𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗲

Charlie came to my speech about the project at The Photography and Video Show at the NEC last month, so it seemed like a great time to photograph him for my project afterwards!

‘Since learning that I’m autistic, I have become more confident and accepting of myself. It has made me feel better knowing that I am allowing myself to stim. Being able to accept myself has helped, and is helping me still, as I can be myself more. Another reason why I am happy about being autistic is that I can advocate for autism on what, and how I experience/experienced life as a neuro-diverse person in a euro-typical world.

I have to be honest here, because this is what the project is about. Some days I feel like autism is amazing, and it helps when I hyper-focus on a task I’m doing. I love when I stim - happy or sad, because I’m finally expressing who I am. The other days, well it’s much harder due to the executive dysfunction. I hate that I can’t do the things I want to do. Those days make it hard to do a lot of stuff - even the stuff I love to do, like photography. I find this incredibly frustrating as I want to do it so bad, but can’t physically make myself do it, which makes me sad. But I would not change it for the world, the bad experiences, the good ones. I am me because of them, I’ve made mistakes, and have learnt and grown into who I am. I am proud of that and can only hope to become a better person with time and more life experiences!

I first figured our I had autism from relating to a lot of the instagram posts on autism my friend was posting to her story. I then researched autism online and followed a lot of autistic advocated instagram to look what they were posting to see if I related to what they had posted about autism and the experience they had been through themselves. Seeing as I did relate to a lot of the posts, I decided to tell my parents, they were very accepting of me saying I was autistic.

They then told me to call the doctors; I told my G.P about my ‘symptoms’. He then referred me to a psychologist. I am now on a waiting list to get diagnosed, but have self-diagnosed myself as I have thoroughly researched autism. I have read over my medical notes several times, and in secondary school I was tested for autism Unfortunately, CAMHS thought I wasn’t showing enough autistic traits. Another thing in my medical notes is that the word ‘complex; was repeated throughout, which I found hurt me because being called complex, in my mind, isn’t a good thing. It comes across as very negative.’ - Charlie