Recently Diagnosed - How It's Going

Hi. My name is Remco, and I have recently been offically diagnosed with autism via an IQ-test. But ever since then, things have been different. I am so so unmotivated and doubly depressed that I actually cry now and magically feel things in places I previously felt numb. I overthink my dont's and do's, crying all over the place and I'm not sure what to do now.

My whole life I have been noticing that I was put in unfair positions that I never had any control or say over. It started with school, where I was firstly put in a "normal" elementary school, but I couldn't follow any of the subjects correctly, so I was put in the lowest levels of schooling possible, and developed my education through there. I was helped there and I felt my presence and value. Good grades were thrown out like bills and I leveled up to a practical school - where you do things with your hands while learning basic maths and language skills. And that worked, for around my first and second year, but by then I felt I could do more. So. Much. More. But I lived this way my whole life, I didn't know how to put it into words and quite frankly, I'm not sure I could. But I knew that this wasn't it.

That I wanted to be in a different school and wanting an actual job to go along with it. So I didn't, instead I was improving myself more and more in the sticky situation I was in. After three to four years of doing the same thing with school, day in, day out - I decided to speak up, warning my teachers and peers that I was no longer going to be attending this school, and that I wanted to go somewhere where nobody assumes I'm weird or different, even. I decided I wanted to be like everyone else. This was three months ago, and I still don't go that school and I have no further plans of finishing it. You may be reading this wondering, "What are you saying?" and trust me, we'll get to that real soon. After notifying teachers and my parents about how I felt, they immediately asked if I was okay, making sure to not lose sight of me. I told 'em I was fine when in reality, I really really wasn't. I started talking to my parents and teachers more about where this whole thing came from, but not overexplaining everything I went through because I didn't want to seem out of the norm.

What's fustrating right now though is the diagnosis.

It came to me as a shock, but not a complete surprise since I've been dealing with issues like autism my whole life, but now that it's there, out in the open, it's been really tricky trying to persue my goals because now I feel like all of that is for nothing. And it's been really hard dealing with it. To me, there are two sides to this whole thing:

Side #1: It now makes sense as to why I couldn't do the usual elementary schools. It's because I couldn't handle it, and these skills were definitely not in my skill-set. It explains why I was a different kid, and took every word that came out of anyone's mouth as literal as possible.

Side #2: It affects my self-esteem and I keep asking myself "How could it?" or "I feel pretty normal". The thing is, I bet a lot of you have trouble finding friends, while I do not. Sure I'm lonely, but everytime I spend a little bit more time online or at social gatherings and clubs, the more I felt like autism simply isn't part of who I am and that I do not have any of the obvious symptoms most other people on the spectrum have. Which is still very confusing to me. I'm guessing something that I am working on right now is; if the person I'm talking to in front of me has any reason to departure, I tend to bond with them less. Still a lot, don't get me wrong, but I don't like hanging on to things I know won't last. Waste of energy, at least trying to, in my head.

A lot of the signs I have is that of character, rather than actual behavior, and that confuses the hell out of me too simply because they're characteristic, you could put anyone on the spectrum with these signs. So, I'm now on day three of processing my diagnosis and it's not going super well, as you may or may not tell. But anyway, I am done ranting about it. I wanna know what you guys think since I've peeked the blinders a bit and saw a bunch of you are undiagnosed/self-diagnosed and I'm wondering if we could have a civil convo about autism and what you did when you got diagnosed or noticed you were having more than II signs of the spectrum.

Thanks a lot for your time,

-Remco