Journal entries from an undiagnosed autistic girl: Part 1
The struggle with eye contact
When I’ve been having multiple days in a row of honoring my needs and routines, I feel great. Relaxed. Happy.
Then I start to wonder: Am I really autistic? Was it really that bad before knowing or did I exaggerate?
And I have a conflicted feeling of needing to be miserable to prove that ‘Yes, I am autistic’ because I’ve only ever heard of miserable autistic people in popular media and in eavesdropped conversations. As if misery is a required part of the autistic personality and not the outcome of various internal and external factors.
Thankfully, my past self kept an excruciatingly detailed record of my inner thoughts that I can turn to in moments like this.
I present to you the journal of an undiagnosed autistic teenager-turned-young adult.
I’ll share what I wrote about one of the most well-known symptoms of autism — struggling with eye contact.
In my next articles, I’ll share entries about other symptoms: the struggle to interact with people and my lifelong search to figure out why I felt so different from everyone else.
Note: These entries will be abridged and only the relevant parts included because I tended to write long journal entries.
Dec 1 2009
I looked up ‘compliments’, ‘eye contact’, and ‘conversation’ (again) and reviewed articles on shyness. Yes, reviewed. I’ve been too lazy to really try to follow them. Shame on me, yes. Now, though, I really will try.
I am afraid of eye contact. I’m not sure how to negotiate the business of making eye contact unawkwardly and keeping it and releasing it.
December 2, 2009
Eye contact is hard. It makes me nervous. I remember having trouble with it (about 4 or 5 years ago).
April 7, 2010
Yesterday, I thought long and hard about my social problem and came up with this: I don’t really try… I am socially lazy. It doesn’t help that I really don’t like talking that much, either… So I’m going to need to work on things a step at a time. First, I’ll start with eye contact. I’ll write a question about it, research, and write my results and comments in here.
Question 1: What is eye contact and how can it be managed successfully?
After rereading these entries, I realized how often I put myself down. How often I said I didn’t try enough, that I needed to try harder. I send past me so much love because I tried SO HARD. I didn’t realize how much effort I was putting into something other people just did without thinking about it.
And I also feel validated that no, autism isn’t something I exaggerated or a problem I invented. This is an issue I’ve dealt with for a long time.
But on the days I need more evidence, there’s my life-long struggle to interact with other people. Read about it in Part 2 of this 3 part series.
