TRIGGER WARNING
Discussions of mental health, s**cide, body image and forms of bullying present.
Sections within this post
- Introduction
- Teenagehood
- Difficulty with change / transition
- Social issues really begin
- Changing special interests
- Mental health
- Physical stuff
- First meltdowns that I didn’t know at the time were meltdowns
- Start of young adulthood
- To be continued…
For my first ever series of blog posts, it made sense to start from where it all began - with autism being a lifelong and present condition and all. I was diagnosed as an adult, into my third decade - so what was life like leading up to the diagnosis moment? What signs were present without me or anybody else knowing or noticing?
Teenagehood
I was a relatively early developer, so teenagehood for me started around aged 11. It was at that age that things started to change, both in circumstance and as I was growing up.
Academically, I did quite well - with some subjects showing signs of being my ‘calling’ and having the ability to hyperfocus on them (such as music and creating magazines in media studies). Education and learning was a joy - the other nuances of school, however, not so much.
Difficulty with change / transition
As mentioned in the first post (here, if you missed it), the transition from primary (junior) to high (middle) school was really difficult. My special interests at the time were seen as ‘childlike’, and moving from childhood into teenagehood meant leaving them in the past - much to my visible upset. In hindsight, they were my coping mechanisms and escapes from the complicated world around me. However, it is not all doom and gloom - they were to simply just evolve into ‘age-appropriate’ things.
I packed away the dolls and anime obsessions in favour of music and video games, and, in some cases, fitting into rigid stereotypes - of which exhausted me to the core and felt forced.
Social issues really begin
A mix of hormones and the complications of relationships and cliques felt like I was living on a knife edge - falling out and making out was commonplace with my peers, and that was before having the stereotypical ‘social awkwardness’ associated with being autistic thrown into the mix.
Friendships
I spent the entirety of my time at high school floating between different friendship groups.
The first friendship group I had was being part of a group of three. This dynamic seemed to be one I fell into a lot, much to my detriment - I often became the ‘third wheel’ that was left out, whilst the other two became even closer.
The flitting-about-friendship-groups followed the same sort of pattern - I looked for something we had in common, worked out how similar I was to the rest of the group, and filled the void between what made me vastly different to them with trying to be exactly like them. As you can imagine, this level of not being your true-self is absolutely exhausting, completely eradicating any sense of connection to who you are really meant to be. I learned later in life that I was undoubtably a heavy ‘masker’ - to the point of, for example, only allowing parts of my special interests to be brought up in certain friendship circles, in case they were ‘too weird’.
Love and relationships
Peer pressure made me feel that having a partner and / or progressing through the stages and activities associated with ‘liking’ someone in ‘that’ way were rights of passage and a great source of gossip.
During my mid-teens, I was in a long-term relationship over multiple years. It was set up after relying on ‘friends’ to get things to progress for me, as I had no idea how to let this person know that I ‘liked’ them in ‘that’ way. We had a few things in common - but over time, as we got older, we drifted apart.
I don’t think me playing The Sims 2 on some occasions for the entire duration of my ex-partner visiting me was a particularly ‘normal’ thing to do. Bearing in mind we did not go to the same school and so I only saw them a couple of times a week or so.
The breakup was indescribable pain unlike anything I’d ever experienced and possibly worsened by my inability to control emotions. At the time, I felt like it was a miracle to have gotten through it and ‘over’ them.
Aside from this relationship, I was never one for flings or ‘one-night-stands’. Loyality and commitment was, and still is, one of my core values (even as a person without faith).
Changing special interests
Once I had to put the dolls away, my special interests altered but did not falter in their intensity.
My first lifelong special interest became prevalent - music. Listening to it, playing instruments, flitting between different genres and associated fashion and culture stereotypes within those said genres (being a ‘mosher’, ‘indie’ and ‘scene kid’ were just some of the pigeonholes I slotted into). The rise in social media and the internet meant I started running fansites for certain bands, as well as digitally collecting and organising images of my favourite bands into folders on my computer.
My second lifelong special interest carried on from childhood - video games. My biggest escape, relaxation and relief from school was to play The Sims 2 all evening (after fulfilling my peer-pressured duty of sitting on MSN Messenger and other social media for a respectable amount of time as to ensure I fit in, despite spending all day with the people on the other end of the line). It was a virtual dollshouse, a means for me to understand social dynamics and to create escapist storylines to distract me from my own life. I was addicted to downloading custom content too.
As well as The Sims 2, I still played iterations of Nintendo consoles religiously throughout teenagehood (and still in adulthood) and loved to care for my virtual pet dogs (on Nintendogs) and my villager ‘besties’ in Animal Crossing.
I was still a bit overtly evangelistic about my interests like I was in childhood, but this caused issues with friendships at school.
Mental health
(Trigger warnings apply here - please skip ahead if you need to)
With my undiagnosed autism, came co-morbidities that, only in hindsight, I can only now correctly attribute labels to the feelings felt at the time.
