Autistic Christmas

It's my final blog post of 2019, which means we've just had Christmas. I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Because this was the first Christmas since I started blogging I thought it's only fitting to review the experience of Christmas from an autistic point of view. I know that depending on the circumstances it can be a tough 3 days for us neurodivergents, and if I'm honest I'm no exception. But let's start with the positives.

This year is the first year that I did Elf On The Shelf, which I quite enjoyed. I tried to use my own ideas as much as I could but there were some stolen from the internet. I'll leave pictures down at the bottom but if you follow me on Instagram you'll have seen some of my favourites such as one of the elves getting attacked by a Facehugger from Alien, the wrestling match vs my John Cena action figure, and the most popular one was the recreation of the pottery scene from Ghost. Coincidentally, 25% of my 2019 Instagram posts have come from this month, and it's all because of Elf On The Shelf! The other positive is the presents I got. My wife pre-ordered Delain's new album for me, which comes out on the same day that I see them live - so with any luck I might actually end up getting it a bit earlier. From the kids she got me a wooden coaster with outlines of all the first generation Pokémon egnraved onto it, and a bracelet with the kids' initials engraved. My mum and dad got me my joint best present (alongside Delain's new album) in the form of a 3 month subscription to the WWE Network. I'll activate it in a couple of weeks so that I can catch WrestleMania before the 3 months runs out.

Now onto my struggles. Christmas day was horrible for me once we left the house. We went to my mother-in-law's for the day and all of their side of the family came too. When I say all of their side, I mean she's got a big family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, 3 sisters etc as opposed to my side where it's just me, my mum and my dad. My sister, brother-in-law and neice would have been included in that if we didn't fall out with them a few years ago but that's neither here nor there. I hate it when the whole family get together like this because there are far too many people around in too small a house for how many there are. Because of how many of us there are there's always too much going on - too many conversations, too many conflicting interests, too many people trying to involve themselves with the kids etc. Plus the fact that my in-laws have recently got a new puppy. As much as I love dogs - or just about any animal for that matter - he gets really hyper regardless of how busy it is and he ended up upsetting my son, breaking a pair of sunglasses and knocking the Christmas tree over while I was trying to cheer my son up. My kids have been better behaved too with me having to stop and start my dinner several times to deal with various things they wanted, all while we were sat at the table which realistically was a bit to small for all of us but we managed.

My wife told me to go home a couple of times but I tried to stick it out. I had to nip back home for something after dinner anyway as we only live around the corner from my in-laws so I just stayed home for a while and sat in a dark room till things had settled down a bit. I went back just as they were finishing unwrapping their presents, so I probably timed it quite well. I know that really I should have gone home earlier than I did, but the whole "look after yourself" and "you don't have to stay if you don't want to" thing is a lot easier said than done. Half the battle for me (and I know quite a few autistics can relate) is giving myself permission to leave when I need to, and admit/recognise when I'm struggling regardless of whether others are or not. Just because everybody else manages ok it doesn't mean that we have to and it's ok to admit when you're struggling. Long story short, internalised ableism is a bitch.

Then we move onto boxing day, which wasn't as bad. Boxing day is usually when we have my family round but they had all come down with diarrhoea and sickness so they couldn't come, which was a shame because my 9 year-old niece was going to come over as well which would have been great fun for the kids. We've re-arranged seeing my side for tomorrow but it depends whether my niece can still come. Aside from my side coming to our house, boxing day is also round 2 of the day before but at our house instead of the in-laws'. Before everyone came round we went out for some shopping to get the last few bits that we needed for the buffet we were putting on, which even though I was knackered from the day before was nice to get out and take our time for a bit before the madness ensued again. The wife's side filtered in more slowly this time so it was a bit more manageable, as well as them being late. With it being in my own house I felt more comfortable to just wander about freely and spent some time in a different room reading to the kids, installing the WWE Network on my PS4 and a few other bits to stay out of the way. By the time they dug out the karaoke machine though it was time I cleared off upstairs. I plugged my headphones into my phone for some music and played Pokémon Yellow on my GameBoy Colour. I came back downstairs after everyone had gone, then once the kids were in bed we chilled and watched Big Fat Quiz Of The Year before we went to bed ourselves.

So yeah, I'm glad Christmas is over and we're back to normal now although I still feel exhausted from the "festive" few days. We took the kids shopping today and we all spent some of our Christmas money, which was nice. I'll leave you with a few of my favourite Elf On The Shelf pictures. As always, hit Subscribe to keep up to date with new posts and follow me on Twitter too @DepictDave. If you prefer Instagram you can check out all my Elf On The Shelf posts at The_Big_Shaw although I'm planning on changing that to DepictDave in the new year to make it exclusively blog-related. I'll let you know when it happens.

[Image description: Our 2 elves (the one in green and red is called Crimbo, the one in red and white is called Imbo) having a wrestling match against my John Cena action figure. They're in a wrestling ring that I made out of a square cardboard box, some paper straws as ring posts and some pipe cleaners as ropes. The ropes are red, yellow and blue to represent the 3 main brands of WWE; Raw, NXT and Smackdown. Crimbo is face down, unconscious on the box while John Cena has Imbo up on his shoulders in position for his finishing move the Attitude Adjustment.]

[Image description: Imbo is laid flat on his back on our TV unit with a Facehugger attached to his face that I made from PlayDoh. Crimbo is sat next to him leaning back against the TV with his hands over his mouth in horror.]

[Image description: Crimbo and Imbo are sat on our TV unit recreating the pottery scene from the movie Ghost. Crimbo has his hands around a large wooden bowl from my kids' play kitchen while Imbo is sat very closely behind him gently holding his arms and leaning around to one side over Crimbo's shoulder.]