officially a freak

i'm a freak, that's pretty much what the report says. i don't do much like the normal person, i cant pretend to be a normal person and i expect far to much from the normal people who happen to be my friends. sometimes cold hard facts aren't nice, even the ones your expecting.

that's the brief outline i've got from the report after my assessment for aspergers. one i have it, two it effects me on quite a wide base and three its kinda bad. not that this surprised me at all, i pretty much knew that already, but reading how i have no normal levels of empathy dose make me feel a little less human. oh and it also made me cry (no surprises there then!)

i'm an unusual case, most people don't get a diagnosis at 18. i should of got one as a kid but my parents buried there heads in the sand and ignored the signs. not that that matters now. the important thing is i've done it. i now know for sure and have proof if ever i need it. i've know i'm autistic for a while so why am i so upset at having it proved to me?

i suppose these things are always hard to read and its not unusual to get upset when presented with a document summing up quite how inadequately you suit nuro typical life. its something that all people on the spectrum have to go through, almost like a uncomfortable right of passage, but i reckon its easier to get it as a child when its your parents who have to deal with the emotions of it all. not aged 18, 4 days before you get on a plane to to spend a year halfway across the world away from all the people who know you. but when did i ever do things the easy way?

the report gives scores from different tests and basicly just summed up the answers i had given at the assessment. my scores read along the lines of:
screening test: 37 out of 50 (most AS people score 32 or above)
empathy test: 10 out of 80 (most AS people score 30 or below)
diagnosis test: 17 out of 18 (need 10 to be classed as AS)
seeing it like this is somewhat difficult, i cant hide behind a wall of maybes now (not that i did much before). its there starting me in the face and telling me where i stand. yes that is what i wanted to know, but i suppose i wanted to be told a bit more nicely (in search of a better word) although i'm not sure how i expected functional documents to do nice?

and i don't suppose sitting in a room that's not your bedroom, in a house that's not your home with all your friends and people who you care about over a 100 miles away is the best way to go about reading these things. not if your relationship with your parents is like mine anyway. 

i felt very alone as i sat crying. suddenly i felt less then human like i wasn't good enough any more because i cant feel things like normal people do and i cant act like normal people. seeing it written like that made me feel invalid as a person. i wanted to talk to someone about it to share it so it wasn't just me who had the knowledge of it, as it seem more then i could cope with. i wanted to talk to a friend. no, actually i wanted a hug. (unfortunately anyone i would consider hugging is well over 100 miles from my current location and in some case over 500 miles away making hugs slightly impractical)

i tried to pull myself together. failed. tried again. failed again. so started writing this. apart from anything else writing what it feels like to get a diagnosis on the day you get it makes it more real then a few days later. i then had a nice chat to a friend and by the time that was over was feeling far more positive about the whole thing and decidedly more human. so that's all good.

i suppose its natural to look at myself and then compare me to a normal person and feel different  and at times when i feel vulnerable or lonely i will think of myself as less then human or a freak. no matter how much i accept myself and learn to work with myself to function within mainstream society there will be times when its hard not to want to be normal, purely because its easier, but i don't have that choice and i never will. i have the right to feel proud of being AS (as long as i don't develop a sense of entitlement with the pride) and i am who i am and a piece of paper (or some pixels on a computer screen) isn't going to change that!

a few words on a few things :)

its fair to say at the moment my world is a bit confused. in the past month and a half i have slept in 10 different places and visited 8 different groups of people. i've stayed in a mixture of relatives and friends houses, student flats and hostels and reached the stage that if there's a bed i'll sleep in it no matter where it is. and in 3 weeks time i fly to canada but not before i've done some more visits. so all in all rather tiring really and for someone who likes to have routine and regularity how easy it is to adjust to a life style of constantly moving around and adapting to new things on almost a daily basis?

