Anyone else had an identity crisis? For me, it's happened this year, and I've crashed very hard. It started from burnout, and led to depression. I've had to learn to accept the help from family and friends, and I definitely feel as if I've reverted to a child. I realise I was trying to chase to be normal, because I really wanted to have that understanding the way others do, I realised I could've better nourished friendships more, and how afraid I was of letting people close. It's scary to realise the way I built my thinking to sustain in this world was very unhealthy, and I have been sucked into vicariously living my life through others, and trying to imagine my past as if I was different when I was younger. I have been afraid of conversation, and have slowly felt myself disconnecting.
The silver lining is that it brought me to finding communities like this to share myself, and read what others put, as there was a time I had coped so much I forgot that I even had autism.
My mind tells me that I need to build up a better version of myself before I go out into the world again, but life isn't about that luxury. I guess I realise how much I have disliked myself internally.
Something that has helped is being more honest with people, and trying not to hide, which is still a serious work of progress, but I hope it can help me to have more authentic relationship with people. My fear is when I do this, I'll appear very naive, clumsy, and all those social blemishes and lack of understanding will be on full display. But I also know that if I can do that, I can live a life that feels more like my own, and not constructed with pieces of what I think a life should look like.
Anyway, anyone else can relate to any of these?
