#i've said before many times as well i STRUGGLE. read Struggle. an autistic sense of justice and black and white morality

[drdemonprince]

Probably a trivial question during a shitty time globally, but I'm going a bit crazy trying to figure this out and need help.

For some reason, people cancel last-minute alarmingly frequently when I host gatherings on days that are extremely important to me. I am talking mainly about my birthday and that of my partner but also a huge milestone graduation do last year was a nightmare as well. Neither I nor my partner have any meaningful relationships with our families anymore due to political differences and rely on our friends for the sense of home and belonging most people get from families.

Except this is a bit of a wasteland, as I struggle to form and maintain close friendships because of how unreliable and disappointing people have been for a while. This is not an individual (although there are a couple of people who I know will cancel every time) but a pattern. Someone will forget to book the right train ticket, another will only lurk on the event group chat and then comment for the first time before the event to say no. One person memorably just said they wanted to keep the option of a weekend gateway open so they could only come to my graduation party if they decided not to do that. Am I missing something here? Is this normal? I need consistency and dependability to feel safe and I feel like people I'd normally choose as friends (witty, nerdy interests, progressive) turn out to be incredibly bad at showing up for me when I need them. A friend I thought was close went completely mum after I graduated and didn't congratulate me at all - after having discussed the degree and its struggles with me for 2 years. Part of me feels like I need to rebuild my circle from scratch and maybe find people I can talk to honestly about my needs from the beginning of the friendship. But it feels so late and desolate to start this process in my mid-thirties. Everyone else has friends they grew up with and who know everything about their lives. Meanwhile, I am at the stage where I have no close friends at all anymore because my needs seem too absurd to even discuss with anyone except my partner, and if I do, I just lose friendships. I remember reading your piece on how to do social things as an autistic person last year and feeling very inspired so I thought I'd reach out to you.

This is all exceedingly, exceedingly normal, especially in the days post COVID for a variety of reasons. When I make plans with people, I assume that roughly 30-75% of the people invited are not going to show up, and I've completely made my peace with that. A friend of mine hosted a movie night a few weeks back, invited I believe around 15 people, and ultimately four showed up, many people being last-minute cancellations or total no shows.

This happens for a variety of reasons. Many people are very socially anxious and decide at the last minute they don't have it in them to show up because they're freaking out. Other people say yes when the event is days or weeks down the line, wanting in the abstract to be there, but then on the actual day of the event, practical daily life constraints are far more visible than they were when the event was just an idea, and so then they have to bail. Other people feel really bad saying no, and so they wait for the last minute to share that they can't make it. And lots of people are so bombarded with notifications on a variety of social media sites and chatting platforms that they just forget all that they've committed to. And then you add into that random illness, flat tires, crying kids, and the like, and you have a lot of reasons why people don't show up to things.

Personally, I have come to accept this. If I go into event planning assuming most people can't make it, my feelings aren't hurt. Every person who does show up is a gift. My invites are an opportunity, a true invitation, not an obligation or an expectation. I don't hurt my feelings in advance by telling myself that I need a high turnout for my birthday or that because I've worked hard making a certain dish for a party (I never actually do that admittedly lol) that a lot of people need to come and eat it.

And I invite people that I like and want to see, over and over again, because I care about them, and I want to show them that I care about them and that I understand they have other things going on and I am not offended that life got in the way for them. I want them to feel loved and included, even if they can't make it. Even the gesture of inviting a person to an event and them showing some interest is a meaningful act of maintaining social connections, for me. And so if they can't make it on the day of, that's fine by me.

I'm 35. My friends are anywhere from 21 to 60-something. People cancel events because of sick kids, broken down cars, long work weeks, depression, double-bookings, writing deadlines, social anxiety, busted ankles, not wanting to see one person they're currently having a difficult situation with, and any number of other factors. If you love people long enough, they get really complicated and their lives get really hard. I find that the most beautiful and friendship-sustaining thing one can do is to not take it personally, because you're going to need that same grace yourself plenty of times. People will drop of the map for months or years sometimes because they're going through hell, and you dont to deprive yourself of being open to reconnection when they're available again.

