Accepting Autism

I thought a diagnosis of autism meant I’d lost myself, when the reality is, it gives me permission to really and truly meet myself on a much deeper level.

I feel like I’ve been wearing everyone else’s clothes. Some people give them to me, some people force them onto me. In other instances I’ve gone and bought the same outfit. Well, I’m taking them all off. I was getting really hot under there and I don’t know what I was thinking…some of those dresses looked shit on me.

So now I’m naked.
I’m naked and when you’re naked you’re vulnerable.

I’m seeing marks on my body left there by clothes that were too tight; my own lumps and dips that I’ve tried to cover for so long are now exposed again and it’s fucking scary. I’m ready to leap at the first tee someone gives me, but I’m trying to sit in the discomfort of exposure. So, I’m knitting my own socks. I’ll start there. I can knit but not very well. I’m very aware that these socks will probably be odd and might be more akin to one of those bright orange wind socks you’ll see on bridges and motorways. But hey, even they’re called ‘socks’. I’m trying to be content with the idea that my socks will be good enough for me. Eventually, my entire outfit (that I’ll have found and made myself) will be perfect. It might be a bit baggy in places and the colours will definitely not be coordinated, but it will be mine. Though I am thrifty, I’ll wear someone else’s jumper if it’s a good fit and doesn’t come at a high price. Some of the clothes I’ve taken off will have stains and I can just fuck them off forever, but others…well they actually looked pretty good too. Maybe, eventually, I’ll rummage through the pile and pick out the best bits before I incinerate them and give them as an offering to Hades.

If it wasn’t immediately obvious, I’m trying to write about my experience of being officially diagnosed as a neurospicy autistic lass. I always said I didn’t think a diagnosis would change anything for me, it is of course, just validation that my brain works in a non-conventional way. It’s just who I am so…what even is the point of diagnosis anyway? But then, I had good ol’ Charley tell me “we can confirm you are autistic” and I cried. Not the reaction I expected to have at all. I thought I’d shrug it off with a “yeah, I thought so” and then I’d continue with my life as I have been. Reader, that is not what happened. Instead, something clunked and clicked and a rusty key was turned in my psyche and “hello” it said, “are you ready to be kind to yourself now?”

I was shown all of the ways that I mask on a daily basis; all the edges I throw myself off regularly just to make other people comfortable were revealed. I push myself really fucking hard to try and meet the norms and societal conventions with complete disregard to how I actually feel. I’ll tell myself I’ll like things I don’t actually like because other people like them; the same with things people find ‘fun’ and ‘successful’ - I’ll force myself to find these things fun too. Fuck it, even going to groups where the unconventional, weird and ‘quirky’ was welcomed, the apparently ‘safe spaces’ where I could be myself, never made me feel like I could ‘be myself’. Guess what, people still gave me their clothes to borrow for the weekend.

I attended gatherings and circles where ‘healing’ was the main focus, but self acceptance kinda wasn’t. ‘You can be better, you’re not your past, you’re not your brain, you can overcome anything at all. You’re not good enough as you are, ascend, change, grow, ascend, ascend, ascend, be better, push yourself’. The idea of having autism felt like something that wasn’t just limiting, it’s something that was in my head that I could control. I was convinced I could train myself to not be autistic, all I needed to do was to get out of my comfort zone. LOL.

I think back on all the things I forced myself to do because I didn’t want to be limited by a label. In some instances, that’s absolutely true, like, being autistic isn’t a valid excuse to give up on yourself, to not grow as a person. You can be autistic and still go on a journey of self development and change…it’s just you do it when it’s right for you. For example, I look back on a time when I had a severe, year long bout of deep depression and anxiety in 2016. Daily panic attacks, codependent, the lowest self esteem, numb all the time. It was a bit like how I imagine being stranded in space to be: surrounded by darkness (and a cool collection of rocks), lonely, scary, seeing the entire earth and all that community, potential and love right there but not being able to just reach out to it. Instead you’re just floating around thinking that if you’re lucky enough, maybe one of those cool space rocks will just pummel into the side of your skull and put you out of your misery.

CBT didn’t work. Therapy didn’t work. This needed a different approach. So, in a turn of events, I found myself leaving the (dis)comfort of my home and life as I knew it, and I flew to France, where I then walked across the Pyrenees and into Spain and continued on the Camino de Santiago. Alone.

Now, no one told me to do this, this was a calling that felt right. This was me putting my own full briefs on instead of wearing the thong someone else wanted me to wear. This was an expansion of my comfort zone I chose for me, at a time it felt right. Also, bear in mind that I had no idea I was autistic at the time, but the want to hike solo now makes a lot more sense. It also made sense why I quit walking after 10 days, because the anxiety of sharing a room with a bunch of strangers every night, let alone the anxiety of not knowing if I’d get a bed to sleep in, was too much. I beat myself up for so long about saying I hiked the camino when the reality was I walked 10 days and city hopped the rest via the bus for the final week, staying in cheap, single, Airbnb rooms where I had minimal interaction with other people; finding spaces where it was acceptable to be in the presence of others without having to small talk, think so many cathedrals, museums and galleries. I did this so much that I got to the point where I was actually comfortable with taking myself out to a cafe or restaurant for lunch instead of being a little troll retreating to my den with my shop bought snacks so I could eat without fear of ‘do I look weird while I’m eating?’ I grew. I escaped my own head. I was still fucking autistic, but I was making it work for me. Hindsight is a great thing. I turned that experience into one that met my needs rather than forcing myself to do a pilgrimage in a way that was deemed ‘the only way’. I had a better experience because I put my needs (even though I didn’t know what they were) first. I adapted a situation to meet my requirements and guess what, it was fucking life changing. So yes, sometimes pushing yourself is required. People with autism are allowed to grow and change just as much as anyone else, but they’ll do it in their own way, at their own pace.

There was once a time when I thought having a diagnosis of autism would be limiting, but actually it is incredibly liberating. If I’m being brutally honest about it, there was a time when I thought being diagnosed with autism meant I was choosing to limit myself. That’s what I’d been taught; it’s the impression given to me by those who are, I assume, neurotypical. So I actively fought against it to try and find who I really was. Ha. All that happened is more masking. I joined workshops and courses to ‘find myself’ all the while I was actively avoiding accepting a massive part of myself. I thought a diagnosis of autism meant I’d lost myself, when the reality is, it gives me permission to really and truly meet myself on such a deeper level.

I’m naked and I’m making my own socks. I’ve only just cast on and I’m not following a pattern, so who knows what they’ll look like. All I know is that I’ll have made them, they’ll be mine, and I’ll rock the shit out of those bad bois.

I’ll probably write a bit more about my experience of this as I go through the journey of finding some self acceptance and being an autistic woman and mother. If you’re into that, as well as the occassional ramble about things I’ve thought about while I’ve been out on a stroll, consider subscribing, even to a free tier - currently absolutely everything is accessible whether you’re a paid subscriber or not.