It's the 28th of june, 2026, and worst of the heatwave has just passed. It feels like there has never been anything else, nothing less and nothing more than the blazing heat and unrelenting misery this week has brought. I haven't slept a true full night since it started, or at least I don't think so? I don't remember, I don't know if it's been a week, or a few days less. I know I'm sat on my living room floor, a fan blowing air past a half-frozen bottle of water hoping that it will stop the aching nausea. I haven't once felt like I had to throw up, but it is so abundantly clear that something is wrong. I've never felt the anxiety and fear of something life threatening before. My body is telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I need to do something. If I don't get up and figure something out, I will get hurt.

Something that I think comes with my autism is my poor temperature regulation. It's always been hard, yet I feel I've only begun to notice it after moving out of my parents' house. Overheating in the dead of winter as I bike up a hill, arriving everywhere soaked halfway in sweat even if I had really thought that, this time, I dressed well for the weather. I could bike through a blizzard, if you gave me the chance to get some cardio in before I leave. I can't begin to count the number of times I have had to stop on the side of the road to take off my jacket, then my vest, roll up my sleeves and put my freezing hands onto my blazing abdomen as I continue on, in a desperate cry for relief.

While I sweat quite a bit while exercising, I feel my body giving up on me now. I can confidently say I have never been this hot before, cooped up in our small apartment with the afternoon sun beaming into our hallway kitchen. Even when close to passing out, panicked looking for a way out, there isn't a drop. It seems so simple, the most basic way we cool ourselves down, how could it possibly just, not work? I guess it's all a part of coming to terms with the way I work, regardless of whether or not autism can be scapegoated for it.

I felt truly seen when I recalled and put into action my best friend's earlier suggestion to try and sleep with a wet towel. It helped her a lot, but somehow I always felt it wouldn't work for me. We're not the same, I just get hot easily, why would her fix be mine? But be it the shared autism, or our general being, or just the fact of it being a useful trick, it really did help me. Where my body failed me, it almost acted as my sweat. I'm emotional because of the heat, I'm overwhelmed and stressed and there is so much cropped up inside that the slightest thing could make me break down, and I'll admit that this small thing gets to me. I have always felt so alone in my struggles. Maybe I felt I just had to deal with them, no one knows me like I know me.

My partner seems to make it a point to reply "it's not" when I sing along to Car Seat Headrest's "1937 state park".

"I didn't want you to hear, that shake in my voice, my pain is my own".

I love feeling helped, helps me feel truly loved. I don't think I will ever be able to convey how much my friends mean to me, I wish I was better at being present, I hope I can be there when they need me, thank you.