I've suspected I'm autistic since I was in high school. I was never told I could be autistic by anyone, and I was in mainstream schooling. When I was in college my mom made an offhand comment saying "don't you remember you were diagnosed with Asperger's at 5 years old?" It's been a decade since then, and she never produced any documentation saying I had this diagnosis.

The past week I've been compiling a document of autistic traits I have with specific anecdotes from my entire life. I tried to go as far back as I remember. The more I wrote, the more I felt I couldn't possibly not be autistic.

I finally worked up the courage to ask my parents what kind of autistic traits they remember me having before I was 5. They immediately responded saying "Yeah, you are autistic," and gave me a lot of pretty incontrovertible evidence (ex. deviation from a schedule led to meltdowns, not understanding any jokes at all, not being interested in other children only books, sounds made me extraordinarily upset). But then they kept trying to insist to me that even though I was weird (and they kept saying it that way), parents love their children and don't think they're weird, and it turned out for the better that they never intervened in my development by having me assessed by a psych because "I grew up to be successful." They also kept saying that I was a perfect kid because I did exactly what I was told at all times.

I don't know why they think everything is okay, or that it has ever been okay. I have been practically clinically depressed as far back as I remember. I remember being 5 years old and hating my own guts because I already knew my peers and the adults around me thought I was weird and unlikable. I am now struggling to get through a graduate degree without accidentally succumbing to malnutrition or ending up holed up in my apartment. I mask so much that two psychs said "they could tell as soon as I walked in the room that I'm not autistic," but at this point the only friends I have are all autistic themselves.

I feel like I'm drowning. My support systems have failed. I can't even turn to my parents, because they don't think anything is wrong at all, even as they've watched me have SI since I was 10. I don't know if there's any help for me at all.