Lightbulb moments...
So many lightbulb moments these days... sudden realisations about the past, a relieved understanding and acceptance that my experiences and behaviour were completely consistent with who I now realise I was and am. I remember Mondays, when Mum worked her way down our three-storey house stripping the beds and throwing the sheets to the foot of the ground-floor stairs, where I lay in the tangle of laundry rocking my head from side to side, convinced that if I did it for long enough I would activate the magic needed to get me to Fairyland. When it first occurred to me that I might be autistic, I raised several objections to the idea. One of them was that I didn't stim. But looking back, it's clear that I did (and still do). I used to rub my head from side to side in bed, making my hair rough and tangled, a classic rhythmic stim, I now realise. I was an obsessive thumb sucker until I was 10 or 11, and along with the thumb sucking went the ear twiddling - a habit I was never...