked at my proposal, emailed me ideas, Zoomed with me to explain the application process, of which, it transpired, I knew absolutely nothing. Some made suggestions about where I might apply, and what sort of PhD I might consider doing (who knew there was more than one sort?). Some amazing friends kept me going with supportive messages. They helped me fight the extremely low opinions I have of myself. I discovered that there were tutors who wished to work with me, but either nobody else would back them up, or there was no opportunities to apply for funding. These last two made me feel so much worse. I was a donkey, straining its neck for that eternally unavailable carrot.
I couldn’t make things click. I couldn’t make myself believe. I couldn’t articulate. My fluency dried like a leaf on a tree and dropped to the floor to rot. I just…couldn’t.
I had developed this ridiculous notion that places would want me to be part of them. That I had done enough, with the MA and with my decade of successful publishing history, to be ‘snapped up’. I know, right? How daft can one person get? I grew increasingly desperate and confused. I shouted through the keyboard quite a lot. Some listened and some (and who could blame them?) did not.
It was at this point, a truly wonderful and trusted friend / colleague C—- asked if they could read my proposal. I felt battered and bruised by this time, so with a mixture of apathy and apprehension, I pressed send (for what I hoped would be the last time, as I didn’t think my health could endure another crisis of rejection or unkind / unhelpful / impossible to comprehend commentary).
C—- read it and asked me a simple question. What is your proposal about? This simple question turned out to be the most difficult one I have ever had to answer. This question led to weeks and weeks and hours and hours of meetings over Zoom, and many emails and redrafts in which C—- helped me to realise so much about myself. I learned that:
1) my ideas were not the pile of poop I had grown to suspect they must be.
2) I had a serious problem negotiating the small but absolutely crucial fine details of everything.
3) I had no trouble at all going massive, bypassing all early stages. I had no problem at all producing a lengthy essay. I had a very big problem limiting myself to 1000 words or under. In order to evade responding to a question with a one-line answer, I would produce 6000 words of new content. This has been a go-to response which I have developed over the years and now rely on wholly. It gets me out of what I perceive as difficulty and ‘danger’.
4) I had an overwhelming desire to follow every interesting lead with hyperfocused, obsessive, all-consuming gusto, no matter how irrelevent this new research to the original source. I couldn’t pin myself down. There were too many rabbit holes that turned into warrens of impossibly fascinating joys. I was already starting the PhD and I wasn’t even accepted as a candidate, because, quite frankly, that felt easier than negotiating the horror-terrain of applications. I just can’t do the flipping things.
5) I had not realised, until my meetings with C—, how much the ‘gaps’ in my brain were affecting my academic life. The best way I can describe this to you is to imagine a long, long river. The Thinking River. The water flows, carries all its content logically along. Every so often however, there’s a dam, and the flow is completely broken. What was in the river (knowledge, research, ideas, communication etc.,) forms bulging pools of swirling information. I can add to these pools as much as I wish. What I cannot do is reform the river and pass one pool of knowing onto another and continue an expected style of flow.
Image description: a black and white sketched diagram which shows a river with arrows showing direction of flow. Every so often, there are lines representing dams which break the flow and cause pools to form.
Between each dam, there is a length of ground that the river cannot cross. Then, out of nowhere, the river source sprouts anew, begins again. What I cannot occupy is that area of land between. I cannot ‘see’ it, sense it, access it, identify what is there. It is a grey area. A blank space. Where each dam is, the water pools and pools, yet never quite pools enough to rejoin. The pools of knowledge cannot communicate with one another. There is no bridge between.
The grey areas tease and tantalise me mercilessly. I know in my roots, bones, meat and veins that everything I might need to become someone completely different, someone useful to myself is there. I feel the areas whispering, and attempt to seize onto snatches of content that leak from the gloom. I bang on the walls till my fists bleed. I fail and I curse myself.
I love it when it rains, because then I go outside to our seating area, covered with clear plastic sheet.
I watch the raindrops follow the slope,………………….progress from single drops
……………..to…………long,…………….worm-like………………………..lines.
The lines of rainwater arrive at the bottom of the slope
………………………………………………………………..and form…….multiple…….small……pools.
The more rainwater arrives, the larger the pools get.
Then comes the repeated miracle moments I have been waiting patiently for –
………..the pools…………creep…………………….towards each other,
………………………………………………….zeptosecond by zeptosecond,
…………………………………………………………………………………………..fermi by fermi.
