Am I Autistic?

From all the parents I follow on social media there seems to be a lightbulb moment that they have, where they realise their child might be autistic, and then they start realising how similar their child is to them and of course they realise they might be autistic too. Now a year ago I knew that wasn’t me, there was no way my son’s neurodivergence came from me, in fact I was sure it came from his dad. Its not appropriate to go into too much detail but that was, and still is, my belief.

But it would be wrong of me not to think about how I am, to see if this fits for me. Research has shown a genetic link with autism, which is another reason why I’m considering it. So I think back to how I was a child, and I was an odd child, there’s no dressing it up I was odd. My mum has constantly told me that I didn’t talk till quite late, well after 2 years old, I was very quiet as a child, very quiet indeed and I never wanted to leave my mams side. In fact, I cried and cried when I did leave my mams side. I think I still cried when I was a grown up and she went on holiday for a week. My mam was quite clearly my safe person.

Now my husband definitely is. It took me a long time to find someone who could be my new safe person as an adult and it is most definitely my husband. These days, I think my husband has taken on that role in many ways. He is the person who understands me best, who gives me space to process things in my own time, and is a calming influence in all our chaos.

Overall, now I am pretty good with food but if you ask my mam about my food habits when young she would tell you that I was a terrible eater. I didn’t like my food touching on the plate and there were only certain things I liked. In fact, one holiday we went on I made my mam take tins of beans and soup with her so that when it came to eating out, I ate them in the room before going out to a restaurant and in the restaurant all I got was an ice cream.

And fruit – don’t get me started on fruit. Fruit is weird I do have issues around fruit. For a long time I would pretend to like strawberries – like who doesn’t like strawberries. Me that is who. And it has taken me until I am 40 to dare to admit that. Previous to that if someone offered me a strawberry, I would eat it but I wouldn’t enjoy it. I don’t particularly like fruit in anything but fruit – I can’t cope with fruit bits in yogurt. I can’t eat any type of berry – strawberry, raspberry, blueberry – absolutely not they are not for me. I used to eat apples a lot, but I would have to peel them so every day I would get my apple out at work and my peeler and peel my apple before eating it. I got laughed at, but I didn’t care apple skin in your teeth makes me feel sick. I just can’t do it. And as I’ve progressed through adulthood, I’ve become more confident with if I don’t like something I won’t be eating it.

Not only that but I did have issues around the plates/bowls and cutlery I used. Can you remember the meals you used to get on an airplane well one of them I got a metal knife and fork and I stole them from the airplane and for years after that was the only knife and fork I used. A small free knife and fork from the Spanair airline. I used the same bowl for my cereal for many many years – I still have the bowl now it has a clown on with my name on it. I loved it.

As I’ve progressed through adulthood I have also gotten better at telling people what I don’t want or coping with it when something happens that I don’t want. For example I don’t like cuddles (neither does my son), I barely cuddle anyone in my family. I can do it on my own terms but if someone goes in for a spontaneous cuddle I will stiffen up and not quite know what to do. I have an exceptional memory (as does my son). I can remember dates, conversations, emails that are sent. If I make a mental note to remember something I will remember it (This could just be because I am a woman though!!!). My husband thinks its amazing, and I cant quite believe he cant remember anything! I remember my schedule, his schedule and keep him right day to day on what he is doing – yes I’m a brilliant wife, he is so lucky.

I hate being spontaneous, honestly. My husband can (and has) woken up on a day and said to me…..Lets go to Edinburgh for the day. And my instinct straight away is no. We haven’t planed this, I cant go. I need time to come to terms with this plan in my head before I can even think about doing it. I have become better at this and my husband is very good at allowing me time to decide whether this is something I can come to terms with. The day he suggested we went to Edinburgh we didn’t go. It was just too much for me but there are times when I can do it. And my son has helped me with that. Now that I recognise I just need time then I can sit quiet and eventually it all gets sorted out in my head and I know I can do it, that’s very much how I help my son. I sit quiet and allow him time to work through what is going on his head.

I don’t have any rituals/routines that I have to do…or do I? I pick at my hands all the time. My husband is always telling me to stop picking but I do it when I’m worried about things and lately I’ve been really worried about things so he has seen me do it a lot. I pick at my lip too – something which my son does all the time. And I thought picking at your hands and fingers was something most people did but when I look at other peoples’ hands they look lovely, not picked at at all.

