Life, After Late-Life Autism Diagnosis.

I've always known that I was 'different' and didn't fit in etc. What I didn't know for a long time, was that I'm autistic... blah blah blah - I'm sure you've heard the familiar story of many-an-autistic person. Well - this is part of mine, so read on if you'd like to know more...

I had seen a later-in-life assessment as something that would be beneficial for my own children, should I be diagnosed. This was mainly along the lines of building a family history for any future assessments that may need to be considered, should they have children of their own.

Aside from that, I expected very little to change with a formal diagnosis.

Wrong.

My own lived experience of this metamorphosis is that actually, the majority of things changed. It was like wearing the wrong glasses my whole life, then quite suddenly - upon being diagnosed, being given the correct ones. Moments of clarity suddenly became more than moments. They became stages of my life. Looking back on things, as if finally at the top of a long, winding mountain path. One on which I have travelled for 42 years - battling the elements of life and finding my way in a world where the scales tip between sporadic chaos and calm in unpredictable fashion.

The clarity was like reaching the summit and watching the fog disperse. The further I see from the summit, the further I see back in time - only now through the lens of an autistic adult who was raised as a non-autistic child through the 80's and 90's.

When I was 17, I made what looking back always felt like a very odd, spontaneous decision which was a surprise to my friends and family. I was living in sunny Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, where I spent my high-school years. I had finished my first year of A Levels at the local 6th Form (Clacton County High School) and had not found it easy to get to grips with the course, the change in routine, the jump in difficulty academically - alongside struggling to develop socially, masking continuously (not always successfully) and keeping up with the pressures of socialising which I found confusing and exhausting.

My girlfriend at the time had gone away for the summer and I felt particularly isolated and that my AS Level results weren't what I was hoping for.

I went to stay in Falmouth with my family for a couple of weeks before the start of the second year.

I hadn't visited in some time, but it was the best two weeks I could remember in years, just being with my cousins and feeling much less stressed and pressured. The way of life was completely different and many of the things that I found other people around me in Essex were overly-concerned with - in Falmouth it was different. There was much more acceptance of people just being who they wanted to, dressing how they wanted to and people generally getting along with one-another. Thats how it felt at least, to the 17 year, unknowingly-autistic me.

I went home, told my parents that I wanted to move there. I split up with my girlfriend. The following day went into 6th Form, told them I was moving and within a week I had gone. I moved into a house near to my aunt and my parents paid for me to live there whilst I applied for the new 6th Form. I wasn't expecting them to tell me I had to repeat my first year completely. However, the syllabus was different, so I accepted it and started back in the first year.

My parents sold the house a year later and I eventually moved back in with them when they bought a house nearby. I stayed there until 2004.

Now - since my diagnosis, I understand that I was struggling in all these ways and feeling trapped socially and academically. I didn't feel like I could find a way to be myself there and it was completely different when I moved to a new area, with better intentions and a new way of life. Whilst I still feel it was unexpectedly spontaneous of me, I understand how I got to that point and why. There have been other instances in my life where I have made decisions about things that I look back on since being diagnosed and see them and the situation completely differently now.

It wasn't a straightforward journey to where I am, but that can be a story for another day.

De-Extinction - Linocut on Fenner paper.