This is an authentic email I received yesterday. A good piece of creative writing, I would say. I am aware of shaped hole expression but it sounds rather strange still but it helped me to understand something.

Enterpreneurs Circle is a club for business owners in the UK, that I joined a year ago when I was trying to go through options about what to do with myself. Setting up a business was one of them and I came accross an ad that promoted their 3 months of free membership so I thought let me try. Membership is £99 per month, so it’s not the cheapest thing, but from what I managed to assess it looked to me that if you’re serious about your business it may actually be worth it. I had a blog already but I wasn’t at the time reflecting on my every day experience so I doubt I ever mentioned them.

So let’s go back to Magda shaped hole – well, this is how I see the world on instinctive level; like a system with a place for me. If someone needs or wants me, that’s how it feels to me – like if they have Magda shaped hole where I need to place myself and everything will be good from now on. And when it’s not working for some reason, I feel manipulated.

I think this is one of the main reasons why I stayed in my previous relationship pass it’s use by date. He wanted me and that confused me. The same about doing extra shifts at work even though I was tired and didn’t need extra money. They wanted me and no one else was willing to do that so it made sense that I should cover it. It also made sense that I’d get appreciated for that while in reality I was being treated like ‘a looser from Eastern Europe’, so again I felt manipulated.

I know this is a frequent experience of autistic women (I’m not sure about autistic men) and it may be related to our desire to help, but it’s not directly connected to problems with being assertive, like a neurotypical person would probably say. To use assertiveness I’d need to first know that I don’t want something, while in this instance it is more about me being unable to weigh my options. It makes sense to me that if someone wants or needs me for something, it will be good for me to join. It feels like they’re creating that Magda shaped hole, where I will fit in perfectly.