2 minute read
(autistic women, girls with autism, late diagnosed autism, undiagnosed autism, autistic childhood, autism gender bias, "the lost generation", autistic teenager, special interests, hyperlexia, sensory overload, social difficulties, autism and school)
Back in the day, autism was a “boys-only” club — and girls just weren’t on the guest list. So I grew up blissfully (or not-so-blissfully) undiagnosed, cruising through childhood with a secret superpower nobody recognized. It actually wasn’t exactly super fun.
My early childhood? Honestly, it was pretty good, I think. I grew up in rural Manitoba, which basically meant peace, quiet, and a whole lot of books. We actually had two full sets of encyclopedias, and I tried to read the entire sets in alphabetical order.
Me before I started pre-school playing with my toys in a weird way.
Then came school. If childhood was a calm lake, school was like being tossed into the ocean during a storm. I hardly spoke, spent most of the day clutching headaches and stomach-aches, and came home ready to crash like a phone battery at 2%. The noise, the chaos, the endless social puzzles — it was exhausting.
This photo is from my pre-school yearbook. I don't specifically remember that day but I do remember feeling terrible the whole time I was at school. Everyone just thought I was extremely shy.
Don't worry folks, I did manage to survive pre-school and I did it in style in these funky overall pants.
My teen years improved slightly. The classroom got quieter and I had the same 20 classmates I’d known since kindergarten. Familiarity became my lifeline, and I was lucky to have friends who accepted my unusual interests without blinking. The classes, though? Boring doesn’t even start to cover it. I feel boredom like it’s a physical illness — complete with symptoms like “zombie stare” and “mild existential crisis.”
People got used to my quirks, and I became the girl with the offbeat passions and the weirdly specific dreams. For instance, beside my picture in the 12th-grade yearbook it says: "Future Plans: move to Mexico and join an Aztec tribe."
And guess what? I actually did move to Mexico — and spent six years there. But that, my friends, is a story for another blog post.
My big hair and I graduated high school in 1995. They had to reschedule my grad picture photo shoot because I had been hospitalized for one week. I'm not sure exactly what the diagnosis was but what I do know is that health issues were a-brewin'.
Looking back, I realize I was navigating life with autism without a map. No diagnosis, no guidebook — just a whole lot of figuring it out the hard way thinking there was something profoundly wrong with me and little did I know there would be many painfully awkward moments ahead.
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