I didn’t know I was Autistic until I was 29. Before that, I just knew I was tired—tired of being told my best wasn’t good enough, tired of feeling like a problem that needed solving, and so exhausted.
Hi, my name is Lyric Rivera. I am Autistic and ADHD, but I didn’t know it for most of my life.
Instead of knowing the truth about my brain (that I am and always have been Neurodivergent), I grew up believing I was a broken neuro-average person, who should try my best to be more like the people around me (even if this goal was unrealistic for me).
Throughout my life, many of the spaces and systems I entered treated me and my needs like ‘a problem‘, and often it seemed as if I was somehow both ‘too much‘ and also ‘not enough‘ for the people and spaces around me at the same time (and for most of my life, I had no idea why).
I started reading when I was less than two years old, much to the surprise of the adults in my life, and by the time I was three, I was already speaking in complete sentences, using ‘big words‘ that often stunned adults, because, as it was once said by a one adult, talking to me “was like talking to a real person“ (to wich three year old me replied, “I AM a real person!“).
Children Are Not Property, They’re People!
It’s an unfortunate reality that some adults still don’t seem to see children as ‘real people‘, instead viewing them as clay that must be coerced, manipulated, and molded into ‘real people‘ by adulthood, and too often treating them more like property or toys for their amusement than people who have hopes, dreams, desires, and passions.
When children struggle to conform to the expectations adults have for them, they’re often treated as problems for wanting or needing something adults find confusing or inconvenient, or for not following the path adults decide is ‘best for them‘ (regardless of what the child wants).
Autism is NOT a ‘Problem’ to Be Solved
The first time I encountered a system that treated me, my needs, and differences as ‘problems‘ to be solved, overcome, or worse, eliminated was when I entered the public school system in the first grade.
Up until that point, at home, everything had been fine, as nothing I did was seen as out of the ordinary by my family members, except for my ‘giftedness‘ in reading and vocabulary (possibly because many of them were also Neurodivergent, but did not know it).
To my family, I was ‘just a kid doing kid things‘. Unfortunately, my teachers saw things differently.
One would think that starting school and already knowing how to read adult-level books, speaking like a little professor, would mean I was destined to thrive in that system, but this wasn’t my experience at all.
In fact, my ‘giftedness‘, as it was called back then, was often used against me.
Because I was highly skilled in one area (reading and writing), whenever I struggled in other areas (like math, science, history, attention, or impulse control), my ‘gifts‘ were used as examples of what I ‘could do if I only applied myself‘, and proof I ‘was capable but refusing to perform‘ in other areas where I had weaknesses.
Being that I am, and always have been, an ‘all or nothing‘ type of person, I put in my best effort, but it often wasn’t sufficient and was frequently seen as laziness.
“If you’d only try a little harder,” my teachers would say to me, without the knowledge that I’d already tried my hardest.
Eventually, I started to internalize that my best wasn’t enough… and by extension, neither was I.
By adulthood, I knew how to push myself so hard that I frequently would make myself physically ill and then keep going, even as the stress and exhaustion turned into migraines and stomach distress, ignoring my body and mind as it screamed out, begging me for rest.
I would ‘hit the wall‘ and keep on pushing, dissociated from the reality of my own wants, needs, hopes, and desires, pushing towards reaching the unrealistic expectations the world had for me.
Unrealistic Expectations for Neurodivergent Kids
In elementary school, class was painfully boring, and many of the lessons my teacher was supposed to teach me were things I already knew. However, I was still expected to ‘sit quietly, actively listen, and engage appropriately‘ (while bored out of my mind) with my body still, my mouth shut, and eyes on the teacher (even if that wasn’t what my attention looked like).
In addition to being still and quiet all day, it was also expected that I wouldn’t read ahead (something I frequently got in trouble for) and that I would follow along, despite the teacher and other students’ painfully slow reading pace, so that I could read aloud when called upon during popcorn reading in the daily circle time, but I couldn’t do it.
