Backstory
Early life: I was an only child of the early 70s. When growing up I was apart from my peers, and not having a sibling or more to bounce off, having only my school aged peers to compare against (and I lived too far away to see all bar 2 of them on a semi-regular basis outside of school). Right now, writing this as a 50-something adult this feels like ancient history, a set of memories blended.
Frequently childhood feels like a blurred memory, even back then I seemed adrift only remembering the odd details. I think maybe memories were locked off as a form of self-preservation; individual events seem to belong to someone else, a dream at arms-length. For me, it’s all about the feelings.
Historically I know some facts – I was born to a religious zealot of a woman, and found out as an adult that I only exist because her catholic priest said to her “isn’t it time gave the church a priest?”… wow… what a find and boost to my feelings of realised abuse as an adult. Anyhow, being an undiagnosed autistic child who was forced through a religious education wasn’t pleasant to say the least. I wasn’t understood, didn’t learn to read until I was 12 years old, labelled “bone-idle-lazy”, and actually physically beaten by catholic nuns. All of my early schooling formed the start of my complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
During later childhood going up to high school, the abuse of my undiagnosed autistic-self continued. I was placed into the remedial set in the first years of high school, at which point I managed to teach myself to read properly, later on being placed into the middle set. I was emotionally stunted, processing differently to others in my peer group – at this age I picked up one of my life-long special interests, computing – hell I didn’t even notice girls until I’d turned around 17.
Starting Adult Life: Advancing through school and sixth form, I moved into employment in the retail sector, and experienced now what I know to be a full on autistic meltdown, completely losing executive functions as if someone had thrown a switch – this first meltdown took three months to get over – classed diagnosis back then as a ‘nervous breakdown’. Even back then I found a shortcut to a reset via alcohol. Whilst alcohol hasn’t defined my existence, and I’m not an alcoholic, I’ve realised that it is a tool to me – sometimes an enjoyable one, but still a tool.
Sidebar: I was bullied pretty much from the first school memories up until just before early adult employment, and then even a spot of it came about.
Relationship Difficulties: You know what really sucks? When you know or don’t know you’re autistic and going through relationships…. No make-up sex, nothing normal you see on TV or in the movies. Why? Because if you’ve failed and the relationship has broken down, even for an hour or so, the world is ending – there is massive fallback to ‘the end of the world’, and when it resolves, the last thing on your mind is sex – the trauma is front and centre. Later on, when you find out you’re autistic, and the cause of all of this is an insidious ganglion on your life, which is you, that’s devastating beyond what can be forged in words. That’s fucking complex post traumatic trauma, poison to your soul if anything.
As an autistic person, the subconscious coping mechanisms will kick in, speaking for myself, this meant what I now know as fawning or people pleasing, and inside a relationship this destroys you a little, as you'll do anything, just anything to keep the peace, often loping off bits of your wants and desires to keep everything stable. You don't love any less, but can't cope if things go wrong - this is an element of Rejection Sensitivity Disorder (RSD) which many autistic people suffer from. It's incredibly draining to keep things in order.
For me it's like I have a simulation of the entire universe running all the time in minuscule detail, people, relationships, everything is classified as friend or foe, a danger which has to be tracked, or a safe-haven; even driving is an experience as I know where everything is all of the time, what's going to happen, where the force from the car is going, what physics is going to do, everything. Life is draining when you're constantly living at DEFCON 3 or above.
Realisation: I realised that I was probably autistic (which was later confirmed by a clinical diagnosis) after my wife of 15 years died after being ill for a couple of years, so dealing with an almost infinite amount of grief for the death of my wife, and an autistic realisation hit me like a freight-train to the face. The trigger was my internalised echolalia which for me means I have something in my head going on 24*7, this is usually music from any point in my life, and I don't have a choice what it is. Sometimes it's internal repetition of a word, or a phrase I've just learnt or is outside my regular lexicon. Some autistic people do this verbally, or have a verbal tick.
As I'd not done any research on this, lacking realisation until that point in time, I thought this was normal, it was normal to have music in your head 24*7. Sometimes this was a comfort, other times a pain in the royal. I was describing my "internal jukebox" to friends who said 'that's not normal', at this time, no shit, Sherlock (d'oh!). So, the echolalia was what kicked me in the privates and made me get off my arse to go investigate. I've read that the length of autistic realisation for many can be years, I'm extremely fortunate in one sense to have months between realisation and diagnosis. On the other hand I could be very very unlucky as perhaps over a longer period of time it wouldn't have been such a gut-punch.