Hi, yes, I'm 59 and I've never benn formally assessed for Autism, and nowadays I have learned to adjust and have coping strategies for social situations, and the avoidance of the same. I have a partner, and a 10 yo daughter, I have a good job and on th eoutside all looks rosy - but that's not the whole picture is it.
I have no "mates" - in my whole life I have never ever instigated a social meet-up with a friend, the ideas of having to meet 121 or in a group for a regular social chit-chat both scares and makes me feel trapped. People have tried in the past to form matey relationships, but I have always batted them away, or failed somehow.
That's ok - I ma not lonely - I have plenty of friends/associates at work and I can handle that as the relationships are defined by where we are and what we do and it never overlaps into out-of-work so it's all good.
My childood was . . . odd. So were my teens, and my 20's and right up into my mid 30's I was still struggling. When I was 23 I worked in a open plan office and several of my workmates took it upon themselves to role pay "sarcasm" for me as I just did not get it. Funny looking back, I was just cosidered eccentric and I have played on that all my life - making a joke out of it witghout ever knowing what "it" was.
I dropped out of school when I was 17 as it was all getting too much, found jobs where I worked on my own, then over the years moved into jobs where i worked around people. I used to apologise to people wh sat near me because I couldn't talk small talk like everyone else, ha ha, I can now but it's taken a long long time.
Later I moved into freelance working because that meant that I could move on when I found myself socially floundering - as everywehere I went I found a small number of people who liked me for myself, an equal number of peoole who really disliked me for the same reasons, and a whole raft of people who I just confised, or whatever.
My partner wants to get married, but I can't do that as it fills me with dread, she wants me to have a party for my 60th: no thanks, she wants me to go out with friends on my own - that will never happen. I not unsociable but anything that centres on my and might illustrate the gaping hole in my social network I have to avoid, and protect the illusions and barries i hae built around me.
I am considering applying for a diagnosis, not for myself, mostly for my partner (although she doesn't know) but I'm afraid of opening up to a GP for fear of being knocked-back, like I said I now how coping strategies so that is what they wil see - not the me inside or the historical me who almost 60 years of back story.
I dunno.
Someone tell me - what am I thinking?
