Speaking of silence

Content warning: mention of suicidal ideation and self-harm

I decided on the University of Toronto because I liked the feeling I got standing in the old buildings. I made up a bunch of other, reasonable reasons later, but this was the only real one. This decision makes no logical sense and I cannot explain it, which makes it identical to almost every other choice I’ve ever made. I had (and have) no specific goals or plans, but everyone seemed to think I should go to university, so I did. At eighteen, I moved into Innis College residence and was completely alone for the first time. By this point, I had already been in therapy on and off since I was thirteen, was placed in an outpatient program to treat anorexia at sixteen, and continued to struggle with self-harm and suicidality. After getting thoroughly used to being alone, I finally made one real friend in my last semester of high school. I was also forced to admit that becoming a professional musician seemed to require interpersonal skills at a level that I was nowhere near reaching anytime soon, or probably ever. Just existing in the presence of others took more out of me than anyone could logically explain, and I had long ago stopped trying.

I took a full course load in languages and literature, and it did not take long for difficulties to arise. I lived in residence with four roommates, but never spoke to them, and was, for the first time, completely socially isolated. I never had to self-regulate at the level that I was suddenly expected to; I’d never had to set my own schedule on a daily basis or approach a difficult task alone. My performance quickly began to deteriorate, and I spent all my time alone in my room, regularly stayed up all night, and missed classes because I couldn’t get out of bed.

In the middle of my first semester, I was having a panic attack and had no idea what to do, so I ended up going to Health & Wellness. I was taken to a psychiatrist, received a prescription for Zoloft, and got registered with accessibility services. However, despite being connected with people who seemed to be at least attempting to help me, I did not feel I was making progress; the drug didn’t help as far as I could tell, and my daily experience consistently felt like being trapped in an ever-expanding void that made it impossible to summon any motivation to do anything, despite desperately wanting do the work and validate my presence. This internal contradiction made me feel awful, and in my second semester, I had to submit my first petition for extensions on incomplete term work. I had never before had to submit anything late in my life. I didn’t understand what was happening or how to make it stop.

In the next year, I was able to switch to a different psychiatrist and was prescribed both Effexor and Clonazepam, which seemed to help emotionally, if not behaviourally. That winter, I was probably the closest I had ever been to suicide; I had been forced to drop almost all my courses because of my inability to complete coursework and was still completely isolated with no plans for the future or any idea on how to improve myself. I knew that intellectually, I could do the work, I had the time and money I needed, but I felt like I was locked in a tiny room in the house of my consciousness and could not access any of the forces needed to move my mind and body in the direction I wanted to go. I continued to attend aimless and expensive talk therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy because whenever something isn’t working, I determine it must be my fault for not trying hard enough. Over the next five years, I slowly accumulated credits by taking a reduced course load and petitioning to complete work in the summer, often months after the course had ended. Logically speaking, I probably should have been kicked out of school after my first year, when it became obvious that I am very bad at it. However, that still hasn’t happened for some reason (the reason is I have money), so here we are.

Then, this summer, the thing I was waiting for this whole time finally happened: I had a moment of insight. I was listening to some podcast about health to distract me from the fact that I had extremely late coursework I needed to do, as usual. The woman being interviewed was telling the story of how she came to some sort of revelation about herself. I noticed my growing unease as she talked about her struggles with being messy, disorganized, always late, struggling with social interactions, being exhausted for no logical reason. And then, in her twenties, she realized she had autism. This unnerved me. If she had autism, could that mean I had autism? None of the many mental health professionals I had worked with ever mentioned this possibility, so I had never seriously considered it. I had also never heard that executive function issues could be related to autism. The term executive function refers to a person’s ability to use cognitive skills to control behaviour, including attention control, inhibition control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. These functions are frequently impaired in autistic people, and especially in women. The more I researched on my own, the more certain I became.

Not long after, I told my psychiatrist that I wanted to be tested for autism spectrum disorder. I came prepared to explain myself with a long list of my symptoms: difficulty making eye contact, difficulty adapting to different social situations, difficulty intuiting other people’s emotions, extreme discomfort in loud and crowded spaces, repetitive self-soothing behaviours like pacing, difficulty forming and maintaining friendships, and even having an eating disorder, which is common in women with autism. She gave me the name of a private organization specializing in Autism Spectrum Disorder, and I was able to get an appointment for a consultation. At the beginning of September, I went and answered questions about my childhood and the development of my various symptoms for about three hours. I was told that it was extremely likely that I was on the spectrum, and I was referred to a doctor who could perform an official assessment. This will be in February, but six months isn’t long to wait, considering that I’ve been waiting to know the reason I’m like this for about as long as I’ve been alive.

Paradoxically, many autistic women evade diagnosis not because most people know nothing about autism, but because they think they know all about it. I really think one of the main obstacles for neurodivergent people receiving the help they need (besides ableism, sexism, racism, etc.) is that most aspects of autism are entirely internal, and “high-functioning” people learn to mask outward symptoms early on. How was I supposed to explain something I have no language for? The void, the ache, the noise: these things have always been there inside me, but they are imperceptible to everyone else. If you don’t display signs perceptible to neurotypical people of intellectual disability or cognitive distortion, it is easy to categorize someone’s difficulties under the vague umbrella of “depression and anxiety.” This ignores the fact that depression and anxiety can be symptoms of a more specific neurological problem.

My entire life, so many people have said to me: “Look, I’ve also had trouble with work, I’ve also had trouble socially, I’ve also felt like I was weird and different from other people; all young people feel this way, but you will grow up and figure out how to overcome this.” Whenever I heard something like that, all I would feel was more isolated, more invalidated, more at fault. Will I ever be able to do all the things I want to do? Will I ever be able to have true self-compassion, after so many years of hating myself for the way I think, the way I talk, the way I eat, the way I look, the way I move, the way I feel? I still think all the time that maybe I don’t actually have autism and this is all just some excuse I’ve made up to avoid responsibility for my failures. In any case, I will undergo an assessment in February. I almost have enough credits to graduate, but I have no idea what I’m going to do when that happens.

This story doesn’t end with me overcoming my challenges through hard work and perseverance, as is so rarely the case in real life. Things will continue to be difficult and uncertain; I need to accept this if I intend to remain alive, and I do. Therefore, I have decided to stop looking for an answer, and instead, focus on formulating a new question.