(fallen london stamps by in general, I feel like I have a pretty complicated relationship with being autistic. like by comparison, having adhd is very straightforward and obvious - it's on my record, it's something I have meds for, its impact is something I feel vividly and regularly in my everyday life from forgetting to eat to having to carefully richochet myself off of a hundred tiny tasks in order to get enough momentum to smash through the big one
meanwhile, when it comes to autism, it's something my Healthcare Practitioners are like "yeah that tracks" about but I've explicitly requested it to not be on my diagnostic record because a) I don't need or want meds for it, b) any disability accommodations I need I can probably request under adhd instead, and c) I don't want to wrangle discrimination for having it on my record. more than that, I just don't... feel its presence so acutely, in the majority of my everyday life? I don't particularly feel daunted by social interaction, even with strangers. I'm decent at gauging people's Vibes and it's not hard for me to make new connections. and I guess I do feel a little alien to this world, but not in a bad way.
it's only when it comes to things like. being perceived as angry and rude because I wrote a several paragraph email explaining why this engineering proposal would be a bad idea, or having a meltdown because I couldn't figure out anything to solve in an escape room, or when I've been outside too long and the well-greased algorithms I've made for social interactions are jamming up, or being frustrated because someone had the gall to upend my work plans with yet another meeting, or struggling to make out the mouthsounds people are making, or squinting at an invitation to do something like "do they mean this literally anytime or only a specific number of times or," or being confused and baffled and overwhelmed because someone is having Emotions in my proximity and everything I try makes it Worse, that I'm like, "ah, right. something is Different about me."
...which like, looking at the list above, I guess it DOES affect me quite a bit. but somehow I forget about it anyway
