TLDR; Spoiler Alert, It Was Autism All Along

I know I already posted almost this same post, but I'm debating posting on Facebook/Instagram (probably Facebook, eventually, because I feel it'll be too long to put as an Insta caption. I always do use more words than necessary and things always wind up longer than I plan for) and I want to have planned out what I'm typing.  I want my words thought out and in order and for them to make sense.

Growing up, I knew I was different.  I didn't know how or why but I knew from a young age that I was different from my peers - and they knew it too.  Because I didn't know the "why" and I didn't have a reason and I didn't have a word to describe it, the labels that were assigned to me from the people around me were things like strange, weird, quiet, shy, nerd, geek, anxious, different, needy, loser, over-sensitive, dramatic.  I practiced facial expressions in the mirror and watched my friends' faces and body language to mimic mine to, to the point where they'd ask "why are you staring at me?" (I wasn't staring, I was studying. Trying so hard to learn how to be a human in all the "right" ways).  I was anxious and upset if the school bus ran late in the afternoon because it meant I would miss more than just the first seven minutes of Pokémon.  I cried when we had an unexpected early dismissal from school and when the teachers would redo the classroom seating charts.  I’d ask teachers for an itinerary before a field trip so I’d know exactly what to expect.  Touching textbook paper made it feel like someone was stabbing the insides of my ears and my stomach churned if my fingernails touched a terracotta pot.  I could touch normal paper most days, but if I was tired or stressed then I’d need to pull my shirtsleeves over my hand to be able to write without touching the paper.  I memorized the order of the songs on Now That’s What I Call Music volume 14 (my first of the Now CDs) and repeated them in order again and again in my head when there were too many people or sounds around.  I was over summer break roughly 3 days into it because I craved the routine of the school day and hated that I wasn’t in a classroom learning new things.  For a long period of my life, I refused to get into the car unless I was told where we were going.

I was an easy target for people to bully and pick on and exclude, and had too many one-sided "friendships" where I was good enough for people to copy my homework but not good enough to be invited to their birthday parties or sleepovers.  Don't get me wrong, I had real friendships too, people who I was comfortable with and felt safe with and who never seemed to care that I was "weird" - but I could count those people on one hand.  Some of them I haven't talked to in too many years, but I still feel their presence and friendship in my heart and still think of them as my friends and as people who shaped my life at such pivotal times and in such important ways that I wouldn't be me if I hadn't known and loved them.

My first semester of college at Columbia-Greene, I was 17 when the semester started and turned 18 just a few weeks later in October, I took a public communications class.  It was a small class and the instructor fostered such a feeling of friendship and closeness amongst us that I felt comfortable around those basically-strangers.  I'm still Facebook friends with some of them and celebrate their wins and mourn their losses from a distance brought on by the passage of time and by, well, literal distance.  At one point in the class, we had to give a presentation and a classmate gave hers about autism.  At that time, I didn't know anything about autism outside of crude stereotypes.  I watched and listened to my classmate's presentation and for the first time in my life, I felt seen.  With so much of what she was saying, I kept thinking "this is me" and "this is the explanation I've been looking for" and "this is me" but also "how could this be me?"  My ears perked up the more she was saying, but I didn’t want to look too interested.  I left class that day wondering if it was possible that I might be just a little bit autistic.  

But I was 17.  Despite thinking I knew everything, the reality was that I didn't know anything.  I felt in my heart and, somehow, right down into my soul, so deeply, that "autism" described me, I also kept thinking of reasons I couldn't be autistic.  When it came down to it, all the stereotypes I'd seen throughout life told me no.  I wasn't a boy.  I wasn't obsessed with trains.  I wasn't a genius at math.  I couldn't tell you what day of the week it was on March 18th 1863.  I could talk.  I could make eye contact.  I got good grades - hell, I was in college.  And besides, I remember thinking to myself, if I was autistic, wouldn't someone have known when I was a kid?  Wouldn't it have been picked up on by someone, anyone, in my life?  I wondered and I thought maybe, but everything I thought I knew kept me from researching more at that point in my life.

I transferred from CoGreen to Potsdam and that change was hard.  Everything was new.  I didn't know anybody and I was four and a half hours away from everyone I knew and from everything that was good and comfortable and normal in my life.  I will forever be grateful that the universe worked the way it did and I wound up living on the floor I did that first year at Potsdam.  I'm glad our RA, Ben, brought us together and made us feel like family.  I'm glad my original roommate never showed up and I had a room to myself for the first few weeks until Anna, who I'd become friends with, and I decided to room together.  I'm glad that even though it was beyond exhausting being around all these new people, Sam and Chris and Anna and LeeAnna all kept talking to me and kept inviting me to do things with them and didn't give up when I didn't have the words to talk back, and didn't give up when I couldn't eat in the student union with them because there were too many people and too many sounds and too many different smells from all the different food around, and didn't give up when real life was too much and I couldn't hang out with them and needed to just hide away in my dorm room with a book and Taylor Swift music playing.  I became inseparable from them because they saw me and they accepted me exactly the way I was, and they made my college experience what it was.

