Some more choosing-a-lab/grad-school-struggles randomly and when that happens I am not very good at writing at paragraphs or capitalizing or even really going back and editing it but also because I am still sort of mush on this topic and ideas right now. So sorry about that because I know lack of capitalization and even also inconsistent capitalization and punctuation can be distressing to read to me at least so here's a heads up that it is all sorta meltymushy.
one problem i've found that I have with autism
and why i don't want to tell people
or can't
because for the longest time i would read stories of kids with autism--because its almost always kids in the stories
and i thought it couldn't be real
because they sounded just like me--a bit younger often, and with a tendency to be boys---and I was not a boy no way who knows what boys were up to or how I could related to them
so i thought most of it was a new made-up craze
that things were overconcerned and overpathologized when it was just people being people
of course
eventually i realized that actually in these stories these kids who couldn't really have something Named, couldn't really all be that different
because it was things I did
things my family did
things I didn't think at all were unusual because they were woven into my everyday life
that these things were not actual Things That Everyone Does
but rather, unusually unique to me and occasionally family members
and this group of autistic
I would keep reading the stories before I realized
because I recognized something similar
but also reading them trying to figure out what exactly it was that made these kids different
sometimes jealous of the more-overtly-things that meant they didn't have to talk to people
or somehow were allowed to do things in public I knew that were not allowed but they were ok for them
not knowing how amazingly lucky and accepting my life had been--which is probably one big WHY that no one noticed things about me
and now i'm struggling with some things in school
contemplating telling people to see if that would help
---by people i mean official school people---
(although i don't know who i would tell since i am not even in a lab)
but I'm afraid they won't believe me
because just like my family was slow to believe when i told (some of) them
because it was just things that everyone did
i live in a world of science and scientists
and a lot a lot a lot of the things I do are not all that uncommon--at least compared to the general population
there is at least one professor who I am almost positive (upwards of 90%) is autistic too
and there are others with hints
and so i feel like it would be less believed
because the straits stand out less--which is sometimes good
but makes asking for help harder
---well, that and the fact that I don't have any actual official paperwork of any sort saying i was autistic. probably a flaw at that time that i should have predicted coming up in the future
maybe when i get in a lab officially
i will eventually tell that PI
and help figure out solutions
In general, i'm not very good at telling people
i've told one person who asked directly
i have told 2 close friends
i told boyfriend
i wish people would ask directly
that is why i didn't even tell the therapist/pysch person
because it didn't come up in any of the questions she asked me
but i think it is very rare that people will do that
it has only happened once
so i probably shouldn't hope for that
Labels: asking for help, autism, disability, fear, grad school, me, melt, my brain, poetry, rant, talking, talking problems, testing, when I was younger