It’s been a while since my last post. It feels like forty years. Given the nature of Invisible Illness, I thought I’d better check in and say I’m still here, just about.

You see, after my last post, a follower and friend messaged me to ask if I’d ever considered I might be autistic. Strangely enough, about a year ago another friend shared this image on Facebook on autism in girls, and I commented how that was me as a child. But I couldn’t go 42 years without knowing something like that about myself, surely?

Erm, yes. Turns out I could. I’m still awaiting an official diagnosis (not a priority for the NHS) but my GP concurs that I show all the traits of high-functioning autism, what once would have been called Aspergers.

It was like being given glasses for the first time, or maybe a tiny bit like finding out you’re adopted. Suddenly life made sense. Turns out 42 is the answer to life, if not the universe and everything.

I’ve spent the last six weeks reading everything I can and replaying my life through this new filter. Exhausting but incredibly enlightening. All the parts of me, of my life, that I thought were broken were actually a result of me being ‘neuro-divergent’. The phrase ‘normal, not normal’ springs to mind. Mostly, for the first time in forever I don’t feel alone. (Go on, who now has a Frozen song playing in their head)

There’s a whole post to write on female autism and why it goes unrecognised. A second on high-functioning autism and why that’s a misnomer. A third on realising other family members also show traits, and the stress that’s put on our family unit, while at the same time bringing hope. Another on having a (suspected) autistic child and helping the world understand them without making them a victim.

I don’t have the energy to write any of them right now. If you’ve ever had therapy, or even a soul-bearing heart-to-heart, you’ll know how draining that is. Re-playing my whole life, all the complicated lonely anxious mess of it, and picking out new patterns has left me with an exhaustion I haven’t felt since having two babies under 2. (And realising some of those horror years of acrimonious self-doubt might have been avoided if I’d realised two out of the three of us were not neuro-typical is heartbreaking).

Anyway, it’s all good. It can only get better. We can only get stronger. There might not be a lot of NHS support, but there is plenty from friends living the same life.

And it turns out that most of the girl protagonists in my children’s books could be considered on the spectrum, so I can thank them for helping me make sense of my differences, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

More than anything, I am grateful beyond words to the very good friend who messaged with her suspicions about my place on the spectrum. There is a strong chance she literally saved my life.