What Late-Diagnosed Autism Feels Like
People Don’t See Your Autism
People don’t see your Autism — until it’s the only thing they see.
I don’t like using the term “high-functioning.”
Who am I to judge how someone else functions? But it’s how most people rationalize my Autism. It’s how they rationalize that I wasn’t diagnosed with Autism until 23 years old.
It’s how they rationalize that your life can be upended by a car accident, a tumor, or a mental health diagnosis, and your day to day life is never the same.
That’s too hard for most people to process. So they say, “But you’re high-functioning, right?”
How do you define high-functioning? I don’t know. It’s not a compliment.
I’m Not Deficient
I felt deficient during middle school at the first suggestion something might be wrong because wrong meant broken. No one wanted to be around someone broken. I didn’t want to be wrong. I wanted to be me.
So I started doing the only thing I did right. Then I kept doing it until people paid attention. I read books, created conversational scripts to get me through social situations, and entered academic competitions. I got myself into college. You can’t argue with a college acceptance, right? Like…
