Peopled out but not down

People exhaust me. They do. I don’t mean that in a mean spirited or misanthropic way, although some people are genuinely exhausting. But I’m referring to people in general. Being autistic, processing and reciprocating human interactions takes a lot more processing power than for non-autistics. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like being around people, I genuinely do, but doing so tires me out – psychologically and emotionally – more than any other activity, even when such experiences are overwhelmingly positive.

Right now I am worn out. I spent the weekend facilitating a small, local art exhibition for the art community that I coordinate. An exhibition in which I was not even exhibiting. Across all measures we exceeded expectations and everyone came away feeling positive and fulfilled. Except for me. I feel like someone dragged me through a sieve by the eye sockets. I was only present for bits and pieces of the weekend, but the constant stream of human interactions was enough to knock me over. It will take me days to recover.

I don’t always notice this incipient atrophy, although I’m usually latently aware of the inevitable effect, but it hits me like a cricket bat to the chops regardless. I can tell when the full force is hitting though, because I stop making sense when talking to other humans and may even start to slur my speech or become partially non-verbal. This is equivalent to the long distance runner’s legs going wobbly. There’s nothing sinister going on here, it’s simply fatigue. Various people around me know to look out for this, and will find me a quiet corner in which to hide and convalesce.

It’s a frustrating disability, particularly so as an artist, where self-promotion is the default mode. When I started to make art again seriously, selling my work was not on the cards. It was just not part of the programme. Art was therapy, a hobby. It was only after I accumulated a body of work, and having nowhere to hang it, that I started thinking about selling it. To be clear, the creative process is, for me, about the absence of humans. It is my means of recovering from humans. Now, when I started on my journey as a selling artist, I was under no illusions that it was going to be easy, but I had no idea that it would be so bloody hard. I naively believed that it was the individual artworks that you sold. That buyers see something they like, in the same way that you spot a nice candle holder in Ikea, and buy it. What I discovered, at least for the type of art I produce, is that people buy the artist as much as the artworks, and that each and every sale is a long game. A really long game. And this particular game involves dealing with lots of humans, in a ongoing tete-a-tete of charm, subtle social cues and sales smarts. You don’t have to know much about autism to know that such subtext-heavy endeavours are not exactly our strong suit. I’m just lucky that the gung-ho ADHD side of my brain is able to bridge some of the gap through sheer, chaotic intensity that on a good day wins people over, and on a bad day, scares the living Seurat out of them.

That’s not to say that I’m a complete bust socially. Quite the opposite, at least for short periods. Over the years I’ve learned how to generally do and say the right things at the right time, but this requires a lot of concentration, and is precisely what exhausts me so completely, and why I’m currently trying to blend into my sofa, laptop positioned shield-like in front of my face, hoping that no one tries to talk to me.

So it’s somewhat ironic, I suppose, that the very saviour of my mental health – making art – has propelled me into the proverbial lion’s den of the very human interactions which were in large part the cause of my mental health issues in the first place. And this side of things is only going to get worse if I am to sell any work and continue to do so. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so tired.

But as with the rest of my life, I need to deal with the normal human world, and I often enjoy doing so, and so I am learning how to do the things that need to be done. For most people this would be like training for a 10k run, a marathon maybe. For me is is more like training for doing the Badwater Death Valley Ultramarathon every year until I keel over and am cooked, or eaten by vultures.

I’m not complaining, I recognise my privilege, and there are bigger challenges in life. But recognising and accepting limitations is essential to my survival, as well the wellbeing of those around me. There’s a certain grudging resignation, and dogged, indignant determination that propels me. A giant “fuck you” to providence. So not only am I putting myself out there, and really pushing and promoting myself, I am regularly helping other artists do the same, by way of starting and running a local arts community and, among various other things, organising regular exhibitions of 15 or more artists. It’s brutal, but it’s very rewarding, and my fellow artists do their best to not break me too much. And it matters. I may not sell a lot of art as a result of all of this, but I have helped create something bigger than me. Bigger than my art. Bigger than my autism. Bigger than lack of social graces.

So yes, I am tired, but it is a good tired. It is the tiredness of having achieved something. I’ll take that. And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a nap.