u/Acting_Brand_Nubian

Better late than never 🤷🏾‍♀️

To begin, I am going to be 40 years in July. Black female, so not a lot of focus on my population/gender and autism. When I turned 18 - and old enough to take myself to a doctor (my parents didn’t believe in therapists) my first diagnosis was OCD. As a little kid I was extremely shy, didn’t like loud noises - I never went to pre-school and went straight into kindergarten. They had to send someone to my house to examine (?) me and they realized I could read and was “fine”…can’t remember much after that. I’d isolate myself sometimes at lunch and I wasn’t even sad. I couldn’t stand when my mom played her Stevie Wonder record because of some loud, strange, uncomfortable noises. The sound of school buses and vacuums scared me. I can’t stand chalkboards to this day and ASMR is my nightmare.

Things started to get worse. When my grandmother passed away, I was 9 y/o with an alcoholic mother. To handle that stress, I started counting and checking things, and dealing with obsessive thoughts. I would also go deep into maladaptive daydreaming (still a pro at it), line up my teddies for conventions. I also had a tendency to stim a lot - walking on my toes, skin picking, etc. Once I was about 19, my diagnosis increased to bipolar disorder due to my depression and sexual promiscuity issues. I found myself using weed and alcohol to quiet my mind and emotions - which also helped with my masking. My masking was always influenced by fictional characters I’d read about or watch in movies. My entire 7th grade year I dressed as the character Daria!

College was a struggle when it came to math. I may have had dyscalculia because I couldn’t pass a math class to save my life, and had to get special permission to graduate. Even with taking lithium most of my life, no other areas seemed to improve that much. After the bipolar diagnosis came Anxiety/GAD and ADHD.

After COVID I realized how much I changed and how much I was masking. It’s harder for me now to make friends - unless they are also neuro-spicy like me. I want to discuss the sinking of the Titanic, comics/Anime, the Air France crash and understanding plane crashes in general, the ins and outs of cave diving, growing plants, making tiny houses…I used to think I was just being weird and manic, but the Autism angle really speaks to me. I now find comfort wearing my over ear headphones all the time, and truly enjoying my space from other people. Regular people just don’t fascinate me at all anymore - if they ever did.

However, I’m afraid that having an official diagnosis at this point won’t amount to much, or change much of anything. If anything, it just helps me make sense of a lot of behavior I’ve tried to hide all these years.

I just want to live authentically by being my true self. What should I do with all this?

To begin, I am going to be 40 years in July. Black female, so not a lot of focus on my population/gender and autism. When I turned 18 - and old enough to take myself to a doctor (my parents didn’t believe in therapists) my first diagnosis was OCD. As a little kid I was extremely shy, didn’t like loud noises - I never went to pre-school and went straight into kindergarten. They had to send someone to my house to examine (?) me and they realized I could read and was fine…can’t remember much after that. I couldn’t stand when my mom played her Stevie Wonder record because of some loud, strange, uncomfortable noises.

When my grandmother passed away, I was 9 y/o with an alcoholic mother. To handle that stress, I started counting and checking things, and dealing with obsessive thoughts. I would also go deep into maladaptive daydreaming (still a pro at it), line up my teddies for conventions. I also had a tendency to stim a lot - walking on my toes, skin picking, etc. Once I was about 19, my diagnosis increased to bipolar disorder due to my depression and sexual promiscuity issues. I found myself using weed and alcohol to quiet my mind and emotions - which also helped with my masking. My masking was always influenced by fictional characters I’d read about or watch in movies. My entire 7th grade year I dressed as the character Daria!

College was a struggle when it came to math. I may have had dyscalculia because I couldn’t pass a math class to save my life, and had to get special permission to graduate. Even with taking lithium most of my life, no other areas seemed to improve that much. After the bipolar diagnosis came Anxiety/GAD and ADHD.

After COVID I realized how much I changed and how much I was masking. It’s harder for me now to make friends - unless they are also neuro-spicy like me. I want to discuss the sinking of the Titanic, comics/Anime, the Air France crash and understanding plane crashes in general, the ins and outs of cave diving, growing plants, making tiny houses…I used to think I was just being weird and manic, but the Autism angle really speaks to me. I now find comfort wearing my over ear headphones all the time, and truly enjoying my space from other people. Regular people just don’t fascinate me at all anymore - if they ever did.

However, I’m afraid that having an official diagnosis at this point won’t amount to much, or change much of anything. If anything, it just helps me make sense of a lot of behavior I’ve tried to hide all these years.

I just want to live authentically by being my true self. What should I do with all this?

I am curious to see if there are any fellow individuals with the same path or star signs? I feel like an odd-ball with the Taurus rising thrown in. Anyone else out there share the same?

I honestly feel very alone wit this reading lol. I’ve been searching all through Reddit to find someone like me, but no luck. So if there is anyone out there with a similar sign - what are you like?? lol

"Patient Zero in the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak has been identified as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, whose passion for birds may have cost him his life.

The 70-year-old man and his wife, Mirjam Schilperoord, 69, were on a five-month trip to South America. On March 27, they visited a landfill four miles outside the city of Ushuaia.

The spot, overrun with trash, is avoided like the plague by its residents, but serves as a pilgrimage point for birdwatchers from all over the world in search of a rare creature — the white-throated caracara, nicknamed Darwin’s caracara after famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, the first to collect it.

The Ushuaia landfill is where Argentinian authorities suspect the Dutch couple inhaled particles from the feces of long-tailed pygmy rice rats, which carry the feared Andes strain of the hantavirus — the only form known to transmit from human to human."

Came across this video on YouTube. I’m closer to 40 so I have been working for some time, but lately not noticing many young people where I work. Watching this video and reading the comments have affirmed what I felt was going on, but I feel it’s these young people that are really going to tear this shit down. Even at my age I’m wondering - wtf is the point of continuing to do any of this?