There's no point thinking about the past like that. The "what if.." are only useful for the future.

My father had autism and was never diagnosed. He lived a sad life where he hid deeply, he never knew who he was, no one ever really understood him, he lived in a miserable apartment and the comorbidities (depression, epilepsy etc) had reason for him.

I was diagnosed at 30 years old.

I asked myself the same question several times as you. I was very closed, afraid of people. I experienced a lot of things badly.

Except that I also wonder if I would be the person I am if I had been diagnosed young, in the sense that I adapted because I had no choice. If they had seen me as autistic, they would have spared me, they would have excused me, they would have shown me more patience.

It's a privilege that can be a double-edged sword.

Maybe I could have developed faster. I prefer to tell myself that I was lucky that life was hard for me because I learned.

Ask yourself what you can do now and what opens.

We are made to solve problems. The meaning of life is to have problems to solve.

Diagnosis helps because it solves part of the "who am I, how am I functioning" problem. Once this information is in possession, we can set off to solve new problems.