Hello @MightyGoldBear, I just wanted to reply to your post because I recognised a lot of what you are saying in the way I felt about myself only a few years ago. I eventually plucked up the courage to apply for an assessment and was told rather brutally that I was NOT autistic although they did concede that I had autistic traits.
Talking to my daughter about it afterwards, she felt that one of my autistic traits is to try to answer questions as honestly as possible and perhaps unconsciously try to tell people what I think they want to hear. There was some questioning during the assessment about autistic behaviour such as they gave the example of a young man who was getting his breakfast when his mother fell down dead in the kitchen and, not knowing what to do, he stepped over her body and put milk on his cornflakes and just sat down and ate his breakfast. "You wouldn't do that would you?"
So I would probably not have stepped over my mother's body in the kitchen and eaten my cornflakes. But I have had nurse training, and a lot of experience in dealing with peculiar and unexpected situations, so I wouldn't have been quite so flummoxed as that young man was, but what do you do if you really don't know what to do? Rhetorical question sorry. - but, I might have carried on eating my cornflakes and thinking what to do rather than flapping around calling ambulances et cetera. I might have.
Five years later I went for another assessment. I paid for it, the first one was on the NHS. The lack of understanding and compassion towards me, a woman in my 60s seeking to understand what's been going on my entire life, was very striking in the first assessment.
I also went to see a counsellor who specialises in autism in women. I cannot tell you how useful this has been.
Second assessment: diagnosed autistic. Help and support offered, mostly in the form of information, but so much more than I had the first time.
Now, instead of wondering what an earth is wrong with me and thinking I'm a freak and a weirdo, and I should stop moaning and just be like everybody else, I know that I am autistic and that my autistic areas are disabling to me. I may not look disabled, but in certain situations I find it very difficult. Now that I understand myself better, if I'm having a bad day or a lot of trouble with one thing or another, I consider my autism and I kind of take a step back. Because autistic. So that's how it is. Not my fault. Not stupid, not bad, not weird. Just processing things, executive dysfunction is a big one, organising, certain things I really can't understand, sleep, change of plans. Dyspraxia, poor hand eye coordination, sensory effects - particularly smell but also texture. Heat and light, cold and dark. Special interests, losing time, always late, feel better when I see something utterly beautiful such as a glorious beech tree down the road, that is just coming out into tiny leaves and makes me shiver when I see the curve and droop of its branches outlined against the sky.
You are not alone, Bear. I hope you will find some support and friendship here.