OMG I might be having a revelation.
I found my high school leaving book the other day and it has this page in it where my friends wrote down the phrases I'd said through my entire high school - I said them so often (multiple times a day every day) that they became a "thing."
Now wondering if this is an #ActuallyAutistic thing cos I'm the same now though many of the phrases have changed.
My old name is on the top (I changed it in the alt text) - please ignore!
Urgh! I was doing so well with being happy with who I am and just doing stuff differently because it makes sense to me and now I'm realising I'm #ActuallyAutistic I'm seeing all the stuff I just avoid, get mocked for, like all the ways I'm different and the ways it impacts me and always has done and it's a lot and it's making me sad.
What got me out of that was realizing that what other people did to me wasn't as bad as what I'd been doing myself - accepting the blame for what they'd done, because it had to be something wrong with me. I've been working on that - not blaming myself, not beating myself up. If I was an ass, sure, I'll own that, and I'll apologize, but if I was just being my autistic self and they reacted badly, that's on them, not me.
