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Being me

fuzz

In my head the narrative was there to keep me 'fitting in' 'you need to be ' ' you need to do ' . You should do this or that. You shouldn't do that or not one will like you. Mostly from my wonderful mum who adopted me. She did it she got me so I could be and do all that and because of these wonderful brains we have I've achieved done and contributed loads, still do still work 2 days. Have great kids and grand kids.

But great joy I don't have to be anything but me now and that's happened since I semi retired probably why I finally got autistic spectrum diagnosis at 70 which fitted the jigsaw puzzle in  such a relief really

Does anyone else feel freed by finally knowing its autism that makes u unique?

  • fuzz said:
    In my head the narrative was there to keep me 'fitting in' 'you need to be ' ' you need to do ' . You should do this or that. You shouldn't do that or not one will like you.

    My therapist always taught me to stop and analise who I was trying to do these things for. Was it for me in order to fit in or was I actually trying to people please and not cause disturbance to the others.

    I've learned to be comfortable being a minor disturbance and to make it a part of my persona. I don't want to be like other people because I'm not. I am comfortable in my own skin, don't really care about their opinions on the whole and have a much stronger feeling of "self".

    Confidence is a good way to carry this off. Be the unusual personality and so long as you are not causing any harm then people trying to take you to task for it are in for a hard time.

    That's just me of course, everyone will have their own approach.

  • in reply to McFrost
    McFrost said:
    I have dreamed about retirement pretty much since the day I started working! That would definitely free me up to do more of what interests me

    I did this about 2 years ago (in my mid 50s) and wow - what an improvement.

    I've never felt happier in my life and find I can now do all the things I have been longing to do for decades but wasn't able to do because of work / partner / location / money etc.

    Most of what I love to do is inexpensive or actually ends up making me money so that helps.

  • Freed in a way, but also not, as I still have to live in and engage with the neurotypical world, being as I am married to a neurotypical person, have kids at school and am still working. I have dreamed about retirement pretty much since the day I started working! That would definitely free me up to do more of what interests me.

  • When I got diagnosed it was mostly relief that I felt. I have a bad habit of clinging on to bad memories, and most of those memories are of times I’ve messed up conversations or even worse whole relationships. Now I’ve got something that I can attribute many of those unpleasant interactions with, rather than just thinking I’m flawed and horrible as a person.

    That’s good to hear that you can be yourself now!