I am autistic

It’s 7:00am and my alarm is blaring. As I wake up, the usual dread hits me like a ton of bricks. I can already feel the pain in my chest, and, in fact, I doubt it’s even left from yesterday. I struggle to eat so I go without breakfast – I’ll regret that later. 

I leave the house and it’s not long before everything begins to spiral. An ambulance with it’s screaming siren. Talking to a passing neighbour – “Was that ok? Was I too quiet? Did I answer correctly?” A dog running up and down the road with no leash. I hate it when people don’t follow the rules. 

On go the headphones – a quiet overcomes me. All I can hear now is the fast beating of my heart, and I’m alone with my thoughts. Oh no, my thoughts. “You’re going to be late. You’re going to be late. Everybody’s going to look at you as you walk into class. You’re the only person walking to school with no friends. How long are you going to last before the tears come today?”

Then, I’m in class. As I sit in my seat, I get myself together. The clock on the wall is tick, tick, ticking like a ticking time bomb. That’s what I am. My days are spent just waiting for something to go wrong; for my brain to explode. 

And then it does: I forgot my pencil case. “What am I going to do?”, I think to myself. “I can’t write in another pen, it’ll ruin my page, which will ruin my book, my revision, my exams, my life.” It all starts up again. The clock is getting louder and louder. I’m going to explode any minute. The teacher is speaking so fast and my brain cannot keep up. One student sniffs every six seconds (JUST BLOW YOUR NOSE!), whilst another taps their pencil to an unsteady beat (STOP IT!). “I need to get out of here,” I think to myself. I hear the classroom door shut behind me and, as I look at my phone, the tears start coming. 16 minutes I lasted – is there such thing as a personal worst?

And that’s just one period; a mere glimpse into what a school day could feel like for me. It was exhausting and at some points impossible. The same old story, day after day, week after week, year after year. I cannot remember a time when high school was manageable.

Yet I still had one question: why is this happening? 

I am a smart kid; a straight A student; a self-proclaimed nerd. I love learning. At primary school, I woke up looking forward to school every day. I would miss it at the weekends, and give myself homework in the holidays. 

What would that curious, intelligent little girl think about me struggling to get up in the morning or telling people I wanted to kill myself, because of school? 

I think I’d known for a while that something was different and the older I got, the more pronounced my problems became. I recall being in P4 and being the only person to cry after an April Fools joke that lunch had been cancelled. “I’m such a cry baby.” Then in S1, I had a panic attack before lunch and was overwhelmed by the stampede of older students entering the atrium. “Get yourself together. Nobody else has a problem with this.” 

I’d always thought it was my fault – that there was something I was doing wrong, and if I just tried a little harder then I would be completely fine. Perhaps I’d missed some of the fine print on the “book of human survival.” 

This resulted in me trying to continue. It was always the same story, it was always the same cycle. It got to the point that I was having a meltdown every single day. 

A meltdown is when an autistic person has ‘an intense response to an overwhelming situation. It happens when someone becomes completely overwhelmed by their situation and temporarily loses control of their behaviour.’ For me, it makes it harder to process what people tell me – I cannot answer simple yes or no questions. I feel exhausted yet I can sense every emotion shooting it’s energy through my arms and legs. I sometimes lose control of myself and kick myself, punch a wall or push over a table. I feel like fireworks are going off in my head. It was the worst I could possibly feel. And I couldn’t imagine ever feeling calm or content again. 

To the teachers I was either a rude teenager ignoring instructions and walking away or I was a kid throwing a tantrum – crying, shouting, swearing and lashing out. And I would’ve agreed with them. I thought of myself as a bad person. I would struggle with my mental health and self esteem, having periods of depression and extreme anxiety, because I thought it was all my fault. What I felt teachers never understood was that to go into class was all I wanted. I so desperately wanted to be “normal” like everybody else. 

At school, I felt misunderstood and unsafe. I used to wish that someone would wave a magic wand and fix me. I hated the fact that I was different and I couldn’t do all the things I thought I should be doing. 

