Wow, this is weird.
The first internet community I ever joined and embraced as a home-away-from-home was the Beatles Bible Fab Forum, when I was 12 years old. Since then, I’ve blazed through countless other social media groups, Tumblr communities, Instagram communities, Twitter communities, Reddit subreddits, Discord servers, et cetera. I’ve become so acquainted with the inner workings of these more contemporary sites that when I look back on it all, forums feel almost foreign, like a half-forgotten relic of my ancient past.
And now I’m 21, and here I am.
Hi. I’m Ava. I’m from Pennsylvania, USA, and I just realized I’m autistic about a month and a half ago, at the end of January (the night between the 23rd & the 24th, to be specific ). So as I’m sure you can surmise, autism is currently my life.
I have a consultation with a specialist coming up in about a week and a half. I have a very supportive family, an incredibly strong & supportive group of online friends, and the endless wealth of knowledge & testimonies that can be found on YouTube and Tumblr and all the rest of it. All things considered, everything is going pretty great. But even still, it feels like something in my life is… missing.
And I think what that something is, is people who not only support me but just inherently understand me. People I don’t have to explain my entire brain and life and existence to before we can have successful communication. People who just… get it. (And who aren’t separated from me by 50k subscribers and an endless sea of comments in which I’m just another piece of driftwood.)
So that’s why I’m here. And actually, this isn’t my first post — I made a slightly insane one a few weeks ago in a very old thread, thinking I could get away with it because I’d never be coming back. Whoops. [Edit: ok people actually responded really nicely to that post so maybe I’m not as insane as I thought akshsjs]
But yeah. It’s nice to see this site is still active; breaks my heart when I stumble across forums where every last post is from 2010 or something. But it looks like activity is still fairly regular around here, so hopefully I’ll be able to slip right into the community and find myself a nice posting rhythm just like I did 9 years ago when my life was John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
A preemptive very happy to meet you all! This site looks like a wonderful place with lots of wonderful people, and I’m excited to be here! <3
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*** Autistic & ADHD late-diagnosee — self-diagnosed autistic at 21, currently waiting on an official diagnosis; self-diagnosed ADHD at 18, officially diagnosed at 18. ***