Sure, i will infodump people if given the chance, will listen to music on repeat, on my ANC headphones, and be a somewhat picky eater, but if you looked at me from afar, maybe you coudn’t tell right away, i can study, i can work, i can be social if i need to, and maybe, if you meet me, the first time you may not notice it right away (unless you’re neurodivergent yourself).
But, when time passes, and i lay my guard low, somwthing will inevitably happen to show me, painfully, that i’m indeed autistic, meltowns, misunderstandments, worse, you name it, and then you remember, you’re autistic and there is no escape, this is what I am and there is no fighting it, i’m autistic, and need help sometimes, with some things.
I overall like to be autistic, i don’t want it gone at all, i feel is basically who i am, but at the same time it is very frustrating, this year and a half, has been awful for me, i dropped out of university and tried to work, but they fired me because they learnt about my plans of getting back at uni, in this whole time (and my numbers were good, i even did sales, i’m sure as heck it was that), whenever i wasn’t rotting on my parents house, i had so many fkng momments that remind me, like a punch on the face, that i’m autistic, not gonna lie, at university had many too, bit atleast there i had an structure to cling onto, because yay comorbid adhd /s.
Anyways, sometimes i feel that if i was more obviously autistic, it would be more obvious to people, that i fkng struggle with things 😭.
My partner is like this. Fully functional until they went down with stress because of the effort it takes to appear normal.
It took several years to come out of, and to figure out that there is an autism diagnosis behind it
The god thing is, that living in a socialistic country, with proper social welfare they were offered to work 10 hours a week and the state would compensate for the remainder of the wage to equal a full time employment
You’re only normal until things start falling apart. I think it’s important to not try too hard to be what you aren’t
Thanks for this reminder at the end. I sound similar, ‘normal unless everything collapses’ and I have got a lot better these past few years from just backing out of things more often
I can be social, for about 2-3 hours, and then from one second to the other I need to go home, immediately. If I don’t: meltdown.
I can work in a team, but if coworkers are put on after shave or perfume and I have to sit in the same room, the olfactory sensation pierces my mind and every other perception fades. It drives me insane and I can’t focus on anything else.
People often think I’m being sarcastic if I take a joke as serious, but quite often I simply don’t understand jokes. That doesn’t mean I can’t be sarcastic, I can!
I feel like I’m not NT enough to get along, but I’m also not far enough into the spectrum to get the help I need.
I’m officially diagnosed and still a lot of NTs tell me stuff like “oh, we all need to get away from parties sometimes because it’s too much …oh, we all have our rituals … oh, we all are sensitive sometimes”, insisting that I need to be like them: NT.
Yes, I too wish sometimes I was more “obvious”.
The issue is not where on the scale of functional you are, it’s that 99% members of society work/are neurotypical. I’m so far on the functional scale that >40 years went by without me noticing my autism. The result: many crashes, health damage and lots of unhappiness. Also alexithymia.
The I got really angry for what I had to go through and yet there still is absolutely no public or health support regarding this even though I am in Europe. You know, because to them I don’t look like an autistic young boy.
The concept of masking is not yet anywhere to be seen in their awareness.
Anyhow, apologies for rambling on.
It’s invisible differences, as in the awesome comic, which is the issue.
Similar to me. 57 now, autism+alexithymia+aphantasia but only discovered all of this through self-directed research. Because I “look normal”. Just a “bit weird”. All of my issues & attempts to cope just seen as me being “moody”, or “argumentative”, or generally arseholish. Anyway, not looking to whine just agreeing with you - it’s not easy and there’s not really much practical support, even though the health services here (UK) claim otherwise.
No need to explain (the reasoning), we know the pain.
Yeah moody and all that crap. Endless social crap. Sometimes tolerance but no understanding.
Paid for my diagnosis myself, objectively (aq, EQ and another one) completely on the spectrum but refusal of the diagnosis because I don’t look like it. Thats some kind of meta burn and discrimination. Still, nothing we can do.
I wish that it was more okay to struggle, to not always have to hide. I wish people had more understanding and knowledge about neurodiversity, that it isn’t something one can “overcome”, but something that you have to fight and struggle with all the time. We need breaks to just be ourselves and do and feel what we need. Just because I have learnt how to behave in public does not mean that it is easy or that I have fundamentally changed. It is just as emotionally taxing to act unnatural to oneself.
As a society, we learned how to take care of the less able people (with every asterisk in the world, but at least the idea is there). However, for some reason, that only applied to people that are very non-functional. If you are functional, but not always, you can still take care of yourself, so suck it up and get your life together.
Fuck that, we should learn that everyone deserves to be helped, not only those who need a lot of help, sometimes a little goes a long way.