I absolutely cannot sleep if there is any bit of clothing sticking out of the wardrobe or drawers or if any of them are left open just a little bit. I need them all to be closed. I have no idea why but I cant sleep like that. And then I remember the rituals that my son does – we had a long time of him shouting “Night night. Best Friends Forever. Sleep Tight. Night Night” over and over again and I remember as a child that I used to shout something similar to my mam before bed. And if she didn’t say it right then I would ask her to do it again right. Something which my son does now.

I asked my friends recently to describe me in one word because I felt sure one of them would describe me as awkward. But none of them did, completely let me down on that one!!!! But I am sure at some point one of them has described me as awkward because I am. I am also really funny though (I think so anyway) and my go to every single time I feel awkward is to make a joke and I think I do it well. I don’t make friends particularly easy – there are some people I am drawn to that I find easy to be around but on the whole people are weird, they can be confusing and you don’t always know where you stand with people and I struggle with that which is why I don’t have a lot of friends. I have a select few who I would call my best friends and I don’t need anyone else. In fact a lot of the time I don’t feel like I need anyone, any struggles I have I keep to myself…..(well apart from this blog which is out there for everyone to see haha but on the whole it is anonymous). I do struggle with sharing things with people, I am completely private and a lot of the time I struggle to let people in which is why writing this blog is almost perfect for me. The people from my real life that do read this get a good insight into what my life is like without me having to actually tell them.

I work with a great bunch of people (I have to say that because they read this!) but I am the only female in my team of 8 people, in fact in the whole department there are around 35 men and only 6 females. And do you know what I love it because with men they tell you what they think. If you have done a shit job they will tell you to your face and that is the end of it, so being the only female might seem a bit weird to some people but it completely suits me.

One of my biggest neurodivergent traits is that I have a very strong sense of justice. I always do the right thing even at a detriment to myself. My moral compass is strong and although that feels right to me there are situations where people take advantage of that. I’m always doing the right thing and do you know what sometimes that really really annoys me. Sometimes I wish I could be a bit more sneaky and then people wouldn’t walk all over me but I cant be like that and that just isn’t me. It will never be me.

And why haven’t I ever realised any of this before. Throughout my life I have created coping strategies that I have done without even realising I am doing it. But now I can’t do those coping strategies because my son needs me in a different way, he needs to be with me all the time, something I really really struggle with. I need alone time, I need time to process things and he doesn’t allow me that time. This has led me to the point where I am at now. At Christmas I practically had a breakdown, I hid in the toilet for hours, I needed to run away but I couldn’t. My brain constantly feels scrambled now. Some days I cant make head nor tail of what I should be doing. I feel in a constant state of anxiety. So I am trying to come up with new coping strategies that I can achieve within the rigidness of the structure my son needs me. And that is hard. Very hard.

The other day my husband said to me….

“If you had to decide one way or the other whether you thought you were autistic which way would you go with it?”

Crikey was he trying to tell me something with this. Now on this particular day we had woken up and I had had a plan of what I was doing for the day, I was going to particular shop to get some items for our new bathroom but when we woke up my husband suggested somewhere else. I agreed. We went and for me (and actually probably all of us) it was a nightmare. It was bank holiday and everyone in the world seemed to be out shopping. People were everywhere, getting in my way, annoying me and I got more and more stressed. I just wanted to go home. We got through it and when we got home my husband asked me that question. I did my favourite thing ever and answered his question with a question….

“If you had to decide one way or another would you say I am?”

He said there were times he thought I was but there were other things that he wasn’t sure about. I could be very sociable when I wanted to be, which was the main reason he thought I couldn’t be. That conversation made me think about how autism can present differently in girls and women. So many autistic women learn to mask or camouflage their differences, picking up social scripts and blending in just enough to get by. Being sociable doesn’t rule out being autistic — it just means you may have developed coping strategies that hide the struggles underneath, sometimes at a huge hidden cost.

So could I be autistic? What do I think? There is a very strong possibility that I am. I know myself very well though, I have great insight into what works for me and what doesn’t and I keep myself right. I want to be clear that none of this is meant to discount the daily challenges autistic people can face. Everyone’s experience is different, and I fully recognise that. This is simply about exploring my own story, and trying to make sense of my life through a lens I hadn’t considered before. I do what I know is good for me and somehow I have made it through and I know I will continue to make it through……autistic or not.