There's really no need to read anything into the randomness of life. This stuff will happen, so it's rational to expect it, and loving to not mind it too much.

Do you need to make some new friends? Maybe so! I have multiple different friend groups and I think that's healthy. You may find the no-shows less painful if you have more people to lean on. It's always good to form new connections, learn new things about yourself, expand your skills and understanding of the world through new information and experiences. But should you start over, and ditch your friends who are flakey? I don't think so. To be loved is to be sometimes flaked upon (and to flake). In this capitalistic, individualistic hellscape it's vitally important that we extend one another grace.

[problemnyatic]

Ugh. I'm certain y'all've noticed, but I've been swinging bats at hornets nests online more and more lately and it's extremely because I'm unhappy with my life right now. Vent under the cut!!! woooo

I'm frustrated and feel trapped in a dearth of agency between The World and The Difficulties and the way my life has not set me up for success in any kind of way save for my small but golden group of friends and partners.

I'm constantly fighting an uphill battle to have my medications in order and every time one falls off or falters it makes keeping myself from fumbling the others that much more precarious. While i'm struggling to keep the utter foundation of my capacity to function held tohether, I need to find some way to string together enough practice with my hobbies that they can turn into marketable skills- an endeavor that absolutely kills my passion for said hobbies.

My sleep schedule is a nightmare and without external structure (read: school or a job) keeping me beholden to one, I'll never be able to keep it together because the one actual nucleation point in my life is my friends, who all have different sleep schedules and live in various time zones. And my desperation to constantly have someone around means I'm up as late as my up-late-est friend is, and then some so I have Me Time to be autistic about nothing/The Questionable in peace.

And even the one thing I do actually do, play video games all day, is frought, because i've gotten into too many at once and now I'm overwhelmed by being pulled in too many directions at the same time. It sounds like such a frivolous complaint among everything else, but it means the only fucking staple in my life- the escape from the looming stress of it all- is also fucking stressful and keeps me antsy.

to my darling girlfriend i live with who I know is reading this, please just don't read the next pragraph. its agonizing about things that there's nothing to be gained from fretting about, that you will fret so much about if reminded (we've talked about these things before, they just cannot be meaningfully changed). I love you so much and i kiss you

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I'm cataclysmically imbalanced right now, and the circumstances of where I live only compound it. I moved a year and a half ago, and I still have barely been outside, let alone connected with anyone new here. The pandemic combined with living in a suburb without a license mean I'm profoundly isolated here, so I cling to the digital world to feel a sense of connection. It's not good for me. These days I spend most of my time in a windowless room for most all of my day, and sleep through the day anyways.

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hiii darling welcome back

I need a serious restructuring of my life, and there's nowhere good to start. my adhd and autism have me trapped between a nigh inability to deliberately form habits, and a pathalogical contempt for manufactured rules and structures. I can't live my life by an arbitrary design, there needs to be weight behind it, not just "I said so," even and especially if I'm the bitch saying so.

Maybe I need an actual perscribed exercise routine. Maybe I need a steady supply of smokeable weed (edibles just do not fucking cut it for the nature of my needs). Maybe I need local friends, despite being well over capacity for relationships I'm keeping track of. It feels like I have a laundry list of things I need to get around to, all of which will help me actually improve my life, and the list itself feels unapproachable until my life improves. I'm just glancing off of everything I need to be doing in a circle forever.

So I'm frustrated. I feel impotent and useless and imeffective and adrift and frustrated at how much fucking effort it's taking to go absolutely fucking nowhere.

So I swing bats at hornet nests. Because it makes something happen. Something that I can see. It lets me watch myself have an effect on the world in some small, petty, ultimately meaningless way, but in a way I can fucking see, it's tangible. And much to my own fucking chagrin, that has utterly zero correlation to how healthy it is. Much like the rest of my habits, I guess.

