Up until my mid-30's, I generally knew myself pretty well. My father had bi-polar which led to my parents getting divorced when I was young, and that led to me spending a lot of time on my own just thinking about thinking.

I could see the systems and operate within them. High school and college were easy. Working in food service and retail and eventually an office were all easy. Being with my wife was easy.

Then we formed a polycule with another couple, with severe ADHD. Everything got harder. Work, marriage, running a household. My memory tanked, my mind slowed to a crawl. I stopped smoking weed but it didn't help. My new GF, in pursuing ADHD medication, got diagnosed as AuDHD and the 3 of them encouraged me to get diagnosed too.

I finally did and I was disappointed how little it did for me. A lot of it really was as simple as "do you like going out and partying or staying home and chilling?", and I would answer "chilling", and that... Means I'm autistic.

So what did I really get out of it? Well for one I'm more comfortable using the word. The biggest upshot of which is that I feel more comfortable interacting with the Lemmy autism communities.

The cognitive assessment was nice. I scored the highest percentiles in Verbal Comprehension and Working Memory, with terribke processing speed. After nearly a year of feeling like my brain was melting and I waa getting terrible at everything, it was nice to have some pretty solid evidence I still have my mind. I scored very low for Processing Speed, and I think trying to keep up with two hyperactive partners may be the source of my issues.

I started reading some books recommended by the psychologist, and so far they have not really resonated with me. Autism is so broad that I think it needs to, and will be, further broken down into subcategories over time. Reading about the experiences of others always has a mix of "woe that's just like me" and "wow that's nothing like me".

The diagnosis drove me to talk to my older sister, who was hospitalized several times before eventually getting diagnosed a few years ago. Talking to her reminded me of how my brain is supposed to work and helped me a lot. I should talk to her more often. She gave me a lot of good advice, but the most profound thing she said was that going out and socializing is something that was actively bad for her mental health, and that she stopped doing it. I had been treating it as a matter of taste. I had been going out tk bars and restaurants and festivals and bowling alleys and all sorts of other places with the polycule. The ADHD seeks novelty and stimulation, so I thought I was giving reasonable compromise to do things I don't like in order to spend time with them. I thought I could just try to deal with it and focus on the positives, but it was actually harmful to my mind and functioning.

There have been negatives too. My wife has said this diagnosis has been a huge revelation for her, but... We just celebrated our 15 year anniversary. We had excellent communication for 13 years before we entered a polycule (that was why were confident doing it in the first place). I kind of feel like she got lost in the sauce of the shiny me relationships and forgot about our marriage, and is blaming it on me being autistic. We astarted couple's therapy to work on things and its going well.

Another negative is... My boyfriend sent me a link to a BS article about a medicine to "reverse autistic symptoms" in mice. And like... I understand he means well. He's seen his wife start Ritalin and has gotten a tremendous increase in functionality from it. But... I like who I am, and I'm incredibly functional whenever I'm not trying to deal with a bunch of frivolous and shallow distractions.