well for one thing you've got to want to do it. this is something i have had to keep telling my self when i have been getting stressed and tired. i chose to do this and i could stop at any point. i'm doing this as i want to see my friends and some parts of my family before i leave. i want to say goodbye to the people i care about and who have made a difference to my life before i bugger off out the country. as someone who can struggle to make connections with people the ones i have got are very important to me. people who are willing to deal with me having a violent meltdown and just accept that its part of who i am mean a lot to me. and due to the way i do things i seem to have a smattering around the country. this means i couldn't just say good bye to them all a day or so before i left instead i have been on the go trying to see them all. i know its worth it but that didn't stop me getting close to melting down on a few occasions when things got to much.

you also learn a lot when on the go constantly. i have met a lot of people the past month and have had to be friendly, polite and open with pretty much all of them, even when all i've wanted to do is tell them to shut up so i can sleep/ read my book/ watch some on-line tv. somewhat to my surprise its in the hostels that i have been the most open and unautistic (i know that's not a word) i've chatted to numerous strangers and got along with most of them i've accepted that i won't always get my own way while i'm staying there and that i have to fit around the other people. things that i'm not always great at doing. i'm not sure if it is because it was with total strangers who had no expectations of who i was or if it was because i was nervous so was trying to portray myself as confidant but i did quite well. by the end of 5 nights in glencoe i had spent nights chatting to people from all over the world played cards with them and even cooked dinner with two people i had met that week. not bad for someone who finds social interaction rather taxing!

not to bad then? well i reckon time spent in hostels is not only valuable in terms of my general social development but will also help me when i get to canada so that's all good. unfortunately i seem to have struggled a bit more while staying in friends houses. i have never been good in other peoples houses i tend to feel quite uncomfortable and although i have improved massively over the past few years its still not something and find terribly easy especially when friends parents are around. trying to string a sentence together while sitting in someone's kitchen with there parents shouldn't be a challenge and i know that. but it doesn't mean i'm not going to sit there silently with hands stimming under the table and only just mange to stammer out an one or two word answer when a question is directed at me. i'm not sure if this is a normal AS experience or not so any feed back would be appreciated!

then on top of the vast amounts of social interaction is the lack of routine. this i thought i was dealing with rather well. spending no more then 3 or 4 nights somewhere means that its impossible to establish any form of comforting routines that you know you can stick to. and while there are advantages to this (you cant get upset when the routines is interrupted when you don't have one in the first place) it dose seem to increase my stress levels. i didn't really notice this at first. each day i would make a vague plan and stick to it. ok things would change but most of the time i was prepared for this so it was fine. but as the days on to go stacked up and i wasn't in control of what was happening each day i got a bit more stressed. to start with i could release it by just going out on my own for a walk, this having no effect on anyone else is much the best way for me to deal with it but by the time i had been on the go almost a month it didn't work so well. 

i have always been an emotional person who cries easily and i have been getting to the stage that when things weren't  going they way i wanted them to i would be close to tears and it would be over very stupid things. lucky on most occasions i managed to keep myself in check. but it doesn't always work. by the time i had reached my friends house in glencoe i had been on the go just over a month. i had stayed in a hostel for the past 5 nights and was pretty tired. when the plans for the day changed because she got called into work i fell apart slightly. i did mange to wait till she left but once she had gone i just let myself cry. i'm not sure what i was crying for, mostly because i was tired and something had suddenly changed, but i did feel a lot better for it. i'm not sure if its just me but sometimes a good cry on my own makes everything feel a lot better afterwards. unfortunately it can be hard to find the quite/ private spaces to have these cries and people tend to get irritated when you cry for no good reason in there presents.

i have read that some people on the spectrum sometimes struggle with personal hygiene and while i wouldn't say i do, lack of routine dose mean on occasions i have forgot to do things i should such and clean my teeth twice a day. while this is no great deal i'm wondering of its something typical of us spectrum people or just my laziness. i have also found that showering can be problematic when staying in places where they don't provide towels when you neglected to pack one, luckily i don't thing my friends like it when i smell so have lent me ones while i have been on the go.

last thing i want to ask is about hitch hiking i'm not sure if many others of you have done this but i have on a few occasions accepted lifts from people heading my way. while so far i have been fine every time i have questioned myself on the wisdom of this being a small 18 year old girl. i know i can be very trusting possibly too much so and accepting lifts from strangers is possibly not the best idea but in a small friendly place like glencoe (where all the lifts i got where around) it didn't seem like and issue.

