This might be my public outing. Here is the thing, when I was 24, I finally started noticing other people, and that they did not seem to think like I think, act like I act, or any number of other things. Up until that point, I just lived like I do without the realization that I was all that different.
I am lucky that I never noticed other people – people in high school basically ignored me, I did not get bullied. My old school parents just dealt with whatever I did, they didn’t go looking for a diagnosis, I was just Darcy, and they loved that. College was great, I immediately made friends with two people who just accepted me and my quirks and didn’t question it.
Then I started working, and THAT is when I started getting called out on things, and when the differences in the way I existed versus other people really became apparent. My logic makes complete sense to me, but not to most other people. I would be given a task, and I would do it the way it made sense to me – which resulted in me having to redo many tasks. I noticed that other people just seemed to know what to do, but I needed step by step instructions so that I didn’t insert my “logic”.
I also seemed to be the only person who needed to be corrected, often, on what is inappropriate to say to coworkers or customers, and that there are subtexts that other people just understood, and I had to be educated about.
After a couple years of this – blessings upon my manager at the time, who actually took the time to teach me these things – it was suggested I should see a psychologist and find out if something was going on there that might be fixed. So I did. The first guy I saw spent five minutes with me and said “You have ADD, take Adderall”. So I did. I lost a lot of weight and felt like I was constantly snorting coke – I zoomed around, I got a LOT done, I sweat a lot, and eventually, I started having insane mood swings that became violent.
I went to another shrink who said if that was my reaction to Adderall, the first shrink should have known to not have me on it. She spent many hours with me talking about things, and giving me a lot of tests, and she said hey, you’re autistic. This was around 2002 maybe, so all I knew about autism was Rain Man. And I was not Rain Man so I said “haha, no I’m not” and I left.
I went to another shrink, and did not mention I had been anywhere else, I treated it as a first appointment. Same thing, hours of talking, lots of tests, and the result of “Hey, you are autistic”.
This happened with 4 different psychiatrists before I finally thought, maybe I’m autistic.
I told my best friend, and her response was “Oh my god, you didn’t know?”. She was much more savvy than I was. I didn’t tell anyone else, until I met my good friend who is also autistic. We worked with the same manager at the same store, and I was significantly older, so I had a lifetime of adapting behind me. My friend was still learning, but the more we interacted, the more I realized that the diagnosis was correct. It didn’t change anything, but it was there. And I never told anyone. My family doesn’t know. If one of them reads this, it will be news to them. Which is strange, because I am almost positive my brother and my dad also fall on that spectrum.
It has been an issue throughout my life, but I like myself so much, and I think my autistic brain contributes to my confidence and self appreciation. It definitely contributes to the fact that I lack shame and I am not self conscious because I just don’t care what people think. I want to be the best at work, and succeed, but if someone doesn’t like me, I will gladly write an essay about why they are wrong to not like me, but I don’t actually care that they don’t like me.
I am going to write more about my experiences, past and present, with being an autistic female adult, but this is my origin story, so I thought I would share it first.
That is it, I am done with this one.
Darcy