My timing is almost always bad and my inability to fit in is remarkable. So I find it a little surprising that I was diagnosed with autism today, on the first Monday of Autism Acceptance month.
But I am only a little surprised. And only surprised at all because I am always outside of, and out of sync with, just about everything. In all other ways, the diagnosis makes perfect sense.
I have spent much of my adulthood reverse engineering my life – trying to understand what event or disappointment or brain chemical has made things so difficult for me. And now I know. Though it’s going to take a while to process it and put my entire life (since nursery school) into perspective.
Why I Got Tested
I have been looking for answers for a long time, but I would have never looked here – if it wasn’t for my own recent proximity to another autistic individual. Knowing someone diagnosed with autism made me curious enough to learn a bit about autism and what I learned felt a lot like me.
I am and always have been horrible with social situations. I struggle with eye contact (even on YouTube) and conversation and understanding things about people that are apparently glaringly obvious to everyone else.
This makes me, kind of naturally, anti-social. Not because I dislike people, necessarily, but because being around them is so hard. I love my family and, while they’re relatively easy to be around, there are challenges.
I do have some sensitives and those things were worse when I was young. But my main issues have always been cognitive, emotional and social. So I escape into my special interests and have been doing that since childhood. I love my family, but I love being alone too. I love my hobbies and my library and the things I collect because the rest of the time, on some level, I’m acting.
How I Feel About this Diagnosis
When I was a child, growing up in the 60s and 70s, autism wasn’t being diagnosed at all. I was blessed to not have any serious academic problems aside from handwriting and long division. But I struggled with being awkward and clueless and extraordinarily anxious. As I got older, I learned how to compensate, but there was, and is, a cost.
The weight and the depth and the breadth of that cost is hard to summarize or process. It is something I will address at some future point.
The main thing at this point is to figure out what’s next. My life is the same, of course, but not really. Things are fundamentally changed and everything is called into question. Including my work and my daily routine and my own expectations.
Right now, I’m not cutting out anything, but I will be learning all I can about this topic and writing about it – not exclusively but regularly – in upcoming posts.