My mental health throughout teenagehood was not particularly great, to say the least. Like most things about me, it was ‘black and white’ - I was over the moon and joyous when I finally felt accepted by a friendship group, but then came the crushing lows of falling out and feeling lonely again, with the same intrusive thought cycles (‘what is wrong with me, why does nobody like me’ etc.).
The first time I ever had a s**cidal thought was after an incident with my first friendship group in high school. They came together, pulled me to one side and gave me a humiliating ultimatum — if I didn’t stop talking about my ‘boring’ interests then we could no longer be friends. I chose my interests, and moved on to another friendship group once the dust settled.
As I moved friendship groups, these eventually exhausted to the point where I felt like an alien and a complete loner in my class. I eventually hit another mental health crisis, went into isolation (solo study in a tiny room alone) and moved class. Despite moving class, the same cycle continued - exhaust the friendship group, move on once I took the hint that they were ignoring me and didn’t want me there.
Only the last couple of years of school were more bearable - I eventually fit in with a group of ‘misfits’ who also were in a similar boat. Whilst aspects of our friendships weren’t perfect, it was finally a period that wasn’t so hellish - especially with having career-forming and important exams coming up.
I was incredibly lucky to not have been bullied - there were, however, numerous cases of being singled out and picked on by the usual suspects, but thankfully nothing ended up physical. The nasty remarks did stay with me though.
Physical stuff
(Trigger warnings apply here - please skip ahead if you need to)
Body issues
I still hated physical education (PE) in school, and even more so as a teenager. Having to change into our PE uniform in a communal changing room was awful, worsened by having body image issues exacerbated by the changing body through puberty, my inherent laziness meaning I was always overweight (and still am in adulthood) and the prevelance of diet culture rife in school and the ‘noughties’ in general. I tried a million and one ways to hide every inch of myself so as to not expose enough to be commented on, as well as ‘hacks’ to help me get changed quicker (as I am still to this day, quite slow and laboured in movement). This included permanently wearing my PE shorts underneath my skirt, wearing black trainers as part of normal uniform and a trick to hide my chest whilst changing from a shirt / blouse to polo shirt.
A trauma point for me in childhood was the humiliation of not being able to do gymnastics (and being told off for it as if I was deliberately putting it on), due to my limited flexibility and fear of not being in full control of my body for some of the moves. I never was able to do a simple forward roll, let alone handstands or cartwheels. This still carried on into teenagehood.
I was also never into self-care, make-up, or ‘beautifying’ myself, but felt like I had to partake in various ways as to not look so ‘bland’ or ‘piggish’. My eyebrows became heavily plucked and mascara was discreetly applied as for the teachers to not notice it. It was also a constant battle in itself to get me to shower and maintain hygiene (I am regimented about showering now though).
On top of all that, it was implied that I walk with an unusual gait, with my feet pointing out diagonally - so now I also have a lifelong complex about my walk.
Stims
The one ‘stim’ I can remember being evident in teenagehood was doodling - and the need to be doing something in parallel when I have to be intently listening and concentrating is something I still do to this day.
In class, there was no way I could sit there doing something with my hands (e.g., crafting or fiddling with something) without it gaining unwanted attention from peers and the teacher, so my covert way to help me listen was to constantly be doodling things in my scrap notepad. Little characters, scenescapes, flowers. To everyone else, I was ‘frantically taking notes’ when really, it was my hidden way to help me concentrate on what the teacher was saying.
I still have to do this today, when listening to meetings - I retain the information more when doing something like knitting / crochet, drawing or Lego whilst being spoken to. It also calms my anxiety (social and otherwise).
First meltdowns that I didn’t know at the time were meltdowns
There are three prominent memories in my life where I seemingly ‘overreacted’ (shaking, rocking and crying) in the moment but had little control over my response to the situations. To others, they may seem minor, but I was completely inexplicably rattled.
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My bedroom being unknowingly rearranged whilst I was out - this was done for a good reason; it was to make it easier to navigate and make the room feel ‘bigger’. My crammed bookshelf was ordered before this rearrangement, but once the shelves had been moved, the books were put back all over the place. Dealing with a changed layout of the room was already bad enough, but the books being all in the ‘wrong’ places on the shelves triggered a meltdown.
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On a trip, watching a theatrical play - as part of the play, the actors pointed fake guns towards the audience and they were being fired loudly and sporadically. The guns (literally) triggered a meltdown and left my fellow tripgoers completely perplexed as to why I was sat there crying when the guns weren’t even real. I blamed hormones but really, it was a reaction to sensory overload and intense anxiety.
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Someone at our high school prom fired a party popper in my face - my reaction was the same the second point above, but with anger thrown in.
Start of young adulthood
Things started to look up once I got to leave high school. The next life stage was college (which I assume is known as high school outside the UK) and then university.
Getting more freedom, independence and having to manage your own time meant things felt like they started to get easier, but some challenges still continued into the next life phase.
Thank you very much for reading this blog post. I appreciate you spending time here on my corner of the internet. Hopefully you got something out of reading the essay above.
Stay tuned for the next part in the series and be the first to read it by following me on the social media links, in the menu bar, to know exactly when new posts are published.
Until next time,
