im autistic

 

This is the meme my best fren Vicky sent me when I told her im autistic

Okay so I'm an autistic woman and I know we are less likely to get diagnosed as children than our Brothers in Autism because we are better at masking. But my parents, best friend, ex, etc. all thought I had the tism. My parents never tried to get me diagnosed though, and I'm gonna be fr I'm self-diagnosed with a score of 139 on the RAADS-R (suggesting very high likelihood though it's not confirmed) but it's kinda obvious at this point. I go to a school where the autism rate is very high (apparently quite common at high-ranking schools) but there is a 16 year waitlist for a diagnosis because basically everyone there thinks something is sus. I'm a grad student and during my training to become a teaching assistant, they told us about 30% of the undergrads at my school in the program I'll be teaching for are autistic or have ADHD (the actual rate may be higher because not everyone informs the schools that they have autism). And I'm a humanities student, so now imagine what the STEM autism rate is like lmao. I think the stereotype of an autistic person is still a boy who's a math prodigy, so autism is underdiagnosed in girls who have book addictions. Apparently people think autistic people don't like fiction because we are uncomfortable with ambiguity. I can't speak for all autistic people, but even though I really need direct communication during social interactions, I don't mind figurative language in books at all. I love a good metaphor in a poem, but not if you're trying to communicate how you feel to me please!!!! 

I also have very intense interests. It took my like 24 years of my life to realize that a lot of people don't. They don't really enter that flow state where they're obsessed with something and intensely concentrating on it. And that's just sad. 

I have a preference for routine so I can't deal with spontaneity. If a friend changes the time or location of a hangout on the day of the hangout, I have a minor crashout. Moving, travelling, etc. are like the worst things ever to me. 

I have sensory issues for loud noises, crowds, and bright lights. This means I basically have an old lady idea of fun. I just need tea, cats, and books to have a good time. Anything more than that has me overstimulated. I am also a clumsy person, not very athletic. 

I've struggled a lot with making friends in the past but when I finally did make close friends, almost all of them were neurodivergent. I always felt like I clicked better with people with autism or ADHD than with neurotypical people even back when I believed I was neurotypical. I also go to a school that is like one of the world's autism capitals, so it is statistically likely. 

A lot of people assume I'm introverted or I hate socialization, but I just hate surface-level interactions that seem that they don't like depth. I still value emotional closeness but don't get it from mid friendships. I've impulsively cut off friends before and had unstable relationships, leading me to think I might have BPD. But guess what? Masked autism in women is frequently misdiagnosed as BPD! And I haven't displayed any BPD symptoms within the last year, a year that I have spent surrounded by neurodivergent people, leading me to believe that the unstable relationships were simply just caused by not being with the right people. 

Everything makes sense now!!!!!