*untitled because I can’t think of a title*

I can’t stop thinking about my upcoming appointment with the psychologist on Wednesday. I’m trying so hard to be “normal” and I’m stressed about everything (Christmas is next week(!!!!!!) and we still need to ship everything and life is hectic because of that) but really I can’t focus on anything because all apparently all my brain can think about is that appointment. In less than 48 hours, I’ll have an answer.

And it’s like, whichever way it goes is… I’ll have feelings about.

Because if she says that I AM autistic, then what I’ve thought and suspected and wondered about for half my life was right. I’ll get that validation that I crave. I’ll know that I wasn’t just a weird little kid who didn’t fit in and who struggled with making friends and who the world was just too much for. I’ll know that I wasn’t just “over dramatic.” I’ll know the why for all of it. Like I wasn’t weird, I was just autistic. If I am. But also, I’ll be so sad for my childhood self who thought that SHE was too much and who never understood why she had to work so much harder to interact with people, when it seemed to be so effortless to everyone else. If the psychologist says I am, I just wish I could go back in time and hug my younger self and tell her that her brain just works differently from the people around her. I’d tell her she wasn’t too much or too dramatic or too shy or too quiet or too anything. There’s that saying, it’s something along the lines of “there’s comfort in knowing you’re a normal zebra, not a weird horse” and that resonates with me so much. When my mom asked why I wanted to have that assessment/evaluation, I told her I just needed to know. I needed to know that I was perfectly “normal” - a normal “zebra”, a normal autistic person. And that’s what I would want to tell little me.

But on the other hand, if the psychologist says that I’m *not* autistic, I don’t know how I would process that. Because it would change my entire worldview. I’ve spent the past 16 years wondering if I might be autistic and the past 7 or 8 years being fairly certain that I am. And if that’s wrong??? If I’m not??? Where would I go from there? What would I do from there? How do you handle life when something you’ve believed for half your life to be true isn’t? 

I trust the psychologist, and she’ll say what she says. I’ll either find out that I was right and that I am autistic, or I’ll find out that I’m not. And I just. I want to know. But I’m also so scared to know, to get that answer. Roughly 44 and a half hours from now, I’ll know. And that’s so completely nerve wracking.