Research shows autistic people just aren’t compatible socially with non-autistic people, but get along really well with other autistic people. Maybe look into autistic social groups, like this community, or something more intimate, like a chat group, or local meetup. Even if you don’t think you need it, what’s the harm? Our entire identity is informed by our life experiences, which statistically means most of the social situations you’ve ever been in were incompatible with you, and probably made you feel less than good. This leads to masking behaviors to avoid the bad feelings, and that’s no way to exist. The stat is between 1/50 and 1/8 of people, largely shit stat because the establishment only diagnosed for disability until recently, but now the diagnostic criteria in a few countries includes people that can generally succeed at life, despite their neurodifferences.

It’s interesting to me you had any expectations of a climax. It sounds like you’ve been purple your whole life, you and everyone that matters to you knew you were purple, and you just paid someone to officially measure your color as purple. People, regardless of neurotype, can be pretty chill, or totally shit. Your totally chill people are likely to accept you harder for who you are, your totally shit people are likely to dig in and throw more shit at you.

I’ll try to DM you a link to a Matrix chat group for autistic folks. We’d (not me, the admin) rather there be a small barrier of entry than to just let people join. It’s a nice group, not that I have a whole lot to compare it to.

No one mentioned DAFT (Dutch American Friendship Treaty) yet. It’s the lowest barrier of entry to EU for English speaking US citizens with no heritage path. It’s just money and grit. Other paths require some amount of chance, be it luck in finding employment willing to sponsor, or acceptance into some student program and hoping you can manage to find employment sponsorship before you graduate. DAFT is strictly having a minimum amount of money (4500 Euro), and then being a successful enough entrepreneur to sustain a life anywhere in The Netherlands.