Dear me,
On why this, why now: My decision to undergo assessment has not been lightly taken. A professional manager and mentor had observed on more than one occasion over the 20-odd years I have known them that the work I do (and do well) requires a different kind of mind (“autistic” was the word that came to their mind). About 3 or 4 years ago, a professional coach assigned to me as part of a leadership development programme queried whether I had ever been assessed for any “special needs”. This time, “autistic” would be a word that came to my mind. I had for some time been reading up on neurodivergence and increasingly saw my lived experience reflected in the words of journal articles and blogs and YouTube videos in the ASC space. My struggle with fit, seemed to fit. And so I started to search for professionals who would be able to help. I spoke to my GP, reached out to ASC experts in the region, with little success as many simply did not have deep expertise working with adult women and late-in-life diagnosis. It took the chance viewing of a BBC documentary whilst on holiday to find ones who had the necessary expertise and care.
So, when, at the end of the ADOS-2 session, I was asked if I would be disappointed if the finding is that I do not have ASC, I told the truth with a lie that I would not be. Let me explain. In all of this, disappointment is an irrelevant response even if I do land up feeling it. My rational brain initiated this process with the expectation that it be a scientific and rigorous one. That is why I went in search of professionals who have made the study, diagnosis and care of autism in girls and women their professional life’s work and have done so at leading institutions. Having found them, I will trust them and their professional competence. I am not shopping for a diagnosis. I am trying to understand what about me ticks differently and then equip myself with skills so that the next half of my life can be less exhausting rehearsed performance and more energising jazz improv. If I do have ASC, then the next steps will simply be easier to navigate because I will have the right words and I have always sense-made through words.
On what I struggled with during the session: Despite my struggle to story-tell when confronted with flying frogs and random bits-and-bobs, my life is words (written rather than spoken). You can see that I am a fan of soliloquy (lol) and drawn to kitsch metaphors. While ‘Mr Candlestick the Frustrated Arsonist’ is a failed short story, someday I shall write a half-decent poem inspired by the fact of it. Fact turned into art is my strong suit – different from the frills and fractures of fiction which takes too much effort because suspending disbelief in the face of historical/scientific/geographical/socio-economic inaccuracy is something that I simply cannot seem to do without commentary (as those who know me often point out). Hence my (somewhat ironic) confessed love for bingeing on reality TV and documentary marathons, and playing my latest musical interest on loop.
On my happy place: At the end of the day, my steady state is thinking – to decode, to enact, to playback, to discover, to wonder. I have often said I would be quite happy as a brain in a jar. Time to think, quiet to organise, capable of stringing words together to make meaning how I mean them and meant just for me. That has always been my centre. My safe harbour has been my family – the patient keepers of this brain in a jar.