My Autism is real
This article scratches the surface of that pressing question, “Should I be diagnosed or better not?”.
And that is the first point I’d like to make: A determining factor is how pressing the matter becomes. (unbecoming wordplay: how de-pressing it becomes)
As for me, at a point a few years ago it became so unbearable, I sought diagnosis. But for others, who objectively could easily fit into the criteria, it is most apparently not pressing, if even a question in life at all.
The second big thing about it is about chances and struggles. Two opposing factors, determining a life’s success, though depending on our decisions towards them.
An official diagnosis opens up bureaucratic access to specific sources of help and support, differing mostly in regional availability.
Not every person, doctor or employer around me understands or endorses the changing process, but it all remains a matter of understanding neurodiversity, and we seem not to be quite there yet in society…
To say it in an abstract way: The way I live up to my good will might have changed, but not the good will itself. In a perfect world, there would be no question about that at all.
Being diagnosed does alter only one factor, to have the most official external affirmation of this complex and deeply-rooted neurological phenomenon.
It is one fine thing, to feel truly connected to a group of people you share so much more with than with the majority of those around you, but the rationally strong side of autism doesn’t allow for certainty without the best-known source.
In the past, I only pondered autism when I had bad days, but in my better days I just polished the armour again and tried to fit into whatever shape had a good rulebook to follow.
This might be the strongest point for me. That I lived through years and years of denying myself closure about a pressing struggle, navigating the daily minefield towards my chances, which could never account for the level of difficulty I was living on.
For when you go and get a diagnosis, it becomes a serious responsibility to act true to your nature and to your needs.
Following this responsibility might stir up your surroundings, abolish old habits, destroy perfected routines and holds up a plane mirror in which my own projection of myself didn’t fit the shape I began to see.
All this change hurts and seems to lead me away from what I thought my life should be.
But shouldn’t my life be about evolving, about healthy choices, about taking myself seriously, about being happy, in order to make the people around me happy?
Even though I am going through changes now, my diagnosis helped me to go in the right direction and to never doubt the reality of it. And the reward is a life more true and more direct and more unmasked, just how I like it.
