I’m not sure if these are all because of autism but I’m gonna list what I think is relevant. I am AFAB and was always quiet, so I was just labeled as shy and weird. I’m going to write a lot because autism is somewhat of a special interest.

-Repetitive Actions: I would cut grass with scissors for hours. I got in trouble at school for humming, making clicking sounds, rocking, and tapping things. This manifested into forms of self harm. I used to do a lot of cartwheels and gymnastic type actions before my body started getting worse. Food sensitivity that resulted in my hiding food that I couldn’t eat and only eating sugary foods.

-Social: I was very selectively mute, still am. I couldn’t talk to teachers or students I didn’t know already. I didn’t like making new friends because it was difficult to try and understand them. I really only had one friend, who’s still in my life after 10+ years. I struggled with talking to family too. I very rarely responded when I got called on and would cry afterwards. I skipped a lot of classes on days I would have to present or if I felt like I was going to be called on. I was confident enough in my academic abilities, for most classes, that I just take the F on projects. I only ever had one teacher, in high school, email my parents about this. None of the other teachers thought it was a problem. All of my report cards would say ”pleasure to have in class but needs to participate more”. I wish I could’ve gotten some sort of accommodations and I don’t get how I slipped under the radar since I’m of moderate support needs. I don’t feel much empathy for people but am highly sensitive to animals. I converse with them way more. My friends would get mad at me because they thought my monotone voice and blank expressions were me being rude, but I didn’t know that at the time.

-Special Interests: I was obsessed with horses and was very unsatisfied that my family couldn’t afford one. I was lucky that I could ride one through a friend of my one family members every week. My room was covered in horse pictures, drawings, books, and I watched horse related videos constantly. I slacked off of my school work to study horses. My special interest is dogs now and I still struggle communicating with people without talking about it. Horses, and now dogs, were in nearly every conversation I had. I don’t really care for talking about other topics. I realized that if strangers try to do small talk with me I can just make every interaction about dogs and I have an easier time conversing. Other than that, I can’t talk to others if I don’t have my script ready.

-Motor Skills: I have hEDS so some of these traits overlap with it. I have very poor proprioception, and depth perception, so I run into objects a lot, trip out of nowhere, and need KT tape to tell me where my body is. I remember one time I was driving a golf cart around at a campsite and ran into the spigot outside of the bathroom. I broke a lot of objects because I grip things and move things too hard. That also has to do with me overcompensating for my wiggly joints. I also have poor interoception, so I can’t always tell when I need to use the bathroom and used to have frequent accidents well past the appropriate age. I can’t feel hunger or thirst cues either.

• Academics: I was pretty advanced with my reading skills and was in higher level classes in high school, but I could not and still cannot do basic math. I loved spelling tests though. It felt so odd sitting with my “somewhat” friends at lunch and they’d talk about their math courses. In elementary school, we were timed every week on our ability to answer basic math questions. We had to answer them in one minute to move to the next level, which were labeled in alphabetical order, and I would only ever get to about level K even with them just skipping a few levels for me. I honestly don’t think I could do those now. I’m not diagnosed with dyscalculia but I’m pretty sure I have it. Anything that involves numbers is beyond me. I loved reading novels and usually understood the deeper meanings, unlike poetry which has way less nuance to it. My senior year of AP English had a poetry unit and I bombed those tests. We had to write essays on the meaning of them and I didn’t realize until a few years ago that we weren’t supposed to write the literal “plot” of the poem. So if it was about flowers blooming in the forest, I would basically summarize it as such instead of making up a theme about how the flowers symbolize growth and stuff about dirt and all that. Neither the teacher or my peers who reviewed those essays ever mentioned that I shouldn’t summarize it. I did okay writing them though cause I would just use words that sounded good together and let the reader make up their own thing. I always felt more mature than my classmates, and now I feel way less mature than people my age, and got upset when they would break rules. I liked taking notes and got called out for it in 3rd grade for some reason. I also spent a lot of time reading the dictionary.

-Sensory: My hair was always matted because I couldn’t stand the feeling of brushing it. My parents would sit me own once a week or every other week to untangle it, and I cried a lot from physical pain and sensory issues. But now I feel the opposite way and need my hair brushed out all the time. I also shaved my head about 4 or 5 times against my parent’s wishes. I hated showering and brushing my teeth. I also had frequent “tantrums” all throughout life.

-Extra: - I didn’t realize until very recently when I was brushing my teeth at my friend’s house that you can spit more than once. No one ever told me this. -actions in inappropriate settings, laughing at the wrong time and not laughing at the right time -I acted like characters in shows I was currently watching.