So why write a blog? That is a good place to start.
The first reason is to possibly answer some questions not only for you, the reader, but perhaps for myself. I don’t see myself as anyone particularly interesting but at the same time I know my life experiences are different from the average person that I meet. I often get met with many questions about what it is like to be an Autism sibling. Questions like; “Was it hard” or “What was it like?”, that I don’t always know how to answer. How do you describe what something was like to someone who has never experienced it themselves? Or better yet, how do you describe what something was like when you have never experienced anything different? The only thing I can ever truly say is “I guess it was hard but I have never known anything else so I can’t really compare it to anything.” Not much of an answer but what else can I say? My family is my family.I love them,and that’s all I know.
The next reason builds from the first. I am writing a blog because from what I can see there aren’t a lot of other people like me who are writing about it. I can relate to people on a lot of levels but sometimes being an autism sibling is not one of them. I have tried to find books, websites and other writings about what it is like to have autism in your family from a sibling’s perspective but I have found very little that I can relate to. There are a lot of professional writings about the psychological aspects of being an autism sibling and how they are affected. I have found resources for parents on many different topics. There are also interviews conducted with autism siblings. All these things are great but I have yet to find something that I can read and relate to. Or something I can send to my friends so that they can understand some of my weird stories or why I act the way I do. In the end I decided to stop looking and just write one myself so that maybe this blog can be all those things for somebody else one day.
Lastly, I must admit that writing this blog is a largely selfish endeavour. Being someone who is so generally full of anxiety as I am, I often seek an outlet to get some of the craziness out. I keep journals that are full of my anxious rants on various subjects that I often end up feeling the need to put into words in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. Sometimes when I go back and look at what I have written I think “what if one day someone was to pick up this book and publish it? Wouldn’t that be crazy? What would people think?”. So perhaps in writing this blog, and not only focusing solely on being an autism sibling, but also on being someone with anxiety is a way of answering some of those late night questions. Or maybe in the same way as my last reason I want to write something that people with anxiety, like me, can read and relate to. Who knows.
So why am I writing a blog? To answer some answerable questions, let a little bit of my crazy out and ultimately to write something that maybe by some miracle someone will read and be able to relate to and find some comfort in.
Let’s just see what happens and go from here!