Why I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic in childhood? (part 1/5)
TL;DR: Because I was (am) an immigrant, from abusive and normalizing family and (misgendered) as a girl. Plus, there was lack of awareness in general. This is part 1 of 5 part series that answers that question. Every part will deal with another element that explains why I wasn’t diagnosed till I was 25.
1. Immigrant
When I was 2.5 years old my family immigrated from the former USSR to Israel. We ran away, without looking back, and have hidden the fact we are leaving, till … well, my family was forced out of the train, 4 kilometers from the border with Poland.
So we came to live in Israel, the best place in the world for you, if you are Jewish, Ashcenazi, White and was born here or at least, born in a “good” country (not the former USSR). I, like every other immigrant, had some hardships. The language was hard, the food was different, everything was humid and noisy.
I was a weird kid. I seemed sort of detached from things, and even though I was sort of hyperlexic in Russian (I think. I don’t remember being actually taught to read. Not that I was a great reader, or that my reading in Russian improved much since then), I didn’t talk much in Hebrew. At least, at first. I seemed shy, I couldn’t do things that others did. My friendships were odd. I had couple of “Russian” friends, like me, but at retrospective, we were friends because we had a similar background. I was always confused by things that happened. I was confused by their way of seeing the world. I was quite good with imaginative play, technically, but I always went too deep inside it, in my head. I could play with myself and I struggled with explaining others my…thoughts. I couldn’t understand lots of things they tried to say, but it was OK. Sort of. My inner world was anyways bigger then my outer one.
At school (first 2 years) I had several weird hardships. It took me really long time to copy things of the blackboard. I wasn’t “hearing” what my teacher said (I was even sent to a hearing test). I could jump, thing I couldn’t do till I was 5, but my motor skills were … wrong. I could draw quite well, but my handwriting was horrible. Things always fell from my hands and table. I were wandering alone a lot in the recess time, not because I didn’t have friends but because I was busy running between different groups of kids, interacting for a little, sometimes forgetting that they were not part of my game. I “wrote” a musical inside my head about cats. I preformed a play I invented by myself with my “Monday” friend (a friend I hanged out with specifically on Mondays) about an alien girl who comes to the human world. I peed my pants at least once in school because I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom, or maybe because I didn’t knew how to ask. I also had a friend who was several years older then me, and I remember just taking of my pants more then once before going into the bathroom, at her place. At 6–7 years old. I also wet my bed quite often. I think I completely stopped wetting my bed when I was 10 or 11. I had no shame and could undress without actually thinking about it if I was by the sea even at age 10. But I have lots of shame right now to cover it up.
When I was 8 we moved, so I had to go to a new school, tho the 3rd grade. And then my social disaster really started. I was one of the only few “Russian” kids at school, and I staggered in “making friendships”. I was friendless or just with one or two friends (that most of the time were not real friends, just people to walk around with in recess). I had 2 meaningful friendships. Both of them on crushes I had, the last is my partner nowadays (we are together from high school), the first… was a friend only after the school, and it ended after the 6th grade.
Till the 6th grade I played with children much younger then me. I sucked at the outdoor games that others managed so easily. I walked around and mainly played with myself. I had friends for short time more then once, but just couldn’t keep them. One girl actually declared me as her enemy, and hated me very much, till we were in different schools, after the 9th grade.
At the middle school… I became a true outcast, not only I didn’t have any friends, but also I was very heavily bullied (physically, emotionally and sexually, usually on a daily basis) by people, or strongly ignored. I was considered the ugliest person on the planet, and people picked on me all the time, even during classes. I tried my best to fit in, but I just didn’t knew how. I don’t want to talk much about it (you can read some of it here) because it can be summarized as a “social disaster“. I actually have no idea how I survived this.
At high-school I wasn’t bullied, because it was a thing that you just don’t do. But people ignored me and I was considered to be a total weirdo. At 11th grade I became my SO’s “girlfriend” somehow, so I could hang out with his friends. But I didn’t belong and I was “that weirdo who is the girlfriend of that cute goth-geek” (we were a geeky class). I tried very hard to make friends, but I just was failing again and again in “doing it right”. I made many mistakes, that I knew was mistakes after short time, but the problem was I never could actually find the right answer. I was more then awkward, I was seen as crazy. I openly self harmed because the idea that people see me was quite foreign to me. My executive dysfunction came visible, but I managed somehow to have good enough grads (sometimes with the help of a tutor), so I was just thought I was lazy and stupid.
During my 12 years of my basic education, I was a social outcast in 10 (the first two were weird but fine, sort of. I wasn’t bullied much in them).
But all that time, my struggles with the social world and my inability to fit in and have friends was seen as an outcome of being an immigrant. Even when other kids around me, who were from a similar background were socially accepted. No one had seen my struggles with physical movement at all. My stimming was somehow invisible, even thought I didn’t knew I should hide it. Oh, I was sent to a psychologist because I was bullied (?), and I went to a diagnosis test in some organisation that said I “just need some tutoring” (because I couldn’t understand some things I missed in class due to sensory issues, executive dysfunction and my total inability to do classwork in class). That organisation, BTW, missed one of my partners very visible dysgraphia and dyslexia and said he is just lazy, so my opinion on them are not good. My sensory issues were overlooked, or seen as being a provocative or just attention seeking (more about that in part 2). My special interests and routine requirements were invisible as well. The interest (and obsession) in books was seen anyways as something “russian kids tend to have”, because the stereotype about “Russian” immigrant children is that we are all dorks, criminals (both for “Russian” boys)or sluts (Most “Russian” girls. I was exception because I was considered extremely ugly). It seemed normal that someone like me would be weird, bullied and friendless, and will fail to adapt.
Because I am an immigrant.
Addition about what was after school years: Because I am legally an adult since I became 18, seeking help and diagnosis was my responsibility, so it is added here just as an after thought:
In the (obligatory) military service and after school education — My hardships continued. I couldn’t do classwork in class, things fell from my hands all the time, I wasn’t creating an eye contact (I may write about that in the future), I was bullied and couldn’t really make friends. My executive dysfunction that was somehow manageable in high-school became totally unmanageable, but I had depression (that went undiagnosed as well).
Next part: Abuse and Normalization
