A Story of Chronic Pain
For the past three years since 2015, I had spent hours and hours and hours talking to my mom and working through my feelings about having a late autism diagnosis at 22. It was a long process of recognizing behaviors and scenarios that seemed unrelated throughout my childhood and adolescence, but gradually all the pieces started popping up and coming together and with it, a profound sense of relief. Years of feeling like a fish out of water finally had an explanation and I couldn't have been happier. I had had other issues with my body for some time at that point, but for one reason or another never got around to pursuing it and just lived with the pain that eventually would cause me so much hassle that I was going to make an incredibly difficult decision. At that time, one diagnosis had distracted me from the urgency of the situation that was to come.
