Not diagnosed (yet) but my reason is mostly so that I can get some money if I am recognized as handicaped. It’s not that much: I’d still be considered as poor by most metrics, but I’d take it.

On the waiting line for a diagnosis (I should call them btw), unemployed despite having diplomas. Those last days I am facing a weird puzzle: I have to get analyzed at the lab, which is open from 7:30 to 11 am, and need to be exactly 12h fasting at that moment, but my daily routine involves a big meal at midnight and skipping it would make me well over the 12h fasting duration (and being hungry isn’t very fun as you may know). I think I will manage it somehow but currently that’s a bummer.

Better: a gal I like a lot is visiting this weekend and it’s going to be great. She is one of the only people with whom I am able not to mask.

Also that’s a great season for mushrooms. Got a full basket of chicken of the woods last week and still have some left.

I do care. I totally get how you can be charismatic in school despite being autistic, that is perhaps the biggest misconception. I personally think if I had no morals and just wanted to make money my best bet would be running some kind of cult (but that would be wrong ofc).

I am a native French speaker who had a phase with an interest toward grammar, so I probably can help you with it if you are learning this language. Also I am quite good at explaining maths to kids or teens, even those with difficulties. It gets harder with adults.

You’re welcome!

One of those traumatic experiences was directly linked to the environment and is perhaps more similar to the one in the video. It was at the school’s restaurant: picture a room with 60 children aged 2 to 11 and handled by a pair of ladies who shout a lot and are overall not very good with children (aka: one of the worst place ever).

One day we were asking wether we wanted the entry dish or not. I decided to try it, as I was taught to always try new foods before saying I don’t like them and I was the only one who said so. That dish was honestly atrocious (I can handle most foods, even by non-autistic standards, but this was vile in all the ways school food can be) and I was supposed to finish my plate before the next dish could be served. All the other 59 kids, plus the two ladies, were waiting for me to finish that stuff. I don’t remember what happened next and perhaps it’s for the best.

I don’t really connect with this. My experience with that kind of situations would be me focusing on one specific aspect of the party and ignore everything else. Like I would spend all the time trying to fold the napkins into interesting shapes, or feeding grass to some slug I just caught and wonder why it doesn’t seem to like it.

I wasn’t diagnosed and yet when I look back at it I had the chance to be surrounded by decent adults who were happy about me being me. There have been bad situations of course (that I am still a bit traumatized by) but I can count them on my fingers. Most are related to my dad having his own issues (I hope he will find the help he needs but the more time passes the less hope I have).

The diag criteria are an ad hoc thing that only exists so that the society has a systematic way of deciding wether a given individual is autistic or not. Someone who just barely misses the criteria to be positevely diagnosed could very well have a lot in common with those who meet slightly more criteria.

Think of it like the administrative criteria to be considered “poor” in a given country: it helps to decide who can benefit from financial help and such, or to have statistics on how fair is the ressource distribution through the time, but it doesn’t mean that your life will switch the very moment your income crosses the limit.

Hypersensitivity is its own thing but the comorbidity rate with autism is huge. I’s also not always high pitches: personally I have issues with the air pressure, daylight, and many smells.

People would think the scenario is a bit contrived and they wouldn’t believe is wasn’t scenarized.

I have a tendency to do the things that will save a desperate situation but also (mostly) create stupid obstacles out of nowhere. Basically ‘this guy’ from an xkcd strip

Oh, one call is already stressfull* for me, but I can manage it. Perhaps it would already qualify as “not comfortable”. That said there is a gradation between your average “not your cup of tea but that’s ok if you can take your time for it” and “risks having a meltdown in the middle of a phone call”. It was dangerously close to that second category.

*Except those from that one person I’d marry if we weren’t both ‘commies’ who think marriage is a thing of the past.

Good luck! Please tell us how it went, I hopefully will reach the same point as you at some point so your experience interests me.