hi, I’m 23, I’ve been really struggling my whole life feeling like there’s something wrong with me. I’ve always felt like I’m standing in the wrong room, everyone else knows each other, speaks the same language and I was just there - trying to be liked, seen, to be enough. But no matter what I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. I’ve always been very quiet, just got on with things by myself but struggling in silence. I’ve just grown up heavily masking everything which seems to be causing me more hassle than it’s worth right now.
I struggle badly with communication, I just become mute. I physically cannot speak. If someone’s talking to me I can never process what they’re saying and I’m always asking for things to be repeated, I don’t mean to come across rude but I just can’t process it a lot of the time. I can’t initiate conversations and I can’t keep a conversation going. Sometimes I know what I want to say but the words just don’t come out or if I do speak it comes out wrong and took the wrong way. And I have no friends, literally. I struggle with anything social.
My mind does not ever shut off, it’s exhausting and I can’t keep up but I could easily zone out and daydream. I can’t cope with any emotions I have or understand others emotions. Everything is overwhelming.
I always have terrible spacial awareness, I’m never aware, I’m always tripping over nothing or anything. My balance is unstable sometimes and I could just go wobbly for no reason!
I could go on and on with other symptoms. I took lots of notes to my GP appointment and I asked for a possible referral for an assessment. But they looked at me straight and said “you don’t look autistic to me.” I’ve never seen this person before, I’ve just switched GPs as the last ones just kept putting me on anxiety medication which does nothing for me. This GP saw me for not even 5 minutes. I’m so lost on what’s wrong with me, because I KNOW I’m not like everyone else.. my boyfriend can see it clearly but my parents don’t even want to support my feelings of possible autism, which also doesn’t help my situation. Everyone’s opinions of dismissing me is just making me believe I’m stupid and wrong about myself but they aren’t me, they don’t know what I have to deal with every single day. I just know there’s something. I’m just stuck to be honest.
