Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, I'm David, in my early 50s, living in Portugal for the last four years since we left the UK. I'm originally from the north east of England.
I'm flailing around a bit at the moment, trying to make sense of things and learn a lot about Autism quickly. Lots of things in my history that I haven't thought about for years are leaping back into my mind and suddenly making sense. On the plus side, it's not like I've changed into a different person, I just have a name for the difficulties I have and a lead on resources to help me figure things out. It also gives me a way to understand why I dread going out to see people, how I struggle in social situations and also how I manage to (mostly) get through them but am exhausted afterwards.
In between processing all of this, I'm renovating an old house while living in it, looking after five cats that adopted us and one dog who kept coming into our field until we figured he should come and join the family and take up his space on the sofa. We all live in a tiny village where we're the only people who speak English. Our Portuguese is coming along, we have lessons, but we're not fluent by any means.
Writing an introduction for yourself is a daunting thing - what should I say, how much is too much, should I add more 'fun' facts? On the one hand I could write an essay and on the other I want to delete it all and keep it to myself because why would anyone want to know any of this?
Hello!
Hah-hah, my given name is David as well. I'm in the state of Nevada in the United States.
I have four cats and just retired from education after 32 years of service. I now blog about autism and am in the process of writing a graphic novel about autism.
Like you, I used to be an expat. I spent 17 years abroad in Ghana, Thailand, El Salvador, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon.
I wasn't clinically diagnosed with autism (level I) until 2020 shortly after I had turned 60. As you might imagine, I had a great many ah-hah moments as I reflected upon my life and saw (with the admitted benefit of hindsight) how my autism caused me to make the professional and social decisions that I did.
My only regret is that I wish I had known about my autism much earlier in life. I might have made some different career decisions.