For a long time, whenever autism came up, I talked about it as a mum. A mum to two amazing autistic boys. That was my lens. That was my story.
But lately, my thoughts keep drifting somewhere else.
Back to me…
When I look back at my childhood and teenage years now, so much of it finally makes sense. Life just felt harder than it seemed to for everyone else. I never understood why I’d come home completely wrung out every single day — irritable, snappy, running on empty. Even tiny things could tip me over the edge.
I just assumed something was wrong with me.
Turns out, something was going on — just not what I thought.
I was masking. Every single day, all day long. Watching people, copying how they behaved, working out what to say and how to react so I wouldn’t stand out. It sounds exhausting just typing it. And it was exhausting. By the time I got home, I had absolutely nothing left.
I also never quite got sarcasm. Everyone else would laugh and I’d be standing there having taken it completely literally, only realising seconds later that I’d missed the joke. That horrible little moment of oh. Oh no. And then the embarrassment that followed.
It felt like everyone else had been handed a manual I never got.
Someone I thought was a friend once called me “dippy.” Just because I didn’t always catch what people meant. It was probably throwaway to her. It wasn’t throwaway to me. Those things stuck. They made me feel stupid, even though I wasn’t. They made me shrink.
I can see it differently now.
I wasn’t dippy. I wasn’t lacking. I was a neurodivergent girl trying to navigate a world that wasn’t built with me in mind — and doing it without even knowing that’s what I was doing.
When I eventually realised I was autistic, something shifted. Like when you’ve been squinting at something blurry and someone finally hands you the right glasses. So many things clicked into place. Why certain situations overwhelmed me. Why socialising left me needing days to recover. Why I took things so deeply to heart when others seemed to shake them off easily.
For the first time, I actually started to understand myself.
And slowly — slowly — I stopped seeing those things as flaws.
I’m still unpicking a lot of it, if I’m honest. Still untangling years of thinking I was “too sensitive” or “too emotional” or just a bit… off. That stuff doesn’t disappear overnight.
But I try to be kinder to myself than I used to be.
Because that girl — the one who was confused and exhausted and constantly wondering why she couldn’t just get it like everyone else — she wasn’t broken.
She was autistic.
And she was doing the absolute best she could.
