Thread by @CKnightWrites

...I'm autistic.

I've 'known' for a while. When the kid was diagnosed, it didn't click, I didn't think of it. But as he started to develop his personality, I saw so much of myself in him - including my mental health struggles, my 'quirks.'

I wondered if he has ADHD. I wondered if Im autistic.

I was officially diagnosed with OCD in the last couple years, still when I was over thirty, and I rejected the idea of being diagnosed with something else too because it made me feel like too much. Like I was too much, that the official bit somehow made me more high maintenance.

The pandemic threw everything into sharp relief. I'm been more...symptomatic in the last year than ever before. There's a fine line between ADHD and autism, but I finally had to acknowledge that I was dealing with something else, something more. I needed more help, more answers.

Spending more time (virtually) with autistic adults to learn from them on behalf of the kid and just by making more ND friends, I started to see more and more lightbulbs go off. And no, not every single bulb went off, which made me reject the diagnosis in some ways.

But trusting my therapist, who has been with me for years, and trusting my instincts got me to this point. I'm autistic, I always have been, and I'm working on believing that doesn't make me somehow more of a burden (or a burden at all - told you, still learning).

I was correctly diagnosed with ADHD, and the overlap made the autism hard to see. I have a few other comorbidities that made it hard to find, too. But knowing it's there and it's real means that I can acknowledge it and "treat" it. I can be a little less hard on myself.

Being diagnosed with ADHD as a kid meant I could stop calling myself a spaz or a freak. Being diagnosed with OCD meant I could stop calling myself neurotic. Being diagnosed with autism means I can be entirely me and not have to try and mask so often. I can learn to take it off.

There's no late diagnosis here. Im being diagnosed now because Im ready to hear it it now, to see myself as a whole person now, to acknowledge all of me now. Im being diagnosed now because getting diagnosed before as an afab person who already had ADHD would have been impossible.

I'm worried about this, about being public with it. I think the stigmas around autism will make some people decide they can't hire me, can't work with me. But I've always tried to be as genuine as possible here and I believe in representation. So...I'm autistic. And I'm still me.