I'm so fucking upset at the state of my life. I really hope my endless stabs at untangling this gordian knot of unstarters fucking get me somewhere soon. It feels like i'm struggling in quicksand.

[asenarieka]

Please read this before following!!

Helloo~

♡ Astrid / Envy ♡ Autistic ♡ Non - Binary ♡ Asexual ♡ Self-shipper ♡ Fictionkin ♡ They/She ♡

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

I'm Astrid but feel free to call me Asena or Envy.

I'm Autistic and Bipolar so I struggle a lot with understanding other people's emotions, my mood swings can also be rather extreme at times. I do not understand jokes and sarcasm unless I know you so using tone indicators would help a lot.

I mostly make OC x Canon or Envy content using various 3D softwares like Source Filmmaker, Blender, MMD and VRM Posing!

I sometimes upload VRChat stuff as well.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

If it’s not obvious already, I’m a self-shipper. I only have one f/o which is my Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist, despite them being evil and all that, they have been a huge support for me through some really tough times. I’m also a fiction kin, where I also kin Envy. We share a very similar mindset and we’re both outcasts of our Family. (kinda referring to 03 Envy here) and we're both extremely jealous over other people. I tend to 'switch' into Envy at times, sometimes I'm aware but sometimes I have no idea. I have not yet been diagnosed with any form of a split personality disorder, but I'm working on getting a new therapist so we'll see. There is a possibility that I have a mild form of it but I'm not gonna make any claims until I have an actual answer.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

I will probably mostly upload content featuring Envy or from my ship Astrid x Envy. If you don’t like self-shippers then please just block me.

If you are also an Envy self-shipper then I kindly ask you to not interact with me, I’m sure you and Envy are absolutely adorable together, I’m just uncomfy with other Envy self-shippers. I already know I’m gonna get a lot of hate for that, but I mean no harm nor do I intend to be rude. I get easily jealous, it’s been a life-long problem so I doubt it’s gonna change anytime soon but I try not let it get the better of me. 

I self-ship to cope, I only have one f/o and they mean so much to me, my feelings and the connection I feel are very much real even tho it’s a fictional relationship. I believe it's a soulbond, that seems to make the most sense.

I have a few other kins which includes, Stiles Stilinski from Teen Wolf, Emma Swan from Once Upon a Time, Dean Winchester from Supernatural and a couple of others.

I’m Asexual and Demi Romantic, I will most likely block NSFW and Fetish accounts as I really do not like that stuff! It just makes me way to uncomfortable..

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

♡ Some things about me ♡

╰┈➤ I'm a selective mute, I do not talk much nor do I write much, I grew up pretty much alone so I never spoke much to anyone.

╰┈➤ Due to trauma from family and ex lovers, I get triggered and scared really easy. I do not feel comfortable going into details, I know i've spoken about it before but I don't remember how much I actually said. Because of Autism and trauma my mental age is different from my physical age.

╰┈➤ I'm not the type of person that trusts other easily, too many took advantage of that in the past.

╰┈➤ I may have "furry" like characters but I left the fandom quite a while back. No hate towards them, just got a bit uncomfy from some situations.

I have more info on my carrd: https://asenainfo2023.carrd.co

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

I do not know how active I’ll on here. I may just re-blog a lot of self-ship or Envy content. I’m honestly scared of being active on here.

Messages/Asks are disabled for my own safety!.

Art tags:

#asenarieka - All art

#envyxastrid - Selfship tag

#astridxenvy - 2nd selfship tag-

#astrid's rambles - My rambles and other weird stuff

#astridxenvy cai - Character ai stuffz

#envy my beloved - Envy tag

[echo-bleu]

hello! I saw one of your previous asks and I was wondering if I could ask you for some writing help too! I have an autistic character that i love, but I'm not sure how to convey that this character is autistic in a way that feel aunthentic and organic instead of stereotyped, specially since she's a girl and I haven't seen many (accurate) representations of autistic girls in the media. I've seen videos about autistic people and they've been very helpful on what not to do, but + I would still love

to get some of the 'do's' what i have so far is that she has a Fixation on the sea, she has a hard time reading sarcasm and/or emotions in others, and she has an overall seemingly 'detached' personality (even if I wouldn't call her that, since she cares about the people she loves, she's just bad at putting it into words). I jsut want to make sure i'm on the right path! thank you so much for listening and I hope this is not a bother!

