Published on 12, July, 2020
Before I got my diagnosis, I used to think that I was just a human being who didn't fully understand how to be a human being - because every other human being (aside from my parents) seemed to reject me.
Now, post-diagnosis, I no longer feel that way.
Instead, I feel like an alien, inhabiting the wrong planet.
Whatever I do, I can't change that feeling.
I used to feel that my diagnosis gave me some form of validation. I was a human being with a difference.
Now, I just feel that it consolidates my status as an alien.
I'm on the wrong planet.
Loving gardening and green and wild environments as I do, I feel as though I'm on the right planet. Looking around, there's lots to keep me here, in this life.
I am maybe in the wrong culture or tribe, though, as something has always felt out of kilter. Plus it is when my anxiety is triggered, often due to feeling like an awkward outsider, that I've had what I've called the "2-headed alien" experience. As if I have two pulsating heads on a long stalk and am conspicuously different from others in my surroundings, like a deformed giraffe wandering into a pride of lions.
Perhaps I've just strayed from my habitat, though, putting myself at risk and, to use my mother's phrase "living on my nerves."
I'm not sure. Being fairly recently diagnosed, i wonder whether i will now become more adept at sizing up situations and people and, as they say, "finding my tribe." And whether this will make a difference.