Neurodivergence

I was a toddler when a doctor first try to get me on ADHD meds. Never officially been diagnosed with autism, but realized I might be on the spectrum in high school. I've known I'm a bit weird since I was a child to some extent, but generally didn't have labels to put on it and didn't care much.

Might also be a bit dyslexic or some similar issue? Had a school counselor ask me about that after I managed to mess up my test ID number in multiple different ways one year (but thankfully, she caught before sending the tests out somehow). And I did have relative difficulty with reading and spelling. I still regularly write letters in words out of order, but I just adjust by putting them between the letters I already wrote.

Diagnosed dyslexic & dyspraxic as a small child, I don't remember much about why, guess my spelling and handwriting was crap even then.

Diagnosed autistic in my 20s, after several years of treatment by my GP for social anxiety I was referred to a psychiatrist, who referred me to a autism specialist to rule out schizophrenia prodrome.

Diagnosed ADHD-PI in my 30's after a friend with both suggested getting assessed.

"Different?" That's just always been true.

I've been going to a psychologist on and off for "social dysfunction" since I was like 3. My family wasn't well off, so it was more my mom trying to do what she could with evaluations or whatever every few years.

I was diagnosed with ADD back when everyone was diagnosed with it, despite not meeting pretty much any of the criteria. My mom tried to argue about it, but random not-quite-poor person vs psychologist, she was blown off.

I used to fantasize that there was an alien civilisation that was trying to understand earth and so created a human-alien mental hybrid to try to make sense of humanity. It'd mean there was nowhere I truly belonged, of course, but it'd also mean there was a reason, a purpose, to me being surrounded by confusing aliens.

Mom ended up going to medical school and learned about autism (and Asperger's, at the time) while there. She was furious. I was a textbook case of a woman with Asperger's syndrome, but in my youth, psychologists frequently didn't consider it possible for female patients to have Asperger's.

She wasn't sure if she should mention it, since by that time I was an adult and on my own. I discovered it through a video game, actually - To The Moon, an amazing story in which one of the main characters has Asperger's.

I mentioned it to her as a "holy crap, I looked into this and I feel like I've been seen!" And she mentioned what she'd learned in school. It kinda annoyed me that she hadn't passed that along, but between her support and what I'd seen, I pursued options and got diagnosed.

Now it's just autism and not Asperger's, but whatever. Still, it was blatantly obvious my entire life. I had a rough childhood. I didn't manage to actually make a friend of my own till I was 17. I had a few friends before then, sort of, but they were a thing where I was kinda adopted because I was easy to manipulate, and not any real connection.

I could be defiant as hell, but I was so lonely, I'd do anything for those who called me friend, so... yeah, not the best friendships, in hindsight.

Really wish those psychologists would have identified my issues back when. My life would have been vastly different.

I always knew I was different from everyone else. I called myself "weird" a lot and thought I looked strange on video. I often pointed out how I don't think like everyone else. I also asked people how they knew things about social situations often, or ran social situations by others to get a better understanding of them. It's like I knew I didn't think about social matters like everyone else did. To me people either (a) made wayyy too many assumptions about others and interactions or (b) had a 6th sense for social experiences.

One day, I was at a gathering a a friend's house. It seems that I said something that was not normal, even though I thought it was completely normal, and a friend said, "Don't mind him. He's autistic." That's when I realized that maybe my comment didn't land well. The next day, to get my friend back by making him feel guilty, I looked for online autism tests to send him the results so he would be worried that I was ruminating on it. To my surprise, my results kept coming back that I was likely autistic. Later that day when I saw my friend again, I asked him if he really thought I was autistic, to which he responded a bit confused with, "Well...yeah." After further discussion, I learned that it is pretty apparent that I'm autistic, so my friend thought that I would have been aware. Nope! I always knew that I like people that were "a bit autistic" and even liked toys for autistic kids, but never really thought tat about myself.

I became obsessed with learning about autism, which further lead me to believe I was autistic. Then, I scheduled an assessment with an autism psychologist for a thorough evaluation. She confirmed it pretty easily, so I was diagnosed not only with autism spectrum disorder, but ADHD also (I knew about me being ADHD my entire life though).

I've pretty much always known I process information and social interactions differently. As for figuring out what exactly was going on: it was after I finally managed to find a social group I really vibed with in my late 20s early 30s. Every one of them is autistic, all of them. They were all very surprised when they learned it never occurred to me I might be autistic too they all already knew what was going on. Suddenly a lot of things started to make more sense for me

It hasn't really changed much in my life to be honest. I had already built up a lot of ways to get through everything reasonably well. I think the main thing is it is a bit easier to talk to understanding people now because I can just be like "hey I've got autism bear with me while I butcher this conversation, I mean well" instead of putting in the effort to mask. Also people are more understanding at group things if I just stand up and fuck off for an hour now that I have words to express to them it isn't because I don't like them