Middle Aged and Autistic
How an autism diagnosis at 43 taught me who I was.
When I was nine years old, I came home from school crying because one of my classmates called me a weirdo. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last. I can’t remember what I had done. It was “something strange” in a long line of “strange things” that Natalie just always did.
This became a pattern throughout middle, junior high and high school. Words like freak and weirdo were very common when other kids would respond to something I had said or done. It hurt each time they said what they said, but I knew I was different.
I wasn’t interested in the same things that other kids my age were interested in. I obsessed over things that didn’t seem to bother my classmates, like my house catching fire, burning up if I was in the sun too long, organizing everything by color or everyone I loved dying. I had very few friends. I spent all of my free time with my dogs and reading many, many books.
I was a good student — when it was a subject I liked. I was artistic and creative and flourished in English, creative writing, painting and drawing. I got into a good college, where I pursued an art major. My art classes should have been easy for me. Everyone told me that I had talent, but I was unable to follow easy instructions. What my professors wanted me to do wasn’t what I was used to doing and any deviation led to a complete meltdown. I felt like I had no one to talk to…because I didn’t. After two months, I dropped out.
After several low-paying retail jobs, where I was constantly anxious and very unhappy, I decided to seek help. I went to see a psychologist and began to be treated for depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. After making marginal progress, I decided to return to college, this time pursuing English and education as a major. I met my best and only friend in a Shakespeare class. (She is still my best friend over 20 years later.) I was moving forward, but I still felt out of step, different, not completely accepted or understood. Not even by myself.
After earning a degree in English Literature, I earned an education masters, then a master’s in library science. I was now also seeing two therapists: a psychologist and a psychiatric nurse to prescribe my medications. Shortly after beginning my medication regimen and after losing a library job I loved, I found myself on permanent disability.
Several years later, one of my therapists said something that shocked me. She told me she thought I had autism spectrum disorder. Huh? What was she saying? I was Autistic? How could that be? Wouldn’t someone have known before now?
I told my mother what my therapist said as soon as I got home. She paused for a moment and then said, “I saw a documentary about Autism about ten years ago and I said to your father, that’s our daughter.” I was shocked. And angry. Why hadn’t someone said something sooner? Why hadn’t my doctors and teachers known? Why hadn’t my own mother and father said something?
I didn’t want to be autistic. I had adjusted, for the most part, to being mentally ill. Why did everything have to change again?
I was angry and in denial for about a year. I told very few people about my diagnosis. I preferred to continue living like I didn’t know I was autistic.
When I started to actually read about autism, I learned that more males than females were diagnosed. I learned that females on the spectrum were very often not diagnosed because they could “mask” or “pass” as normal. I learned that many females weren’t diagnosed until they were adults, very often when their own children were being diagnosed. I learned there was a word for people like me: neurodiverse. And just like that, I finally started to understand: the awkwardness, the anxiety, the inability to relate to most of my peers, my obsessions and my meltdowns. I wasn’t a freak or a weirdo. My brain was wired differently. I was a middle-aged woman who had just found out she was autistic.
At 43, I wondered if knowing any of this would ever make a difference. Children in public school with an autism diagnosis have education plans tailored to their learning. They also have a lot longer to process their disorder. When I went to school in the ’80s, an autism diagnosis would have placed me in a class for students with severe disabilities. I wouldn’t have gotten the education that I needed because autism was still such an unknown back then, considered a negative disability.
My youth and adolescence had been difficult because no one could explain what was going on with me. As a young adult I struggled with social norms, expectations from employers who had no idea how to manage me and a persistent feeling that I had missed out on all the normal things normal people experienced. At 43, I finally had an idea why my mind functioned the way it did, and I had some answers to the questions that I struggled with for so long.
After receiving an official diagnosis, I still don’t know if it matters all that much. But now I have an online community of other females who understand what it’s like to be like me. I may have been getting close to middle-aged when I found out about my autism but just knowing makes my life a little easier.
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