What is one thing you would change about yourself?
Well I bet the one thing I am about to choose is not what you think.
If you follow my blog you will know that I am an ex teacher, ex pat, ex GB age group triathlete with an autism diagnosis, a total knee replacement and a left leg below the knee amputation.
So, what is the one thing I would change?
Well, let’s see.
Ex teacher
Nope. I wouldn’t change this. There’s no way I would want to be a teacher and leaving was pretty scary because it is all I had ever done, but it was absolutely the right move and I have absolutely no regrets.
Ex Pat
The move to NZ on the face of it, happened pretty quickly once I applied for the first round of jobs from overseas. But, I had been considering leaving the UK for quite a while before that. I just had not considered New Zealand at all because I knew nothing about the country until I came here to race in the 2012 World champs. I was bowled away with its beauty and space, and I still love it just as much. Added to that, there is a blessing associated with being such an isolated country, in so much as we have kept out of all the terrorism and European unrest. The down side of course, is cost of living and cost of travel. But that’s ok. Still no regrets.
If I had not left the UK I wouldn’t have met my true soul mate, would I?
Ex GB age group triathlete
Being on team GB for 5 years saw me travel to some amazing places that I for sure wouldn’t have visited otherwise.
Places GB racing took me
- Australia
- Southern Ireland
- Hungary
- Spain
- China
- Israel
- New Zealand
Total knee replacement
This was as a result of an ACL injury many years earlier when I was playing rugby. Although this in itself was pretty shitty to go through and is by far my most painful surgery and recovery, I still wouldn’t do anything different. My only regret is not discovering sport earlier in my life.
Left leg below the knee amputation
Ok, I would no questions rather have two feet than one and I regularly feel pretty angry with the individuals at fault and the shit I have and continue to go through. But, if I had not had to have an amputation, I wouldn’t have ever found out about how dysfunctional many aspects of my life was (an understatement at best!) I would also not have had the time to truly rediscover myself and all the aspects of my life and personality that I had lost or discarded
Some of which include..
- Care and pride over my appearance
- Started wearing makeup again
- Started wearing dresses
- Embraced the curl after straightening my hair all my life
- Stopped colouring my hair and embraced the grey
- Exercise for enjoyment rather than to get the next qualification or do the next competition (it had become a bit of an obsession)
- Tried new sports I had not tried before
- Gone back to crafting
- Started Parkrun
- Went back to regular reading
I also would never have met Peter and would never have found out what it was like to have found your real soul mate – someone who is your best friend, who you can talk to about absolutely everything.
So although I sacrificed a lot in the process of losing a leg, I also gained a lot too.
So, what exactly would I change?
ASD diagnosis
Having struggled with many things almost all my life, I finally pursued an ASD diagnosis at the age of 42 and paid for it myself.
It was like an epiphany, like almost everything I was confused about suddenly made sense.
It didn’t solve anything, but it made everything ok – all the things I had always struggled with or not been able to do, it was all ok.
I seriously wish that I had known at the very least before I left school.
Looking back on that, there are so so many things I would do different if I had known this before now.
Some of the things that suddenly made sense:
- Struggle to make friends
- Struggle to communicate feelings properly
- Certain sounds etc causing meltdown
- Supersonic hearing – things that others can’t hear
- Everything looking more vivid to me than normal people
- Routines, lists, things being just so
- The need to be the best – perhaps a bit more driven than was healthy sometimes
- Feeling of overwhelm
- Need for silence and stillness
- Literal meaning taken for everything when it isn’t always appropriate
- Inability to question things. You don’t know what you don’t know.
So there we have it. I am grateful for where some of the struggles have led me, but resent how much harder life was before I found out I was autistic.
