Why I no longer sit on my hands

When I was small I heard:

“Will you sit still?!” “You’re fidgeting!”

Then there was the one that changed everything:

“If you can’t sit still, sit on your hands!”

I took it literally.

Today I am no longer a small blonde creature fidgeting but a much bigger blonde creature. One who instantly sits on their hands to stop themselves from offending anyone in their vicinity. I’ve been doing it all my life; it is second nature, I don’t even think about it.

This is where Nick Walker’s NeuroQueer Heresies arrived, I devoured it like it was my only source of oxygen. Nick Walker talks about stimming and particularly flapping - the joy and soothing found in bodily movement. I felt like a light turned on in my mind: maybe I wasn’t a naughty child who couldn’t sit still, maybe I was an Autistic child trying to regulate my body in the world.

I made a decision. That was it, I was not going to sit on my hands anymore - not now, not ever - not metaphorically and most certainly not physically. So I stopped.

I began to move my hands, tapping, wiggling my fingers, flapping for joy, flapping for stress, flapping for anxiety. At first my partners were worried - were my newly rediscovered flappy hands a step back on a long recovery from a Schizophrenic breakdown?

I kept flapping, I kept tapping, I kept using my hands and arms to navigate me through the world. Worries, whilst well meant, were unfounded. I would not go back into the physiological cage I’d been restricting myself with. I’d found my flap and I wasn’t going back.

So where am I now, a year of flapping later? I find I am less over-stimmed, I can handle social situations more easily, without having to leave early or face losing the next few days. I am more connected to my body, something I never thought would happen.

The best aspect by far is joyous flapping. I struggled with showing joy. I feel it, but then as the golden feelings that bubbled like champagne coursed through me, I would physically clamp down. Don’t be too exuberant, that is the worst thing you can be. The bubbles would burst and it would no longer feel golden but taste like yesterday’s champagne - sticky, sour-sweet and nauseating. Now when the golden light moves through my soul the energy goes to every inch. My hands flap excitedly, I bounce on my heels, I let myself smile with a grin I was once mocked for. The power of movement rebounds the energy back into my soul. Where once they looked on worriedly, my partners now grin when they see my hands flapping excitedly at some new moment of pure joy. My bodily joy becomes their joy.

I will never sit on my hands again. My flapping hands are my way of being in the world. Flapping with neuroqueer abandon has given me back pure unadulterated, unfiltered and unmetered joy and that is priceless.

REFERENCE

Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, Autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities. Autonomous Press.