I’ve had a rough week, month, half-year. More. Replete with curses, and some blessings, thank God, that led to my continued survival. I keep that in mind, because I’ve been trained to say alhumdulilah no matter what, trained to ape gratitude, and I’m glad of that, too, to have the shape of grace within reach.
Earlier this week I was down to my last $10. How to explain the desperate weeks that led up to this moment? The fact that, in the week prior, I was on national television (unpaid), I launched the Aesop Queer Library in Sydney (payment to come), I did an event at the Opera House (payment to come). How to explain the relentless fear and shame, that I allowed my family to come to this because of my foolishness (being a full-time writer) and my failure to get a job.
I’ve been trying for months. I’ve been in job interviews where the interviewers were nervous and disbelieving, Aren’t you overqualified for this? And still didn’t get the job. In the past, I was never able to job search consistently. It will sound hyperbolic I’m sure, but it always made me suicidal. I could cite the studies that show people from Middle Eastern backgrounds have to apply to 68% more jobs to get the same amount of interviews an Anglo applicant would with the same resume, I could tell you the sense and taste of dread and defeat that comes over me at the thought of having to walk into another room and try to prove myself worthy of bread, but truthfully, I am never far from suicide.
These past five years have seen me the furthest from it I’ve ever been, because I found love, and I sheltered in it, in her, and I confess part of me even started to believe I had put the spectre aside for good. It has been incredibly debilitating to find the spectre again as close as my shadow, mouth in my ear, whispering that it would be better if I was dead and gone. What good am I if I can’t provide for my family? What good is it to have, on the one hand, a list of achievements and peers testifying to excellence if my bank account is empty? What good is excellence if you can’t eat?
It’s okay, my account isn’t empty anymore, luckily I got a payment brought forward, I’m not asking anyone for money, just trying to write my way through these feelings and thoughts to ease the noose coiled around my neck. I have enough privileges and education that there are still some options available to me and my partner as we try to scrape through the medical and financial crises we’ve been facing since the birth of our child.
It isn’t just money, it’s the daily failures I feel as a father whenever my son cries and I feel helpless in the face of it, more, I feel incapable, flustered, and equally distressed. Imagine. I’m an adult, and I frequently feel as distressed as a baby, or at least this is what the spectre tells me, you dysfunctional shit, how dare you? How dare you not be up to the task? How dare you claim to be tired in the face of your responsibilities? Daily, I wonder if this is normal, the sheets of sandpaper and jagged flint someone put behind my eyeballs, so that no moment of ease is possible, there is only a constant abrasion. His cries are like barbed-wire whips ripping through my body, and surely this is my fault, this wrongness, this inability to soothe.
I am hypersensitive to sound, which is funny, because I have severe hearing loss in my right ear where a cholosteatoma ate two of my three hearing bones. I remember the first time I went to a concert—Panic! at the Disco—I was 17, and I told my friend I thought I was having a heart attack, my heart was trying to climb out of my chest, I was reeling, I felt an extraordinary amount of pain and my friend shouted they didn’t care, they were jumping up and down, didn’t want their moment ruined, and so I stumbled out of the crowd to slump in a chair as far from the stage and the sounds as I could get. On a weekly basis, the constant exhaustion I feel crescendos unbearably and I have to go lie down in a darkened room, put a pillow over my eyes, and whimper. I mean that, I moan, and I can’t stop. My skin aches. Have you ever been so tired every bit of your skin hurts, has tightened to your muscles in an effort to retreat from the world, from any touch?
Only now have I begun to find the language for what I’ve been going through, this hypersensitivity, autistic fatigue, the crashes, though what utility that has beyond communication I've yet to determine. There’s still so much I don’t understand, and can’t yet because after my ASD diagnosis last year I ran out of money and haven’t been able to go back to my psychiatrist or clinical psychologist, so in some ways I feel like I’m just grasping at straws, whatever reasoning allows me to retain some shred of dignity.
