The Three Times I Found My Autistic Self

This World Autism Awareness Day, I’d like to tell you a story. Most of you have heard parts of it, but not so many have heard the whole. I call this story: “The Three Times I Found My Autistic Self.” And before I go any further I should say: yes, I am autistic. And although I’ve never really been IN, per se, this is my coming out post. Shower me in sunshine!

1.

I’m six years old. The psychologist at the clinic says she’s never seen a girl with autism before. But the school has flagged up my behaviour, which I think is code for “noticed me giving flying lessons”, and I’m ticking all the right boxes now I’m here. I talk like a little professor. I do not know how to do friends. They do tests on me, old-fashioned ones where you act out things with dolls. It’s meant to determine if I can put myself in other people’s shoes. I barely have a handle on my own damn shoes.

They don’t diagnose me, in the end. It’s 1993 and girls aren’t supposed to have autism. They tell my mother I have it, for sure, but it’s “so mild” that there’s nothing to be gained by saddling me with the stigma. Anyway, I’ll probably almost certainly definitely grow out of it. Mum takes me home, and over the next few years I receive ongoing therapy that aims to train me to better fit into non-autistic society. How to take turns in conversations. How to make a friend without bribing them with food.

And then the therapy runs out. And I wobble on.

2.

I’m twelve or thirteen. Mum and I are driving down to visit family in the country, a three hour drive I have taken countless times throughout my life. We pass the time as we always have, with curious, helter-skelter conversation. And it comes up — how the school noticed my behaviour and pushed for me to be assessed, the clinic, the dollies, all the sketchy details of my diagnosis. I listen gape-mouthed in wonder. Because in the years since the therapy ran out, I’ve forgotten. Completely and genuinely forgotten. Mum gives me the theory of mind test they gave me back then, and just like back then I fail it. I can summon up a dim vision of the clinic, and I remember having therapy even though I don’t remember what it was for. But mostly I’m hearing it all for the first time. Mum ticks off the symptoms on her fingers, reciting what they told her years ago. High IQ and abnormal vocabulary. Difficulty socialising. Tendency to be pedantic. Poor motor control.

When we get to my grandparents’ house, I go into their bedroom and stand in front of the full length mirror. It’s like I’ve never seen myself, not REALLY seen myself, before. This is me, I think. I’m not normal. I never was. I’m never going to be. I’m different. And in that moment, I felt like I’d come home.

3.

I’m thirty-one. Adult life has been less of a roller-coaster and more of a Gravitron. You know, that thing that spins you around and around till you throw up. I’ve studied three degrees at once. I’ve had mushrooms growing in my bathroom. I’ve started and quit more adventures than most people dream of. And I don’t think about my autism much. After all, I’ve got a bunch of new diagnoses to worry about. And I grew out of that, right? Right?

On a late night Internet foray for who knows what, I stumble across a list of female autistic characteristics. Women with autism present differently from men, it says. We mask our symptoms and we don’t fit the stereotypes. And then the list, a hundred little red flags to look out for.

I tick yes to 94 of them.

And I realise, as I read more and more and reach out for the first time to autistic communities, my dear weird brothers and sisters, that I never stopped being autistic. It wasn’t mild and I didn’t grow out of it, because it’s not something you grow out of. It was obscured, certainly, by denial and misdiagnosis; the history of my mental health treatment is a whole lot of doctors falling over themselves to tell me I don’t seem autistic at all. But every where I look, my adulthood is littered with evidence. The panic attacks that plagued my twenties? Autistic meltdowns. My issues with laziness and procrastination? Executive dysfunction and autistic inertia. The way I used to tell five stories in a row without letting anyone get a word in edgewise? ‘Nuff said.

And so as the months go on, I start to lean back into myself, as if I were an old comfy chair. I get to know parts of me that I’ve never noticed or acknowledged before. I begin to feel like I did that day when I was thirteen. I begin to feel at home.

And then the most beautiful thing happens. Just as I’m settling into this newfound autistic acceptance, my mum has a discovery, too. See, I send her the list of female autistic characteristics the night I discover it. And what do you know, she ticks 90-odd boxes too. So we talk and we talk some more, and I introduce her to the autistic communities I’ve discovered, and the upshot is she’s gone to see a specialist and has just been diagnosed with autism herself. And I couldn’t be happier. For her or for me. The sunshine is bursting out of me and I want it to light up the whole sky. Because the thing I always thought of as separating me from my family is what made me close to them all along.

So that’s the story of how I found my autistic self. I’ve never felt prouder and gladder to know who I am and where I came from. It’s still a big journey, and I have a long way to go; I’ve started seeing an Aspergers therapist and I’m doing a lot of work to address the things I never got help for as a kid. You’ll probably see a bit more autism content on my feed from now on, because I process things by posting shit to Facebook. But mostly, nothing much will change. After all, I’ve been autistic all along. It’s like growing up in an eclipse, only the eclipse lasts for thirty-two years. While the sun is hidden, everything is dim; it’s all you’ve ever known but still, nothing quite adds up. Then finally one day the sun comes out and shows up the shadows and edges to things and suddenly everything makes sense, even the things you thought never would. At long last, you have an explanation. It’s the sun, you say to yourself, and you look up with a smile. This whole damn time, it was just the sun.