RoundSparrowBeing born in 1969 and graduating high school in 1988, my Indiana high school didn't know or speak about autism. I wasn't diagnosed until age 39, back in 2008, 2009.
Unmasking for me hasn't been a choice. My mask was falling off, that's how I discovered I had autism. But my mask had been falling off all along, and I had made adjustments, dealt with hard choices.
Shortly before age 30, I had struggled enough in office work environments that when I got fired from a job for being frustrated with communications I left structured office work environments. This was a decade before I knew the details of autism.
Autism has been a decade by decade loss for me. Loss of being able to work in a routine office environment structure, having to find work that was flexible enough that I could do it on a schedule of when I could do best.
Then loss of my first marriage. It was during the divorce that I found out about autism, the person I hired to help manage my divorce happened to be an autism expert and dealt with divorces involving autistic children. I had no children, but this assistant turned to me after working with me for a month or so and said I needed to learn about autism.
this was 2009, there was little books about adult autism and Asperger's syndrome was still thing. Nobody talked about the life expectancy issue, it wasn't until 2018 that I came across studies and articles mentioning the topic.
It's been 15 years now that I've been reading about autism, many times in support groups from #ActuallyAutistic perspective and not just the medical science side.
Loss, grief, of abilities. I've forgotten it, but there was a term someone used in therapy about "loss of dream" grief. And i haven't heard about that in autism support groups as much as I think.
If my autism in childhood had been more dramatic I would have been diagnosed with something, but I wasn't. And I had "the good side" of overachiever from age 16 onward with computers and book authoring at age 20. In reality, I was not able to juggle work and a social life, so work was always the priority. My work and hobby were the same thing, learning computer industry and keeping up on technology changes.I even was a high-end consultant, advice giver.
But I lost those skills. I didn't "choose" to unmask, it was more like age and accumulated brain experience leads to the mask crumbling in onion-like layers.
#RoundSparrowToDo : incomplete like most of my recent postings. I just can't organize the communications the way I want. But I'm posting it incomplete.