Sariel talks about why labels can be important

After reading the experiences of fellow community members, I have realised a trend: most, if not all, had late diagnoses. Although I can empathise with them, as I’m still waiting to be assessed for ADHD, my experience about growing up autistic is different.

Turns out I was diagnosed as a kid. I would love to be more specific, but I can’t. My parents decided not to tell me. Or anybody. Despite the fact I knew I was different all along. But they decided to keep it to themselves. Like my mum revealed to me later: it was a dirty secret, comparable to soiling your bed after certain age.

To make matters worse, I didn’t learn I was autistic by my parents. It was my psychiatrist. He was not meant to tell me. In fact, he just casually dropped it because he assumed my parents told me. How wrong he was! Although I can’t blame him for what he did, as the issue here is my parents’ misguided decision. One of many, many more.

I hated myself for being different. I had a very, very hard time accepting that I’m autistic, and the fact that being autistic is neither bad or good. How could I had coped, when all the information I got was a bunch of random leaflets directly printed from the internet with information that was outdated even back then?

But my issues accepting myself don’t end here. My parents never had my best interests in mind. Because I was seemingly doing fine in school, apparently everything was fine. When in reality, I never did my homework. I didn’t care much about studying. And for my exams, a lot of times I wasn’t really bothered to complete them, as I felt it was too much effort. But revisiting my life now, as an adult, I realise that there were a lot of red flags, and several of them had little to do with being autistic.

I’m glad I crossed paths with the neurodiversity movement in the mid 2010s, when the whole thing in my first language wasn’t even a reality yet. From there, I have learnt a lot about myself, and how life handed me a very bad starting hand of cards. If we were playing Pokémon, I would have all Magikarp. Six magnificently pointless, unedible Magikarp.

For this reason, when I read parents claiming they do not want to “label” their kid, I have to ask myself to breathe in and breathe out. I’m not a parent, and I refuse to be. But I was that kid that never got told, and I know the whole experience is painful and confusing. We know. We might not know there’s a word to define our reality. But we know. Please tell us.

Because of the actions my parents took, now as an adult I have to untangle the massive ball of scrappy yarn they left me. It’s now when I’m learning that I’m not just autistic. I’m almost certainly an ADHDer, I have some degree of learning disability; and because of all the bad things that have happened to me in life I’m dealing with C-PTSD, although I have no hopes to be assessed for this.

And because I had to power through with little to no support until now, I have been for at least a year into autistic burnout. And before this, I have spent from 2018 to early 2021 with severe bowel issues. I was very lucky a surgical procedure was enough to fix it, but observing those years from a safe distance now, I feel that health problem manifested due to the high levels of stress I was subjected back then.

If this is not a massive butterfly effect caused by one single decision, I sincerely don’t know how to illustrate it better.

Parents: tell your kids. They know.