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.
Hi! Yes, there are lots of things where I figure if I'd known what was going on then I might have done things differently. That said, I'm happy with where I am, so I don't regret any of it.
If anything, it's the things outside of my control that made me feel bad or weird (like slouching when I was young, which I got told off for lots) or the amount of bullying I got at school for being different when I had no idea why (or even that I was) different that make me sad. I'm not sure anything could have been done about them at the time, but it strikes me that there are probably a lot of people in the same boat as me.
I was bullied also. I once had my head shoved into a (thankfully) clean toilet. During gym class I once had someone throw my clothes into the shower so that they were completely drenched. This forced me to attend the remainder of the day's classes wearing my gym clothes which brought humilating cat calls and whistles from the girls. In high school, I was also physically beaten up twice. In both cases, when my father expressed a concern to the school administration, he was told that "boys will be boys."
Since I have a Pollyanna reaction to bad news and have long sinced learned to always look for the good, the one good thing that I can say about my bullying is that this happend during the 60's and 70's before the advent of the internet and the availability of smart phones.
What' sad for children who are bullied today is that bullies can use social media to prolong their victim's suffering. By uploading videos of their bullying, they can not only force the victim to relive this experience but they can extend the humilaton to a much wider audience.
In today's world, bullying can go on 24/7.
I remember seeing a statistic that said that 50% of everyone on the spectrum has experienced bullying. I suspect that this percentage was understated and that there are likely a great many more people who were bullied but never reported it.
While I have always had an introverted personality, I suspect that bullying made me more reclusive and introverted than I otherwise might have been.