I’m in my mid-thirties, have a family, a good career, and I am Autistic. If you just saw me, you probably wouldn’t guess. If you know me, you probably thought, “well now that you point it out, I guess I can see it”. This reality is both bad and sad.
It is bad, because I’ll hear things like “you don’t look autistic”, or attributing my struggles to negative perceptions of who I am. It is also bad because it means that we, as a society, have yet to break the stereotypes of what an Autistic person is.
It is also sad because it is a testament to my ability to mask and how I learned to do so without even really knowing I was.
So, this Autism Pride Month I am going to be vulnerable and share with whomever reads this my thoughts. I want to take some posts and walk through what it is like being diagnosed (or more accurately understanding myself) later in life.
To be clear, nothing I say here represents all Autistic people, if you’ve met one of us, you’ve met one of us. However, this is my experience. Even in my 30’s I’m new at this (which I’ll explain more about later) so as much as this is about coming out, it’s also about me coming to terms with being Neuroatypical.
In this series