TRIGGER WARNING
Discussions of alcoholism, mental health and forms of bullying present.
Sections within this post
- Introduction
- Young adulthood
- Starting college
- Drinking culture
- Meeting my husband
- Pain in the brain
- Alone-ly time
- Off to university
- On the career path
- Queen of the fads
- 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?
Young adulthood
Having finally left high school (middle school) and making it to college (assumingly ‘high school’?), it was time for further studies but to also enter another rite of passage - legally becoming an adult and unlocking the new experiences surrounding that. Things started to get better as independence increased, but that didn’t mean my early adult years were completely plain sailing.
Starting college
At the end of high school, I knuckled down with studies, and got the exam grades required to attend my chosen college. My college felt fairly similar to high school, but with less restrictions on appearances (no uniform or strict rules) and no longer having to stay on premises until clocking off (you were free to leave and come back during free periods). Personally, I found the studies to be a massive jump upward in difficulty compared to high school, and despite best efforts, there were times I had to resit exams / coursework to ensure grades were met to get into university. These retakes were not as a result of me being lazy or skipping class etc. - whilst I did partake in the (exhausting) social aspects of college, my studies came first and everything else was an afterthought. If I studied any harder, my mental health would have nosedived even more. In hindsight, I do wonder if it was a severe case of autistic burnout where I just could not physically or mentally take anymore or anything else in.
Drinking culture
(Trigger warnings apply here - please skip ahead if you need to)
Hitting the ripe young age of eighteen meant I was legally allowed to consume alcohol and freely go to bars and nightclubs with a trusty provisional driving license as ID in hand. A mix of peer pressure and curiosity meant I did ‘party’ on numerous occasions. My drunken persona consisted of (and still does consist of) having no social anxiety whatsoever, becoming extroverted and just wanting to dance to music I liked. However, with the intake of alcohol came a high level of anxiety when danger or discomfort was present - for instance, I saw a fight taking place that I had zero involvement in whatsoever and I kicked off into a panicked meltdown desperate to get home instantly.
Luckily, I did not end up in a situation of danger myself (although let’s just say that non-consenting touch did not go down well with my sense of justice), but like most, I do have regrets or embarrassing stories - such as doing karaoke on a stage(!) and crying over the agony induced by wearing a pair of cheap high heels.
Going back to the point of dancing to music I liked, I was very much into the ‘indie sleaze’ music and style that was rife during that decade (I still love it). It was a special interest that engulfed me, and my evangelism for the latest upcoming bands was something I often inflicted on peers against their will. Coupling this with my autistic bossiness, it meant that there was a nightclub that I would often drag everyone to, that catered to my music tastes and played my requests without hesitation. I got huffy when we had to leave to go to other clubs - you know, so that everyone got to go where they wanted to and not just stay in one place all night on my whim. Obviously nowadays I see that it was fair to cater for everyone, but at the time I felt personally attacked for having to leave.
Meeting my husband
I wrote about a break-up in the previous post, which actually occurred whilst I was at college, but the majority of the relationship was through the tail-end of high school.
The story of meeting my husband is something I want to do as a separate, more in-depth ‘story time’ post - because let’s face it, the namesake of this blog is a consequence of me somehow meeting someone and eventually marrying them (my attitude here stems from the disbelief that anyone would marry this hot mess).
However, to touch on it a little bit here so further sections of this and subsequent posts make sense, I started ‘dating’ my husband at college, in the second year. It was from then on, that we have stayed together - there are no breaks or gaps in our relationship timeline, since then.
Pain in the brain
I started having migraine attacks in my mid-teens, and whilst some people have said to me that they have gone through the same thing but stopped having them as soon as they hit adulthood, I was unfortunately still having them in young adulthood and beyond. A number of times I got sent home from college, uni and my eventual post-uni job due to debilitating symptoms.
I still don’t know what caused them, or what causes them to this day - it is something I would also like to write about on the blog in future, especially if there is any link somewhere to autism.
