Autism Awareness Day always has a theme. Officially, the UN sets the theme but different organisations also choose their own themes; for example, I know that autistica has chosen the theme of anxiety. The official theme (the one set by the UN) is ‘Inclusion in the Workplace: Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-Pandemic World.’ I don’t feel that there’s really anything useful I can add to that conversation, given that I’ve never been well enough to have what society would consider a proper job and that the career path I’m following doesn’t really involve traditional workplaces. So, instead, I thought I’d write about something different, something that has been a really big deal for me this year.

For so long, I just felt like I was broken. And I felt like I was broken in so many places. I couldn’t understand it. Getting the Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis helped but there were still all these cracks, all of these problems that no one could make sense of. I had mental health problems, I had chronic fatigue, I had chronic pain, and so on. Nobody could figure out the whole picture and at worst, I was just abandoned by medical professionals, told that my case was just too complicated. That was the most painful part, I think; these people, many of whom it was their job to help with situations like this, were willing to let me continue to struggle rather than put in the effort and help me. It made me feel like I wasn’t worth helping, the toxic best friend of feeling like I was broken.

But in the last few months, with the help of several new medical professionals and some more diagnostic work, the pieces have all slotted into place and, I think, we might finally have the whole picture. So this is the timeline, beginning in 2016 (I might add dates later but I don’t have them all to hand right now).

(I’ve covered some of this before but I think it’s necessary if we’re talking about said whole picture.)

• I was diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety by one psychiatrist
• I was diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) by my long term psychiatrist.
• I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and had the BPD diagnosis confirmed at the local Neurobehavioral Unit.
• My therapist explained that my mental issues, particularly my BPD, may have stemmed from the continued invalidation of my ASD.
• A few years passed.
• After a discussion with my psychiatrist, my mental health related diagnoses were updated, changing to Treatment Resistant Depression (TRD), Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and BPD.
• I was (re-)diagnosed with OCD after further sessions with my psychiatrist.
• My GP diagnosed me with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) when we could find no obvious cause for Chronic Fatigue I’ve been dealing with since I was twelve.
• A couple of years passed.
• I started to develop Chronic Pain that got dramatically worse over a period of several months.
• I was referred to a specialist who diagnosed me with Hypermobility (apparently individuals with Hypermobility are seven times more likely to be autistic), which led to a diagnosis of Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), explaining my Chronic Fatigue and Chronic Pain as well as a number of other ‘smaller’ symptoms that, due to the bigger problems, had been ignored. This, as far as I can tell, makes the ME/CFS diagnosis void.
• I was also diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), many of the symptoms overlapping with my ASD, during the same period.

And suddenly all of the pieces started to click together:

THE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES (TRD, GAD, OCD, AND BPD) AND ADHD ARE, AT LEAST IN PART, CONNECTED TO MY ASD.

MY ASD AND HYPERMOBILITY ARE LINKED.

THE HYPERMOBILITY LED TO A DIAGNOSIS OF hEDS, WHICH EXPLAINS MY CHRONIC FATIGUE, CHRONIC PAIN, AND OTHER PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS.

Discovering that it’s all connected has been a really helpful and comforting revelation. I’m starting to see each condition as a star in one big constellation and that’s a hell of a lot better than feeling inexplicably broken in multiple places. I still have to deal with everything that comes with each of these conditions, of course, but knowing that they’re all part of the same picture does make my health less draining to think about and manage. It all makes more sense. And I am a person that needs things to make sense. So this is all a really big deal.