I’m struck by “looking around at all the items that have been background noise for four years and foregrounding them, assessing them, deciding whether to hold on or let go” mostly because this is how I’ve felt in the wake of a midlife autism diagnosis. That undiagnosed thing being a sort of “background noise” I didn’t even ever know was there. Midlife diagnosis of any lifelong condition, I suppose, feel like this: like a retcon of one’s own life. Everything, or mostly everything, gets reassessed.