AuDHD, Autistic Mother, Autistic Child, Part 3

The Mask Giveth And The Mask Taketh Away

For many Autistic/AuDHD women, the mask gets us the job and then –  what’s under the mask loses it. 

If you’re Autistic/AuDHD, imagine being a neurotypical person… 

If you are a neurotypical person, just imagine… 

You’re going about your business, being ordinary and doing ordinary-seeming things, when you receive an irate text from a co-worker you thought was pretty chill. To you, this text makes absolutely no sense and, not long after, this previously chill-seeming person quits, is fired, or quietly disappears, and you never hear from them again. Later, when you think of them, it will seem as if they were difficult, crazy, or just plain odd and you will never know what you missed out on when you lost the opportunity to benefit from their brilliance.

Now, if you’re not already in the shoes of the person with Autism/AuDHD who had the meltdown, imagine wearing those shoes, and picture this happening again and again. 

This is the future I saw for C when I got their call because this is what I saw in my past. And, because I had never been diagnosed with AuDHD – because NOBODY was getting diagnosed with AuDHD – what I had concluded from my experience was that, for reasons I could never understand, the world seemed to consider me (and people like me) difficult, crazy, and uncooperative: also lazy, unwilling to go the extra mile, and just plain defective.

But I didn’t feel like I was any of those things. Instead I felt perpetually confused, desperate to please, willing to do whatever I could and, oh yeah, very, very tired. 

It was only after C had read the RAADS-R assessment out loud to me and tallied up my (autistic) score that I started to consider that there was a reason for how I felt – and there was a reason why the (neurotypical) world saw me the way it did.  Since then, I’ve felt a lot of grief knowing that I can never undo the mistakes I made. And also that, while I was suffering from so much self-loathing, anxiety, and depression,  what I really needed was support, understanding and a fucking DIAGNOSIS.

But on my call with C I didn’t feel grief. Instead I felt like the person I wish I’d had when I was twenty: someone who could offer support, understanding, and a way around the neurodivergent traps of invisible disability. 

In Part 4, I explore ways of stepping around the traps and getting to where we want to go (as opposed to fired).