Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi! I’m over 60 and recently diagnosed ASD. I’ve spent an awful life of being misdiagnosed and even incarcerated, due to the psychiatric services in the second half of the 20th Century having rigid ideas about what mental illness is. Or what it isn’t. Now they can’t get their heads around ASD, and PTSD caused largely by their mistreatment, actually causes depression. They don’t even understand ‘are you hearing voices?’ leads the the logical conclusion ‘Yes. Yours!’ I see the funny side now. Over 45 years too late. I am a whole person, with positive as well as negative attributes. Psychiatrists really do seem incapable of seeing anything other than negatives in patients, in my experience. I think things are improving for the young generation. How many other lost people like me were there? How many are still out there? How do we learn at such a late stage to help ourselves be the best version of ourselves we can be? I am a successful, musical, empathetic person. I am at last finding my wings, like a teenager in a body falling apart!!!! I would love to support other people. And I think it’s so important to each be ourselves. The kids at school these days think they are being so individual ..... yet they all want the same phone/trainers etc. I do believe people should learn to be more tolerant of differences. But what do I know? I’m a 17 year old trapped in a sixty plus year body.
Hello, and welcome.
I'm 59 now and was diagnosed 3 years ago, after a lifetime of bullying, challenges, mental health issues, misdiagnoses and misunderstandings - the usual stuff. I have no friends, and never really have had. I live alone now and prefer it that way. I failed at school - or rather, school failed me. I caught up a bit and went to uni at 28. In spite of my degree, though, I still feel uneducated. I've missed out on so much. I've always been years behind other people - including emotionally. Like you, I still feel like a teen. I sometimes imagine my lack of education, the books I haven't read, the things I don't know as a mountain in front of me. Each year that passes, that mountain gets higher and steeper, and it blots out more light. All I have is a short rope to tackle it. The more I try to climb, the more I find myself back in the foothills. I sometimes wonder if it's too late now to even continue trying. In my brief and all too infrequent periods of positivity, I tell myself It's never too late. Keep it up. Deep inside, I know that's true. But I have things working against me. I find it difficult to read now - difficult to focus on it. I find it hard to study and retain knowledge. All I've ever wanted to be, since a small child, is a writer. It's the thing that's been with me throughout life - the bug in my head. I've had a few things published - including a novel 5 years ago, which soon vanished - but haven't achieved what I've always striven for. I look at that novel now, though, and realise I've still got a long way to go and a lot to learn yet. At 59! If anything happens, it will be a very late flowering indeed!
Yes... I can't help feeling that huge amounts of my life have been lost. Wasted. I'm one of those lost - but I'm trying hard to find my way through.
Haha! It's always amused me why people choose to express their individuality by copying everyone else! People are strange, as Jim Morrison sang
What does ‘uneducated’ feel like? I’ve never heard of that feeling before.
And what is a writer? I thought it was a person who writes. I’m a writer. I always have been. Or at least I thought I was. I don’t write story’s or anything and sometimes I just write random words, just for the sake of writing. But mostly, I write as a way to help me process this world but I don’t read what I’ve written and it just gets thrown away when I pick up the energy to have a clear out. So I’m a writer, and always have been. I’m just wondering, what your definition of a writer is? I thought it was somebody who writes but you must have a different definition because I know you write.
And isn’t it great that we never grow up :-) I think it’s got to be one of the greatest benefits of being autistic. I love being a teenage boy even though I appear to be a 51 year old woman and I love that I’ve got my own little gang now, at my autism group, and we’re beginning to do all the things I never did or at least not fully, as a younger person, whatever that means, because I’ve always been young. My friend (female) sits with all the woman acting all grown up and talking about grown up things but me and the boys sit and play scrabble and have amazing, easy and often random, not matching, conversations with a bit of teasing sometimes.
It sounds like you’re still grieving, which is understandable, and from what I’ve learned, grieving takes it’s own time. I’m glad you can still bring a smile though, even if that’s hard to do sometimes.
Hi Martian Tom! We have so much in common. I love writing, but due to only having 24 hours in the day I concentrate on music. If writing is your passion, go for it. I got a music degree as an immatu very mature student. I like my own space and doing things alone. It can get lonely, but that passes. I do feel like a Benjamin Button. I was an overly wizened child, now I’m a teenager in my emotio etc. If I don’t look in any mirrors I’m just fine. Not sure why all the laughing emoticons happened. I only meant the last one. People are strange, but my phone is too!