I warn you, child... if I lose my temper, you lose your head! Understand?
-The Queen of Hearts
During our first tumble down the rabbit hole we saw how the gaps in communication, misunderstandings and contradictory instructions land Alice in one sticky situation after another. This situation comes to a head when her plain-speaking beings her into direct confrontation with the Queen of Tarts, who sends her to trial.
Alice nearly loses her head.
I nearly lost my family.
The externalization of my internal chaos and frustrations, coupled with a deeply troubled home life, resulted in escalating meltdowns throughout my teens. By 18 it had all become too much for my mother and she did the only thing she thought possible by asking me to leave home. When I refused, she took the decision out of my hands. I came home on a Saturday, two weeks after finishing high-school, to find my bags packed and sitting on the doorstep, the locks changed.
Though furious at my mother, I knew deep down it was all my fault.
I was bad.
I was broken.
I was a lost cause.
Like me, Alice turns on herself, blaming her own impatience, lack of attention and impetuosity for the mishaps she experiences in Wonderland. So convinced of her own failures she rarely questions the fact that everyone in Wonderland, from the Caterpillar to the Cheshire Cat, speaks in incomprehensible riddles. Many of the ‘wonders’ she encounters either ignore her or actively try to harm her. The narrator in the original text signals Alice’s failings on more than one occasion, making clear the only person she has to blame for her misfortunes is herself.
At 18, I was lucky to have friends who could put me up until I found a place to rent, got myself back on the path to work and travel I had charted. My mother and I eventually made our peace, and I was gradually granted reentry into the family home. But her acceptance was not necessarily reflected by all of my family. Some relationships have never quite recovered from that moment, nor the turmoil which led to it. For them, I will always be the cheeky, sullen, misbehaving girl who never gave her mother a moment’s peace and deserved to get kicked out of home.
The inability of families to cope with their autistic children is a narrative which has persisted over decades, causing much harm to autistic people. My story of estrangement is, unfortunately, not unusual. Had my mother or I known I was autistic I wonder would we have found a healthier, more compassionate way to manage our clashes? Perhaps we could have found supports to help me manage the overwhelm of academic and social challenges at school so I would not have needed to discharge my frustrations at home? Perhaps I could have mitigated some of the damage done to those fundamental relationships?
Or, perhaps I would have been subject to even more coerced efforts to modify my behaviour to fit neurotypical expectations such as ABA or had undue limitations placed on what has been a relatively free life?
But she did not and I did not and so we carried on in ignorance. I lugged the shame and the fear that the bad, broken, girl was still lurking inside me, waiting to detonate at any moment, around with me for most of my adult life.
Alice outruns the Queen and the pack of cards clamouring for her execution and makes it back to her world intact, convincing herself it was all a bad dream.
I remained trapped in the incomprehensible world of Wonderland a lot longer. For nearly 20 years I have hopped from one shiny toadstool to the next, sometimes slipping off and getting stuck in the mud, other times getting distracted by pretty talking flowers and mad-hatter parties. Meanwhile, my family and friends began to hit the usual adulting milestones which have often felt inexplicably out of reach to me. At 36, I found myself at floundering through a third attempt at a career, still renting, with a string of broken friendships and failed relationships behind me. I began to wonder why some things seemed to be getting harder, rather than easier, despite years of therapy and why I was so tired all the goddamn time?
The answer was autism, of course, but getting there was an odyssey we’ll keep for next time.
I had not thought of Alice, nor my childhood obsession with the sing-along book and tape, in nearly 30 years. Within weeks of my diagnosis I found a copy of the original animated feature and sat down to watch. The scene of Alice alone and crying in a dark wood caught me sideways. It was as if she was speaking to me directly, the too familiar words and their sad melody, found their way back to my consciousness as if I’d never really forgotten them. How could I have forgotten them when that sentiment had come to define my whole undiagnosed life:
‘I give myself very good advice but I very seldom follow it,
that explains the trouble that I’m always in,
If I listened earlier I wouldn’t be here,
I should have known the price I’d have to pay.’
Alone on my bed, singing along to Alice’s lament, I was once more in tears. I cried for the lost time and the misunderstandings and the isolation and the little girl who was always getting into trouble despite her best intentions. Alice was borne out of a troubled legacy, but at nine and 37, she helped me feel less alone in a world where I was considered too big or too small, too loud or too quiet, too sullen or too smart-mouthed.
Alice eventually found a way back to the safety and familiarity of her world without losing her freedom, her head or any other body parts. Autism is not something to be cured, to grow out of, to recover from or to get over. It is a fundamental part of who I am and how I’m wired. I do, however, hope that with time I can recover from the trauma of being lost for so long in Wonderland.
Ours is a friendship that is well and truly still flourishing, all these years later :)