I remember when I was five. We had just moved into a new house and I had to face whole new circumstances. I used to pace the backyard with a papaya frond in my hand and twiddle it and my grandfather spoke about it in a nasty way and my mother told me it was stupid. I was threatened with being sent to psychiatric hospitals and the like. What I now know is that the pacing and the twiddling was a form of self-regulation.

I was always accused of staring, I was accused of being weird.

What I so wish had have been able to happen was if the neurologist who told my mother I had muscular dystrophy and then told her he'd made a mistake would have been if he'd said, "Okay, you don't have muscular dystrophy, but I would like to assess you for something else." I truly believe that had we known back then what we know now, and I had been properly assessed, I could have avoided many problems. When I changed primary schools (when I was little, my mother told me that I'd have to leave my first one and go to a "special school"), had I had the diagnosis in my hand, maybe the second school principal could have said, "I don't think this school is equipped for your son's needs. I can recommend, however, a nearby primary school that has a special programme and he can have assistance in areas where he needs it and go mainstream for the rest."

One of the most ridiculous things my mother ever said to me was, "You didn't have autism when you lived here." WHAT???!!! I've been autistic all my life, I didn't KNOW I was autistic until 11 years ago.