My biggest fear is people thinking I'm not trying to act normal and live my life as a kind and thoughtful person. It isn't tht I'm self-centered, it's more that sometimes I have no ego at all on topics and am very globally-oriented cosmos-oriented to a point of being out of touch with local customs. I just can't keep up with all the details and manage my body. I hear sounds, spot movements, have to build up sentences to speak. My automatic abilities do not work well and I've painstakingly built a set of mental brain routines to work around pains in my brain and memories of previous mistakes. I just can't get it together to be fun to be around. So I try my best to not be a burden, even if that means not talking to people for days - as that is how long recovery takes without hard core drugs or alcohol and such... which just leads to other health problems and difficulty managing how much at what times.. Due to age and long-term stress, my "best' is pretty pathetic since Thanksgiving 2019. -- Stephen
Videos about what some of my autism experience has been like with late-diagnosis at age 38/39.