Hi there, recently I’ve been looking a lot into ASD and potentially ADHD but don’t want to jump to any conclusions or self-diagnose.
I’m seventeen and have basically dropped out of school, despite being predicted A*s across the board. I now spend almost all of my day as I have for years - rocking backwards and forwards on my bed while listening to music from my headphones and daydreaming. It’s been a routine that I’ve wasted so much of my life doing for years and I don’t really know why. I’ve been looking up some autistic traits and how they present in women and girls and relating to a lot of them. As a toddler, I was almost impossible to get me to play with the other children as I would immediately run off to my mum. I started speaking very early and was hyper-verbal. In my very early years of school, I was obsessed with pebbles and would spend my playtimes collecting them instead of playing with friends until they were falling out of my bag and pockets. I would also ‘stim’ to an extreme level, rubbing parts of my body until callouses formed and parts of my face until red marks formed. I was incredibly rigid and resistant to demands and would cry all the time over small things. The friends I did make I could be really awful to. I could engage in imaginary play but generally had to be in control. If I lost control, I could lash out both verbally and physically, often at one friend in particular and my mum a lot. I expressed feelings of self-hatred from a very early age and once even hit myself in the head repeatedly with a fire poker whilst having a tantrum. I was known as the child who always cried, mainly because I would start crying as soon as my mum picked me up from school and all the way home. I also engaged in a lot of sexually inappropriate behaviour until relatively late on in primary school, that included touching my private area while walking around and in the middle of class as some form of sensory-seeking. I don’t know how concerning that should be.
After I started secondary school, it got a lot worse. The friends I made initially I all alienated as I had basically zero social skills or awareness. I was incredibly young for my age, didn’t know how to do basic things like brush my own hair and I despised showering. I was dirty and socially inept. I would skip around school like a little child and dress like a very little girl. I struggled to relate to the other children and small things would induce a crying fit in front of everyone, partly because I was a huge perfectionist, which people probably made fun of me for but I was oblivious to everything. I also struggle with spacial awareness and am accused of being ‘away with the fairies’ when I’m out. It got to the point that I had zero friends and would spend every lunch time on my own, crying down the phone to my mum. I was obsessed with Lord of the Rings and would talk about it ad nauseum to anyone with ears. I ended up moving schools, where I also struggled with friends and social situations but learned how to blend in better. It was around Year 7 that I started coming home from school and jumping/rocking on the bed for hours. I still have intensive interests, ranging from fantasy to the Middle East. I also display signs of limerance but only to fictional characters. It’s not romantic, but I end up daydreaming about them for hours. I’m still resistant to demands, struggle with executive function and cannot organise myself ever. I forget to wash, eat, drink. I still need to be woken up in the mornings and given a lot of warning before I do things, despite my poor organisation making routines hard to follow. Being late can cause crying fits, but it’s impossible to be on time. I spend 90% of my time daydreaming and ignoring people who text me because answering them seems terrifying. I’ve always been behind on social trends and never understood social media. I have severe OCD and signs of depression.
However, I don’t tick every box. While social situations give me anxiety and I often can’t do them, I have consistently had friends. When I was very little, my excessive alone time was based on lack of interest in other people rather than lack of ability. Imaginary play has never really been a problem for me as long as I am in control. I have never been very good at maths and numbers but excelled at English, despite never having the focus to study, which means I can read between the lines. I can make friends now, it’s just I prefer to be alone. At the end of primary school, I became really good friends with a girl who was quite popular and was in her group for a bit. I don’t know what they thought of me but I was very loyal to her. Most of my sensory issues also come from touch. I don’t like hugs very much, my shoulders and head are very sensitive and I hate people touching my face anywhere or filing my nails. No one likes loud noises, me included, but I should imagine there are people with far bigger issues than me and it doesn’t cause a meltdown. I don’t think I am terrible at reading facial expressions and most people who know me probably would not assume I had issues. It’s just my attendance that raises alarms. I have always been very well-behaved in school and academically intelligent, just crying that’s a problem that my teacher used to call ‘wobbles.’ I used to have hobbies like dancing and violin, but I had to quit both because it became impossible to get me there without a good few tears and I was always told off by my teachers for crying at competitions.
If you’ve managed to read my ramble, thank you. I’d just really love some advice.
