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An Autistic Adult’s Poem of Panic, Vapor Lock, and the Terror of Navigating Fraud Recovery Systems Without a Safety Net

An autistic GLP's account of bank card theft, panic, and navigating broken systems. This isn’t a complaint—it’s an incantation. A poem, a plea, and a reminder that survival shouldn't have to feel this lonely.

Introduction

There is a specific kind of terror that comes with realising your cash card—your only card—has been compromised. Not a “mild inconvenience” sort of panic, the kind they write about in budgeting blogs. Not a “simply call the bank and get it sorted” event. No, this is the sort of rupture that leaves you frozen mid-breath, somewhere between dread and disbelief, because you know what comes next.

As an autistic adult—especially one who processes language gesturally and holistically—the world is not built for me. I don’t have a tidy script for “bank card fraud.” I don’t have a linear, repeatable sequence of calm steps to take. What I have is vapor lock—a mental and emotional freeze that happens when the story of my life, the one I thought I was living, suddenly doesn’t make sense. Someone else inserted a scene. Someone else wrote a line in my ledger. It doesn’t matter if the bank will reverse the charges. The damage is already done: the safety is gone.

This is what I call part of the autism tax. Not just the literal cost of time, trust, and energy—but the emotional interest charged on every encounter with a world not built to include us. I’m expected to call a number. Navigate a menu system. Explain calmly, coherently, repeatedly, what happened. And if I fail—if I script in the wrong place, if I mishear an option, if I hesitate—I risk losing access to the only means I have to feed myself or put petrol in the car. The stakes are enormous. The system is unforgiving. And the design? Built by the lowest bidder.

No human being should be asked to perform clarity while in a state of emergency, but autistic people are expected to do it constantly. We are expected to mask, to translate, to perform neurotypicality under duress, or risk being ignored—or worse, denied. There is no button on the phone that says “I’m panicking, and this isn’t my fault.” There is no option for “I am a gestalt processor and the words are not coming in order today.” There is only the looming dread of needing to perform neurotypical calm to satisfy the call flow while your insides are screaming.

And once it’s done, you are still not safe. You are told a new card is coming. But it will take 7 to 10 business days. Seven to ten days of uncertainty, of scraping by, of wondering whether you'll need a miracle just to buy groceries. Because this was your only card. Your one protected thing. And now it’s gone.

This isn’t a complaint. It’s an incantation. A way to speak through the tremor, to steady my hands in the aftershock. A way to take what vaporised me and wrap it in words I can hold. This is how I slow the panic. How I name what systems erase. It is the ritual of anchoring myself back in the moment—so I can come home to my own body, to the ridgeline, to the place where breath returns. I wrote the poem that follows not just to document what happened, but to survive it. To remember who I am beneath the terror. To get ‘home’ safely.

The Line is Not Secure
for the moment when I opened the envelope

It starts with paper.
Innocent.
Expected.
A bill like any other,
until it isn’t.

I read the number three times
before I understand
and then
I don’t.

The air goes thick.
The shape of the world shifts.
Something slipped in—
something not mine—
and it used my name.

I try to find a breath
but there is only static
in my chest,
as if my lungs have
entered the hold music too.

I am vapor-locked,
hands shaking
eyes wide,
trapped in the soft panic
of the scriptless.

There is no pathway here.
No prewritten phrase to summon.
No “press 1 for violation of trust.”
No “say ‘terror’ to continue.”

Only this thin line—
phone to bank,
and I must walk it
perfectly,
on tiptoe,
in a storm.

The automated voice
asks questions
I do not understand
in the order they demand.

I forget my own address.
I stutter the wrong date.
I wait,
afraid I will be punished
for breaking the format.

(There is only one card.
There is no second chance.)

I am performing clarity
with a heart full of fire.
I am nodding into the void,
saying “yes”
when I mean “please.”
Saying “thank you”
when I mean “don’t hang up.”

And when it is over,
and the charges are “under review,”
and the agent has logged the threat
into a case number,
they tell me—

7 to 10 business days.

I nod again.
Smile into the nothing.
They cannot see
that I am already calculating
how to make groceries
last twelve.

I am carrying a silence
I cannot afford,
measuring hours
by what I can no longer buy.

This is not resolution.
This is limbo.

The line is not secure.
But I am the one
left disconnected.

Aftermath …

f this resonated with you—if you've ever felt the tremble behind the performance, the exhaustion of navigating systems that weren’t built with you in mind—I ask, gently, for your help.

The normal subscription price is governed by Substack, and I know not everyone can afford that. But if you're able to send even a dollar through Venmo, it would mean more than you know. Every bit helps, and it will help steady me through these panicked ten business days, until my new card arrives and I can exhale again.

This is not just about money. It's about being held in community during a moment of profound vulnerability. And if all you have is a kind word or a moment of your attention, that helps too. Truly.

Venmo: @Jaime-Hoerricks

Thank you for being here. Thank you for witnessing.