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).
Thanks! Having friends that give hints is helpful, but considering what I’ve learned about social interactions since and my history with this particular person, it’s also crappy realizing that he meant it as a passive-aggressive insult. It’s nice to finally clean house of bullies though. Onward and upward!