The State of Grace

by Rachael Lucas

Being a human is a complicated game – like seeing a ghost in the mirror and trying to echo everything they do. Or like walking in step, but with someone trying to trip you up – and you’re juggling at the same time, with people pelting more and more balls at you. Then, just when you get the hang of it, someone starts flashing a torch in your eyes and then yelling in your ear.

I’ll be mid conversation and listening and responding in all the right places, then someone will say something on the other side of the room – a snatch of something that my brain will pick up. I’ll lose the thread for a second, and when I tune back in I’ve lost my way. And then the other person might – for a split second – look at me oddly or scratch their nose and I’ll start thinking, No, Grace, you’ve lost it, and by then I’ve fallen even further behind, and I remember that my face has probably stopped making the appropriate shapes (interested, listening, concerned, thoughtful – I have a full repertoire, as long as I don’t get distracted) and then I panic.

I speak human as a second language, and there’s always a subtext that I miss.

It’s not that I don’t want to get it right, it’s just . . . God, it’s hard work being a person sometimes.

Friendship is a weird sort of thing when you think about it.

You don’t look autistic.’ ‘And you don’t look ignorant. And yet here we are.’

As soon as I turn the corner, I flop back against the wall of the science corridor and start to laugh. Yes. Yes, yes, YES. I’ve had that bloody comeback stored away in my armoury forever. Stuff you, Holly Carmichael.

We don’t know anyone with a red car, and – I can feel my steps slowing almost involuntarily – I can’t face people tonight. Not ones I don’t know, anyway. I’ve done town and school, and that’s enough.

I feel a swoop of sick panic. Mum said she’s going out with Eve, so there’s no way she’ll be up for getting covered in horsehair and hay. I need someone to check Mabel at teatime and Anna’s supposed to be getting ready at mine and there’s no way I can be in two places at once and – ‘Course I will.’ Polly grins. ‘I was teasing, silly.’ I shake my head and put on a smile. I like Polly, because she’s cool and interesting and nice. And she knows everything there is to know about horses. Although sometimes she makes me feel a bit on edge, because I never quite know if she’s joking or not. But I’m getting better at guessing.

Learning this stuff – what makes people happy – it’s like dealing with Mum. I’ve already worked out that if I act all charming and lovely with her, and don’t argue back, I can pretty much do what I like. Sometimes I think people are weird. Most of the time I think people are weird. Or maybe they just know this stuff instinctively. I feel like I’m putting the world together in pieces.

I try to make my voice sound casual. Anna and Charlotte’s mothers have concocted this wonderful plan between them and I’m too polite to say no, even though it’s making me feel sick. I like routine and knowing what’s happening and everything being the way I organize it and most definitely not surprises like this.

Anna. ‘You’ll be fine,’ says Anna, and for the first time since I can remember I worry that I’m a sort of awkward inconvenience. And she’s like

I need to be quiet, somewhere, and just let myself settle, like a snow globe. But it’s hard to make people understand that.

I’m the sort of person who thinks about doing things, then goes home and eats toast instead.

Sometimes I feel like everyone else was handed a copy of the rules and mine got lost.

And out of nowhere I feel it beginning. It’s a heat in my head, and my ears are thrumming with red noise. I can feel my chest rising and falling rapidly and it’s weird, because there’s a split second where I could probably just stop this, just walk out and not let the meltdown happen. But then it’s too late and like a wave it hits and my temper rises and I turn round. ‘Have you got something you want to say?’ I look at her. ‘Grace.’ Mum’s tone is warning. ‘You sound like you need some quiet.’ Oh now she gets it. Well, it’s too late.

and my head is full of all the things I have to remember when I’m being a person every day: don’t be rude, don’t stare, don’t look blankly into space when you’re not thinking anything, shut down the noises of everyone talking, concentrate, hold it together, don’t have a meltdown . . .

‘And it’s like living life in a different language, so you can’t ever quite relax because even when you think you’re fluent it’s still using a different part of your brain so by the end of the day you’re exhausted.’

– I can’t pick them out to start with, because my contact lenses don’t work as well as my glasses do, and I’m hopeless at recognizing people. Because of this I’ve developed a fairly standard sort of polite (I think, but remember I am the Queen of Resting Bitch Face) half smile, which I keep in attendance while I work out who I’m smiling at.

I have this weird thing, where people outside their normal spaces confuse me. When I see people from school that I don’t spend time with, it takes me a moment to work out who they are. When they’re in uniforms and in the corridors and they’re hanging around with the same people they always do, I can recognize them almost straight away. Put them in everyday clothes, mix them up so the populars are hanging around with the geeky science lot, and the skater boys are talking to the netball team people, and I am confused. Beyond confused.

Being on for a whole afternoon is exhausting, and I can feel my legs dragging as I walk.

Honestly, life would be far easier if someone handed out a ‘how to be a human being’ handbook with subsections for stuff like ‘what to do the day after a date in which you told your boyfriend your nemesis fancies him’. Except of course it would also have to have a sub-subsection called ‘how to know when the person you kissed stops being a person you kissed and becomes a boyfriend’. Except if it was a girl you kissed, obviously. You see what I mean? Life is a complicated thing.

I have no idea how she manages to make being a person look so uncomplicated. ‘And this is Grace.’ Gabe smiles directly at me,

And I still can’t get the rules. I watch and I try to absorb it, and I try to get it right and hang out at the park and fit in, and somehow I break everything. Not glass, but people. And lives.

thought as you’ve had a bit of a time of it, and Polly’s happy to

The trouble with people is they don’t tell you how they feel in words of one syllable or less, so you always imagine the worst. The trouble with being me is I don’t know how to ask because my words get stuck.

And another part of me is angry because life is so complicated and nobody tells you anything and there’s so much of being human that’s about unspoken stuff and presuming and well I just thought you knew and I never know anything until it’s too late

And the funny thing I’ve figured out is that sometimes, when it seems like everything is falling apart, it’s not the end – it’s the beginning.

I’m not grumpy; that’s just my face. I can look at you and look like I’m listening, or I can listen and look like I’m staring into space. But both is tricky. You choose.

Let us speak. If you Google Ten Things About Autism you’ll find pages full of Ten Things Your Autistic Child Would Want You To Know, written by parents, which isn’t the same thing at all. There’s a whole world of autistic people out there. We have a voice and we want to be heard. Listen to us.