The first time I told my parents I think I may be autistic, they laughed at me. For context, my family uses humor a lot. Everyone teases each other, makes jokes in almost any scenario. In some ways I’m sure it made communication easier. There’s a familiarity and casualness to playing around like that. It also probably taught me how to determine if someone is serious or joking with me. Well…kinda. Sometimes I still don’t know and it makes me super uncomfortable. Anyway, my point is, the fear of being teased, being laughed at, caused hesitation. I couldn't always be vulnerable. So when I told my parents over the phone that I took an online assessment and scored VERY high, indicating that I should consider pursuing formal diagnosis, their response was unsurprising, but discouraging. The conversation ended awkwardly because I had to explicitly say “I’m being serious right now, don’t laugh at me.” My mom appealed to me a tiny bit to ease the tension, but I was already putting up a wall...
Over the next few weeks, I want to share my story about my autism diagnosis. Well, actually, I guess more accurately, I should call this my Autism Realization. The first time I thought I may be autistic was probably my late teens. I knew I was different from my peers in a way I couldn’t explain. But when I was in college, trying to connect to new people, it was exhausting and confusing. I felt burned out a lot. I felt so lonely and couldn’t figure out why connections and friendships didn’t come naturally to me. I didn’t understand the nuances of interactions as much as I felt like I was supposed to. Why am I not allowed to say certain things to people? Through observation, I figured out “Yeaaaa these folks hated that interaction so it was either weird or rude.” But I didn’t understand WHY it was weird or rude. I just left it at “ok, can’t ask that question, it makes people uncomfortable.” In college Psychology and Sociology courses, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) was always ...