I have often been asked if I have autism. They often seem ready to wonder this if it seems like a situation is approaching where I can’t, in their eyes and their words, “read the room”. The very concept “of reading the room”, they then have to be told, plays out differently even on a cultural level. I am not of a common cultural background, and this is said to demonstrate itself in, say, seeing someone’s arms crossed. I see crossed arms and, if anything, I’m going to assume “decision maker mode”. They then ask “don’t you see I’m angry”.

For our sake, I’d be lying to say I don’t operate based on “tell, don’t show”, which is the opposite of what others often say, which is supposed to be beneficial yet often gives off the opposite impression because people want to cling to the idea that assumptions are inherent. People often also complain about how complex yet semantically loose (owing to “culture”, but at the same time I wonder why people, again, use their own expectations of verbal norms to assume what something must mean, instead of acknowledging dictionary-described words and sentences are just the word equivalent of mathematical equations) my communication is. Relevantly, that can be combined with my experiences with, ironically, people bashing me for not living up to their “unspoken directives” rather than gentility inspired by how I would say I expect logic to work, to produce the impression in me that maybe neurodivergent people are onto something with their sense of clockwork, placing me in what could be called autistic culture by nurture rather than nature, as is my calling when I’m told I’m only destined to rattle around in the realm of normal people. The neurotypical practice of succumbing to bias based on trained taboo and the infallibility of their dear ones (relevant among the gossipers) has done nothing except disillusion me in the presence of all who willingly exist without a striving for protocol clockwork, and if I had an ark, I would fill it with these neurodivergent people they say they fear.

No one person specifically, but it was all the ADHD memes that had me actually go and get checked. Ended up diagnosed with ADHD, Asperger’s, and BPD. I didn’t even know about BPD until I was told I had it.

Probably in their mind, but not that I’d care to pay attention; so not obvious to me.

Human beings are diverse. defining a human as “divergent” is meaningless and so fucking dumb. Psychologists seem to be really bad at statistical analysis; and/or data collection that is representative of the species. But they’re maybe good at conning mugs to pay them to denigrate people who don’t fit their world view, or confound their predictions.

I dated a girl who worked with elderly neurodivergent people. She was at my place and i heard the dryer was done with it’s cycle. I said i’ll have to go and make my bed, because you know how it is, if you don’t do it right away, you’re not doing it for two weeks.

She laughed and said: but you know why “we” have to do that, right? I was like: what? No. And she said, because we have adhd.

I just laughed and thought: YOU have adhd, i do… Oooooooooooh

A friend posted a link to something and mentioned me saying “you’re hyper literal brain will like this” and when I got done being annoyed about the typo I realized for the first time I am excessively literal.

Another time at lunch with a friend she mentioned in an offhand way that I have anxiety and that was when I first realized what anxiety is and that it’s not normal to feel the way I do all the time.

My boss has got very high EQ, but tends to have fraught, tense relationships with our female coworkers (I described it to my husband as working with a mother and daughter who don’t get along- they say a bunch of things that seem nice and also seem to hurt each other a lot and I don’t know why).

She sometimes says passive aggressive things to me, but it always takes me too long to parse passive aggression in person, so I respond completely earnestly. This seems to confuse her without being rude, and she’s just vexed by me.

Actually, passive aggression in general makes me feel very neurodivergent.

My psychiatrist does all the time

I don’t think I’m ND even though sometimes I’m a little awkward in person and make up for it in other ways. Unfortunately, one of my aunts doesn’t think so and spent a good portion of a family meeting trying to convince everyone that I have Aspbergers because she had just learned about it and found my behavior odd when she went to ask me a question and started me. I could hear all the shit she was talking through the wall saying how antisocial I was for keeping to myself. Then years later she proceeded to wreck the family but that’s a different story, so I’m left wondering who the antisocial one really is.

Does my doctor who stopped in the middle of an appointment, looked at me, and said “you know you’re neurodivergent, right?” count?

Had 2 psychologists refuse to work with me, after they got to know me

Some person I just met at a party asked me if I have Asperger’s. He explained he has Asperger’s himself and just wondered.

I thought it was a rude remark of him. Especially since we barely know each other. I certainly don’t have Asperger’s. This was some years ago.

Either way, I just got diagnosed.

How would I know if something is wrong with me?

Probably in K-12? Like seriously everyone in my “friend” groups and half of my classes knew something about me was off, and I believe I was known as the eccentric genius throughout middle/high school (and my HS had a lot of smart students). But the broader culture I was in didn’t believe in mental health so…

Other than that… there were two people I relate to very well on Mastodon (when I first joined), one of whom is very openly autistic; hence why I got tested. That’s probably as obvious as it gets

…not until now…

I was hospitalized for a seizure recently and the nurse ended up going and grabbing me a little silicon bubble fidget thing because I just couldn’t stop messing with shit.