So I finally found someone who is qualified to test an adult for Autism. I've been looking, albeit casually, for years.
Why, you ask?
It's a very common question for those I've spoken to about it.
I appreciate your concern, but the question is honestly a bit annoying.
Part of the reason it annoys me is that I find it very difficult to explain. So I'll try to here. I've always been better with words on a page than words straight from my mouth. My brain moves too fast for my mouth to keep up and the answer always gets jumbled up.
This is a very deeply personal issue for me. It was never a question I asked myself, growing up. Never a consideration. It was only after I knew that my son was Autistic that I began to wonder.
Little quirks that he had, I recognised in myself. Mine are less obvious, but still very much there. I was painfully shy as a child. Even as an adult, I feel exceptionally awkward in social situations. I'll say something in conversation and walk away mentally berating myself because 'normal' people don't talk about things like that in public. And that conversation will pop up in my head even years later, rendering me suddenly every bit as embarrassed as it did that day.
As the years passed, I looked to the internet to see if there were others like me. I found that many women are diagnosed as 'on the spectrum' later on in life, from their 30's to their 60's. You see, Autism displays itself differently in males than in females.
Here's an article that explains it better than I can: Gender and Autism
If you don't feel like clicking the link, the long or short of it is this: girls with Autism don't display the same outward signs of it as boys do: the flapping, the rocking, strange vocalisations and such. Girls are also socialised differently as children. As a result, many are not identified as Autistic, and some are misdiagnosed altogether.
Most of my life I've felt strange, like an outsider. I explained that in my last blog post so I won't get into it here.
But if I am on the Spectrum, it would explain a lot. It would give a name to my oddness, a word to explain the feeling, and a community to share my experiences with.
It would give me a stronger position of advocacy for my Autistic son.
I've always felt a kinship with my son's 'oddness'. I feel like having him in my life makes me feel, not less strange, but more at home. It's kind of a 'You too, huh? Guess I'm not so strange after all,' feeling.
I won't get the test results back for a few weeks. It takes a while to compile all the data gathered over two hours and come to a conclusion. I'm honestly more afraid that I won't be on the spectrum, than that I will be. But if that is the case, it falls on me to let this go. To learn to be comfortable in my own oddness, and to hell with anyone who I make uncomfortable.
I guess I should do that anyways, regardless of the results of this test.
With Love,
-Nan
