I have struggled with how to start this article for long enough. Instead, I'll force myself to get something down on the page. Text can always be edited later, right? At least, in this day and age, everything can be edited. Scary thought... but already I digress. I was about to tell you about the day I got diagnosed with Autism.
It all started when I began looking for a therapist to help talk me through some rough stuff at the time. She listed a few specialties on her profile, but one jumped out at me: Autism and ADHD. Neurodivergence is the class into which these two fall, as opposed to the term neurotypical which describes those without. And if the first thing you thought of when you read "neurodivergence" was the movie Divergent, you're not alone — there's something oddly fitting about a story centered on people trying to find where they belong.
The first session I had with my therapist (we'll call her Flora to protect her identity) was mainly introductory. She mentioned through our conversation that she thought I might want to be assessed for Autism. I thought, "Well, what could it hurt?" I had already had my suspicions from some research I'd done before, but that story is a different post. And so I was given an assessment which included a bunch of very deep questions over 4-5 different tests. I told "Flora" after I'd finished the first one - "I don't like this. I don't like talking about my personal self." She smiled and said that was a very common autistic complaint that she heard. With renewed interest, I took the rest as honestly as I could. You see, for 51 years I had been programmed to keep my real self hidden or face the consequences of ridicule and unacceptance (which happened all through elementary, middle and high school in the form of bullying).
"So James," said Flora, "now that I've gone over these assessments, keep in mind that a score of 26 is pretty indicative of autism... and you scored a 45." For those of you who don't know, the score does indeed start at zero and goes up each time an answer shows familiar traits. I almost doubled it. She saw the look on my face and simply and kindly said, "It must have been so painful for you to keep yourself hidden (the term is masking) from the world for so long." I burst into tears. Some sad, but some happy because at that exact moment in time, someone saw ME. It makes me tear up even now.
That day something shifted — I needed to understand what I'd just learned about myself, so I started reading everything I could find on autism. What I found surprised me: most of the so-called experts out there, the ones dishing out advice about neurodivergence, were completely wrong. Bizarre theories about the cause, the behaviors and general social conduct. Some of the difference in opinions from the experts directly contradicted others. It's been misunderstood, and therefore misdiagnosed, for decades. But things are changing. The voices talking about autism are people with autism. People like me. And it's working, because even in the last few years there have been breakthroughs. Which means things are going to start getting better, right? Let's hope so.
