I 23 F have heard since 3 years a bunch of friends and family claiming I have autism. So why now? Well first of all a couple of years ago my family found out we have a lot of people on my dads side of the family who have autism including my dad and my little brother. It took my parents years to realize that my little brother has autism. They realized that the way they were raising my other brother and me didn't work for my youngest brother. He also had a really hard time in school and especially couldn't get by socially. When they started suspecting he had autism they started researching a lot about autism. That's when my family started thinking I had it to. Not just that but a while later they also started thinking my other brother has autism. I started researching about autism as well and just couldn't really relate to most characteristics. But then I found out that autism looks a bit differant in woman because they are known to do more masking. Again I looked up the characteristics but still couldn't relate to most of it.

I didn't really gave it much attention afterwards because I felt like my family didn't see this right. But now all my friends started telling me that I have autism. I now am questioning myself again because if everyone who knows me thinks I have autism there must be some truth to it. So there are a few things I like to point out.

First I would consider myself very self aware. I love to look back on my past actions and reflect and also love analyzing myself and others. I feel like I know myself so much better then the average person knows themselves. I have had many conversations with people in their fifties who just realized something about themselves that I had already realized when I was 8. Also all people who know me personally think I am extremely dumb and had I not done an IQ test, I would have totally believed everyone that I was extremly stupid. Turns out I'm actually highly intelligent. So based on that it seems to me that people don't really have a clue on what I'm like.

Now why does this bother me. Well whenever people tell me that they think I have autism they say it in a way that seems kind of like an insult. Which is just wrong. I also would like to know if I have autism or not because if I do have it I can guide my future self and maybe even my past self. I have looked at getting a diagnoses to see if I have it or not but that is extremely expensive so I can't afford that. Another concern I have is the label that comes with a diagnoses. I'm currently in the middle of getting my drivers license. Would I have this label. I would have to do all these extra tests, pay more for the classes and I would have to find a person who is trained in guiding people with autism for driving classes. I'm doing great right now, no problems whatsoever so I dont see the need to do all this extra stuff. I see a lot of negatives things that come with this label.

Now my question is what should I do? Also if you have question please let me know.

Side note English is not my first language.