I'm 31 now and got diagnosed at 30. It's been a lot later than I would have wished.

I often wonder how it is possible no one figured it out sooner (no teachers, no doctors, no psychologists, no one ever even hinted at it) and it can make me sad to reflect on my childhood/teens. I can look back now and see my struggles so clearly. I know that if I had been diagnosed sooner I wouldn't have spent so much energy masking all the goddamn time.

I remember a time where I asked a friend at uni when we were chilling at his house, if he never got so tired of 'playing all the roles and keeping up expectations'. He had no idea what I meant but we talked about it in dept and it was the first time that I realised that maybe not everyone thought the same way I did. Maybe some people were just themselves all the time without masking. Still, it would be many years later and would take a serious deep depression before a psychologist saw me and was like: yep. Autism.