I woke up early again, after approximately five and a half hours of sleep. It is still enough for me to not get psychosis (please, remember, I’d need more than one sleepless night to develop an episode). I’m wondering if the reason for waking up so early can be the fact that the room is not dark enough as there is a light above the reception door just outside of my window and curtains are really light.

On my second night in this room I managed to cover the part of the window where the lightbulb is showing, but the room still gets quite a lot of light. I like being here though and again keep thinking that ideally I’d not want to go back.

It’s so difficult to deal with the fact that my family is changing, especially that there’s nothing to replace what’s gone. I don’t have children, my brother obviously doesn’t have them either (which is probably a good thing).

I never really wanted children, thinking I may not be able to cope with all the responsibilities that being mum brings but what happened now is that I’ll be completely by myself. It’s a scary thought.

The Boyfriend is a fantastic guy but I doubt we will be able to live together. It seems to me like for both of us having normal life is an enormous effort. Having a job is not really enough to be a functional adult, we need to do shoping, tidying, arrange for repairs. It takes loads of effort and then we only have enough energy left to go to work the next day. Romance is not really on our agenda and we want things to be easy. So we only meet every other weekend, not even the whole weekend as we need to recharge.

We spend loads of time chatting over email on other days and it seems like it’s enough, like it’s exactly what we need, and yet, I don’t know, it feels like something is missing. It feels like I’m prioritising my ‘being alone’, autistic needs, over my ‘being together’ needs.

It’s not as easy as one, especially neurotypical one, may think: with my previous partner my ‘being together’ needs were prioritised and I felt frequently overwhelmed, I felt like I couldn’t take it any more. I guess it was one of the reasons for our frequent arguments, although certainly not the only one.

With The Boyfriend we hardly ever argue, even though I feel like I want more togetherness. Even though I want more intimacy I still feel really grateful for the fact he is there for me and for how supportive he is.

In a lot of ways I feel like he’s the only person I can be myself with. Now, when my family doesn’t exist any more, this is really important for me.