Alone-ly time
(Trigger warnings apply here - please skip ahead if you need to)
College is supposed to last two years - but due to a change of heart in terms of career path, and whilst my friends all went off to uni, I stayed back for a third year to take up subjects that I needed as a requirement for a particular degree. Whilst in hindsight, this benefitted me in terms of career, my friendships dwindled to nothingness as I felt a bit left behind. My friends had also matured and changed, given they had just moved out from home for the first time. My husband became my only close companion outside of family, which is still true to this day (the joys of autistic loneliness, huh).
For some reason, college still had aspects of school where if you were seen as an easy target, you were damn right going to be made a mockery of. As I was on my own for the third year, my friendship group a mere memory, there were times where I was singled out and picked on for eating lunch on my own, on more than one occasion. This really did not help with my mental health, having felt alone enough as it is and having pangs of regret for not going to uni with everybody else. My saving grace, which I was eternally grateful to my parents for, was persisting on learning to drive, getting the required tests passed and having my little old banger car. I finally had a retreat away from being picked on - a quiet, locked space to eat in peace.
Off to university
With my intense photographic memory, I still vividly remember waking up and logging on to my laptop to see that I had been accepted into university by reaching the required grades, including on the subjects I had to stay back a year for to complete. Happy tears ensued - the perseverance of that difficult year was worth it in the end.
For university, I stayed in my family home and commuted in for lectures, and so I didn’t have the whole ‘moving out and finding your feet’ aspect that many others had. The reason for this is that I didn’t feel ready to move out. In hindsight, given how long it took me to move out in the years after uni, I do think it was down to undiagnosed autism - I was still heavily reliant on my parents for things, even as a young adult. It was definitely an executive functioning issue - to get me to do anything that wasn’t a hobby or special interest was like dangling a cat over a sink (horrible for all parties involved, basically). In some spaces online, I have seen an observational commentary on how autistic people are set back a few years emotionally - which again could be another reason for my late-but-eventual moving out.
There were times during the degree where living there would have been beneficial, but that would have solely been the social aspect - being able to attend parties, societies, meet-ups etc. without worrying about getting home. I started to realise throughout my time at uni that I was past my ‘party years’ and didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. I mostly kept myself to myself (except for meeting my husband outside of classes when we had the same free periods / end times), striving to sit alone in lectures but I did have familiar acquaintances who did try to sit / engage with me.
University was the ultimate in independence and freedom, which I loved. Finally, I could sit somewhere on my own to eat lunch, and not get picked on! Yay!
Academically, I did fairly well - but noticeably over time, I realised I was getting sick of education and was constantly feeling burned out no matter how much or how little I studied. Again, I had to resit and redo modules due to failing exams and / or coursework. Partly this came down to me being unsociable and hating the thought of constantly badgering the lecturers for help, as it felt like once you were stuck on something, then it was tough luck, there’s no going back as there’s a whole module to get through and hundreds of you in a lecture hall - therefore I believed the lecturers wouldn’t have the time to help me and all my woes. I really fumbled through some modules, not really understanding stuff and then barely scraping through with a ‘pass’. Another reason was that some modules were worse than watching paint dry, and one of my (often) detrimental autistic traits is that when I am really not into something, it becomes impossible for me to listen / absorb / care for it.
Just before finishing the final exams and submitting the dissertation, I got a graduate scheme position - after summer break, I’d start on another new career path that differed from my degree (as after the degree, I didn’t want to do that subject anymore - it was no longer a passion as it didn’t come naturally nor did I have any joy left for it). I told myself ‘no more exams or study’ after uni, as the cycle of attending a new learning institution just to leave it completely burned out to a crisp was getting tiresome. However, I would have been an idiot to turn down the graduate scheme - it just meant another two years of post-graduate study (ouch).
On the career path
(Trigger warnings apply here - please skip ahead if you need to)
I won’t divulge too much about the graduate scheme as I am still employed by the company, but the aspects around it and my (at the time) undiagnosed autism are what I will focus on.
