The author of this article was diagnosed with ASD in her 40’s, and while appreciating it as a more positive label than those she’d previously received, she also struggled greatly with the subsequent non-existent support.

The assumption that we must have worked it out by now if we’re still walking, talking and have a pulse can hide a grim reality of difficult, isolated and unfulfilled lives. Sometimes someone just giving me a reality check of the “have you eaten today?” kind would be useful.

Left to my own devices, I turned to the internet, where I discovered there were others out there trying to make sense of it all too – an online tribe for the tribeless, a diaspora of aliens in a neurotypical universe.

In the long-term, diagnosis has allowed me more self-forgiveness and self-understanding and I’m much happier because of it.

But some support in reaching that place would have been useful. So would occasionally being asked: “Do you need any help?”