Pinkie B
Just Me
Hi All,
Been obsessing over this forum since I first joined. I had this very strong shock and emotional resonance realizing that I might be on the spectrum a month or so ago. I identified with just about everyone here to some degree or another and just felt like OMG THAT'S ME! and YES! THAT! to basically everything that people were saying. It was a great feeling to finally find people who are like me.
But as I've been reading more and the initial shock is wearing off, I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm not autistic enough? On the one hand, I don't want to be disabled. I don't want to play life on a harder setting. I don't want to live every day knowing that I will never be able to check my mail in a timely fashion and that I will forever be a slave to my routines.
But then, on the other hand, I don't want to be alone. I don't want to go back to being that weirdo who just has all these things that are hard or that have to be a certain way or that other people just don't get and I'm tired of explaining it to them. I don't want to go back to thinking that I have to be as productive and functional as everybody else or that it's my problem that the world is getting noisier and noisier and unexpected sounds leaking into my home can shut me down for days making life miserable and getting anything done plainly impossible.
I don't want to define my life by what I can't do and I don't want to start talking about myself as "needing to stim" or "having another one of my meltdowns" -- I don't want to change how I think about myself, but I feel like because this is how other autistics talk about their worlds that if I don't, then I can't be a member of the club.
I have toyed with the idea of getting a formal diagnosis but while I'd love the affirmation of this very intense affinity towards the autistic community, I'm afraid because I've accomplished so much in my life that I would be told that I'm too functional to be disabled.
::sigh:: I feel like Mononoke Hime: Not truly human, but never able to be completely a wolf.
Been obsessing over this forum since I first joined. I had this very strong shock and emotional resonance realizing that I might be on the spectrum a month or so ago. I identified with just about everyone here to some degree or another and just felt like OMG THAT'S ME! and YES! THAT! to basically everything that people were saying. It was a great feeling to finally find people who are like me.
But as I've been reading more and the initial shock is wearing off, I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm not autistic enough? On the one hand, I don't want to be disabled. I don't want to play life on a harder setting. I don't want to live every day knowing that I will never be able to check my mail in a timely fashion and that I will forever be a slave to my routines.
But then, on the other hand, I don't want to be alone. I don't want to go back to being that weirdo who just has all these things that are hard or that have to be a certain way or that other people just don't get and I'm tired of explaining it to them. I don't want to go back to thinking that I have to be as productive and functional as everybody else or that it's my problem that the world is getting noisier and noisier and unexpected sounds leaking into my home can shut me down for days making life miserable and getting anything done plainly impossible.
I don't want to define my life by what I can't do and I don't want to start talking about myself as "needing to stim" or "having another one of my meltdowns" -- I don't want to change how I think about myself, but I feel like because this is how other autistics talk about their worlds that if I don't, then I can't be a member of the club.
I have toyed with the idea of getting a formal diagnosis but while I'd love the affirmation of this very intense affinity towards the autistic community, I'm afraid because I've accomplished so much in my life that I would be told that I'm too functional to be disabled.
::sigh:: I feel like Mononoke Hime: Not truly human, but never able to be completely a wolf.