Life With High-functioning Autism
I've realised that I tend to overreact and feel certain emotions very strongly, more than what a ‘normal’ person would. Sometimes I can get very sad. I don’t know if I can use the word depressed.
Co-written by ‘M’ and Jaden (M’s friend)
M was diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) when he was thirteen. Before then, most people thought his quirks were part and parcel of his growing years. But by adolescence, the way he interacted with his classmates became noticeably different.
He vividly recalls an incident which happened when his teacher wanted to demonstrate what discrimination was. She separated his class into two groups by gender and told the boys that they were more stupid than and inferior to the girls. “Naturally, girls have higher IQs than boys.”
When M heard this, he didn’t realise that she was being ironic and got very upset, to the point where his friend noticed and had to calm him down.
He was able to take it in his stride though and took it as a learning opportunity. “I do cringe at these stories, but that day I learned not to take things too seriously. I feel like these [incidents] are a bit embarrassing but still quite okay,” he reflects.
Because of incidents like these, he was referred to the school counsellor, who recommended he see a clinician.
His family was willing, so they hired a psychiatrist to conduct a house visit. The day was a long one; the test taking roughly 5 hours to complete. M was given two tests: an IQ one, and another for ASD. And while he remembers the IQ test in vague detail, he recalls having lunch afterwards with the psychiatrist. As it turns out, having lunch was a covert way to assess M’s behaviour. “What do you do in your free time?” the doctor would ask while eating steamed rice.
Two months of waiting for the diagnosis followed. But M wasn’t disappointed by the result. Instead, he was relieved. “Things kind of made sense,” he remembers feeling. “And I was quite happy I could get exempted from second language.”
This next portion of the article is written by M.
I've realised that I tend to overreact and feel certain emotions very strongly, more than what a ‘normal’ person would. Sometimes I can get very sad. I don’t know if I can use the word depressed. And sometimes, I also feel very lonely, but I guess it’s okay, because most of the time I’m home alone just with myself, and it doesn’t really affect me much. When I feel sad, it just feels like nothing means anything, like I’m having an existential crisis. As for whether I think it’s due to having ASD… maybe?
I’m not very sure whether or not my strong emotions are due to my ASD or ‘me’ as a person. For people with autism, the thing with social interaction is that some find it very hard or even impossible to empathise with other people and some feel so overwhelmed by their surroundings that they can’t control how they react to certain situations.
However, I think I was much worse in primary school. Back then, I just didn’t understand much about myself and my feelings. I remember one time in primary 5 where the teacher was handing us back a science test and I didn’t do as well as I thought and other people got higher than me. I got angry in class and couldn’t control myself. These incidents were quite frequent from primary 3 to sec 2 but I guess I’ve learned from them. I remember tearing papers and hitting the table a lot.
I remember some people in my secondary school who found out about my autism. I was doing a maths problem and I ran out of paper. So, I continued it on the whiteboard. I didn't bother to ask for paper from someone because it seemed quite weird to talk to people in the class seeing as I barely knew them.
I also don’t like talking to a lot of people and when I’m doing math, I just don’t talk. One of my classmates made a snarky comment which implied I had autism. I didn’t really care, but I could see how it might affect other people.
I’m fortunate that not many people know or can tell that I'm autistic, but I know that not many people are as fortunate as me and I’m sure they face even worse problems than me.
If you were affected by this account or have any questions regarding ASD, you can reach out to Jaden and M at onghyjaden@gmail.com
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