#like i'd been mostly confident in my own assessment of my autism for a few years now

[thegreathomestuckreread]

been spinning my wheels again about whether or not i'm autistic

it would explain. so many things. and i feel like a lot of my experiences make so much more sense with that lens of processing the world applied to it

like at this point i've got over a decade of scattered research and reading trying to figure this shit out, including results from a smattering of self-report assessments where almost all of them place me in the autistic scoring range

but more recently all that's brought me to like. the emotional intensity of the autistic experience seems like a pretty crucial piece of the picture and i don't think i really meet that?? things like, i'm a highly empathetic person, but i don't think it's autistic high empathy, not debilitating like my high school friend who once started crying because i was describing an animal video to them. i have a hard time crying actually, it's something i do very infrequently. that's just one more specific example but just like in general, from what i can see the burning overwhelming intensity of emotion is kind of a really big part of the autistic experience, and i don't think i'm there, or at least not there with enough regularity for it to be like A Thing

and like i don't think i've ever had an experience that would fit the description of an autistic meltdown, or an autistic shutdown. i mean, maybe some of my experiences could fit into descriptions of a shutdown, but idk if the same intensity is there, and even if it is the frequency seems way too, well, infrequent to qualify. anything that might fit the description of a meltdown i think would be much better described as just a plain ol' emotional breakdown. and along the same lines i don't think i've ever experienced what would be called sensory overload

like even as a child i don't think the slipper fits on this stuff, i was perhaps a bit more emotionally intense than my peers but not like my autistic childhood best friend was, i didn't even really have tantrums that could have been mislabelled meltdowns

but there's so much other stuff that just makes so much sense. [i had a whole huge paragraph here but i've cut it and put it under the readmore at the bottom to cut length]

there's more. it's a lot. i've been adding things to this paragraph for at least 20 minutes now, maybe closer to 30. like there's a very good reason that i am still on this research thread after so many years. i just can't shake that i could be reading it all wrong

like all of the stuff i talk about causing me stress or whatever, i'm getting the sense that it's not with the same intensity as the autistic experience of that stress. like it really stresses me out yeah, but like. not enough maybe??????????? and that's kind of the thing with most of these traits i guess, i'm questioning whether i actually experience them with enough frequency and intensity that they would fall under autistic experiences

and like, i'm not going to seek professional assessment, because even with a diagnosis i don't know what that would do for me as an adult. the accommodations i got in school for my chronic illness covered any time i needed accommodations for brain reasons while i was in school, not like i plan on going back. and idk what i could even ask from a professional working environment

and at the end of the day if i'm not even seeking that what does it matter???? like can i not just exist as i am and keep using the tools that help me regardless of whether or not i may qualify as Diagnosably Autistic? i guess it all comes down to like, i don't want to water down what autism means by calling myself autistic if that's not really it. it would just be really nice to know why these things are hard and know there's a community of people who understand that. it just feels like if that's not it then what have i been doing wrong? if that's not it what am i doing wrong?? bluh

the childhood bullying and being confused as to why people didn't like me, the intense social anxiety in high school, struggling to start and end conversations that don't serve a logistical purpose, difficulty maintaining or initiating small-talk, how fucking hard it is to maintain friendships especially over time and distance, forgetting to fucking talk to people lol, literally all of the close friendships i've ever had being with people who are autistic or adhd or both, all of those people looping me in as neurodivergent without me even saying anything about it, my ex who said that when they were confused and frustrated trying to figure out what the fuck my deal was and complaining to their mom the two of them would use autism as a lens to talk out what the fuck my deal was and it was genuinely very helpful lmaooooo, my general inclination towards just telling the truth and how stressed i get about lying and dishonesty, the 'picky eating', the chewing the shit out of my lip, constant fiddling with my clothes and jewellery, being a 'high-energy child' (my mother's words) aka hyper bouncing off the walls, the specific noises that made me cover my ears and run away as a child (ripping up the bathmat and the sound of the vhs rewinder going really fast), the amount of stress i feel in unpredictable situations or when plans change unexpectedly or when i'm not prepared for a situation, how untethered i feel without some semblance of routine, the empty state of my brain when plans change and i don't know what to do with myself lol, how stressed the thought of not being in control of myself or being in an uncontrollable environment makes me, my systematizing and sorting and categorizing and organizing, when i learned what even numbers were as a child and immediately thought "those are my favourite numbers because they can be divided neatly", how i often speak in fractions and percentages, my attention to detail and noticing small details others don't (and sometimes having to pretend i don't notice things so i don't come across as 'nitpicking' or 'creepy'), researching and researching and researching for the smallest decisions, being overwhelmed with excessive options and just shutting down and not doing anything, general excessive indecisiveness, my god the fucking 'procrastination' on school assignments and communications and fun things that i would like to be doing, my 'literal' reading of school assignment outlines and surprise at seeing how classmates could twist the assignment and still do very well, my multi-year intense interests such as the sims 3 and homestuck and animal crossing, the fact that even when i play the sims i forget to make my sims talk to people until i realise their social meter is really low lol, how i lost so many things as a child, how if i don't have a written prioritized to-do list i tend to just faff about aimlessly and forget everything that i need to do and/or not get most or all of it done, the genetic factor of it running in both sides of my family