Published on 12, July, 2020
Recently diagnosed after seeing so many therapists for poor mental health and all of a sudden it all makes sense. I’m so tired from just not being myself for so long. I just want to be myself now and I know I would start to feel slowly better but I just don’t know how to tell people or how to deal with the questions like oh your 36 and only just found out or things like oh you don’t seem like you have autism? I feel like I have masked for so long I don’t know how to unmask!
There’s no hurry. It takes time to unmask. I feel like others think I am becoming ‘more autistic’ but the simple fact is I am unmasking. I realised I was autistic 46. I put it out of my mind for a year, and then got my diagnosis this March, I’m now 49. My changes have been small. Not talking when I don’t want to. Stopping needless conversation. Saying what I think instead of shutting up or agreeing. Stimming more freely at home. Doing nothing for days if I want/need to. Saying no to social situations I don’t want to be in. Still lots to come.
As for telling people, why? Who needs to know? I told my manager 2 months after my diagnosis. Five months in, i told a couple of others in passing when it cropped up naturally.