Unveiling Myself
A Journey from Autism Diagnosis to Acceptance
Introduction
I was diagnosed with autism in 2013, and it was not a good day for me. To set the scene, it was a Friday in January. We’d been through a few snowstorms since the holidays. The sky was grey. The roads were wet from snow melting off. There were piles of snow along the sides of the road, and I had to leave work early for the appointment where the results of a couple of years of intense looking for answers were about to take place.
The Supportive Wife
While Erin had been the first to suggest I needed to look into autism (Asperger’s), she’d taken a back seat to most of my journey through therapy and reading and connecting with the different professionals who were part of the diagnostic process. This was the first and only appointment she went to.
The Diagnostic Process
The appointment with the neuropsychiatrist went over the many tests and assessments she’d conducted weeks before, from an IQ test to the Rorschach test (ink blots) to all sorts of things.
Before the neuropsychiatrist, though, the process included other specialists who interviewed me to eliminate other possible causes for autism-like behaviors. These could include past abuse or trauma, and while some of that does exist in my life, the purpose wasn’t to point at a specific event, but to eliminate the possibility that an event or series of events could be the cause of my autistic behavior.
Holding Out Hope
Up until that grey and wet Friday, a part of me had held out hope that I wasn’t going to actually be autistic. Instead, the professionals would determine that I was dealing with something else, something that could be treated through therapy and awareness.
Around 3:40 on that Friday, though, the neuropsychiatrist got to the point in the meeting where she explained that I was, in fact, autistic and did I have any questions?
Erin had some questions. I had a lot of processing to go through. Along with the processing, I also immediately fell into a state of despair and depression because, for the first time in my life, I’d been told I was never going to get it. I was never going to be normal. I would never walk into a room and get a true feel for it.
Realization of Being Different
I was different. Different is an okay thing to be, and one of the conditions of being Erin and I try to instill, without focusing on it, in Commander. As a child, one who is in some areas way too smart and in others very immature, this makes sense. Unlike Camper, Commander isn’t immediately going to public school. We reviewed the programs available and the people running those programs, and we found the use of ABA and the attitudes of the teachers uncomfortable.
Being different really isn’t bad until it is. Even so, what caused me to fall into a state of private depression and despair was that I’d spent most of my life, since at least becoming a teenager, trying to figure out why and also thinking I’d figured out people, life, relationships, and other normal interactions.
I’d thought I’d figured out how to interact with people.
And I hadn’t figured anything out at all.
Reflecting on Interactions
I could go through what I would call a clinical explanation of things. Talk about relationships and communication. Wax poetically or philosophically about the nature of being with someone. But that was all books and observation. There was little to no practical experience in any of it, regardless of what I thought.
It took me years and a lot of unexpected and not really important interactions to begin truly seeing what it meant to be autistic. For example, I delivered pizza for a while, and one really busy evening, the deliveries slowed down enough I could take a breather, and one of my coworkers approached me to ask, “Which side are you on?”
What?
They then explained to me the assistant manager and his girlfriend, another coworker, were having a fight and everyone was taking sides. It’s like Team Edward or Team Jacob, and I was expected to pick a side.
Fortunately, I needed to deliver a pizza and could blow off the question and implied drama. What was also true, and hadn’t been before, was how unaware I was of social situations like that unless they were brought to my attention, or I have a pressing need to observe what’s happening and draw my own conclusions. In this case, I was never going to need to know or observe, and the only way I could know was to have it pointed out to me.
A Blow to the Ego
This was, for me, yet another blow to my ego and sense of self. It showed how little I picked up in even casual interactions with people I knew and mostly liked. Like being given a diagnosis of autism, I was shaken by how little what I thought I knew about myself didn’t match with reality or the world I inhabit.
Lack of Support for Adults
What is true for adults who are diagnosed is there is a complete lack of support and help. It exists, but there are no easy or visible mechanisms to connect adults to services. I had to learn what was available. Sometimes services were suggested to me by someone else, and often as an off-hand comment. At other times, finding help came by way of intense and varied online searches. Often being told about some kind of help, therapy or life planning or whatever, happened as the result of someone else I was working on or someone I was working with.
The Emotional Wreck
The other truth, for adults, even if we expect the outcome and prepare for it, is the complete wreck we can become because we were holding out hope for a different answer, a different reason, or a different diagnosis.
For me, I stopped producing things I enjoyed writing and working on because I stopped believing I could or that I had the right. That part of the autism diagnosis is still ongoing and difficult. I’m much better now. I’m progressing, but not before I’ve had to regress and rethink and build myself up again.
The Journey of Acceptance
What I’ve found is none of this is easy, and every time I think I’ve mastered something, that’s when it’s time to go back and review and maybe start over again. Being diagnosed with autism was one of the worst days of my life and the beginning of something big and important for me. It’s also something I wouldn’t change because the me I know now is clearer and more defined than the me before I was diagnosed and tossed into the deep end of coming to terms with an autism diagnosis.