I wasn’t really intending to blog daily about this, but today has been a bit of a shock – in a rather unexpected way.
I was completely unprepared for how exhausting *I* would find it.
I figured it would be a bit tiring, but I was definitely not expecting it to be three-weighted-blanket tiring. It took me a good half an hour lying under my duvet-and-three-blankets before I could even tolerate anyone being in the room with me – unfortunately for my husband, who chose that moment to try and ask me a question about something. I’m still not sure what he wanted.
I’m *really* hoping that it gets easier as I get used to things, but I wanted to just take a minute today to acknowledge how I’m feeling right now. It’s a very particular sort of tiredness; the same sort I get when I’m in a noisy environment for a long time, or when I’ve had to do extended socialising. It’s almost always accompanied by brain fog, and I often lose my words completely, which is a very strange experience. Deep pressure helps (hence the three weighted blankets) and I’ve found I can speed up the recovery process with my favourite piece of brain-unwinding music. It’s definitely a mental tiredness, rather than a physical one, but at the same time my body is exhausted too – although not the nice sort of exhausted that comes after exercising.
I don’t know if non-autistic people get this sort of tiredness, but I’d be interested to find out. I think it’s probably similar to the brain-fog that comes with a bad cold, but perhaps not usually brought on by two hours of social interaction with one’s own offspring…