I love the quietude of what people are calling “self-isolation” and “distancing”. I am one of those autists who delight in inhabiting my own little bubble of presence. Yet, I am unable to quell the force majeure of interconnectivity, and what my mind intuits and decodes is quietly shattering the gentleness of solitude.

My Autistic Brain, yes, blame that brain. All those little details, patterns, rhythmic sequences unfolding, unpacking and evolving. The minuscule bits and bobs that reach out with mournful tendrils, grasp, touch and intertwine across a massive expansive network of misery, fear, anxiety and pain. The final few seconds of gasping, life slipping away, the excruciating knowing. The gnashing and grinding of teeth as vicious evil commodifies lives, directing the theatrical tragedy from their self-established positions in the stratosphere, while commonplace humanity groans. Every little ornament – dust particles of affliction, microscopic droplets of misery – screams in shattering silence. The turmoil is palpable, overwhelming and crushing – all the frantically gyrating, jostling dots are concatenated in dolorous bitter chains.

It isn’t only sensory inundation that leads to meltdown. It’s also cognitive deluge that threatens shutdown.

Not true that the detail-focused mind is unable to perceive comprehensive global dimensions. At least not all of us. The truth is slowly taking more and more concrete form inside my consciousness, though I have for a long time suspected this and voiced my humble hypothesis: when a finite human mind is compelled to attend to every microscopic fragment, every delicate thread and subtle gesture in a colossal tapestry of human folly, anguish and haplessness, the delicate ecology of graceful order shatters, imploding from within.

Shutdown.

We are not disconnected. We are overly connected with the universe in all its splendid glory and expansive melancholy.

Empathic resonance. The weight of the world. Very real. Especially a world that is heavy with desperate suffering.