diagnosed today

Yes, it's early days as you say, and like anything else it takes time to get used to. I was stunned when I got the diagnosis - no idea what it meant, no idea what to do next, and no-one available to help me understand it. Making the diagnosis was the end of the assessor's involvement, and he finished by recommending a few books and websites (this was one of them) and wishing me 'luck'. I wondered for ages what that meant.

Let me put a number to the people I told. Two nieces, both with children, two of my sons, and two friends I've known for a long time. It's funny, but writing it down now I've just realised that everything's in pairs - I'll be thinking about that now. Anyway, I think I expected people generaly to be as astonished and bewildered as I was, but it didn't go like that. Of course, I only know what they say to me, I have no idea what they discuss between them although I have suspicions. I try not to think about that because I could get paranoid about it.

It seemed almost anti-climactic. Here I am with momentous news that just shattered me and threw me into all sorts of states, and all I got was an almost 'well, cheers for telling me, and so what?'. Of course, I can't tell them 'what' when I don't know myself! The only thing I could stumble through was to suggest that if it runs in the family, and knowing how easy it is to cause horrendous damage to an undiagnosed AS person, perhaps they would re-evaluate their own kids.

I hadn't taken account of people's natural tendency to say 'there's nothing wrong with my child...'. Even now, I wonder if they prefer to think there's nothing wrong with the person they've known for a long time. Either that, or they now have to think about how they've talked about me before. All my life, people have called me names and accused me of being all sorts of bad person, and now I still don't know what, but I know why. There's no reason why people who know me would be any different to those other people

I don't think there's anything 'wrong' with me either, I just think I live in a world that diasables me because of who I am. I'm still trying to understand who I am.

It all gets twisty inside my head. It's like exploring a strange country without a map.

Yes, it's early days as you say, and like anything else it takes time to get used to. I was stunned when I got the diagnosis - no idea what it meant, no idea what to do next, and no-one available to help me understand it. Making the diagnosis was the end of the assessor's involvement, and he finished by recommending a few books and websites (this was one of them) and wishing me 'luck'. I wondered for ages what that meant.

Let me put a number to the people I told. Two nieces, both with children, two of my sons, and two friends I've known for a long time. It's funny, but writing it down now I've just realised that everything's in pairs - I'll be thinking about that now. Anyway, I think I expected people generaly to be as astonished and bewildered as I was, but it didn't go like that. Of course, I only know what they say to me, I have no idea what they discuss between them although I have suspicions. I try not to think about that because I could get paranoid about it.

It seemed almost anti-climactic. Here I am with momentous news that just shattered me and threw me into all sorts of states, and all I got was an almost 'well, cheers for telling me, and so what?'. Of course, I can't tell them 'what' when I don't know myself! The only thing I could stumble through was to suggest that if it runs in the family, and knowing how easy it is to cause horrendous damage to an undiagnosed AS person, perhaps they would re-evaluate their own kids.

I hadn't taken account of people's natural tendency to say 'there's nothing wrong with my child...'. Even now, I wonder if they prefer to think there's nothing wrong with the person they've known for a long time. Either that, or they now have to think about how they've talked about me before. All my life, people have called me names and accused me of being all sorts of bad person, and now I still don't know what, but I know why. There's no reason why people who know me would be any different to those other people

I don't think there's anything 'wrong' with me either, I just think I live in a world that diasables me because of who I am. I'm still trying to understand who I am.

It all gets twisty inside my head. It's like exploring a strange country without a map.