Knowing

Earlier I was talking to Mum about prenatal testing - Cat had found a blog post where an autistic woman learned that her parents would have aborted her if they’d known she’d be autistic - and what she would have done if she’d known that my brother Christopher, who’s severely autistic, would be the way he is (don’t fret, we love him dearly, he’s my best friend in the world).

Then Mum asked me if I’d thought about getting myself assessed. I asked her why, she said that it would be useful, since Dad had lost out on promotions at work due to his social difficulties (he has Asperger’s), and she didn’t want me to go through that since, as she put it, I can sometimes take things the wrong way or offend people.

There was a part of me that felt hurt at that, I have to say. I do my best to not offend people, and I was sure that I hadn’t offended anyone unintentionally for a while. She disagreed, which made me feel a bit anxious - I’m told I’m polite and friendly by my friends, so to be told by my mum that I can be hurtful, hurts.

Now I’m catastrophising, methinks. I sometimes have depression spells, part of which involves making things seem worse than they are. I wonder if I’m doing that now, but that doesn’t make me feel any better, no matter what the CBT person I see keeps telling me.

Anyway, I told her that I had asked for an assessment, but that it would take about 6 months before the psych. clinic even got back to me (true). I was in a minor state about asking for an assessment, one reason being that I didn’t know what Mum would think. She’s tried to raise me to be normal, has emphasised the importance of my being normal while encouraging tolerance of others (how does this work?), and has scolded me many a time when my traits show. I think the last time I had a really noticeable trait in front of her was a few months ago, when she insisted on cutting my hair, and I cried because I didn’t want it to be touched. Sometimes her fingers on my skin make me feel something like pain, even when she’s just resting her hand on my shoulder - she’s a massage therapist, almost every time she gave me a massage I’d cry and writhe in agony (she got the hint after a few months, much to her dismay and my relief). But that’s going off topic.

So now she knows. And she seemed okay about it. Then she talked about how it would be good for me to have a statement, to show others that when I’m having a bad day, it’s not that I’m a rude person. At this point I was hurting, so I asked her if I could go, then spent the rest of the afternoon in my room half in tears and half trying to focus on my essay.

It’s weird, I’ve just spent the last month volunteering for a non-governmental organisation in Peru, and over there I felt fully ‘normal’, not feeling any traits or any depression spells. And I’ve been back home less than 24 hours, and this happens. I don’t know what it means.