I hold my breath for each one.
For each one, my heart pounds.
The reward for this waiting is the magic of cohesion.
Suddenly,……………….the pools can no longer resist
………………………………………………the attraction they feel for one another.
Suddenly,………………..they become part of one another, are mutually absorbed,
…………………plip,……………………plip,……………………………………plip!
Everything that was part of each independant pool has become
a different, new whole. The information and molecules
are morphed into something so much more.
They have flooded the grey areas away.
At each of these miracle moments, I silently cheer. My soul soars for them, for this gorgeous thaumaturgy. This is the whole universe! This is everything I wish my mind could achieve. This is exactly what I imagine is meant by the phrase ‘joined-up thinking.’
These were the exact grey areas my PhD proposal was suffering from. What I have learned about myself through working with C—-, is that I believe it impossible to cross these divides. I believe I cannot create the ‘infill’ which would render the proposal lucid, and easier to follow / decipher for potential tutors. What C—- helped me to realise was that I had created a proposal only I could understand. I knew exactly what I meant. I was beyond frustrated that nobody else did. What was indecipherable for others was exciting to me.
We both realised I was in desperate need of a translator. One who could reframe the language I used to speak my truth and passion into something more akin to the language required for an academic application. One who could translate each dammed pool into the river’s flow. One who could help me break free of the endless loops. This is what C— has done for me, and how they have managed to do it with such unrelenting patience, fimrness and kindness is beyond me. They have coralled and prevented every digression I have tried to hide behind. They have witnessed the workings my unique, autistic mind with unfailing understanding. They believe my proposal is important, and might have the potential to alter academia for future good.
What I have also been helped to realise, through these sessions, is that is is OK to be different – it is OK to ask for more understanding. That the process ought to be a whole lot more accessible. That your disability ought not mean an instant slamming of doors. That is wrong, deeply wrong. C— has taught me that, when it comes to tutors, it is equally important that I choose to work with them, not just that they choose to work with me. I have a right to ask for an accessible place as a potential candidate. I have a right to ask
………………………….so…I can offer you this. Now what can you offer me?
What this process has taught me is that there is still much that institutions have to learn, if they wish to be truly, fully accessible. That they need to expect potential candidates to come at them slant; that the established procedures are often prohibitive and excluding. That people like me will give up, and this is the saddest thing of all, as it means that vital research will be nipped in the bud before it has had a chance to bloom. The vulnerable and the precarious are slipping through the net.
I sent a fourth redraft to an institution, and received a number of questions from them, requesting I clarify a number of points. I was frustrated with myself, as seemingly, I was still deficient in my clarity. I had another meeting with C— to discuss how I might rearticulate. I went away and turned 4 pages into 21, and sent those off, in the hope that I had adequately explained my ideas, with many sources and examples. I am yet to hear back.
I confessed this to C—, and we Zoomed once more. Three hours later (poor C—, how might one ever repay such an immense debt of gratitude?), I understood that this was way too much to send, that my timelines were all over the place, but at least I had managed to much improve upon my idea’s articulation. C— brandished the pruning shears once again, and chopped the proposal back to a 1500 word core. I am re-looking at it, and have yet to send it out there but I feel as if I might, just might, have landed somewhere near where I need to be. I think I can say that I know what it is I want to spend three years undertaking.
So why am I yet to release the proposal back out into the wild? Now we come to the actual point of this essay (finally!, I hear you sigh. Celerity and brevity are strangers to any of my processes). During the years I have been wrangling with this proposal, I have acquired what seems to be a lorry load of books. Every one of those rabbit holes that I have spilled, Alice-like, into have caused me to buy a book or books. Then the warrens these holes have expanded into have caused me to digress into more buying of books. Every article, and their spin-off links have brought more and more to the postbox. They are piled on every surface. The coffee table is overwhelmed with dusty tome towers. The book shelves have long since given up their containing. The floor has developed numerous paper stalagmites.
This is far from unusual in book-loving folk, I know. The trouble is, I am not just an acquirer of books. I am an acquirer of EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING. If, for example, I find one glass animal I love, I will gather every glass animal I can, for years and years. Ditto cups, dolls, plastic horses, porcelain figurines, pebbles, broken pottery….you name it. The lists are endless. I collect things to epic proportions. Over the years, I never realised I was drowing in stuff. Every shelf, cupboard, dresser, cabinet. Under the bed. On top of wardrobes. Not a square inch of space left to breathe.
