My recent meltdown involved me, running down the side of the highway, my car left in park in the bike lane, screaming like a banshee and hitting myself on the head. It ended with me lying in the dirt on the bank and screaming into the dirt while my mother pleaded with me. https://twitter.com/commaficionado/status/1253417677655207936

Even though I knew she was pleading with me, even though I could hear a man asking my mother if everything was okay, even though my mother even pulled out all the stops by telling me my dog was worried about me and needed me to come back, I was still screaming into the dirt.

I screamed so loud, for so long, that my voice was hoarse for the next THREE DAYS. My ribs ached when I laughed or took a deep breath because I sprained my own back muscles SCREAMING.

If I found out that someone had that on video...

I would be completely humiliated.

People think we don’t care that everyone is staring at us. They think we aren’t aware of how we must look. We do. Or at least I do. I was almost watching myself from above, this fat middle aged woman running down the road screaming and crying and hitting herself. A total nutjob.

And I was thinking to myself: this is ridiculous, this can’t be a real thing that was happening, because I am aware that a man is watching me act like this and I’m just... not stopping? Just going to be like that in front if people? Oooookay.

And there’s always a point in the meltdown for me, about halfway through, where the extreme pain of whatever it was pushed me over breaking point has ebbed, and now the meltdown is really about the MELTDOWN.

Like at first I’m doing what I can only describe as “autistic screeching” and hitting myself and saying I want to die because my mother said she doesn’t think I really try to keep my house clean. But now I’m screeching because I’m having a meltdown in the woods by a highway.

There’s a kind of hopelessness that comes with a meltdown, for me. A point-of-no-return, no-way-back feeling where I almost don’t want to leave the meltdown because then I’ll have to deal with the aftermath of the meltdown.

And knowing that I’m going to have to deal with the reality of this meltdown, that I’m going to have to climb back up that bank and get the dirt out of my mouth and maybe even deal with the concerned bystander... makes me continue to meltdown.

A meltdown is an unreal place, for me. It’s a place where I can run screaming down the highway, oblivious to the terrified pleas of my mother, past a very bewildered man, in a way that no normal, mentally balanced person would ever do.

The pain that leads to a meltdown is so unbearably intense that it’s like childbirth. Some part of you knows you are screaming and splaying your legs while a group of people stare at your hooch but this is the least of your concerns right now.

But when you’re done giving birth you get handed this baby and everyone is congratulating you and there’s this feeling of “hey look I survived and now there’s this whole person that I made.”

A meltdown doesn’t have that kind of payoff or positive energy to it.

After a meltdown you have to apologize and explain yourself and you certainly try to minimize things because the last thing you want at this point is more attention. You have to text people to tell them you are running late or not going to show up after all. You have to clean up.

Getting enough control over yourself to stop screaming, and climb out of the ditch, and apologize, and send texts, and rummage for wet wipes to get the dirt off your mouth takes more courage than childbirth.

The idea of someone filming you and then putting on the internet so people could see how awful it is to deal with you...

...well let’s just say that I might never have the strength or courage to find my way out of a meltdown again.

If I had had someone filming me, planning to put it on Facebook, maybe even with my name attached to it... I don’t know how I could have ever stopped screeching into the dirt. That screeching in the dirt was thing only thing keeping the awfulness of everything at bay.

It took my mother climbing down that steep slope to put her arm around me and beg me to come back to the car, to reassure my dog, to convince me that the world might be safe enough for me to stop screaming. Someone standing there FILMING ME would not have accomplished that.

Here’s a comparison to the awfulness of treating meltdowns like a spectator sport: A loved one once had a GI virus that was so painful they were writhing in pain on the ER floor. A watching nurse informed them that they were “hilarious”.

Extreme unbearable pain is not funny.

An autistic meltdown is probably one of the only socially acceptable ways to videotape someone suffering. If someone had a severe injury and was screaming, or had just lost a loved one and was tearing their hair in grief, people wouldn’t think it was okay to share on FB.

Think back to your least dignified, most excruciating moments. Maybe the time you were so constipated you collapsed in the bathroom. Maybe the time you coughed so hard that you vomited on your spouse. Whatever it is, imagine someone filming that and loading it online.

An autistic meltdown isn’t an episode of Anerica’s funniest home videos. It’s not like I decided that jumping off the roof onto a swivel chair was a brilliant idea. I didn’t ask for this and I have no control over this. Don’t film it. Don’t upload it. Just don’t.