I’ve had a rough few weeks and a lot of self-reflection in that time. I’m not very good at certain aspects of my job and I feel that I’m just not up to task sometimes despite getting good feedback from my superiors. I’ve spent a lot of time analysing my own cycle of self-hatred and thinking about why I do it to myself. Recently I came across a page on Facebook where this guy makes webcomics talking about the experience of him and others with autism. I saw one comic and found it to be quite relatable which led me to check out more of what this guy was saying. I messaged him and explained my experiences to him throughout my life, he messaged back and we had a lot of discussion about a lot of different things. Suddenly I’m able to re-examine my whole life, all of my social mistakes, my inability to logically process instructions from others at times, the times when I get sensory overload, the way I employ masks in social situations to suit different people in order for me to be as socially acceptable as possible, it all made sense for the first time and I finally felt like I could stop blaming myself for the first time ever since I was like 7, I’m now almost 31. I always considered myself a neurotypical who just has something wrong with them but now I can understand and accept myself as someone who is neurodivergent. I’m a normal zebra and not a strange horse.

I think it’s going to be a long process for me to fully deal with all of this. I feel like right now I’m still letting go of all the negativity I’ve heaped into myself for so long, reliving all these memories and instead of mentally flagellating myself for every mistake I’ve made, I can now just accept that it wasn’t really my fault as it wasn’t fully under control. All the mental self-abuse I subjected myself to never worked anyway. What I think is going to be the next big hurdle is how to start thinking positively about myself. My self-esteem has never been good, I’ve never had an idea of my own self-worth beyond how much other people want me around for whatever reason, be it love, friendship or work. However, I also struggle to internalise positive remarks made about myself as there’s always a cynical voice in the back of my head telling me that people only say nice things to me just to be nice, it’s not sincere and sadly that voice has been proven right too many times in the past. I discuss my issues with my parents and they always try to reinforce to me all the positive aspects of myself that they like but I just can’t truly accept it in myself because in my head it’s like, of course they will say nice things about me because they’re my parents. It’s a real mental conundrum where I’m fully cognisant if a problem in my own head but still unable to fix it. Hopefully with time I’ll have the answers I need.