Me and my autism
A note from Challenging Challenges: One of our friends, Jeanette, has autism, and she was recently diagnosed with it, only a year and a half ago. We asked her to explain what her life is like, what changed and how she feels, we left it in her own, words which you can read below.
There is a line where she says: “I’m different, with the wish to be ‘normal’.” It is clear, this is a diagnosis that she is still coming to terms with. We, at Challenging Challenges, want Jeanette, want you reading this, want your friends and family to know, there is no such thing as ‘normal’, you’re perfect the way you are.
All three co-founders spent years wishing to be ‘normal’, trust us, it doesn’t exist. To quote Taylor Swift: “Be yourself there’s no one better.”
My name is Jeannette and I’m autistic. They diagnosed me when I was 24, I’m now 26. Today I wrote about my life with autism. I have two sisters and had always the feeling that I’m different. I would compare myself to others, and others would also see that I’m different when they talked to me. I compared myself with other people in my primary school, in my high school and during my A-Levels. I’m different, with the wish to be “normal“. What is different about me? I just eat five or six things on repeat. I hate to try new things in every aspect of my life. I just like to eat the meals my mother cook. She lives 100km far away, that means I do my daily menus at home myself, these consist of pizza and spaghetti (always the same kind) from Monday to Sunday. Sometimes, on bad days I’ll eat the same for every meal.
I smell things more than other people and when that happens my brain gets stressed really quickly. I hear things louder, I smell things more intensely but my brain can’t deal with it. The result is I sometimes freak out, I cry out, I got quiet, I hide and I can’t talk to people.
My brain can’t overload itself if there is too much information I begin to lose myself. These meltdowns make me tired or sometimes I’m not even able to explain why this happened. I can’t eat meals that have strong smells e.g. like onions or cheese.
But there is a smell I need to live. The smell of my clothes after they came out of the washing machine. I don’t use perfume or anything else, I just need the smell of “my” washing powder and softener. It sounds crazy but I can’t wear my clothes when they don’t have this smell. I can’t sleep in my bed when it doesn’t smell like this. It’s been like this for years. Maybe you’re asking why. I don’t know.
There is much more. I had to learn new things before I thought someone is smiling – they are happy, someone is crying – they are sad. At the age of 25, I learnt not every crying person is sad, some of them are happy or proud. Now, I can learn things really quickly, but basic things in life I sometimes don’t know. That’s me and my autism.
Not every autistic person is like the other. I’m pretty good at self-reflecting. But we all have some parts from the spectrum. Not every one of us is a “brain“ or genius, I hate maths but I’m really good at remembering numbers. I have friends, my friends have learnt to deal with me. I’m friendly and I give love to people hugs even though there are certain people I can’t hug.
Sometimes I don’t understand jokes or conversations but when they explain me things with examples of Harry Potter or Disney movies I understand things. I always tried to be “normal”, like my sisters, and I hid every different characteristic I recognized about myself. That made me ill, sad and depressed. Trying to be someone I wasn’t led me to be in a hospital for a while, I had to keep going back as an ‘interval patient’ because the doctors weren’t fully trained in how to deal with autistic patients.
They called me unfriendly because I wasn’t able to look in their eyes – typical autistic.
They called me naughty because I always said what was on my mind – typical autistic.
They called me trouble because I don’t like changing doctors all the time – typical autistic.
After nearly two years, I eventually met a therapist who told me I’m not naughty, that I’m not bad, that I’m actually lovely in my own way. She started to look after me and teach me about being autistic.
I freak out when someone says: “Harry Potter”. My autism is invisible but the characters in these books are also special and these books have helped me to become who I am today and be proud of myself.