Hi Anon! I’m not bothered at all and I’m happy to answer this kind of ask. As always, I can only speak for myself, but I’ll try to give you a few pointers. (The previous ask mentioned is this one.)

First, it’s lovely to hear about an autistic girl! I’m not sure if you’re speaking about an adult or a child/teenager, but either way, it can be interesting to read about how autism can look a bit different in women. The gender distinction that has often been made is something I don’t agree with because I feel that it’s an unnecessary shortcut, but a number of autistic people, in majority women and people socially perceived as female, learn to “adapt” more to neurotypical standards by masking their autistic traits a lot, and might not be detected as autistic until adulthood. Masking takes a lot of energy, which can translate as feeling “socially exhausted” all the time and lead to burnout. This article list traits that can be found that are less common and obvious. It is far from perfect imo, but it can give you new ideas!

You didn’t really say if your character is a main or a side character (which changes the amount of detail you’ll want to go into) but so far to me you seem to be on the right track! Having a hard time reading people is something a lot of us struggle with. It might not just be sarcasm, btw, understanding metaphors and jokes can also be hard. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have a sense of humor: it’s entirely possible to be able to use sarcasm and struggle with noticing it when it comes from other people, and a lot of autistic people have a very developed and specific sense of humor that can be seen as odd.

The “detached” personality is something you may have to handle with care because lack of empathy is a harmful stereotype. Maybe look up the difference between cognitive and affective empathy. Some of us do struggle with empathy, many of us struggle with expressing it in a way that’s comprehensible to neurotypicals, but it doesn’t mean that we lack it. It’s fine for your character to struggle with it, but be careful that she doesn’t end up seeming cold/robotic if she’s not the POV character.

Now for some “do’s”: I’m only going to talk about autistic traits here and assume that you’ve fleshed her out with an actual personality outside of her autism, just like you would any other character.

- I agree that it has to come up organically, but it would be a lot better in terms of representation to make her explicitly autistic, ie use the word autistic. It doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the story. If you’re in a fantasy setting or for some other reason you can’t use the actual word, then describing something like neurodiversity would be a good way to make it explicit. In fanfic, I personally think that tagging “autistic [character]” is enough if the fic is short(ish) and the word isn’t used in the story but the character’s autism is fairly clear, but in an original story, you don’t really have that possibility.

- Something I like to do when coming up with original autistic characters is to choose a few specific stims from them, that regularly come back in my descriptions. It falls under the same umbrella as choosing mannerisms, it gives characters their own specific flavor. You can choose a happy stim, a nervous stim and a bored stim, for example. Autistics stim a lot and in a lot of ways, but I think most of us have a few stims that come back often. It can be things like chewing on a toy/finger, flapping in a specific way, rocking on their heels, twirling hair, fidgeting with a toy or jewelry.

- Sensory differences. It’s also something that you can choose for your character: maybe she likes to listen to music very loudly, and often speak a little too loudly, or on the contrary she’s hyperacusic. She might wear sunglasses outside, or need lights on all the time. She might need subtitles to understand a movie, or be super distracted by sparkly things. She might not make eye contact, or make it too much, or seem to make it by looking somewhere close to the person’s eyes. She might find touch painful or difficult, or seek it constantly, or both (can depend on the moment, how tired she is, or if she trusts the person).

