#hello masking

I was hesitant earlier not because I thought it had to be bad to be valid (I've known that if I am then I'm low needs) but because I'd listen to autistic people experiences and was like "uh I don't know this isn't really what's happening in my case" so I wanted to get diagnosed first before claiming anything for sure... but at this point I don't even need that because I can no longer attribute these things to adhd

I started suspecting it a while ago but as I said I was hesitant (hello imposter syndrome my beloved). It was pretty obvious I was somewhat on the spectrum but I didn't know if it went beyond adhd (cause some things are similar and I didn't want to make a leap).

First thing that was making me suspicious for a while is sensory sensitivity. Like not being able to eat food that I don't like the look of, the smell hit me and now I'm throwing up even if it's fine, the texture is weird goodbye. That's obviously not necessarily a sign of autism, adhd does that too. As well as when it comes to a bunch of other small things (dino hands and spacing out are the ones off the top of my head but I know there's more)

But two days ago I got recommended a video from a psychiatrist talking to an autistic woman about differentiating platonic and romantic attraction and it hit me. Oh it's the autism that does that.

This is like a huge thing I've been struggling with because I can absolutely for sure tell you when I was actually in love, but in the moment there's no difference for me between "I want to hang out with you so badly and be your friend let's play games and talk for hours" and "I love you and I want to spend my life with you I'll literally do anything for you" and it ruined at least two friendships for me

Then I got recommended a video from an autistic creator I've watched before, and she was talking about stimming there, and I've watched videos about it before but I never identified with it because fidgeting is the adhd thing and I thought it was that cause I don't flap my hands and never did. But I bite my nails. I pick and bite at the skin on my fingers. I pick on mosquito bites and cuts, until I bleed, before they can heal, my arms are all covered in those scars like I'm a leopard. Surely that's not stimming, right?

So I tried flapping my hands today, even if it felt silly. And I can't even explain how satisfying it felt (granted that I've been in a perpetual state of stress for years now)

And so just now I got recommended a video about meltdowns. I've always thought I didn't have those (GIRL HOW ARE YOU STUPID YOU'VE EVEN BEEN CALLING THOSE MELTDOWNS OH MY FUCKING GOD) and I wanted to see if maybe I was wrong (YES??) and long story short yeah in fact I'm having those constantly and some are silent, some are loud and violent (and oh how did the "you're being manipulative" line punched me right in the gut), and one once led me to go to the psych because I was confident I was going to kill myself AND IT WASN'T DEPRESSION DOING THAT (well of course it's the reason behind everything but depression isn't violent like meltdowns are)