What I wish I’d known before my Asperger’s diagnosis…
As you can tell from my leading picture, I’ve always been a little odd, and through the length of my life it wouldn’t be until many years later after this picture that I would find out why. My brother was diagnosed with autism very young, and while there is less research into ASD and the way it presents itself in girls I was very lucky to be diagnosed.
Many people who know me personally will know I am very open about my Asperger’s diagnosis. We all have a story; all have things that make us who we are. And the way my Asperger’s has affected me through my life is a whole can of worms I want to spill. A whole can of worms I am open about, and proud of, so let’s get wiggling! This is an interesting read about women and Asperger’s.
School..
Different is something I have always been. In school I was often placed on a table specifically for children with disabilities, even though I had no diagnosis. I looked like the able-bodied children, and played like them, but I was always separated. The school system always seemed to ensure this, simply because they did not fully understand me. I never acted out and was never rude. I tried my hardest, but always felt less than I was.
I feel deep sadness for the little girl I was, even if she mostly existed in her own made up fairy land. Sadness, for the few times she snapped back to reality and realised her best friend sat on the opposite side of the room to her, on the ‘clever’ table, where only the children who were high achievers sat. It was year 3 in school, and there I would sit, often wondering why she was separated and treated differently. Stupid was something I knew they thought I was. Distant and dappy. ‘She’ll grown out of it’ they would say; but she didn’t, and she wouldn’t.
A good day…
Aside from the support I endlessly received from my Mum there was only one other occasion as a child that I remember truly feeling like I was not less than the other kids. The day the writer Stuart Ross visited our school. I found him so exciting, and his books were quickly sewn into my imagination to use in my made-up worlds!
He ran a little competition in our year where we each wrote a short story and he picked the story he liked best, which happened to be mine, it was a very proud day indeed. He gifted me a signed copy of his book ‘Down with the Romans’ which I still have to this day! Though this is a fond memory and I will always be grateful for it, it should not have been one of the only times I felt good enough.
My diagnosis…
In my teenage secondary school years, I was facing many more problems aside from just feeling different, I constantly faced boughs of depression and anxiety that eventually led to self-harm, I didn’t understand why I wasn’t like other people. Why everything, even socialising, was so hard.
At age 15 I was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s. I remember the stuffy room. The unfamiliar staring faces. They told me they were sure, not to worry, I was different for a reason. And I, so young, so relieved to know why, held back a smile so hard the room span. My mum embraced me tightly and I knew that everything would be alright. I knew it would, and I knew it wouldn’t. Different had never been easy.
I wish…
I look back to the young girl I had been, a head full of dreams, stories and fairies guarding her from a world she did not yet understand, and I wonder if she knew that as a woman, she would still not understand?
I wish I had known then what I know now. I wish I could go back and tell the little girl who grew up so slowly compared to others, that she was not stupid. Tell the confused teenager, that things would make sense soon. I would tell her she was a galaxy. A rouge dreamer made up of a world of complex thoughts and ideas. I would tell her that she is wonderful, in all of her messy ways, wonderful, always. I wish I had known how far I would come.
Happy just to know…
I am learning every day about who I am. Learning every day that I am born anew. I am endless and exploding. Born today into someone I was not yesterday. And I am proud of the good and the bad in myself, a diagnosis is not a sentence that deems me unable to function, unable to cope, though I may feel that way sometimes. My diagnosis is a sentence that deems me unimaginable. Unable to truly define. We are all different, and everyone, with a diagnosis or not, is a beautiful knot of all things messy and human. In whatever form it presents itself. Colourful fools shining in the night.
I am grown now, and my guardian fairies no longer appear. Yet my imagination is an escape I will always turn to run with. To create and write with. I am different, not stupid. And I am proud.
I am glad to know what I didn’t know then. By being open and honest about my diagnosis and every day getting more and more of an understanding of myself, I can bloom like yesterday isn’t watching.
