Aug 12, 2025 Society
I’m on the autism spectrum — always have been, always will be. But I didn’t always know I was. I received my diagnosis when I was 32 years old.
I did a number of sessions with a psychologist, and passed with flying colours. During the final session, she told me that sometimes when a person receives an autism diagnosis the people in their life can be surprised. Pushback was to be expected. I imagined that would absolutely be the case with me. Everyone was going to flip out when I dropped the bombshell. Guess what? Your old pal Abby was autistic all along! BOOM!!
In fact, this news did not come as a bombshell to my family and friends. Literally no one was surprised. My autism was like a good murder mystery — the clues were there all along, and other readers had figured out the answer. I just hadn’t put the pieces together myself.
In my twenties, I was at a party talking to a guy I didn’t know. Mid-conversation this guy stops and goes, “You have autism, right?” I laughed. Oh how I laughed! I said, “No way, man, not me,” then immediately went back to listing my top five military strategies. People asking me outright if I had autism was my first clue that I might have autism.
I thought this was a hilarious story. So hilarious, in fact, that I decided to use it as a stand-up-comedy bit. I remember standing on stage and confidently delivering the punchline: “… and then he asked me if I had autism?” Crickets. No laughs. Dead silence.
That was clue number two. The idea that I was autistic was not a crack-up to the audience. They did not find the notion preposterous. I took the loss and moved on to the next joke, an extended routine about how I cannot tolerate bright lights or loud noises.
Other clues were more subtle. For example, I have always found it difficult to regulate and articulate my emotions. This is where musical theatre really helped. After a bad day at school, I would run up to my bedroom, lock the door, fire up the iPod Mini and lip-sync ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ from Les Misérables with the full intensity of emotion the song required. At the time, getting passed over for a role in the school production was a devastation on par with that of Fantine, who would in the next song slide into a poverty so immense that she was forced to sell her own hair and teeth.
One of my favourite songs to sing was ‘Part of Your World’ from The Little Mermaid. Something about that song really resonated. For many years, whenever I had a strong emotion, I would run up to my bedroom and sing ‘Part of Your World’ as hard as I could. No doubt it is now the soundtrack to my parents’ nightmares. I couldn’t explain what it was about the song that I connected to so deeply, but I knew that whenever I sang it, I felt better.
Further clues include but are not limited to:
- Finding sleepovers with other children to be an unfathomable enterprise. Around 8pm, I would reach my limit, not because I was having a bad time but because I’d simply had enough.
- My intense special interests, which included the likes of the Titanic disaster and the Tudor period (specifically, the sub-period 1528–1603).
- Approaching possible friends as if they were playable characters in The Sims.
- Happily eating, and in fact preferring to eat, exactly the same thing for meals every day.
The list could go on and on.
By the way, if you can relate to any or all of these things, it does not necessarily mean you are also on the autism spectrum — these are not diagnostic criteria. Don’t listen to me; I’m not a doctor. (Well, I technically am. I have a PhD in theatre studies. But nothing about that applies here. Or, if I’m being honest, anywhere.)
When I got home after the diagnosis, I immediately hit the internet. I wanted to learn everything about this autism business. I found myself, naturally, on the r/autism subreddit (not as toxic as you’d think it might be) and I saw that someone had done a post about how their favourite Disney princess was Ariel. Given my old connection to Ariel through ‘Part of Your World’, I thought that was interesting. I decided to listen to the song again for old times’ sake.
This was not a positive experience. It made me feel sad, realising why I’d connected with the song so much. The lyrics include the line, “I wanna be where the people are”. Ariel is in her underwater cave with all the stuff she loves and obsesses over — don’t get me wrong, she likes it in the cave — but everyone else seems to be up on the surface, dancing. I remembered that I used to think that one day, when I got older, I would be like Ariel. I’d grow legs and be like everyone else.
Listening to this song again as an adult, freshly diagnosed, I realised that that’s never going to happen. I’m never going to change; I’m always going to be like this. My journey is not the same as Ariel’s. (And thank God — I mean, the movie doesn’t show it, but I bet adjusting to life on land had a lot of sticky moments. Speaking of which, who teaches Ariel to use a toilet?) I’m not going to bargain away my soul to a Sea Witch one day, magically grow legs and be like everyone else. Instead, my journey is to open up the cave a little more, let people in. Let people be a part of my world.
