What it’s Like to Learn You’re Autistic at 37
It’s like being from another country, but thinking you’re local.
Imagine that you hit your head while traveling, then woke up from a coma in another country. You cannot remember anything, and have no identifying information.
It’s kinda like in the movie Overboard, but instead of a rich bitch getting hers, it’s you, trying to fit into a verrrry different society.
But the thing is, even though it feels like you’re horribly out-of-place the doctors and experts assure you that you’re from there.
That you’re “just normal.”
You don’t question this assessment. The people of Allistic speak the same language as you, most citizens even have the same accent as you, and you look normal enough; but you’re still different, even after you learn their customs and ways of socializing (which you’d really prefer to do your way, even though you have no idea why your way differs).
You try not to wonder why you think so differently from the people around you, but it’s persistently unsettling.
You try now to show it, but you feel intimidated much of the time; it’s like they all know something that you can’t quite pick up on, for decades you try to do everything they do, but are still assessed as…
