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theoldaeroplane · 10 months

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Man; this last year has been so strange for me in terms of my perception of myself.

It has been not quite a year since I said to my [redacted] that my fussiness over people at my work not following any sensible structure in their code was so strong that you would almost think I'm autistic. I'm not sure why it was that idle thought, specifically, that made me start researching what having autism actually looks like. It was such a tremendous breakthrough for me once I started reading, in a way it hasn't been for some friends that have offhandedly mentioned they thought they might be autistic. (It's possible they're having their own breakthroughs in private, but I don't think so.)

Suddenly I had Explanations for why I am the way I am. I had the language. I didn't have to constantly fall back on "I guess I'm just overly sensitive" or "I'm weird like that" with no obvious cause.

On the heels of this, and I mean like three weeks after I started reading, I began to suspect I might have ADHD as well. I've suspected this in the past, I even took a test, but I was told I didn't have it. And they were the professional, and I paid hundreds of dollars for that test, so surely it meant I didn't have it, right? My problems with time and attention and memory must just be quirks. I must just not care enough.

Buddy.

Earlier this year I finally got an appointment with a psychiatrist, who asked me some questions and gave me a prescription. It had to change a few times before we found one that balanced side effects and symptom relief.

I can't tell you how strange it's been to watch my perception of myself change. For most of my life, I was told I was weird, lazy, that I didn't care enough, that I was too sensitive, that I needed to try harder, that I had so much potential I wasn't living up to, that I was acting different on purpose, that I thought I was so special. I internalized all of it. I believed all of it. What else could I do? I was a kid. Something was wrong and the adults in my life decided it was those things.

No one ever thought I might be autistic. No one ever suggested I might have ADHD. Not even my dad, who also has ADHD, who is probably autistic himself.

I do my best not to be bitter. The world was different when I was a kid. Information was hard to come by and we were poor. For all that I've come to hate my mother I understand that she herself was struggling heavily with her own mental health. I'm angry I slipped under the radar, but I don't know if anyone can really be blamed. And being angry can't change the past. All I can do now is move forward.

I have to remind myself, often, that I am a good person. (The fact I was raised to believe that all people are inherently wicked is another post.) That I am trying my best, and operating under a fundamentally broken system that is intolerant to people who don't fit its borders. That if the screaming and shaming and self-flagellating were going to work they would have done so by now. That my brain is built in such a way that causes it to constantly feel both over- and under-stimulated. That I'm not broken.

I was, as the story goes, a cygnet being raised by ducks, who simply got more and more frustrated when their strange duckling did not act the way a duckling should.

Well. I guess I'm a swan now. A swan with baggage, which is a funny image. I can't quack, but I can trumpet. And I have wings so powerful that they can break bones. (Just go with the metaphor.) More importantly, I know I'm not a duck, and I'm learning I don't have to keep trying to be one.

#corgijournals!

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