I lived out of a suitcase for some time - travelling and living in hotels. On top of this, it was also time for me to finally leave home and move out with my husband. We moved to a big city, but it lasted less than a year as we were both homesick - I was often waking up in the middle of the night sobbing, longing to be back ‘home’. The changes were vast, thick and fast - and so was the layer of studying for a post-graduate degree (Masters) in a completely new subject area, on top of working full-time hours. It was tough, but the overall outcome was totally worth it.
Going back to the hotels thing - it was nothing personal to anybody at all but I struggled massively with the aspect of spending all day with fellow scheme members, to then dine out with them and then potentially have drinks in the evening on top. My social battery had simply ran out by the end of the work day, whilst being brain-fried from learning new stuff. I had a new excuse every evening to avoid any post-work contact - hiding in my hotel room eating Pot Noodles for dinner, getting on with coursework / reading up on studies (not really, it was just a good excuse - I was way too tired to study in the evenings and just watched re-runs of random Family Guy episodes on the television).
With a bigger workload than ever before and multiple life changes to deal with, I inevitably ended up depressed (and I still am, it never left). We moved back to our hometown and our family homes again in the end. I was well and truly done with studying - and the burnout cycle swinging back round again. I did stick it all out and as a result of doing so, landed a full-time permanent role that I (somehow, despite my mental health) still hold.
It was not all doom and gloom though - I revelled in the independence and having a wage was a blessing, as it meant being able to indulge on special interests (more on that in the next section). I had weekend jobs in my late teens whilst at college, but for both of them, I had the ‘Sunday Scaries’ so severe that I refused to go back to the jobs after having meltdowns on the nights before my next shift was due.
Queen of the fads
Something to this day that makes me question if I could be AuDHD (autistic and ADHD) is that whilst I have long-term special interests (music and video games), I have short-term fleeting ‘fads’ and compulsive spending issues related to them. For example, at any given moment, the latest creative hobby that has all the buzz about it is likely to have me in a chokehold and be a money drain for a few months, before I get bored of it and all the paraphernalia ends up donated to the local charity (thrift) shop. This is a constant cycle that has seen me through the years when I started to get a wage in - the draw towards always partaking in the current creative craze was so I had a relaxing hobby at all times to rely on when university work stressed me out to the max (and I was having a ‘bored of The Sims’ phase).
Remember loom bands / Rainbow Loom? Yep, I was all over that craze. Even though it was seen as ‘for kids’, I was really into it because once you got a loom board and got into some complicated patterns, you could make some really intricate-looking bracelets (some I’d say were a bit tricky for kids to get the hang of). I think what made me more addicted to the craze was because there was an element of storing and sorting ‘things’ with it. I had multiple containers of bands, in all sorts of colours and patterns. I ended up having more bands than I actually used, as the time spent organising them was more fun in the end to me than making the bracelets. Yes, they eventually ended up at the charity shop, but before then, I learned you could use the loom board to knit with, so it had a little more longevity in it before getting donated (anti-consumers, please don’t come at me, I am sorry).
If it wasn’t creative crazes, it was fashion - before ‘fast fashion’ and aesthetics became a big boom from the rise of Pinterest, TikTok and short-form content, I would sniff out the latest ‘cool trainers (sneakers)’ on Instagram and go into a level of debt to have them on my feet (Balenciaga Triple S, anyone?), to then see the trend fizzle out and I’d be stuck with something now seen as ‘uncool’. I already had issues with fitting in, being an undiagnosed autistic, let alone wearing ‘cheugy’ clothing items (writing this paragraph alone has made me feel really old and uncool).
Start of adulthood (pre-diagnosis)
Now in a fully-established career, I was starting to wonder why things were always still a struggle, no matter what. I was often questioning ‘when would things get easier?’. Everyone else around me seemed to cope with balancing multiple responsibilities…
…until one day, a passing comment from an autistic individual seemed to hold some weight to it, once I bothered to look into it years later.
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,