My urge to collect is something I cannot control. It causes any amount of trouble at home. It leaves me in desperate financial staits.
I just love to touch stuff,……….think about stuff,……….look stuff up on the Internet, clean and care for stuff,……….lose myself entirely in stuff,
communicate in my own way with stuff.………..Pour the love I fail to express into stuff. Stuff never yells at me or hurts me.………..Stuff is fascinating.
Stuff is quiet and never alters what it is.………..Stuff asks nothing of me.
Stuff is the gift that keeps on giving.
Until the books began to fight for what was left of space, I never understood what a predicament I was in. I have had some harsh truths to face. I simply cannot keep everything. I have spent time, as I often do, Internet researching my behaviour. I need to check that I am doing OK. I read articles about people with autism and collecting.
One the one hand, I feel a little embarrassed that I wrote all this rather than simply tell you that I eventually sorted some stuff out. One the other hand, it feels much deeper, much more important than that.
I think that I am more than a collector. I am a hoarder. My mind decided that I could not consider submitting what might be the final PhD proposal until I had made an effort to address my hoarding. For two weeks I have stood, statue still in front of piles of stuff, wresting with the agony in my heart.
……………………………………………………………………….Can I let anything go?
……………………………………………………………………….How will it feel to let some of it go?
I had a lengthy discussion with myself. Which is more important – being tied to your collections of stuff or being tied to your collections of books? Where is your peace, satisfaction, safety and pleasure – in stuff or books? Which will help you attain your dream of a PhD – stuff or books? You might think, with my desire to become a candidate, this would be a no-brainer decision. Ha.
It had to be the PhD and the books. It had to be. Didn’t it? I vacillated. Dithered.
My dream was clouded by stuff; it was lost in stuff.
Slowly, I made my first bag of stuff. Then another, then another.
What a dreadful, heartbreaking process it has been.
Every single scrap of stuff has had to be sat with, held, and grieved over,
as if I am sending every piece of stuff to its death.
It has to die in me, but before I could let it go, I had to remember
all the stories we have made together, this piece of stuff and me –
Where I found it, how long we have been together, whether, when I found it,
it was dirty or clean, broken or fixed.
Oh, who will love this stuff now that person cannot be me?
My collection of 100 porcelain birds was reduced to ten. My glass animals to two.
My twenty porcelain figurines to seven. My immense weight of carnival and green uranium glass to a few choice bits. My china Cinderella carriages from five to one.
The mirrors and picture frames under the bed have quartered. You get the idea.
Every piece was held, kissed and cried over. I am not sure how I have survived this terribly stressful time. There is a chasm inside me I fear will never be filled.
The sense of mourning I have is desperately raw and sharp, like my guts are a bag
of cold steel cutlery. As each bag has been taken away, I have wanted to run after
the car, begging it to return.
I am trying not to feel embarassed that nobody seems to have noticed the efforts
I have made. Perhaps it is testament to the sheer amount of stuff still remaining
that it looks as if nothing is gone. I know though – I recognise the pits, caverns
and catacombs of absence everywhere, even if those places are now filled with books, books and more books. I feel now as if I might be a lot more ready to send that proposal off again. I feel as if I have altered the path of my dedication from stuff
to books fully this time. No half measures. There is more room, somehow, in myself.
This is what the photograph at the start of this essay represents. What was on the top of this cabinet was a huge pile of stuff. What is there now, is much less. It’s a pile of books and a vase, for now, I have elected to keep. The books say
…………………………welcome, PhD Jane. This is now a dedicated space.
Above them is the painting I did for my last poetry collection, Be Feared. I got it out from under the bed, because, why not be proud of this sort of thing? You can see the Thinking River here too – it passes into the mouth and out from the calavaria, or vice versa. The blockage between is my own head. I live in hope.
Perhaps one day, the wider literary world will realise that I am here. Perhaps one day, I’ll be accepted as a PhD candidate. Believe this or not, but the rain has begun to fall right now, on the clear plastic roof where I am sitting, typing this.
The waters are gathering. I can decipher no mystic message in this, though I am trying to do so. The waters cannot tell me if I will ever succeed in my endeavors. At least,
I think, we both are managing to join up a few of those dots.
Jane Burn Poet & Artist 