I’ve been mulling this over in my head, and I concluded that I am trans-autistic in the sense that I wish I had a different experience as a cis-autistic.

I’ll explain, for most of my life, my autism has been unrecognized. It significantly dented my progress as a person. Even worse is that I did get tested for it as a teen, but I was told I couldn’t be autistic because I displayed empathy. I was devastated, because I remember even at that age, with the little I knew about autism, it really felt like me. I had to throw in the towel though, and accept that I was ‘neurotypical’ according to the organizations that were meant to help me with my mental health. I cannot count how many times I beat myself up over not being able to do things I was ‘supposed’ to be able to do. The hopelessness and misery towards the fact that I could make no improvement. All because those that were supposed to help me, where looking in the wrong places, and trying to fix the wrong things.

Around my mid-twenties, I’d had enough. Evertime I’d scream for help, essentially the answer was always ‘just be normal, kek’. I could feel deep down there was something fundamentally neglected, and I figured if they weren’t going to try and find out what it was, I’d just do it myself.

I’m really proud of discovering and diagnosing my own autism. Getting the medical confirmation afterwards has allowed me to receive the help that I needed. Life is still going to be a struggle, but at least is not completely hopeless anymore.

Part of me is triumphant I managed to do it on my own, part of me wished I didn’t have to go through all that. I’m torn. Also due to the specific circumstances, I didn’t have to do a formal autism assesment, which feels like both an ego-boost and a denial of a default diagnosed-autistic experience. What happened was, that because the waiting list for a diagnosis was so long, I was offered to do a combined online and in-person group course about autism. Within this several months long course the autism specialists that would have assessed me otherwise, had gotten to know me so well, they were confident that I was autistic and said it would be a waste of time to go through a full assesment.

I really wish they hadn’t denied me that experience. It is so painfully ironic how obvious my autism was at the end of my journey as an invisible autistic adult.