If you know anything about autism, please read this!
I'm a 20 y/o girl with a physical disability. I've always been the "weird one" at kindergarten and school. But I was never diagnosed with a mental disorder. However, when I got into middle school, I learnt more about mental disorders and wondered if I could be affected. I considered having social anxiety, depression, ARFID, trauma and other unspecified disorders.
Some weeks ago, I started to get educated on autism. I'm a hobby author and wanted to write about an autistic girl, so I did some research. While writing and doing research, I started to relate more and more to my character's story. I could easily describe her having problems with and not being interested in social interaction with peers. I related to her while I wrote scenes where she felt left out like an alien for not being like the others, where she didn't know how to keep a conversation going without being boring, where she struggles to find out at what point in a conversation or phone call she can start to talk and when it's time to be quiet and listen. While writing about her needing a routine and not being able to accept even small changes in her life, I felt like I was writing about myself.
At some point, I decided to do more research and I read about typically autistic food intake problems. There are plenty of accounts, blogs,... for parents of autistic children about food. And I feel like these are exactly describing my own problems with eating. I've always been difficult when it comes to food, I'm considered a picky eater but I know it's more. Picky eating is different. My eating habits are terrible and I can't change it no matter how hard I try. For example, I need my mum to cut bananas in a certain way and remove brown parts of it so that I can eat it. And bananas are even a SAFE fruit for me, it's the fruit I can eat best on its own, there's actually barely any other fruit I eat in a "normal" way. Just for example.
I'm hypersensitive about sensory experiences. Many noises that others don't consider annoying maybe a little bit, literally hurt me. I'm very sensitive to smells, I feel sick if someone's eating a tomato or strawberry anywhere in the room and going by train is often almost making me throw up because of the many different smells. In a lecture hall, I notice the slight smell of smoke at people's jackets even though they are more than 10m away from me and I'm sitting next to the window.
I'm easily distracted: I can concentrate on a book I like for more than 1, sometimes even 3 hours, but if I'm not 100% into the thing I'm supposed to do, it's hard for me to stay focused for more than 5 minutes without help.
Even the less important symptoms like noticing many details and being fascinated by dates, patterns,... apply to me.
There are also other autism symptoms that I think apply to me, but I can't list them all.
I kinda suspect I'm autistic despite not being diagnosed during my whole childhood - even though I saw a psychologist a couple of times and I used to have doctor's appointments regularly.
I plan to ask my mum if I can see a professional to possibly get a diagnosis or get the confirmation that I'm NOT autistic. I think about not telling her details but I'm going to only say that I'm suspecting something and I want to see a professional to get it confirmed or not (it might not be the nicest way because she would worry but I know that I couldn't tell her before I spoke to a doctor).
Since I'm still insecure about the whole thing, it would really help me if you could tell me about your (or someone you know) story. How did you notice you're autistic? How does it show?
Even though I'm feeling like 95% of autism symptoms (that are mentioned online or in books) apply to me, I somehow feel like I'm exaggerating and maybe I'm just reading too much about it. I'm not really scared of getting the diagnosis - I would actually be relieved because it'd make sense and explain so much about my life starting from kindergarten until now.
I fear that my suspicion is ridiculous. I've always been different, shy, socially awkward and mocked by classmates. I've always wondered why I'm even different when it came to things that's couldn't be related to my physical illnesses. Why I couldn't have normal convos with classmates, why my ideas in houseplay were considered strange and dumb, why I never liked what my classmates were interested in, ...
But I'm scared that I'm over interpreting it and it's just me, not a disorder or something else, and that my suspicion is the most unrealistic thing my doctor will hear that week.
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