I love you I said
Even as this stone might seem a stranger

I could still see him in there
And I could see him

searching my eyes

To try
To try and see himself

I love you I said

And he said

Well he did say

I love you too

But he sat there so silent
That he might as well have said

Nothing.

Written by Gemma Abbott for Magical Women

Laid low by my former love

We promised ‘til death and

Very nearly etched it into our beings

But his well ran dry early

Perhaps being as

The beginning of this end has

Felt like a hundred excruciating deaths

He is no oath breaker after all

And this impostor of a man

Who wears my husband’s skin

Now holds another in those “other” arms

While the wife in me

Lays starved to death in the corner

A hollow vessel I must now give up

Miss Havisham raises a dusty glass

And we sit there together

This corpse bride and I

In the blazing remains of what we once

Might have called home.

I lost him some time around Lisbon, if not before. He reckons later but I can see he is still deceiving himself in many ways. He tells me off for trying to see into his soul but I am not any more. I don’t like what it is that I find there, this impostor in the shape of my husband.

The impostor in his arms already.

I can only stare at him with wide sad eyes, like looking at a photograph on the front of a funeral programme. I am excruciatingly aware of what he has cast aside.

And he has killed twice this year. He has killed the man that was my husband inside of him, a sudden and selfish death. He has also killed the wife in me, without my consent and much to my anguish. I loved being a wife. I loved being his wife. The space on my finger where the ring should still sit feels numb, pining for that little golden symbol that once made it shine like a star.

Written by Gemma Abbott

A Survivor from Birth

Bates was challenging as a woman

Like many Neurodivergent females, she was criticised as being ‘pushy,’ ‘ambitious,’ ‘aggressive,’ “challenging” – qualities for which men in leadership roles are praised; traits that make men powerful.

Yet, by possessing these precise qualities, Bates was able to have a significant impact on her community and wider afield.

In 1968, Bates moved to Mitchellville, Arkansas, a majority black town that was also impoverished and lacked economic resources. When Bates arrived, she used her organisational skills to pull together residents and improve the community.

But Her Speech Was Written by a Man

She was the only woman permitted to speak, though not for long, and not in her own words. After being introduced by march organiser Bayard Rustin, who was a Gay Civil rights leader, Bates delivered the 142-word “Tribute to Women.” 

Whilst her statement was brief – women in this day were timed as well as censored it seems – as the speech she read out was written by a male staffer.

However, Bates’ writing shows she was far from unable to speak up for herself and others. A powerful orator and writer, she put her words to print in the newspaper she owned with her husband.

She created empowering spaces for herself where she could write uncensored and her words could be read. She was a journalist who persisted and it was those very traits that make men powerful and are so often used to silence, exclude and so often fire women, that drove her to create a (metaphorical) earthquake across the country to force change in the law.

Violence Against Women

Bates and her family were often a target for intimidation. Rocks were often thrown at and into her home several times and she received bullet shells in the post. These threats forced the Bates family to shut down their newspaper.

Bates’ Legacy

After the success of the Little Rock Nine, Bates worked on improving the status of African Americans in the South of the USA. Her influential work with school integration brought her national recognition.

She published her memoirs, The Long Shadow of Little Rock in 1962. Eventually, the book would win an American Book Award. 

Bates died on 4th November in 1999. Her work was recognised by the state of Arkansas who proclaimed the 3rd Monday in February, Daisy Gatson Bates Day. In 1999, she was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom.

By this point, I was hanging by a thread. The person diagnosing me said something which has always stuck with me. ‘I’m not questioning your Fibromyalgia diagnosis, but have you ever considered it might be the impact of living in a world not designed for autistic people?” I was sceptical at first. Surely, I can’t have become that unwell just from existing?

In the year following my diagnosis I told myself to keep going. I’d figure all this out but, in the meantime, I had to keep up appearances. I really tried. But it was taken out of my hands. My physical health deteriorated quickly. I was way beyond people’s perceptions of ‘exhausted’. And my sensory sensitivities became so heightened that I was even getting motion sickness from the sensation of driving my own car.

I started to become frightened after that. I was losing speech, losing memory, losing basic skills. One night I became unable to feed myself, unable to speak. My husband kept asking me to explain what was happening, but I couldn’t talk. I had retreated inside myself and just needed to be alone. My GP ordered an urgent brain scan. I carried on. After all, my Manager had told me that I was managing to hold it together in the day, so it wasn’t really impacting on work she said.

And then I collapsed.

I’ve not been back to work since that day. I’m unemployed now, and people are often asking me what I’ll be doing next. The truth is, it’s taken me the last year to get back to some form of myself. But I know I won’t be the same. I’ve lost confidence I’ll never regain. But perhaps that’s for the best? Where did it get me?

I now realise I had experienced autistic burnout. Something widely discussed amongst the autistic community, but rarely among specialists that aren’t autistic themselves. My experiences were typical. Raymaker et al (2020) state “Autistic burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports.” What I hadn’t realised in my naivety is that eventually, I would break.