Hi, I'm gus

Hi everyone, my name is gus and I was recently diagnosed with ASD. Apparently level 1 or high functioning ASD.  I’ve been posting and now I feel like it’s time to introduce myself. These posts are just an amazing form to connect with you and see that I’m not alone. By the way I do not live in Britain, I’m sorry if the community is restricted to British residents, but I couldn’t find any community online in Brazil. Maybe facebook or something but I don’t have any social network.

Being diagnosed with ASD at 42, also being married with kids it’s just confusing. I’ve tried to talk to people about it but they all just say that “you don’t look like an autistic person”. Not quite encouraging.

Last year I saw a BBC report on the Autism Awareness Month and for the first time I immediately identified myself. I always thought that I had a serious problem, specially with social relations. As a kid I stopped going to school for a while. Lots of psychologists and nobody found out. But that was the early 80’s and ASD wasn’t very known I guess. My mother died in 1985 and since then they all said that I was “different” because I’ve lost my mother. Now I see that before that I was actually a very different individual. When my older daughter was born I thought I would freak out being forced to talk to different people and especially attending children's parties and parks. on some occasions I had to leave parties and stuff because I could not bear to be there. This happened dozens of times in my life.

Thank you for the opportunity to read the testimonials and share as well.