My name is Siggy, I'm 19 as of 8 Nov. 2017, and this site got me through so much.

I'm autistic, but I didn't know that when I was a frequenter of fanfiction.net. I wrote most of these fics as a way to cope with my problems - I had severe social anxiety, I hated all of my friends but was too much of a coward to break ties with them, I was questioning my own perceptions of the world around me, and I felt utterly hopeless in every aspect of my life. I wanted to kill myself when I was sixteen. That's when I started writing Parallelism. I wanted to enter into another world and be the hero instead of staying in my shitty one and being the victim, so I created Reaper, an idealized self-insert with all the talents I wished I had. Eventually I broke down and told my mom I'd been hurting myself and she took me to a psychiatrist. I'd been diagnosed with OCD since I was seven years old, but I was suddenly carrying the weight of four more diagnoses: depression, an anxiety disorder, bipolar II, and some undisclosed mood disorder. I went off to college at age seventeen and fell into one of the deepest depressive episodes I've ever experienced; it was so bad that I didn't even know I was depressed. Eventually my parents got me in with another psychiatrist, and this guy (shout out to Dr. P, you the real MVP) basically told me that my other psychiatrist didn't know shit and "undiagnosed" me with bipolar and that mood disorder. We tried a lot of different medicines and therapy techniques, but nothing was working - I couldn't pay attention to anything in school, I had no friends, I was perpetually anxious, I was suffering from chronic fatigue, I was losing weight, I wasn't doing my homework, etc. Then, in February of 2017, Dr. P had an epiphany. He sent me to a psychologist (shout out to Dr. R, you another MVP) who specialized in adult autism, and the rest is history.

I feel so much better now. I'm able to wake up in the morning without hating myself. I've been able to find methods of organization and sleeping and dorm-room-decorating that make me happy and functional. I've made friends who care enough that they don't even need an explanation when I tell them that I'm too anxious to go into a restaurant or too overstimulated to go into a party. And I'm so less anxious that it's a little alarming. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night crying because I'm so relieved to finally be diagnosed.

If any of you are interested in seeing more of my fanfiction - I still write with Reaper, the protagonist of Parallelism - I post as Siggy1998 on AO3 (Archive of Our Own, for the uninitiated). I'm coming out with more fics soon, and these will all feature an autistic Reaper and a much better writing style.

This site helped me so much. I was able to disappear into these characters and these stories instead of concentrating on the tumult inside me, and that may have saved my life. Thank you to everyone who has commented on my work - you saved me, too.

-Siggy