I'm not officially diagnosed yet (eventually, I want to get a diagnosis when I have the money for it—in my country, you can only get one from private practitioners), but I strongly suspect that I'm autistic.
The thing is, I also have bipolar disorder type 2, and since it's been treated and I've been feeling much better and more stable, my autistic traits have become more visible. There are also many things that bipolar disorder simply couldn't explain—things I remember being there from early childhood.
Recently, I stopped fighting against myself to appear "normal," and boom, everything surfaced. For example, stimming has become much more frequent, and I do it almost constantly now, but I no longer care about other people's opinions of it.
My whole life is starting to make sense now. I always knew something was "wrong" with me, and I'm still surprised by the possibility that maybe I'm not a failure. It's such a relief.
I thought I was a failure and somehow less than others for my whole life. Can anyone relate to this? I think those who were diagnosed later in life must have felt the same way.
