A New Adventure, Part Three: Moving Forward

You can read Part One here and Part Two here!

    The diagnosis is in hand--well, saved onto my computer, but you get my meaning. As of a week ago, I have been diagnosed with Level One autism (no intellectual or language impairments, yay me!), moderate ADHD, and high intelligence--and yes, I count the high intelligence as a diagnosis, because it comes with benefits and problems of its own. We'll get there. :)

    I guess by this point, it might be reasonable to wonder why I would share all this rather personal information about the last year of my life. Why does all this matter?

    Honestly, I have dreamed for a really long time about having the ability to help people. I've spent the last almost-nineteen years of my life living and functioning with undiagnosed ADHD and autism, and while I think I've received a lot of gifts and advantages because of this experience, it is really hard to be different from all the people around you and not know why. I have one friend, who I met through my first job because she was my manager. She is probably the first real friend I've made--I met some other folks at that job who I love dearly and enjoy hanging out with, but who I can't really count as friends because I hardly speak to them anymore.

    Since my childhood, I've sat on the sidelines of social interactions, trying to figure out why nothing I tried to make friends ever worked. Every time a new family moved into my neighborhood and a new kid joined my Primary class at church, I would immediately go sit by that person, introduce myself, and offer myself up as a potential friend--and every time, that person would sit by me and chat with me for a few weeks, and then suddenly they'd be sitting with a group of kids on the other side of the classroom, and I was alone once again. Eventually, I gave up on it all--clearly my attempt to be the first friendly face new people saw coming into the class was failing. They ended up with different friends anyway. What did it matter anymore?

    Over the years, I've become a hermit in many ways. When I'm not at school (hard to do during the summer), working at a job (hard to do during the ongoing job hunt), going out for a job interview, or going on the occasional date, I'm in my room by myself, playing a video game, scrolling through Reddit (it turns out that the autism and autistic adults subreddits are really great places to read about other people's experiences once you've run out of YouTube videos to watch about autism), writing a story, or laying on my bed with my headphones on, listening to music and daydreaming.

    It's not a very healthy lifestyle. I forget to eat a lot--in fact, it's safe to say that over the last six months, I've eaten an average of one and a half meals a day plus snacks. I also don't interact with that many people anymore. All my various "social groups" have disappeared. I used to talk to people at karate. Then I quit karate. Then I talked to people at Irish dance. Then I quit Irish dance. Then I talked to people at my job. Then I quit my job to focus on school and a relationship. I used to have a fiance I talked to all the time. Then I broke up with him. I used to have a friend group I played Dungeons and Dragons with; but once my life got full and I stopped pestering them to meet up and play, we stopped playing. I've slipped into a rut in my life where I don't really do all that much anymore, because everywhere I've gone it's felt like no one understands me, or cares to understand me, enough to actually want to be my friend. Eventually, I end up on the sidelines, existing quietly in my room like a mouse that doesn't want to disturb anyone.

    I don't want that for anyone else. It's not a happy existence when it feels like your best friends are the books on your shelves, the games on your computer, the stories in your head, and the YouTubers you watch on the Internet. All humans, even the autistic ones, need connection. We crave it. Having people we can talk to, spend time with, and rely on is so incredibly critical for our mental and emotional health as a species. Whether you believe in evolution or that God created everything, the fact is that we crave connection because we're better together--I learned that in my marriage and relationships class last semester. We think better, we work harder, we see challenges in a more positive light, and we tend to be more successful. Part of the reason autism can be so crippling for so many people is because it impacts the way we function in social situations, which impacts our ability to make friends, which in turn impacts our ability to get a solid support system so we can succeed.

    I have been fortunate enough to have a family who, while being thoroughly imperfect, supports me and my endeavors in every way. Not everyone has that. There are a lot of people who grow up in really toxic, abusive households, and when you add autism to that mix it pretty well guarantees they're going to struggle to find a support system of any kind.

    If there is something I can do to change that, then I will.

    So I'm writing this series of blog posts.

    In all likelihood, almost no one will ever see these. But I can't just sit back and do nothing when I'm learning so much about how my brain works and developing ways to work with my brain to succeed, rather than trying to force my way through life the same way I always have and wondering why I'm not getting anywhere.

    I still struggle. One of the biggest downsides I run into from having high intelligence is that school has been easy for me my entire life--and as a homeschooled kid, school has been my entire life for years. As a result, when I run across something that is legitimately challenging for me, I have a much greater tendency to want to give up. To all you people who have struggled in school your whole lives, please count that as the gift it is! You've been learning to overcome hard things from the very start, and I'm having to learn how to do it now. In that sense, you have the advantage.

    I still struggle. One of the biggest downsides I run into from having autism is that I don't understand social cues as readily as most other people do. I talked way too much as a kid because I was legitimately unable to see that the person I was talking to was utterly done with hearing me yap about the topic. I've learned a lot and I've made a lot of progress, but I still struggle to keep conversations going without slipping back into that habit.

    I still struggle. One of the biggest downsides I run into from having ADHD is that I find it incredibly difficult to get started on tasks, even if I want to do them. I've been thinking about writing this blog post series since before I got my diagnosis. I've only just managed to organize my thoughts enough to write it all out now.

    I don't have all the answers. I'm not perfect. In fact, I feel like I screw things up a lot. I learn new processes slowly, and that has led to a lot of pain and frustration in my life. I often don't feel like I have all that many skills or gifts, and I constantly want to beg those closest to me for reassurance that there is something I'm good at, something I have to offer the world, because I see all the ways people around me are succeeding and moving forward with their lives and I often feel stuck in a quagmire several miles back on the road.

    I don't have a brain that learns processes well. I don't have a brain that understands social situations well enough in the moment to make new friends. I don't have a brain where I can just flip a switch in my mind, sit down, and do something hard--I have to trick myself into completing my homework!

    What I do have is a brain optimized for learning and sharing information (though what information it will be in the mood to share at any given time is hard to predict). That high intelligence I mentioned at the start of this post? It lets me learn information incredibly quickly. The autism gives me the drive to go down rabbit holes and study that information in as much detail as I can, helps me think about it in different ways, and then share that information with others in a fit of uber-excited info-dumping. The ADHD helps with variety--eventually, I get bored of one rabbit hole and move on to the next.

    So, as I work on the areas of my life I find most challenging, allow me to use the gifts I do have to share what I'm learning with you. In the next and final (for now) part of this blog post series, I'm going to share some of the things I've learned about that help me function the most, and perhaps, if you also struggle like I do, you may find them useful in your own life.

You can read Part Four here!