Coming to Terms With Change

Life has been kicking my arse recently. I can’t think of a single person who, at some point or at many points in their life, could say this has never happened to them. No matter who you are, what you do or what you have there will be times when God/the Universe/life seems to be conspiring against you to bring you down. And once you’re down it will proceed to kick you in the balls and then steal your TV.

I’ve always found, though, that the reason this happens is that ‘the Universe’ is trying to make me see that I need to change something. My attitude, my choices, whatever.

So that’s what I’m going to write about today: Choices.

Decisions can be hard for some people. Others can make major life choices as easily as they choose pizza toppings but I am not one of those people, because decisions often mean change. Aversion, or inability to process, change is one of the staples of Autistic spectrum disorders, and it’s a horrible one to try and work with. I can remember going into my English classroom one morning in year ten to find that the teacher had moved all the desks around for an exercise, and I nearly had a panic attack. I couldn’t tell you why- logically I knew that nothing bad was going to happen because of it, that nothing was going to hurt me because the desks had been moved- I just couldn’t help it. I still have that reaction now, even for something as small as a change of dinner plans, but I have a tighter control over my emotions these days and so I don’t let it show.

(My point about the lack of rational response is possibly an important sidetrack: people with ASD rarely have appropriate emotional responses to anything. The extremes I’ve found are having no reaction to a traumatic/emotional event, through to overreacting to something that doesn’t even warrant a second thought. It can be hard to handle for me, so I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone watching it. When I go toward the latter, I give people full permission to slap me with their gloves. End tangent.)

Those examples I gave are instances of physical change, and are easy to avoid or to manage- I told my special needs support about it, and she agreed to make sure I was informed beforehand of any unusual arrangements. However, what I’ve been going through recently have been changes of an emotional sort.

I had planned to go to university at the end of this year. For the first time in my life, I thought that I’d get to do the ‘conventional’ route and go from A-levels to a degree, and maybe be normal. I went through a whole summer of angst and indecision before coming to the decision to do history at Bath Spa, and I was content with that choice even in the face of my personal tutor who tried to insist that I apply to more than one place. Well, I’m not sure that this week’s decision will make her much happier. A week ago I added to my UCAS application three courses at the University of the Arts, London: Two photography degrees, and a degree in fashion photography. Today, my parents took me out to lunch, and on the way they quizzed me: What did I really want to do? Did I think that having the history there, as a back up was a good idea? How committed was I to the idea of pursuing a career in photography?

I thought about it a lot. It was difficult, and scary, and a little painful because more changes? HELL TO THE NO. But they kept asking the questions and forced me to think about what I really want out of life.

I decided to take off the history option and to go for photography one hundred percent.

And then they said they would buy me a digital SLR, and I maybe blacked out from the shock a little.

The point of this is how they handled it. It was a tough, emotional choice for me to make and I can see how many parents could well take it upon them to make that decision especially when faced with a child who shies away from changes. The thing is that I believe it’s possible for anyone to overcome this, but you need to let him or her make their own choice. Help them lay it out realistically and see all the options, but make sure that at the end of the day you go with what they choose. The more you do this, the easier it gets. I promise. And with reference to the new camera: bribery should always be an option.