Anna asked me once, a few weeks after we started rooming together, if I was autistic.  She just came out and asked it.  And even though I wondered and thought maybe, I got defensive and shot that idea down.  I thought I might be, but I wasn't going to say that because I still thought of it as a bad thing.  As something to hide and never mention.  She brought it up a couple more times, telling me that I really did remind her of her autistic niece (or maybe it was cousin. or family friend. it's been over a decade and the person I reminded her of no longer lives clearly in my memory) but each time I shut down the conversation. Because obviously I wasn't autistic.  I was in college, wasn't I? I wasn't a boy, was I?  I struggled through my math classes and cried because I didn’t understand the stupid math concepts, didn't I? I could talk, couldn't I?  I thought maybe, maybe, maybe, I don't know but maybe, but all I could say was no.  And I wondered and I wondered and I thought, could this be possible??? - after all, I'd spent two years wondering and now other people, people who didn't grow up in my small town or go to my small school and who hadn't known me "since forever" had noticed too.

Time and life both went on.  More people asked me.  I kept denying it.  I couldn't even tell them that I suspected it was true because I wanted so badly to just be normal.  I took the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) Test online again and again and it kept saying the same thing.  I kept scoring in the same range, the range where autism was likely.  The questions kept frustrating me because they weren't specific enough.  How could I say if I definitely or slightly agreed or disagreed if I didn’t have enough information to properly answer the question?

I found myself googling "am I autistic?" and "can you be autistic without knowing it?" and "how do I know if I'm autistic?" and "can you be autistic and still normal?"  I took tests like the AQ online over and over again and kept getting the same results - that autism was highly likely.  I followed autistic content creators online and bought books by autistic authors.  It made sense in a way nothing else ever had. By my late-20s, I was still wondering but I was also fairly certain I knew.  I felt pretty sure that neurotypical people didn't spend over a decade wondering if they could possibly be autistic.

As an adult, I found myself feeling like I was constantly teetering on the precipice of complete burnout and not knowing why.  No one else seemed to be struggling.  No one else needed to call out of work for two days because they went to a concert over the weekend.  No one else needed earplugs to be able to enjoy a hockey game.  No one else was exhausted to the point of not being able to speak after a long day at work or breaking down crying at home because customers in the office were loud at the end of the day.  No one else was getting home and seeing the dishes in the sink and suddenly feeling so overwhelmed and helpless over ANOTHER thing to get done.  No one else was planning their conversations for the next day the night before.  No one else was feeling how I was feeling and I didn’t know WHY so I just kept pushing myself to do better, do more, keep going, try harder, because clearly (I felt) the problem was me. Me, not being good enough at being a person.

My wife and I have good health insurance and so almost two months ago I saw a psychologist to find out for sure once and for all.  At the final appointment, the psychologist asked how I was feeling going into this appointment, knowing that one way or the other, I would know after that day.  I told her I was nervous, that this was the appointment I was most anxious about.  She asked why.  I tried to explain but I didn’t have words.  I'd thought this about myself for so long - almost half my life - and if I was wrong, what was I supposed to do next? If I was wrong, then what was the explanation?  If I was wrong, then what was wrong with me?  She said she understood and then she said three words that have never been more beautiful to hear.

She said "you're not wrong."

I wanted to cry.  I've never felt more relief in my entire life.  I had an answer.  I wasn't strange/weird/different (I mean, I know now that those descriptors aren't terrible and honestly I am all of those things. In the best way), I was just autistic.  I cannot even begin to explain how getting that diagnosis made me feel, just having that validation, just knowing.

I've seen posts online.  I've seen people ask why getting a diagnosis as an adult matters.  What the point is, because there really aren't too many resources available for autistic adults.  What difference it makes in your everyday life.  And for me, I needed to know.  I needed an answer to a question I'd been asking myself for nearly half my life.  I needed permission to be kinder to my younger self.  I needed that diagnosis so I could let myself be kinder to my current self, to treat myself with more grace and more understanding.  I needed to know for myself, to know that it wasn't that I wasn't failing at being a person, that life truly was harder growing up for me than for the majority of my peers, that it wasn't all in my head.  On one hand, nothing in my life has changed since getting diagnosed as autistic in December. I'm still the same person I've always been.  But on the other hand, everything has changed because I'm still myself, but I know more about myself now.  And THAT is why it matters.

Anyway.

TLDR. Spoiler alert, I'm autistic.