Imbue Art

Hello! My name is MayMei (He/Him) I am a second generation Filipino American living with autism and ADHD (along with a few physical disabilities). I love to draw/paint and crochet.
 

Art Journey

I've always been an artist at heart growing up, experimenting with photography, film-making, video game design believing that I wanted to be an RPG video game developer or video content creator with all these hobbies combined.

One hobby that stayed consistent was traditional sketching all of the stories I would create in my head.After getting my first iPad in 2017, I started experimenting with digital art by drawing fanart for a few fandoms. Honestly the digital paintings were a little rough at first but I started looking up tutorials online and delving deep into art theory and anatomy in order to improve my skills.

In 2019, I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons and from there, my love for telling and enjoying stories that I always carried through my various hobbies finally had an outlet. My random bits of information and the need to learn anything and everything had a home in all the stories that I would create.

In 2021 I spontaneously decided that I wanted to try crocheting and quickly fell in love with fiber arts. I also found crocheting as a way to meditate and also stim. Since then I've been crocheting as much as I've been drawing trying to find the balance between the two

My Diagnosis Journey

In 2019 I started noticing that I was struggling with concentrating in university. For the first time I could no longer keep up with the high expectations that I once had in grade school. I went to a psychiatrist thinking that it was ADHD but was quickly told that I only had anxiety and depression. I was then put on antidepressants in hope that it would help with my brain fog.

As I pushed on, I started to struggle more and more, the medication not seeming to help. Then one night as I was getting into a new anime fandom and scrolling through tumblr, I found a post of a character being headcanoned as autistic along with some a description of the traits that sounded eerily similar to to things I found normal. With my love for art and D&D at the time, I decided to make a similar character that had autism and poured all my energy into research. As I did more research I found that the traits presented differently in women, with the traits seeming to resonate deeply with my experience growing up. After consulting with a friend who also has ASD, I started compiling evidence of autism traits in my childhood and even my family and went in for a diagnosis for both autism and ADHD. As of 2021, I was officially diagnosed with autism only, as I did not meet the requirements for ADHD.

After receiving my diagnosis, I thought that everything would be significantly better after finding solutions to my struggle with autism. I looked online for community and support and felt that even though I was resonating with other women with autism, it still felt like something was off. There were many traits that I felt outright contradicted that of autism. I still firmly believed I had ADHD even though the psychologists I worked with for the autism diagnosis told me I didn't have it. So I went to see a different psychologist for their opinion, which they did diagnose me with ADHD, dominant in the inattentive side as of 2022.

Since then I've been trying to find ways to support myself both at home and work. I've been lucky enough to have family that is understanding and willing to help me financially though I would still like to be able to live independently as they will not be always be there in the future.