briefly, a mystery

because I don't want to bother my parents, because I think they think I bother them a lot about this stuff, and my dad always says he can't find my records from the psychologist I went to when I was in second and third grade, who thought I had experienced some kind of traumatic abuse. At the same time, if someone thought I experienced traumatic abuse, I kind of want to know about it.

The other thing, though, the really weird thing, is the PDD-NOS diagnosis. It was kind of nice to find out about it since I anyway don't think of myself as having "Asperger's" and now I have an excuse for not wanting to describe my disability that way, and just saying ASD which feels truer and simpler. It's nice--but also, I kind of feel like I'm lying, because I've never seen the diagnosis written down, and I found out about it when I was twenty, nine or ten years after the fact.

Yesterday I told someone that I thought I had been sent to a resource room to practice eye contact. But then I didn't even know if I was telling the truth. When I think about it, I know that I went to resource rooms throughout middle school, but I remember very little about what I did. Maybe I just don't remember much about being that age--but although there's stuff I've probably blocked out, I paid attention to stuff that seemed relevant. I think the reason I don't remember about the resource rooms is simply that I didn't know I had a disability, so I didn't think about my life that way, so I didn't exactly realize that I was doing disability things.

I was interested in disabilities. I think I would have been aware if I'd known that's what it was about.

For the years before my AS and NVLD diagnoses (I was diagnosed with both at the same time, which is kind of like diagnosing someone as both homosexual and gay) I was conscious that my parents were worried about me and thought something was wrong with me. They read a lot of books and got me a lot of extra help. This bothered me and I remember the moment in seventh grade when I really sorted it out and realized how incredibly lonely and guilty I felt, and realized that I couldn't be as bad as the situation made me feel I was. My intent isn't to criticize my parents, they were doing what they thought was necessary--but my intent is to criticize my parents, because I can't believe that I was already diagnosed as ASD and they didn't just tell me.

I don't even understand why I got diagnosed again. I'm sort of starting to put together that when my mom would tell people I had PDD-NOS, they'd get really upset, or they'd just tell my mom it couldn't possibly be true because I didn't hit my head on walls. So--maybe--I'm constructing this--my parents wanted me to know I had a disability, because it would influence my actions in some way, or help me understand things, or something--but they didn't want to tell me I had something that was looked at as so dire. And then they found out about this thing called Asperger's which was kind of the same, but new and not as bad and easier to talk about? So they started trying to introduce me to it, and then they got someone to diagnose me with it? Not that they shopped around or something, but that they asked someone "Does Amanda have Asperger's or not?" like there were two options. That's how I think of it.

It's not exactly important. At the same time, I desperately want all my records, and I want to ask my parents a bunch of questions, but I always seem to ask at the wrong time, and I'm probably mean.