I'm back in Chicago. The bus rides back were somewhat eventful, but it was okay. The biggest snafu was that after I arrived in Chicago, I waited for the Lincoln bus for forty minutes before suspecting that there might be a holiday schedule in effect (which there was), meaning that the Lincoln bus wasn't coming. I had a hard time staying awake riding the el and the Kimball busses homewards.

On Wednesday, I attended a presentation on transitioning from childhood to adulthood as an autistic person. It made me think a lot about what I should be doing to enable myself to live as an independent adult. Two and a half years ago, I lived on my own for four months. It was a miserable failure, resultng in psychosis on my part. After I moved back in with my parents, I became far more dependent on them than I had previously been; and I've remained relatively dependent on them. This is not a good thing.

I expect that I will be moving out again in a year, give or take eight months. I've been very uncomfortable thinking about this. The presentation made me think more about it. It made me think about the advantages I will definitely have over last time, and the advantages I could have over last time. Next time, I will be older, more financially secure and able to afford a lot more. I will not have to be in school full time; just to work. I'll have a lot more time to look over apartments at my leisure, and I'll know to avoid certain things I didn't know to avoid last time.

But what I hadn't realized is that next time, I could utilize some support. I could probably afford to pay somebody to come over to help me out once a week for a few hours, and that would probably help me a lot. And I can contact Access Living (which I have already been to a few times) and ask them for help in figuring out where to find the right sort of person, exactly what sorts of things I should ask the person to help me with, how much is appropriate to pay them, and how that works out with taxes ('cause if I have an employee, I think the tax issue is sort of complicated). I'm thinking about when the right time to start working on this would be, and whether I should look into hiring such a person while I'm still living with my parents. It could well ease some of the tension at home, I think.

In my first two years at autreat, I wasn't really sure that I had had a good time. But this year I had a much more mellow experience. I met a lot of autistic people my own age that I was more comfortable with. I didn't bother with much by way of scheduled activities, but I played a few hours' of chess, a game of apples to apples, and some ping pong. I spent time on my own, walking down to Bradford and back. I went swimming (and accidentally went into the girls' locker room!). I went to two full presentations and part of a third. I spent a lot of hours with a person I'd spent a lot of time corresponding with by email. I spent a lot of time tutoring and talking to my roommate (which wasn't actually an entirely positive experience because he's not queer friendly). I went to a wedding. I spent some time in the library reading comics and proofs of Heron's formula (very nice librarian, by the way). And just as I was starting to feel homesick, I went home.

P.S. I talked to my endocrinologist today. My thyroid numbers are all in range now !!! The T3 and T4 are edging towards the hypothyroid end and he says to make an appointment if I feel symptomatic of hypothyroidism; otherwise, he doesn't want to see me for another two or three months! That's great news. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate was below normal, whereas we had been looking to see if it was high; he says not to worry about that. The c-reactive protein was very normal. This leaves us with no explanation at all as to why I was thyrotoxic, nor with much idea of what happens next, but I guess for now I'll let it be.

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