- Like I’ve said before, meltdowns/shutdowns are a delicate thing to portray if you’re not autistic yourself, but overloading can and does happen without going all the way to either of them. It’s actually fairly frequent, and happens when there is too much sensory (or emotional) stimuli at the same time or a too long day or something. From the inside, it can look like struggling to think, feeling like your skin is crawling, feeling like everything is too much, and struggling to initiate actions/figure out the steps to do something. From the outside, it can look like the person is rejecting touch, needs to isolate themself, is irritated, might struggle to speak/be very quiet. As long as the character isn’t mocked for their behavior, I think it’s something you can portray without too much risk.

- A specific interest about the sea is a nice idea! The sea is a very large subject, though, so she’ll probably have a predilection for some things. Is it water currents? Fish species? Underwater plants? Beaches? There’s a lot of options to choose from here.

- Maybe think about co-occuring conditions, because most of us have at least one. Some are very hard to distinguish from autism itself, like dyspraxia or ADHD, because they’re linked or similar to autistic traits. A lot of us are also disabled in some other way:  for example there’s a clear (though unexplained) link between autism and hyperflexibility, which can lead to joint pain, gut issues and chronic illnesses like EDS. Many of us have mental illnesses, growing up autistic in this world is honestly traumatizing and it’s hard to find autistics without some kind of C-PTSD or anxiety (on that subject, this post points out that the current diagnostic criteria can probably only diagnose traumatized autistic people anyway).

- A pretty good portrayal of an autistic girl (and to my knowledge the only one where the actor is also autistic) is Matilda in Everything’s Gonna be Okay. I didn’t actually watch until the end and I’ve been told the last episode isn’t great, but the start was pretty good. She’s a teenager, and at one point gets a girlfriend who is also autistic and has a service dog. In Elementary, while Sherlock is only autistic-coded, there is at one point (season 4 I believe) a recurring character named Fiona who I thought was a pretty good portrayal as well. She’s an adult, and she’s stereotypical in some ways but it’s better than most portrayals I’ve seen or read.

I would advise you to have a look through the blog @cripplecharacters. They answer asks about disabled characters, and I know they have answered a number of questions about autism and have at least one autistic mod. Their answers are usually very interesting!

[k-a-cook]

I've already sent a similar ask so feel free not to respond again, but I've finally gotten around to reading more of your writing with the help of the yearly summary post, and again I want to show my appreciation and I don't really know How, but please know that your work is wonderful and valuable and I'm very glad it's out there,, all of your characters are important in their own right and I am just highlighting the ones I love the most, but I especially am grateful for Kit and Esher and Ein,,

Oh, I’d definitely reply to this! I’m struggling right now with Lyrica added to my three other sedation-causing medications, so I’m slow in doing so (it’s taken me two days to write this, I think) but there’s no way I’d leave this. Mostly because then it’s there on my blog as evidence that oh my god someone likes my characters and no creator extant will never not need that!

I’m very talented at staying awake, which is why I was on three sedation-causing medications plus melatonin to get my sleep sorted again before the Lyrica addition, but it’s now taking me about ten hours to not be the human equivalent of overcooked noodles via microwave after waking up. And it turns out that stopping the melatonin didn’t make me any less tired the next day while actually stopping me from falling asleep last night. So now I’m zonked from the Lyrica and actually tired from lack of sleep. On the positive side … oh, Ein, once you finally have a much-needed conversation with Amelia about your chronic pain, you’re going to be subjected to a new direction of Personal Authorial Experience. What’s the point of suffering if you can’t bequeath it to your characters, right?

(I have to say that, deep down, I’m not really writing characters for grand ideas of Representation of their particular identities; I’m writing them so I get to depict the odd, strange, conflicting and bewildering experiences of a life that doesn’t much fit the Western social assumption of “normality”, experiences I don’t see–or see well-handled–in fiction. Medication side-effects. A brain that tells you on a daily basis that you shouldn’t be alive. Stimming. Autistic observations. No/low/limited feelings of romantic attraction. Assorted shades of queerness.)

