Yesterday it took me four to five hours to get one medication.
Not a new medication. Not a complicated one. The same medication I have been taking for five years. There is a five-year file. There is a doctor who has been writing it the whole time. Nothing new in the case.
What those four to five hours looked like
I called the practice. They said yes, we will write it. I called back later. They said no, it was not accepted. They did not say why. They did not let me ask. They just said no, and the call ended.
I went in person. I had another appointment right after, but I went in anyway, because there was no other way to get a real answer. I waited even though I had an appointment booked. I spoke to the doctor face to face. He said yes, we will do it this time, but next time bring a report.
I went to the pharmacy two hours later. There was no medication.
That is the day. One medication. Five years on the same prescription. Five hours to come away with nothing.
Now picture doing this while autistic
Each phone call is not just a phone call. It is the script in your head, the explaining, the not knowing what tone the other person will take, the second call where you have to start from zero because no one wrote anything down. The in-person visit is not just a visit. It is the journey, the waiting room, the second appointment you are now late for, the conversation you have already had three times this week.
And you are doing all of this from inside the state the medication is meant to treat. You are not at full capacity. You have not been at full capacity for a long time. The system asks you to perform at full capacity to receive the thing that, if you had it, might let you operate closer to full capacity.
Multiply by everything else
This is one medication. It is one small thing.
Now multiply it by every other small thing. The bank, the insurance, the form, the appointment, the email no one answered, the phone call you have to make again because the first one was lost. Each one looks like one small thing from the outside. From the inside, each one is a four-hour day.
There is no separate slot in the week for "doing the small things." The small things are the week. They are why there is no energy left for anything else. They are why people in this situation look, from the outside, like they are not doing anything, when in fact they are doing nothing but this.