It was half way through my S5 year when I finally got my diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. At first, I wasn’t 100% sure how I felt. I felt a relief and almost a sense of pride. Yet I also realised that it will never go away and this made me feel angry and sad and scared. 

The first change in my life was that, about a month after my diagnosis, I stopped going to school. Along with my family, I decided I would never go back to the relentless days of trauma that come from attending school every single day. They’d known for a while this was the best thing to do but I thought that if I stopped attending school, I would have given up. It wasn’t the conventional way of doing things, so how would I ever achieve my qualification? Go to university? Get the job I wanted? I imagined myself as a failure.

This was far from the truth. 

I began to attend a neurodiversity service called Vibe, at the Donaldson’s Trust. 

A couple months ago, at Vibe, lifeguarding classes got cancelled. Consequently, I got quite upset because my autism means I really struggle with plans changing. It is what happened next that truly sums up the impact a specialist neurodiverse service makes. 

If I was at mainstream school, I would’ve quickly become overwhelmed. As much as the teachers would try to help me, it was just too loud; too busy; too unpredictable. I’d often feel embarrassed as I found it hard to explain why a small change made me so upset and I’d get into trouble for it. I spent a fair amount of time arguing “it’s not that I don’t want to – I can’t!”

But at Vibe it was different. I had a quiet room to sit in and, instead of feeling alone, angry and scared; instead of the exacerbated argument ending with “I just can’t ok!”; I was met with patience, calm and a hot chocolate. Then my friend came along to me and asked me if I was ok. “It was the change of plans, wasn’t it?” I chuckled through my tears and I realised I’d found my place. 

There have been many more of these moments in the last 6 months. 

I was crying after being knocked out of the Autism Football Scottish Cup but then, as I looked around, I saw many of my teammates also upset. I didn’t have the usual feeling of being “over dramatic” or a “crybaby.” 

The joy of feeling supported and understood is unmatched.

I often see people on social media using the cliched phrase “you’re not disabled, you’re differently-abled” when referring to an autistic person. I understand it’s coming from a good place but I’d beg to differ. The dictionary states that disability is being limited by a physical, mental, cognitive or developmental impairment that makes it difficult to do things that other people do. That is what I experience daily. I am unable to attend a mainstream school and I find some scenarios extremely hard to cope with, that neurotypicals would find a breeze. 

But being disabled isn’t always a bad thing. Yes, I have more challenges in some areas that are often taken for granted and sometimes it makes my life really hard. However, I find my autism to be so intertwined with my personality that if it was taken away, then who would I be? It gives me strengths that I wouldn’t change for anything. I can do a Rubik’s cube in a minute. I can name all 195 countries of the world. I’m pretty funny and surprisingly good at using sarcasm. I find a deep love and passion for my interests. 

I’m 16 years old and I want to discuss Roe vs Wade whilst holding my soft toy called “monkey.” That’s who I am and my diagnosis has helped me love all of it.  The so-called childish joy of loving to run around in a park or play with LEGO, paired with the desire and determination to learn as much as I can and reach the highest level. 

My diagnosis has changed my life for the better. It has opened so many doors to such great opportunities that I am so grateful for. I have found friends that I love spending time with. People I can have a laugh with, can confide in – and most importantly, who I can be myself with. One of my autistic friends once said, “I love learning but I hate school.” At that moment, I realised I’m not alone. 

I now look optimistically forward to the future. I imagine a life where I have control of where I am and who I’m surrounded by. I plan for university – something which, in the midst of my struggles, I doubted I would be able to achieve. 

However, what my diagnosis has given me, above all else, is the chance to get to know myself. It has changed my mindset in life. To think that I felt ashamed of myself because I couldn’t cope. What I have realised is that I can thrive in the right environment. I no longer loathe what I cannot do; I am proud of what I can.

I have belief and confidence in who I am.

I am autistic.