It’s funny that you mention those three characters: Kit is in part how I want to be, Esher is how I am when I’m keeping it together (which says something about said ability to do so) and Ein is how I’m desperately trying not to be. (Internalised ableism, how you doing?) So I’m glad that they speak to others, given how much of me is tied up in them! That said, I generally find more enjoyment in writing characters least like me. Ein is hardest to write because there’s so many unrealised emotions about my own experiences that flare up in the process. It’s good, in the sense that I’ve repressed so many feelings for so long it’s past time that I got to know a few of them, but so often it’s like being hit upside the head, and it’s not something that I can ever anticipate enough to not be overwhelmed by it. I don’t think I’ve ever written any early (around Their Courts of Crows) piece about him that hasn’t left me sobbing at the keyboard before flailing around for the tissue box.

Anyway, thank you. Thank you so very much! And truly, this is perfect–please, please don’t feel like you have to find some magical, non-existent phrasing. Not ever. I’ll speak on behalf of all writers everywhere to say that any positive response is gorgeous and wondrous and dizzying, and I have in fact gotten excited over someone making a tag using three exclamation marks. So if I get excited over that, a comment like this is just mindbogglingly wonderful!

(If I just said !!! in a tag, would you all understand that means me wandering around in sheer, unadulterated glee?)

I have a feeling this reply sounds a bit weird, tonally, for which I’m blaming the Lyrica; I’ve been prescribed it now in part because it makes me kind-of stoned. I just have to see if the sedation side ever lessens up enough that I can function more than two hours a day. I’m definitely into “writing things nobody ever asked about and not feeling anxious enough to delete it” territory, and since I’m prone to that anyway, well.

So I’ll just finish, before this gets any weirder, by saying thank you, again, because it is so incredibly kind and amazing that you took the time to write this, and I am overwhelmed and grateful and some amount incoherent … but I don’t want to leave it any longer to tell you that I am grateful and amazed, either. Because this has made my week and the end of the year and, truly, thank you.

[stimtoybox]

I know you've already answered something similar, but I sometimes think that I might be on the spectrum. I've become more aware of my stimming/need to stim. But I feel like I'm faking it. That I only think that I see the symptoms because I want to be in with the in crowd (my friends, most of them are) or whatever. And I feel like I would've been diagnosed earlier. Idk I'm just really afraid of bringing this up with my therapist.

It’s okay to be afraid of bringing this up, anon. Bringing anything up with a therapist or psychologist is scary, and this is a big thing to bring up. Especially if you have any reason to feel as though you’ll be ignored or dismissed, and given the ableist ideas many professionals have about autism and how it presents, there is a chance of having to endure the pain of this. It’s a very real, very valid thing to fear, and I think we’ve all felt it at some point.

It’s also okay to feel like you’re faking it. But, honestly, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be autistic that doesn’t have a connection or similarity of experience that draws us to the label. Being openly autistic means opening yourself up to an awful lot of ableism. It’s hard, scary and sometimes incredibly dangerous. I’ll be honest and say that this word is one of the better things that has ever happened to me, in that it has given me a label, a connection, a community, a way to conceptualise all that is strange in me - and it has opened the door for me to conceptualise other identities (being aro and grey-ace, things I consider connected to autism in me, like my lack of gender). Being able to go back and look at my characters through the lens of I am autistic and accidentally writing characters who are also autistic was a delight I find hard to put into words. But … it is dangerous to be autistic. It means not being understood by so many medical professionals; it means being dismissed. It means having your stims questioned on the street by strangers. For me, it meant having to quit a job because “not being able to control my facial expressions because I’m autistic” wasn’t good enough when a customer got angry at me. It means people having a label to put to your difference and that label used against you.

What I mean is this: on the off chance anyone is actually faking autism to be popular or part of a crowd, they’re opening themselves up to an awful lot of awfulness. That’s an incredibly high price to pay for connection. (I know we autistics are awesome people, but I don’t think many allistics are willing to endure the social consequences of being autistic in return for that awesomeness.) The reality is that most of us are trying to fake allism (consciously or unconsciously) to be popular or part of a crowd, not the reverse.

