Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello from in Shropshire, England, I'm Nick Squiggler 68 years old, diagnosed about 4 years, finally. For me it was a great relief, and the diagnosis has changed my life. I know who I am and why I am not the person school and my tutors doing my degree in Fine Art wanted me to be. I am better than that, because I am my true self now.
I can't say it was easy, but somehow I managed to scrape through with a degree. I had no diagnosis, so no student support, if I had of had support as Autistic I would have done better, but I passed, and that was a great achievement. Especially as I never read a single of the recommended books. Art literature is impossibly hard to understand, rocket science would have been easier.
When I started I found it very hard to write in anything like an academic way, but in the end I did manage to write a dissertation. Not great, but good enough to pass.
That was about 15 years ago.
I love making art and drawing, painting and sewing are my favourite stims.
My current obsession is the idea that Autistic people are people with Neanderthal traits. My favourite book when I was at school was Stig of the Dump, a caveman living in a town's dump. I have always felt like Stig, an outsider, someone who just doesn't belong in the 'normal' world. I feel that people think I'm a human being, and I try very hard to look like one, but really I'm not, as if I accidentally came here through a time warp. Actually my head is very similar shaped to Captain Jean-Luc Picard's I have a distinct brow ridge and long skull, I always thought I had Neanderthal DNA even when no one thought it was possible.
Some people liken Autism to being on the wrong planet, I can relate to that too, but far better for me is being an ugly duckling, a changeling, someone who everyone thinks is a human but is actually a faery, alien or Neanderthal. However looking at my family I see the genes, lots of odd shaped heads and creativity and easy for me to get on with. I come from a long line of oddballs, and I'm very happy with that.
Hi, Mr Squiggler! I'm a contradiction in terms. I'm a late 40's, piano-guitar playing, music-writing, fluent French-speaking, creative who weeps at Bette Midler's 'Beaches', and also shouts triumphantly whenever I see a woke liberal explode in a ball of fire and hypocrisy.
(Until recently) I taught English to refugees and asylum seekers, and now teach French privately as well as provide a specialist proofreading service (essays, and dissertations).
I was only diagnosed late in life, but it's clear to me now why I never fitted in with the neurotypical herd.
Yes that does seem quite contradictory.
I loved watching Stig of The Dump as a child. And, oddly enough, I've been working on a screenplay which has as its premise that homo sapiens were not the only species of humans to have made it through to the 21st century.
Yep, you bet. I've jut been watching Ben Fogle's life in the wild, visiting someone called Nikola in Croatia, a sports coach turned hermit, living in the woods in a mud house, He has a broad nose and brow ridge eats once a week, keeps pigs cats and dogs and he would make a great Stig.