[dimal]

I don't think most people understand how difficult things are for "high functioning" autistic people and how much work we have to put in just to get by in society.

It's not like I've had an easy life. At times, life has been pure torture. For example, I've barely been able to work at all for the past three years, because of being discriminated against in interviews, not because I was actually unable to work. The toll this took on my life and health has been incalculable.

From one angle, my autism is a superpower. From another, it's a curse. I'm able to solve intractable problems that other people can't. But since my way of solving these problems is impossible for neurotypicals to understand, and I can be kind of odd, I've been essentially unhireable. I've had to go into consulting because that's the only route open to me. And this is just one of many problems I've had fitting into society. It's exhausting to be "high functioning" in a society that doesn't accept what you are.

But yeah, I do agree that merging everything into one spectrum has made things unintentionally confusing.