The summer of 2026

a misery post

Jun 8, 2026

I live in Bangalore, India and I want to record my experience of living here this summer.

The rainy season has finally started and my nervous system has calmed down. The past few months have been absolutely unbearable for me. I was in autistic burnout starting november getting worse in december where I slept 3 months, all I did all day everyday was sleeping about 12-16 hours a day. It was easier to do in the winter months tucked in my blanket.

But then the summer rolled around and I noticed myself getting more and more agitated. During this burnout I was unemployed this year, so I could not escape to an AC office, I did not have the means to buy an AC and my house was in the topmost floor bearing the brunt of the heat that gets trapped. It was extremely hard, I was overwhelmed all the time. I had to work towards getting a job but I could not sit for more than 25 mins in my seat to do anything without my clothes getting soaked with my sweat.

One of my biggest sensory issues is touching something wet. I fear it, I dread it. I would rather smell horrible forever than step in a wet bathroom floor to get a bath. I have to work up the courage to get a bath everyday. And I'm terrified of people perceiving me as someone that smells bad so I don't leave my house. It is an uphill battle every single day to not become an agarophobe, the fear of the outside is very very real. When I don't have a job I don't have to leave my house and the worse this fear becomes.

Anyway back to the main point, imagine the horror when I become the wet floor I am afraid of touching due to sweat. There was no escaping myself. I would sit and spiral for hours a day because I'm stuck in this loop of being wet and not wanting to exist because of how sweaty I got. And everyday became hotter and hotter. I would wake up extremely miserable. I always wondered why I got so depressed during the summer but now I knew what was wrong. I did not make much progress in anything. And I was dragging my feet through every task. Being on atomoxetine was not helpful either. I could not eat. I could not sleep at night as my mattress would get hot from my own body warming it up. The one thing I relied on to help me regulate had become something that made me anxious. And there was no escaping it. I had to switch on the fan and the sound would also keep me up at night. My neighbours also bought coolers and the coolers dissipated heat outside and the sound would get unbearable in the nights. I'd be miserable and frustrated not knowing who I could even say anything to. It felt unfair. Slowly my life was a nightmare I couldn't escape from.

It gets worse. The powercuts happened often and for long periods of time when the sun was especially bright and hot. I would slither and slide on the floor hoping to fall asleep only to be bothered by mosquitoes. My head resting on a pillow that would soon get extremely hot

How bad can it be? How can this person be complaining so much? Please consider that not everybody has the same experience of being alive as you. My senses, especially my hearing is especially sharp. I was once on a date in a mall and we were getting coffee and I said to my date "my god I would pay any amount of money to get this kid to stop crying" he said "what kid?" We walked all the way to the other side of the mall where the kid was still crying and he was fully shocked and said "did you mean this kid?" yep, it was that kid, almost 10 shops down crying that I could hear crystal clear in the other side of the mall. I can hear people talking all the time. All day everyday all people do is talk. I can hear electricity. I once told my flatmate that the fridge was making a different sound than it usually does and it stopped working three days later. I can tell when most appliances are about to give me trouble, when wheels are slightly clogged with dirt by the sound they make and the slight resistance change when they move.

My favourite time as a kid was when the power would go off in my neighborhood. That was the only time I ever felt relief as a kid and I never understood why until I put all of this together in my adulthood. But now, I dread when power goes off because my neighborhood is full of apartments that have generators that run very very loud. If power goes off at night I am awoken and stay awake from these dreadful generators and my senses never ever get a relief.

I know how negative this blogpost is. But there's a reason I'm writing this. Summers are getting really bad and there's a cap to how much corruption can eat us alive in this country. Not everyone can get an AC and the power grid could not support it even if we all did.

"The walls in my house are hot"
- Ankur, summer '26

You can't run from the walls. My heart goes out to people living under sheet roofs and the autistic/ neurodivergent people that cannot afford to get friends that have ACs in their houses that they can escape to, like I did for about 3 times this summer. Please turn up and vote for better people, care about what is happening around you. And we have a great planet, I want to be alive and experience it, I want to take care of it. I might get a job soon, buy an AC and stay in my temperature controlled house forever but what about everyone else?