Notes from An Autistic Woman
It’s a wild rabbit. There are literally thousands more where it came from.
But those other ones… They didn’t take up residence in my fenced in backyard.
They didn’t find the one spot in the entire fence to come through.
They didn’t appear the day after winter solstice, when we decorated our solstice tree.
They didn’t burst out of whatever random area it had hunkered down in when my child and I came out to play, and scare the crap out of me.
They didn’t sleep every night for 3 months under my daughters window.
I didn’t name the bunny, because I read in a book: if you name it you tame it, and if you tame it you’re responsible for it. Responsibility makes me anxious. I did smile when I saw her tracks, when the hay bundles were missing from the base of the tree. I even smiled when I realized she had eaten my baby oak saplings. I knew it took that bunny exactly 4 giant hops to get from on side of my yard to the hole under my fence…
My desire to be close to nature is so powerful and so so limited within village limits. I struggle daily.
It was a sand colored rabbit with a splatter of white throughout its fur. Nothing to mark it as remarkable except it chose my yard to call home. It gave me joy that it felt safe and welcomed.
But see I am a person with autism, who is HIGHLY empathetic. (not everything you think you know about autism is accurate, especially when it comes to female autism.) I’ve yet to decide if that empathy is a stronger connection to my fellow humans or animals, and I get attached to things I know I shouldn’t.
My past self would scold myself for being so torn up over this, believing it’s silly to be so. Which for 36 years has resulted in my still being sad, but with a layer of negativity, embarrassment, and guilt.
My growing self is holding this sadness close to my heart, allowing myself to be sad over the dead rabbit in the road, just past my yard. To mourn the senseless loss of life. I know in my very fiber of my being that it was my backyard bunny. I know that it's amazing it lived as long as it did in town. I’m not sure when this will pass, but it will as these things do. There is nothing wrong with feeling sad when something once living dies. Rule # 5 in our house states “If you want to cry…cry. It’s made for my daughter so she doesn’t grow up with the same voices in her head telling her she's silly for being sad. I’m learning it is there for the child inside me who needs to hear the same thing. Healing. Being doing lots of that lately.
“It’s just a rabbit, plenty more where it came from”
I know many things, but honestly, I feel so many more things. That's the glorious heartbreaking part of being human…autistic or not.
