Hello everyone,
I'm a 42-year-old female from the UK. Today I received an NHS diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome.
My immediate feeling is one of relief. Suddenly, a lot of my earlier life has been brought into sharp focus and I can now see that the difficulties I had with forming friendships, sensory issues, making social blunders, and feeling like an infant alien dropped onto Planet Earth in some kind of experiment, were not because I was a bad or insensitive person, but because I had undiagnosed Asperger Syndrome.
All my life, I knew that something within me wasn't quite aligned. From early childhood, I instinctively felt a disconnect from the world around me. I put it down to being shy and awkward, and had pegged myself as one of life's introverted outsiders. But as I grew older, several family members were diagnosed with varying degrees of autism and Asperger Syndrome. As I learned more about their issues and traits, I began to recognise the same things in myself, although it wasn't until about three years ago that I seriously considered the possibility of having the condition myself.
It's taken me four long, anxious and painful years from my initial visit to my GP to an assessment and today the confirmation that I'm an Aspie. Although there is sadness that so much of my life has been a giant misunderstanding, today I can look forward to the future with a fresh and positive outlook, helped by the fact that I can now access support for my condition.
I'm really glad to have found this community on the first day of the rest of my life.
Cheers.
V
04 Aug 2015, 11:03 am