all in all my past month and a bit has been relatively eventful. im currently at my parents house catching up on sleep and trying to eat regular and healthy meals after the some what dubious diet that i've surcomed to on occasions. i'm also counting down the days till i leave still a scary and daunting prospect but one i am looking forward to greatly. i'm longing to settle down for a a while and get a routine for a few months at least :) i don't think i met any other autistic people travelling around but i do recommend it even if just for a week or so. i don't like to let being autistic get in my way and while shearing rooms with people you have never met can be terrifying is probably also rather good for us. as i've always told my self its better to be scared and do things then less scared and not :)

limbo

im currently living in a strange kind of limbo, not quite here but not quite there. i don't really know where i am. i've left home but not got to where im going. i know im autistic but not sure where i fit on the spectrum  i can climb but its not climbing (will explain this later). all i know its that im in-between big parts of my life and for now all i can do is wait for them to get going. witch i suppose is the first part of travelling. the waiting to go.

so where am i going? well im off to canada in november to be a ski instructor in whistler. sounds easy enough really, travel half way across the world to a new place, live in student style accommodation with a room-mate who i don't know and spend all day taking kids up and down a mountain, what's to be scared of? not like im not great with people, have routines that annoy the heck out of the people around me or am prone to meltdowns when i get, well, when i get to the stage that i get meltdowns.

its fair to say the idea of all this terrifies me, but in a way that partly why im doing it. i like to push myself way out my comfort zone (or at least i tell myself i do, so i do) and see how i react and what i can do that i didn't think i could. but right now it all seems very big and scary and due to my bloody marvellous habit of circular thought ive been thinking almost non stop about what canada will be like. and scaring myself silly. useful!

all that said i am very much looking forward to it. scary as it might be i love skiing, i love canada and i've been looking forward to this trip since i had the idea of going. but im not there yet. right now im travelling round the uk visiting family and friends who i wont see for a while once my real travels start. between leaving my summer home in glencoe to going to canada i wont be in the same place for more then two weeks. well if everything goes to plan anyway.


before i get to canada there a few things i want to do and getting a formal diagnosis to find out where i am on the autistic spectrum is one of them. ive know for almost two years that i fit somewhere on the spectrum after stumbling across a news paper artical about AS women and very quickly identifying with what was being said (i had been thinking for a while that i might be slightly autistic before i read the artical). my parents who also read the artical could see most of what was being said in me as well. i promptly when online to do some digging and found that i seem to directly fit the profile of an autistic woman. to add a bit of weight to the theory of why i was so meish and not so good at the whole fitting in thing, one of my aunts and a cousin who knew about these things had been telling my mother for years that i must be somewhere on the spectrum.

i tried to get a diagnosis back then but it turned out there was no provision for adults on the spectrum where i lived. they didn't diagnose us and they didn't really care. my doctor tried to go though my school nurse but that failed as well. in the end i gave it up as a bad job. i probably wouldn't be trying again now if i hadn't moved to glencoe this summer but my experiences and friends there told me (rather directly) that its something i really need to get done. so im trying to go private. 

having started the process im now trying to get on with it, filling out forms and what not while all the time mindful that i need to be done before i head off and away out the country. so i'm checking my emails eight times a day just to make sure i don't miss anything.(well obliviously)

i'm also an obsessive climber but due to a rather unfortunate injury have not been able to climb for well over a year. this has upset me somewhat. i live climbing, it's my world and i didn't know how to, or want to live with out it. but finally i am back. i can climb again but to me, someone who enjoyed competing at a high level, i'm not really climbing. as much as it good to be back i want to climb hard again but i cant. so, to me, i'm in-between not climbing at all and being able to climb properly. another state of limbo.

so that's me a girl in limbo. travelling around the uk with no one place to call home (not that i'm complaining is rather fun) each new place brings a new routine to be adopted (i cant live with out them) different people to see and a few new challenges in terms to staying happy, polite and civilised when what i really want to do is scream at people and run away. but im learning, living and being me and i suppose that what really matters.