Spending your whole life thinking something isn’t quite right with the way you function leads you to trying to work out what is wrong. Without chasing down doctors for a diagnosis when ever a possible solution has presented itself I have investigated it as an option. These have included:
Leukemia
The first time you hear about leukemia you hear that one of the most common signs is unexplained bruising. I have always had bruises that I haven’t known where they came from. It has gotten to the stage when I do bump myself I will tell the nearest person ‘If I get a bruise there and can’t remember where it came from, remind me about this’. I don’t always get a bruise from that and I still get unexplained ones. I ruled out leukemia quite quickly because when I first heard about it was years after I knew I had been having unexplained bruises and I figured if I did really have it I should be dead by now.
Manic Depressive
Some days I wake up and I accomplish amazing things. I am like the Energiser bunny and can just go and go. Other days I don’t want to wake up or I may not get out of bed. I can wake up in the middle of the night and the solutions to all of the problems in the world are so obvious to me. Or I can stare at a simple sentence for ages and not be able to make sense of it. I discounted manic depressive mostly because it was a label I didn’t want, and rightly or wrongly, I associate it with being self destructive. But sometime in moments of doubt, or on the hard days I would get a niggle that maybe I should look into it further, just so I could get a solution and be able to cope with more of my life.
PTSD
Apparently this one is quite common for autistic persons. My problem with it as a solution was that I could never work out what the T was. Then you hear that the T doesn’t have to be a single event but can be a series of events or a lived situation. Given I have been the way I am for as long as I remember that makes you start to doubt your childhood. I wont say my childhood was perfect. Given what I am learning about autism I believe my mother was undiagnosed. Given how hard I have found my life I can easily understand her issues on coping with hers. I don’t think I could cope with being the stay at home mum to four kids in a society that doesn’t believe women should have equal opportunities to men. Given all of the givens, I think my parents did an amazing job. To quote the poem my husband wrote me after my mum’s death when I was having trouble coming to terms:
Not everything she did was right
But not everything was wrong
But she always did her best
And your best is never wrong
I am sure that have been other passing worries of things that may have been wrong with me but autism is the one that truly fits. I am sure I have said it before, once I googled it and found information on autistic females, it was like someone had been following me around my whole life making notes. Only a few more weeks to the next step of my official diagnosis.
I'm not broken 