I struggled to follow along because my zippy ADHD brain had trouble focusing at the grueling pace and kept zipping ahead. I often didn’t know which sentence or paragraph I was supposed to read when I was called upon.
Whenever my teacher ‘caught me off-track‘, I would be scolded in front of the others in my class for ‘not paying attention,’ and that was embarrassing.
In addition to struggling to know what passage I was supposed to read, my anxiety meant I also couldn’t read out loud, despite the books being way below my reading level, because I was nervous and afraid to read in front of my peers, who mercilessly bullied me whenever the teacher wasn’t looking (and sometimes in front of the teacher).
Anxiety-induced selective mutism, I’ve heard it called, but at the time, I had no idea what it was or why it was happening to me. I only knew that when my teacher called on me to read aloud, it felt as if my brain forgot where my mouth lived or how to properly form words.
If I managed to get any sounds out, they would be whisper-quiet, or I would stutter, unable to express what I understood or knew out loud and share it with the people around me.
At first, my teacher thought it was because I couldn’t read, and I was sent to special education for reading support to help me ‘catch up‘ with my peers. However, after sitting me down at a computer for a reading test, it was determined that my reading level was 12+ (college level), and I could, in fact, read better than most kids my age. Then I was sent back to the mainstream classroom, to a very frustrated teacher who was convinced I could do what she was asking, but was refusing to do so.
This post was written with the assistance of Focused Space (a sponsor of the Neurodivergent Rebel blog).
What is Focused Space?
Focused Space is an ADHD-focused, Neurodiversity affirming, goal‑setting, and online co‑working / body‑doubling platform designed to help people prioritize, stay motivated, and bust through procrastination (and it is something I believe in and personally use every day).
More info:
Learn more about how I use it here!
I get requests (that I mostly ignore) to do brand partnerships all the time, because I don’t want to partner with products unless I actually find them useful and high-quality. I also want to work with brands whose owners and processes align with my personal standards and ethics.
That’s why I’m excited to announce that the Neurodivergent Rebel Blog is officially partnering with Focused Space, and our community members can now get access to Focused Space at a special rate of 20% off forever when you use the code “NEURODIVERGENTREBEL” at checkout via the button below or at get.focused.space/neurodivergentrebel:
Now when you Get Focused Space via the link above you’re getting discounted access to a great tool as while supporting the work I do here at the NeuroDivergent Rebel Blog.
Also, if you ever join a 7am CST wakeup call, or pop into an un-hosted Quiet Owl session on a week day, you might bump into me.
Not sure if Focused Space is for you?
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Hope to see you over there!
Back then, nobody knew I was Autistic, not me, my teachers, or any of the other adults charged with my care.
Back then, I still had a strong desire to ‘be good‘ even if the teacher’s ideas of ‘good behavior’ were nearly impossible for me to attain. However, eventually, after being told often enough that I was ‘bad’ (even when I tried my best to ‘be good’), my desire to ‘be good‘ would dissolve, as being a ‘bad kid‘ or a ‘problem child‘ (the title of a popular movie when I was growing up) became a key aspect of my identity.
Being told over and over again that I was ‘bad‘, ‘a problem‘, ‘stubborn‘, ‘lazy‘, and ‘rebellious‘ when I had no desire or intention to be any of those things had an impact.
Eventually, the external messaging and projections people placed upon me became internalized, and I started to believe the lies people told me about myself (that I was ‘the problem’, ‘a bad seed’, ‘a broken, evil person, born rotten to the core‘).
What else was I supposed to do?
For most of my life, I internalized the idea that I was a problem and that I needed to work hard to be worthy of other people’s kindness.
Self-compassion was not something I knew or felt I deserved. I believed the worst about myself and hated myself for it.
I worked hard to change myself, modeling myself after society’s neuro-normative expectations, chiseling parts and pieces of myself away, because they didn’t fit into who or what I thought I was supposed to be.
