@markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @sentient_water @hosford42 @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity

Ah, that just negated my self-suspicion!

Love spicy foods ( I put habanero hot sauce in my cofee)

Zero ear for pitch

Don't mind distracting chatter or bright light

But here's the thing. I KNOW I'm not "typical," But nobody is. I have many characteristics I see mentioned here. Don't have others. Is that not what "divergent" is?
This is why I don't identify as is/is not autistic.

@dbc3 @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @sentient_water @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity You don't have to have any of those specific things to be autistic. There are many different forms of autism, and they can look *very* different from each other. Each kind of blends into its direct neighbors, but it doesn't take long going from neighbor to neighbor to get to something that is very different from where you started. The biggest thing that connects us is that we don't think like "normal" people; we are out at the ends of the bell curve, whatever dimension you happen to be measuring us by.

@hosford42 @dbc3 @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @sentient_water @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity

>There are many different forms of autism

I'm going to be down this rabbit whole for an incredibly long time, aren't I?

@hellomiakoda @dbc3 @markusl @cwebber @ginsterbusch @dpnash @sentient_water @Tooden @actuallyautistic @neurodiversity Well you are in luck, in a sense, because aside for some very specific syndromes (Rhett's, or tuberous sclerosis, for example) nobody has labeled them. And the ones that have been labeled are generally things that can be diagnosed other ways and come with a side of autism.

The reason there are so many different forms autism can take, and the way they all kind of blend into each other, is that there are thousands of genes which contribute in some minor but meaningful way, and everybody gets their own unique subset of these.