#authentically autistic

[dependently-und3cided]

Burnout

[dependently-und3cided]

Sweep me up in your arms

Tell me I'm safe

Show me I'm safe

Wipe away my tears

And fight off my demons

Tell me I'm safe

Show me I'm safe

When the trauma rears it's ugly head

Hold me

Protect me

Love me

Tell me I'm safe

Show me I'm safe.

[st-dorothy-minority]

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRsGUsMQ/

Embracing my autism be like this

[st-dorothy-minority]

Here's an authentically autistic confession:

I hate being autistic.

I hate being unable to make and retain friends

I hate getting hyperfixated on things/people

I hate being unable to accept gray in a world of black and white, all or nothing

I hate being unable to quiet my mind

I hate being unable to understand social cues and navigating social settings or be in groups (online and offline)

I hate being too much

I hate that I feel things so intensely

[st-dorothy-minority]

Yesterday was the last day of autism awareness/acceptance month.

I still haven't quite accepted myself....

[st-dorothy-minority]

One thing I'm very grateful for is having a boss who has an autistic daughter in high school. He has been so understanding and days like today where I can ask "Can I come in and vent for a minute?" And he listens and assures me, "It's not the autism; that would be frustrating for anyone" and just has a way of calming me down and indulging my little idiosyncrasies.

He's like my work dad. He's incredible. It feels great to feel seen, heard, and valued.

[st-dorothy-minority]

Autism and me

"I fucking hate autism."

That was one of my first thoughts after I was diagnosed (a little over a month ago now). I rode the waves of emotions, ran all the stages of grief. Things had gotten so bad emotionally/mentally that I was determined to figure out what was wrong with me and needed an official diagnosis so we could start catering therapy sessions more to dealing with it. I never once considered the dreaded “A” word until a friend suggested I look into it. After taking some online tests and reading up on how it presents in women, I thought, “Yes! This is me! This explains it!” I presented the idea to my therapist and assessments were ordered. At the following session, even though I knew it in my heart by then, as she was going over the results and concluded I was autistic, I cried. I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. I felt that couldn’t be right. Along with autism, I have obsessive compulsive personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, severe anxiety and depression.

The next few days were an emotional roller coaster, and I kept coming back to the phrase, “What’s worse? Being the weird, awkward, shy girl or the autistic girl?” As a woman in her early 30s, finding out you’ve been living life on “hard mode” (as one of the books I read described it) and never feeling like you fit in or that something was wrong with you or you don’t know who you are because you put on a mask every day to be what people need you to be – it was a lot to handle. That what you thought was normal is not, and the fear of people “knowing” what you didn’t and secretly judging you is tough. Not to mention the anger of not having this diagnosis earlier in life and potentially putting proper support systems in place to deal with it better.

With this being Autism Awareness month, this past week I’ve found myself revisiting that thought of “I fucking hate that I have autism. I hate autism.”

Things that are so simple for others are so difficult and complicated for me. Getting out of the house, grocery shopping, making a phone call, accepting an invitation to a get-together, driving – the list goes on. Anything that disrupts my routine and outside my “norm” is upsetting. Being social is the worst. Constantly thinking “I’m saying something wrong, what if I offended the person? What do they think of me? I shouldn’t have said that. Why *didn’t* I say that? I’m being too much. I’m not being enough. What do I say?” The feeling of constantly failing as a friend is exhausting. I feel like I ruin friendships, and I never know why, or I just self-sabotage myself because it’s pain upfront versus pain later. I can’t tell when someone doesn’t want to be a friend or when someone *shouldn’t* be a friend. I’m loyal and take people at face-value, and I can’t seem to learn that not everyone is meant to be a friend.

I want to be an active member of fandom, yet I can’t seem to make friends or engage properly, including the restraints I’ve put on myself of not reading fanfic of others because I compare myself way too much and feel so insecure and “Why do I even bother?” when everyone else is so much better at writing than I am. I talk too much about what I want to talk about, dominating the conversations or putting restrictions because I can’t handle talking about a certain thing; combine that with my inability to regulate emotions well, I am seen as manipulating or “too much” and more often than not, I crash and burn the friendship without meaning to. It also doesn’t help that one of the things with autistic women is becoming obsessed/hyperfixated on not only interests but also people – I do just that with someone I find interested in the same fandom/thing as I am. I get so excited someone wants to talk to me and we share a common interest; I then get a bit obsessive with them as a person. In the current book I’m reading (“Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder” by Sarah Hendrickx), it had this to say about autistic girls, and it certainly holds true for me as an adult:

“…The friend can become a subject of fascination and focus, which can cause enormous distress if and when she decides she wants to play with other children”

It’s followed by a quote from another woman with autism: “From a very young age, I craved exclusivity with a ‘best friend’.”

Another statement that hit hard was: “It is possible to be *too* sociable (according to expected norms), with too few boundaries and little understanding of the feelings and intentions of others.”

I become way more attached to the other person than they ever are to me. And it’s a tough lesson to learn over and over again.

With each day, I’m trying to be kinder to myself, to be mindful of my differences and be more accepting. Some days, I don’t notice it much. Other days, I notice, but it’s manageable. And then some days, it really does feel like a disability.

I’m not sure what the point of this post was. Maybe it’s just me trying to recapture some of the things going on in my head since the diagnosis. Maybe it’s me trying to help others in some sort of way. Maybe it’s like an apology letter to the friends I met in fandom who couldn’t deal with me anymore (though I know they won’t see this….). Today is a day I still hate being autistic, and no one hates me more than I hate myself for it.

Happy Autism Awareness month, y'all.

(If you are interested in books on women with autism, I highly recommend the following. I have torn through them faster than I thought I would. I think reading about women and autism is a new hyperfixation….)

[asupportedlife]

This morning’s sensory support is touch, in the form of modelling clay. My son loves bugs, not real ones but toys are ok. He loves the caterpillar I made the other day and I know he will love these just as much. They’ll be a neat find for him when he comes home from kindy.

Image description: four small multicoloured handmade worms sit on white baking paper. They’re made up of red, light and dark blue, pink, purple, white and yellow modelling clay. They have very small eyes and are all in their own form of wiggly shape.