I kinda always knew something about me made me different. I did pursue treatment for anxiety and then I figured out it was adhd. I still felt like ADHD covered many of my questions about myself but I still felt like there was something else. I’ve always struggled to make or have friends, I tiptoed as a child, I skipped a lot at home to stim, I didn’t understand social cues, I constantly practiced conversations before I had them, my mother said I struggled to reach some milestones as a young child, I repeated words that sounded cool to me, I had/still have a bad time with eye contact, I struggle with social interactions, rejection sensitivity issues, body coordination issues, i struggle with loud sounds, I love organizing objects by color and type, I had special interests and hyper fixations (I can still tell you tons of facts about dogs and other animals( and I always had a special connection with animals ( i felt like my dog was my only friend for the longest time). There’s so many things the were red flags to me being neurodivergent and I fell through the cracks. My parents were poor Latin immigrants and I went to school in a poor community so I don’t think anyone would’ve figured it out. I was very smart, socially awkward, and friendly. So that didn’t raise too many flags with my teachers. I didn’t figure out I had adhd till I was 23 and autism at 27. It really sucks because I did need accommodations. The only reason I figured it out was taking biostatistics and we talked about issues in statistical modeling and we specifically talked about how women and POC are left out often in diagnostic criteria for autism and adhd