But back to the job search, and suicidal ideation, my persistent and hateful spectre. I said it was hyperbolic, and I meant to you, imagined Reader, who is most likely “normal” or else carries society’s ableist attitudes unchecked, as part of me still does. It’s hard not to think of rejection sensitivity dysphoria without mockery, thanks to the patriarchal cruelty instilled in all of us. But my wife helped me frame it differently. She said, People don’t talk about how uniquely shit it is when you get knocked back from a job, you have to put forward your whole life, a summary of all your skills and experiences, your personality—you are trying to sell the entirety of you, and so of course it’s psychologically damaging to be rejected as unfit. Over, and over, and over again. It would be awful enough even if you were well and “normal” and not desperate and didn’t have to fight a lifetime’s worth of messaging that you are unfit, incapable, unwanted.
The other aspect to this, the other reason it isn’t hyperbolic to me, is because I don’t think of suicidal ideation with the drama I imagine some people do. It is so familiar to me, so ordinary, so part of my life. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognise its danger, in fact, given the transformative nature of love on my life, given that it wasn’t enough, I have to tell you I am terrified of it once again, the certainty I now have that if my heart doesn’t give way first, or some accident doesn’t do it, this fucking thing will actually kill me. Not now, don’t call the authorities, I’m not in imminent peril, but somewhere down the line. I’m thinking about all this because I was taking my baby out for a pram walk the other day, and I wandered into the library to see if they had any programs for infants, and saw an NDIS information table set up inside.
My psychs had encouraged me last year to seek out the NDIS, they would support me in this, but given the scars Centrelink left on me a decade ago, and the horror stories I see online about this service, I didn’t try. I was desperate enough that morning to go and talk to the NDIS rep, and the lady was kind enough and easy to talk to, she said I would have to fill out a form and my psychs would too, and I should write an impact statement about the effects of autism/my disabilities on my life. The psych who wrote my ASD report has 30 years of experience diagnosing and working with autistic people, and he was absolutely certain I qualified as such, and still I sit here wondering not only if it’s true, but what it means. Honestly, this is how stupid my thinking is, this is the line that runs through my head: I just don’t want to add another problem to my list, I have enough to fucking deal with, you know?
It’s not an addition, of course, it’s a readjustment, a realignment in how to frame and understand my behaviour, but it feels like an addition. I’m a bisexual Arab-Turkish Muslim, I grew up poor, and if I have to add another qualifier to my experiences, all of which when entered into the public sphere are debated and discounted and dismissed or diminished, from bigots and supposed “community” alike… I just don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I can handle it. If I have the energy. If it’s worth it. The spectre is right here, right now, in my ear, saying no. You don’t. You can’t. Step back, pipe down, run away. Look at the chaos all around, the stupidity, the petty, the cruelty, the pain. Maybe the spectre is right. It’s hard to see clearly at the moment, to envision what comes next, and that is depression’s intent, that is exhaustion’s creed: let there be no more.
What’s the step after burn out? The one where the ashes are dispersed on the wind? Does it have a name? That’s where I am, whatever it’s called. Insha’Allah wherever I land will be gentler than where I left off. Until then, I have to hold tight to my loves, I have to let them see for me and hear for me and fight for me, and I am blessed beyond measure to have that available to me.
This is not my “impact statement”, this is just my way of saying how impossible it is to write one.
Salaam,
Omar
I'm sorry to hear about all your agony, Omar.
Yes, suicidal ideation doesn't have to be dramatic, catastrophic, or even out-of-the ordinary. But yes, it can be dangerous, and I think it is always regrettable.
And yes, our privileges often can't save us from crushing disappointment and self-recrimination.
I have been stuck between jobs, with no money and no prospects, and no time and energy for anything other than the rigmarole of futile job applications, and interviews that should have gone somewhere, but didn't. This sort of situation grinds you into the dust, even without neuro-divergent challenges to deal with besides, or alongside.
I just wanted to let you know that I understand at least a measure of your discomfort. I wish I could offer you more that was helpful.
Your "non-impact" statement is beautifully expressed. I have a number of "take-homes" from the workshop you gave in Central Australia last year, which I still use for my own writing. Thank-you for those.
I hope things start turning around and organisations pay you for your work (as a start) and that you find your energy. Much love akhi اخي 🧡