I was more intelligent than most children. I had the reading age of 8 when I was 5. I was on the Gifted and Talented programme. How am I now nearly 30, struggling to find work, still living with my parents, receiving assistance and now applying for disability payment? It's not even just the anxiety. I think I just stopped becoming more intelligent once I turned 13. That's when my grades started to drop. It's like my brain went "nope, you're smart enough now, no more". My boyfriend thinks I did this to myself because it was around the age of 13 I tried to dumb myself down so people would stop bullying me for my intelligence. But can you really lose intelligence that way? Maybe it's because that's the age I realised I was really unpopular and had to try harder to act "normal". All that masking my autism must have destroyed a lot of my brain cells. I used to think it's because I started fancying boys but I didn't do that until I was nearly 15.