“To be a female with an ASC [autism spectrum condition] is to be twice excluded: once from the neurotypical female population, and once again from the [autism] community” (Shefcyk, 2015)

The opening quote for this blog resonates with me a lot…but…let me backtrack one second.

I have been away for a hot minute. A million reasons, which I am sure will be discussed in these blogs as the months go on, as this is where I tend to speak about the realness of life. But not today.

“You’re so autistic.”

It’s a ‘joke’. Banter. Something that is often said to someone when they act a certain way. I have said it myself. But actually, looking back, to people who I recognized as being on the spectrum but also not understanding what that meant to me. But still, I hope I never caused offense.

Autism was not something that was mentioned when I was growing up. But looking back, I can now identify many people in my area who would now be diagnosed as autistic but back then were classed as strange or just different. All of them boys. Because, you know…girls mask it so much better, apparently.

Apparently….

I have wondered how deep to go with this blog, but as many of you know (mainly by my spelling mistakes), I write all my blogs in one take…. type and post. I have struggled to write for a long time, and now I am back. I can only do it how I know how…so here goes.

I was always different growing up. I can’t exactly say how because you need to factor in environment and trauma, but I was different from many of my peers. I was very young when I realised I thought about things very differently from those around me. For example, lights. I had a big issue with the light in classrooms or formal offices like social care. First, the lights made me feel sick. Like, throw up sick. Because they have this kind of “heat” light I can feel and see (See, already, I’m regretting opening this Pandora’s box). Second, I can hear the lights most of the time. Buzzing. And it used to drive me mad. Third, the kind of light makes me feel like everything is amplified and “fake” colors and stuff. Lastly…. There was no escaping them. Just lights everywhere. But how do you verbalize such a thin, especially when you’re already the night kid? Easy…

Turn the light off.

Several times, I was excluded from primary school for ‘low-level disruptive’ behavior or words to that effect. This included climbing under tables and turning lights off. I still struggle with lights now.

If I started writing here all the different things that I can now identify as me being very “different,”  we would be here for a long time.

But let’s say that I went into my teenage years and adulthood becoming more and more aware of how different I was but also trying harder to hide it.

I never actually thought of it as hiding or ‘masking’. I just have always had this voice that says…don’t let them know how crazy you really are.

Because for 43 years, that is precisely what I have thought. That I am a bit mad. I ‘joke ‘about it often… oh, you know I am mad, and that’s why I do that, etc. Sometimes, I have asked people to see if they feel the same as me. Mention certain things that I think or feel, like the lights. Most of them look at me with a storage face as if to say…No I do not think that!…, and I will say….’ only joking as if that’s normal,’ and we will laugh…

But sometimes someone would give me a look to say…I get it.  Many of them are some of the best friends I have ever had.

The biggest problem I have faced in life has been people. Mainly women and girls. I have always struggled to make female friends from a child until now. I don’t get a lot of the ‘politics’ and unsaid rules that come with girlfriends. I don’t really get it when people are being bitchy to me. It took me a long time to realize that many don’t want the truth when asking if they look good in something. I have never been on a girl’s holiday and never lasted very long in groups of more than three. I have thought my whole life, how come everyone else does it. What’s wrong with me?

I don’t often know when people like me.

I also don’t really know when people don’t like me.

Most of the time, I don’t care much about either of the above

What this has resulted in ultimately is exploitation when I was younger and then abusive relationships as a teenager and adult, struggle to keep friends, upsetting people, not picking up specific social cues, breakdown in some of my closet friendships, and the impact is two things mainly

Isolation and sadness.

Imagine (and I know many of you will) that you get it wrong so much that you choose not to be around people, and when you do, you ‘act’; you become a different version of yourself. A person that you have figured out people will kind of accept. But 90% of the time, you are at home alone, with a load of cats, eating yogurt and cookies and watching Bata Squad. Or, you know…something general like that. Because its exhausting. Pretending to be someone that the neurotypical world will accept.

Because pretending is always too much, and what the point…you get it wrong anyway.

You so autistic is the running joke. Until a couple of my trusted people looked me in the eye and said..”You know your autistic…right”?

No

As if

Me

So, I went for the assessment. With the amazing Stephanie Connolly  from Linked Communication

It was an assessment for ADHD and autism, and whilst the ADHD was just a formality, I did not expect that it would come back and say I was autistic. And then I could say to people…no I am not autistic, just mental.

However, after hours and hours of testing and taking, Stephanie and her team delivered the news in an email and then a call…

To tell me that I am autistic and have ADHD.

And I am not joking when I say that I cried on and off for days.

It was like my whole life just got rearranged in front of me.

I am sure I will write about this in depth over the next few months, but it is taking some time to sink in and think about things like all those professionals who blamed me for my own exploitation and sent me to different doctors and specialists for my ‘behavior’ actually allowed an autistic child to go and navigate a very dangerous world with no tools whatsoever to arm herself with.

All the girls and women in my life who have known I am different and have taken advantage of that. The ones that smirk while being unkind, knowing that I won’t realise until later. The ones that have tried to set me up to fail. You know who you are.

And that’s why I cried.

I have to isolate myself sometimes to feel safe. It’s funny that in these times of isolation, my mum used to call “ghosting,” you see who your real people are. The ones that check-in in comparison to the ones. …Who…well don’t.

Once I recovered slightly from the news, I asked to meet Stephanie, and I had one question for her.

And I asked him to be honest.

The question was.

“Am I more autistic than I think I am?”.

She asked me if I wanted the back-and-white truth, and I said yes

and she said…

Yes. You are more autistic than you think you are.

I know that is not the correct terminology, as does Stephanie, Because now I have a million books and am doing a PGC in autism….you know what some autistic people are like…But she knew what I was asking and knew I needed the truth.

I am an autistic woman. There is very little research on Autistic women, and much of the information and studies are based on children or men. So, navigating the world is harder for me. I feel excluded from the Autistic population that seems dominated by a male lens.

I am an autistic woman. I don’t get the ‘rules’ of being friends with neurotypical women. You will need to tell me if I have upset you. You will need to have courage and have real conversations with me. I will need you to tell me if I get it wrong. You must understand that I must tell you if you upset me. I will ask lots of questions. I don’t ‘get’ some of the social rules that society has constructed.

Or don’t.

I feel excluded by the neurotypical female population because I feel that many see that I am different and choose to ignore it for their own gain in life.

I have been gone a hot minute because I didn’t really know who I was. But I am on a journey to finally find out and , as always, I hope you will come along with me…