raising my small, ceramic cup to you.
it's always nice to hear people's stories of finding meaning in knowing how they tick.
Hello barman, I'd love an Irish coffee please.
It's been a little more than a year after I started the professional diagnosis of why I'm weird. To sum it up in a somewhat offensive sentence.
Now this week, I have the final result on a surprisingly long list of tests that costed significant time and money. Three different health professionals concur to say I am solidly on the spectrum. And that it hadn't be spotted before because it was masked by "intellectual giftedness".
What use does this label have now? It does retrospectively help why I hid under beds when noise overwhelmed me in the student dormitories, tactile issues as a child, emotional detachedness, why several mundane task completely drain me of energy, etc...
As a child, in the country I grew up in, this label would actually have restricted some of my possibilities. But as a younger adult, I believe it would have drastically altered my trajectory for the better. There have been entire epochs in my life where I felt overwhelmed and depressed, which I feel would have been avoidable with an earlier diagnosis.
Better now than later I guess. I feel bitter about what could have been. And bitter to feel bitter about something that can't be changed.
I feel ashamed to share that result around me now. It's the "clever part" supposedly compensating the other aspects that feels boastful and exceptionalist. Basically "I'm functional because I use the power of my big brain to push the weirdness iceberg mostly underwater". But hey, I know how I tick now. That's something.
So I raise my glass to you barman and to you, fair stranger listening to me. I am grateful for this place where I can express myself freely.