So I've been harbouring a little secret.....
When Freya was diagnosed we were sent off with a bunch of leaflets about autism, I'd only ever met one child with autism and I'd only seen him a few times briefly and just remember thinking he looked perfectly normal, his mum never said much other than he was obsessed with slamming doors. So I was pretty ignorant to what it was.
As I sat at home reading them I remember thinking that not much of what they were mentioning seemed odd to me, I also began to notice that a lot of the signs and symptoms were things people had moaned at me for doing over the years. I mulled over this in my head but tried to dismiss it.
Clearly I'd forgotten how my mind works and not obsessing over things that worry me is something I don't have control over and so I began thinking about it more and more.
Little things popped into my head from my childhood, how early on I could remember my own ocd crippling my actions, my dad holding my face so I had to look at him when he was talking to me, it still makes me squirm internally, it was so uncomfortable.
I thought about how I'd never had more than one or two friends during my school years and how difficult I'd found it to fit in with anyone.
I started to research further online......
As I read it was like being hit with a sledgehammer, it became less discovering how many signs I had and more trying to find one I didn't have.
Every time I would mention another marker to my partner he would just say "uhuh, fancy that" eventually he just gave me a sad look and said "I have tried to tell you"
My partner's brother and sister are both autistic, one is moderate and one severe so he grew up around autism. He recognised it in Freya long before I would accept she was a little different.
It seemed like a bad joke at the time, he's always got really frustrated with me and said I see things in a completely bizarre way, he can't explain to me, my explanations make no sense to him etc
According to him these randoms comments of "you have such a weird way of looking at things" and "my god you're so special" were meant to be telling me I had a problem?!
After ranting on facebook about it my eldest sister also informed me she had tried to tell me several times!!
I've recognised recently that I don't do subtlety but to my knowledge no one has EVER even remotely suggested to me there was something different about me.
Yes every partner I've ever had has ranted at me about the way I behave but I honestly thought it was just men being idiots and not understanding women.
Yes I've always had anxiety and lived at a high stress level but I have a lot going on in my life so that just seemed normal.
I've got to 36 believing that everyone hated me, that I'm just an annoying unsociable person, I've kept myself to myself to try to protect myself from being hurt.
I feel so angry, everything I thought about myself and my life is now in question.
My sister says autistic people don't find it helpful to have a diagnosis but I disagree, whether I'm on the spectrum or not I would have found it very useful to know that I was struggling for a reason, that it may not have been my fault that I couldn't express myself to others. I have blamed myself for everything that has gone wrong in my past and now I need to know if this is why I've always found life so hard.
Adult diagnosis however is a lot harder to come by and it took me 2 trips to my GP to get a referral. The first time I just couldn't spit out what my concerns were and the doctor ended up suggesting I have my thyroid tested! After many tears and frustrated rants I made a long list of all the things I did that concerned me and reasons why I didn't feel my thyroid was to blame and went back to the GP.
I have just received my appointment and I have to wait until October.
I keep adding to my list and I keep going over and over things in my head and October seems an awfully long way away. I feel like my own identity is hanging in the balance, like I don't know who I really am. I don't know what's real and I can't help but wonder how different my life would have been if someone had actually told me straight out that I needed help.
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