A Path to Autism Diagnosis
My path to an autism diagnosis began with an epic meltdown burn-out overwhelm. I was non-communicative and non-functional for three weeks in the summer of 2019 not knowing any of the autism-like things or words to describe what was going on. I knew rationally that I was panicking when I heard a squirrel or a bird racing across the roof of my little studio cabin space. The only reason I was able to feed myself self so I didn’t starve to death was that I was reading as I cooked and ate and I didn’t have to interact with humans at all in any way.
As soon as I was not reading, all the overwhelming things accosted me: I didn’t have anything to distract myself from the crazy crazy anxiety when I wasn’t obsessively reading. I was also depriving myself of sleep because reading and over-tiring myself were all I could do to minimize the irrational panic. It was my only coping mechanism.
One of the books I read, towards the end of that period of crazy, is called Water Bound by Christine Feehan. She wrote it in 2010 (or it was published that year according to copyright, anyway). Water Bound is a paranormal romantic suspense, about a woman with autism. Reading that book was the first time I found someone that was weird in exactly the same way that I was weird. Furthermore, she was using those differences as a superpower in the story which is how I’ve always felt about my weirdness…
