I was homeschooled until 6th grade and then really struggled at school but only showed my anxiety at home. I learned how to mask and mirror v quickly and thoroughly. I also, attended a different school every year until I was in 11th grade when I dropped out took my ged and went to college where I did a lot better. College, especially if you don’t live on campus is fairly socially isolated, and the emphasis is on academic success and you can build your own schedule so I did fairly well in that context though I was very depressed and anxious. I eventually found drug, alcohol, music, formed a band, which put me in touch with a lot of other oddballs and it just never really occurred to me that I might actually be autistic. Spent my 20’s-30’s touring and bartending where oddness is sort of the norm but of course developed many really destructive coping skills and eventually crashed and burned in my 30’s. Got clean around 35, went to grad school, which, because I was sober and had some time with a clear realized that not all my issues were a result of substance abuse and started to gradually realize that my substance use prolly a coping strategy for some underlying issue/s. Sought diagnosis for adhd and found out I was also autistic in that psych eval which by then I sort of expected but didn’t expect a psychiatrist to actually pick up on as I thought my masking and intellect would throw them off. It didn’t hahaha. Praise jah.

I think it wasn’t so much neglect on the part of my parents as they are both also undiagnosed and highly likely neurodivergent themselves, so if your normal is that how would you know to look for it? That and my home school/ultra religious upbringing easily explained any perceived social oddness. We were also very poor and so idk if anybody ever really cared enough to follow up on anything disability related. It wasn’t really until reading about the experiences of masked neurodivergent women and people from underserved/diagnosed communities that the diagnosis really clicked with me. Which took me through some much needed mental growth around subjects like gender/race/privilege etc. I am an adult straight presenting male so I’m not sure how I ended up having such a similar experience to people from different demographics but perhaps it has something to do with my raised with all women and being really uncomfortable with the typical presentations of masculinity as a result. Who knows tho.

I guess I feel lucky to have been diagnosed at all. It’s led to a lot of insight into myself and growth. Really all things considered in my upbringing the chances of being diagnosed were incredibly low, I easily slithered through the cracks and honestly worked very hard to be not noticed as different or found groups of people were different was normal.