Just A Silvereye

Okay so

For the past two weeks, I've been back home. Since my parents and brothers are working/at school, I've often been alone there.

I've rested, I've read, I've walked. And I've been thinking.

And my thoughts keep coming back to older days. To the ancient times where I left and went into the world, certain that I could face anything that could come.

It was great, for a while. It was hard and intense - that was what I had signed for- but it was great.

And then...

I'm still not sure what happened. Maybe I veered to close to the sun. Maybe it just became too much to handle. Maybe it wasn't sustainable in the first place. All I know is that I broke, at about the worst possible time.

A bit later, I left that place, for my time was due, and I didn't want to stay anyway. I left with way worse results than I could have expected only months before, but it was still something.

I went to that new place. And I tried to wish it all away. I didn't work. I started falling while denying I was falling, and hating me for not being able to wish it all away. I just had to do it, it was nothing compared to before. So why couldn't I?

This lasted for nearly a year and a half. I actually nearly managed to wish away the problems. Then of course, it fell apart. And as things were at their darkest since the initial breakdown, a little nugget of an answer arrived. 

I realized I was autistic.

It explained so much. Why I almost never managed to create lasting relations with others, why I sometimes couldn't even talk to others in those years. Why I had so much trouble making myself do something, and then the next minute gladly spend two hours tediously setting up a stupid thing in a video game. Even stuff I'd forgotten about, like the bursts of anger I would often have as a kid whenever something would go wrong ; or my hands always going somewhere, beating to the tune of a song I heard in my head ; or as a kid, how I would have trouble with loud environments.

I started looking for an official diagnosis. Meanwhile, I got the internship I needed to validate the year at the last minute.

Most things that could go wrong during that internship went wrong. Which made the burnout (for I know now it's that) go even worse.

Then, I could finally return home. And I got word from a group of doctors that proposed autism diagnoses. They asked me to fill a 40-page dossier to get started. Questions were often hard to answer, so this took some time. But I finished it, and sent them. 

And received an automatic email in response, saying that they were changing their diagnoses protocols. On their site there's a new (I think) section that reads: 

(Redacted some stuff for anonymity)

And I'm getting scared. First, because I don't know if this will apply to people who had already started stuff with them. But also because the journey they're describing fits me to a T. And I'm questioning everything now, wondering if I am actually autistic. 

And that's so scary. Because if I am not autistic, then all the reconstruction work I started (well, tried to start; the world did its best against it) over the last few months is based on a lie and falls apart. And I'm back in the terrifying realm of "what the hell is happening to me?" where I spent most of the last couple years.

Right now I'm constantly switching between "No you're definitely autistic, you fit so many signs" and "Maybe I'm not, after all I don't have X and Y sign". I will most likely do that for a couple weeks (they should recontact me around November in any case)

And I'm afraid