Thanks for this. At 31 I’ve tentatively adopted autism as an identity, but feel conflicted because so many of my “symptoms/traits” align with the myriad other mental health diagnoses I’ve been given over the years (I may have mentioned this on one of your stories before – your writing resonates a lot, so thank you). Ultimately I like the terms neurodivergent and Mad because they’re all-encompassing. Autism also feels loaded (too loaded at times) with my trauma history; I was horrifically abused for having bulimia and addiction as a young person (which also developed due to abuse), and to reframe those experiences as being ramifications of autism (as in, “my parents sent their autistic child to a homeless shelter to ‘hit bottom” when she drank to cope with being unable to process stimuli) evokes incomprehensible grief. Somehow focusing on the bulimia and addiction is easier, in that I can still blame myself to an extent. Obviously that’s problematic as hell, but un-learning that I’m bad/sick has been a multi-year process, and there are layers to it. I’m rambling now, but tl;dnr: endeavouring to nearly categorize the infinite complexities of the human experience is futile and, based on what I’ve seen, intrinsically violent.