While I recognize almost everything in this Pete Wharmby thread about late-diagnosis, masking, and identity–I’ve written, in fact, about diagnosis as retcon—it ended up being the last straw for me in terms of autism Twitter. Today I shunted my autism follows into a list and unfollowed them all.
I’ve written before about feeling like a failure and a fuckup both before and after diagnosis, and in the end today I accepted the fact that following even a selected portion of autism Twitter doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel worse, because all of these people I follow are out there being, in one sense or another, to one degree or another, successful. Or, at least, let’s be honest, financially self-sufficient. I fully admit I almost didn’t share the Wharmby thing anywhere out of the sheer petty disdain for him not only having a career but having not only an actively-supported Patreon but Buy Me a Coffee page, too.
Meanwhile, here I am, still incapable of offering anything to the world of sufficient value to support myself.
(While I was at it, I unfollowed reporters and the like, too, and also shunted them off onto a list. I’ll only look at either of these lists if i feel I have the wherewithal to be made to feel depressed about everything around me, and most things in me.)
Wharmby is right that the late-diagnosed autistic can feel as if their entire life up until that point was a kind of fiction, if not an outright lie, but what about when the late-diagnosed autistic looks at their life after that point and wonders why all those other autistic people nonetheless seem to have successful and meaningful lives.
No more “autism community” for me, then. It’s just not making my life as an autistic person any better.