Our tenancy was almost up and so my housemate and I began to look for new accommodation to include another person. We had a good thing going but we could make it better, maybe. My requirements would be a big enough space to stow a child a couple times of week, but other than that – loosey goosey baby, loosey goosey.

That said, as the time pressed closer and we still hadn’t found anything, I start to panic. Usually quite a happy-go-lucky optimist, I became emotionally wobbly at one point, which made me realise that I was afraid of something.

Begin a one week countdown until I’m homeless. I need something, a plan at least. I reach out to people for advice and temporary solutions. My new potential housemate says that he could put me up for as long as needed, and could even take on the boy. A beautifully kind gesture, but I still felt uneasy and anxious.

An unusually robotic personality, driven by logic in the same ways as Dr. Spock and Data, he asks why I am so stressed, what is it specifically that is bothering me so much, considering there is now a fix.

I pause for a moment and then begin to verbalise feelings and thoughts that I didn’t know I had, straight from my subconscious: that if I were to be staying at someones house, with all my belongings in tow or in storage, and I didn’t have a date for when I’d have my shit together, I would feel embarrassed. And then to have to bring a child to this home of someone else, I’d be mortified. I would feel like a failure to those around me, but more importantly, a failure to my son.

He looks at me, nods his head and says ‘Yeah, fair enough’ and walks off.

I know he doesn’t mean anything by this – his aim wasn’t to console me, merely to understand, and now he does, leaving me to sit and stew with this confession. Now I am able to acknowledge and better deal with the problems ahead, realising where my anxieties lie, all thanks to my autistic guru and new housemate.