If you think you might be autistic, please explore it. Please. Follow autistic blogs, track the #actuallyautistic tag here on Tumblr, ask questions of autistic people. The worst that can happen is that you find out you’re not autistic, but you come away having learnt more about us. That harms nobody.

I can tell you, from the very depths of my heart, that time and age has nothing to do with the validity of your diagnosis. Nothing. It has everything to do with the fact that parents, doctors and teachers are awful at recognising autism, especially if you aren’t a cis white boy. Even then, if your autism presents a little atypically, you can still fall through the cracks. It’s only relatively recently that SPD symptoms were even included as part of an autism diagnosis, meaning people with communication skills good enough to muddle through (people like me) were overlooked entirely. It didn’t matter that I had few friendships growing up; it didn’t matter that I lacked a lot in interpersonal skills; it didn’t matter that I had no small talk skills, or any meaningful conversation skills, unless it happened to be a special interest of mine. I could rattle off a script for buying items (after many years of trying to figure this out) and I didn’t stim too much (largely because it had been abused out of me) so I was just shy and quiet, and my parents never mentioned the screaming matches we had about their stealing my pillow (to replace it with a “better” one) to our family doctor.

Anon, I was diagnosed last year. I’m thirty. (I’m a bit older than most people here. I don’t usually give my age out online other than “adult” because, as a writer, so much of my personal details are already readily accessible. But I think, today, this is something you need to know.) True, I’d been told at seventeen by an autistic friend that she and her mother thought me autistic. True, I’d been told at twenty-eight that my psychologist, parent of an autistic son, thought me very similar to him. True, I’d been told at twenty-nine that an autistic friend thought a character I wrote was based on her … when it was actually an exploration of my own SPD symptoms. True, I’d self-dx’d as having SPD for a couple of years. So when I underwent a BPD assessment only to have them tell me that they suspected I was autistic and assessed me for that … well, the evidence was there, but as I’ve said before, I was still shocked. And then I was angry, so angry.

The evidence was there, and two strangers saw it after a couple of one-hour sessions, but so many people who’d known me all my life (the people with the power to improve it) didn’t see it or refused to say the word. How could they have not have seen it? How did they all make me go so long before a professional finally said the word? How was it that I had to spend so many years feeling different, feeling alienated from all the things people don’t struggle with, until finally someone professional told me I’m autistic?

(Of course, now I know more about professionals, I don’t consider their words very important. Reading autistic people’s posts here on Tumblr affirmed my autism. Seeing how similar their challenges and feelings and experiences are to mine affirmed my autism. We are not identical - very autistic is different - but we have enough in common that autism is right for all of us.)

Yet, when I came online, I discovered that this is normal. So normal. That there are women and NB people who are being diagnosed in their thirties, forties, fifties and older. That so many people are only now getting the word that makes sense of their lives. That ableism, racism and misogyny all combine together to routinely deny many people a diagnosis that gives us understanding, identity and community.

As a late-diagnosed autistic, I swear to you that there’s many reasons why you might not have been diagnosed earlier, and none of them invalidate your autism.

My advice is the same as in this post, if you decide you want to bring this up with your therapist. But please know that you can take your time. Do it at a pace that is comfortable for you, if you want to. And if you don’t want to, don’t! If you choose to self-diagnose, the vast majority of the autistic community considers it good enough (as we should) because we know how many of us are missed by professionals. We know the professionals are awful at recognising autism and we’re not going to let their biased viewpoint keep our own from connecting with us and sharing the resources we have.

It’s natural to feel the way you’re feeling, anon, but I don’t believe you’re faking or doing this to be popular. I believe you’re discovering similarities in your own experience, those similarities drawing you to connect with other autistics. ND folk (even unknowing ND folk) tend to folk together - other ND folk make better sense to us, after all!

It’s hard for me to message with people because of my chronic hand pain, so I tend to be quite erratic in this (and if it’s been a high ask day I might not get to them at all that day, so expect that, too) but if you need to talk to me about this, the message box on my personal blog is always open, okay?

Best of luck, anon.

- Mod K.A.