{My Story}

Autistic women share their personal stories about life & autism.

Honest. Raw. Emotional. Powerful. Real.

Telling my story is hard but also very healing… 

I am the youngest of three, with an older sister and brother.  When I read or hear about autistic people say they felt weird, different or alien growing up and their reasons for those feelings I have to admit it confuses me.  I felt completely normal within the context of my family and that I think is the key because most of my family is weird.  Weird in my family however involves spending years with an undiagnosed chronic illness. 

Since I shared this illness with my family and since we all shared a number of similar symptoms,  the fact that I also grew up isolated, lonely, shy, spent a lot of time day dreaming and reading books could just as easily be blamed on having to grow up and deal with this rare, weird illness.  The fact that I was premature and my mother was often told not to worry if I was a little delayed in development like walking and talking and I would eventually catch up probably didn't help. 

Primary School wasn't much of a problem for me, I wasn't doing as well as my older two siblings but I wasn't doing all that badly either.  Sure I had a different friend every year and only ever had one friend at a time but it wasn't until highschool that this habit of friend hopping caught up with me and ended up with me having no friends at all.  No friends and highschool unsurprisingly tends to lead to been bullied. 

Too shy to say anything and having read the all too common advice of 'just ignore it, they will ignore you when they don't get a reaction/ get bored',  what this actually translates to in real life is 'these people will just keep trying and trying, getting worst and worst, just to see how far they can go and how much they can get away with'  just in case you think this actually works.  I put up with this for far too long and one finally did go to far and get caught, I was more then happy to tell everything. 

Despite this, I managed to get through highschool and quickly found myself at a bit of a loss with what to do with my life since everything I was trying just didn't seem to be working out.  I kept failing, quitting, trying something else and just not getting anywhere.  This lead to me getting a ADHD diagnosis at 19.  I was never entirely happy with this, sure I had a problem with focus and concentration but I think I knew even then it was only a partial answer.  This sense of dissatisfaction led to me ditching the medication and just trying to live my life as best I could.  I probably should have tried harder then and pushed but Autism still didn't even really exist in most people's mind back then, particularly for girls. 

I eventually got a job in Hospitality where all you had to do was ask what people wanted to eat and then take food out to them.  I worked part-time at a low paid job for a number of years before I got tired and bored of doing the same thing every day and surviving from pay day to pay day.  So I tried to get better jobs and failed, and failed, and kept failing until I ended up homeless, broke and sleeping in my car. 

I could have gone to my parents but I had my pride, I wanted so much to be independent, to be able to prove myself, to achieve and succeed in the things I wanted to do and on my terms.  I was over 30 by this point, surely by this age I should be able to do this on my own.  Been somewhat naivee and increadibly trusting, I put myself in an increadibly vulnerable position when I met my ex.  Charming, attentive, sweet, funny, protective, he seemed to be everything I wanted and needed and no one had ever paid me that much attention in my life. 

The second year I knew him, he pushed me backwards down some stairs.  Awhile after that he hit me the first time.  The third year a few incidents happened and each year slowly got worst and worst.  Eight years of my life I wasted, hanging out for the good days that got shorter and shorter and more erratic, always holding out hope things would get better, dreaming of the day where it was all good again and making all the time and effort worth it.  It took me too long to realise the man I had met was a ghost that never really existed. 

The bad days were full of intimidation, manipulation, verbal abuse, occasionally physical.  I wasn't terrified so much for myself but everyone else I cared about since emotional blackmail was one of his favourite tools.  He took everything about myself that I use to laugh about, my clumsiness, my forgetfulness, my messiness, my disorganisation, my social awkwardness and made them into weapons.  Making me believe I was my own worst enemy, that I was the reason everything was going wrong, that everything was actually my fault.  That all his problems, all the things that were going wrong for and with him were my fault too. 

So I kept trying and trying and trying to make it right, until I had nothing left to give any more.  By the time COVID hit, I was already mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted.  It was COVID that helped me realise that not only had I dug myself into a pretty big hole, but that I was also standing at the edge of a cliff.  If I didn't take exactly the right steps to save myself, I was heading for some really big, serious trouble.  

So I did the bravest thing I have ever done and I left.  It's been a year and a half and not that long ago I had my 40th birthday.  There has been a lot of self reflection, healing, trying to work out the how's and whys and trying to find out the answers and the more I search, the more certain I am that the reason why I am the way I am is Autism.  Understanding this means I can make peace with the events of my life and start laughing at myself again because I rather like and enjoy been clumsy, messy, forgetful, awkward and a bit chaotic, no one else has the right to make me feel bad about the very things that make me me.

 If you would like to share your personal story of receiving an autism diagnosis in adulthood, please contact Nat directly. All stories are anonymous unless otherwise notified. You matter. Your autistic voice matters. Au-some Women believes in empowering, supporting and connecting autistic women. I am truly grateful for allowing me the privilege to share your journey and allow your voice to be heard.

Nat x

Au-some Women founder/facilitator