A letter to my family: I'm not autistic.

Dear family, a freshly diagnosed neurodivergent relative doesn’t make us experts in identifying otherness.

Yeah, it’s easy to do.

I’ve done it.

You’ve heard me do it.

I’ve said things like “he/she deffo—without question, has autism/ADHD/dyslexia”. I hold my hands up. It’s a fair cop. It doesn’t help that I devour every true crime documentary across five—more like ten—streaming services. I read the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—for FUN. I’ve become a psychiatrist by osmosis and that’s the danger because I am obviously still a layman. I can’t conclude with any experience or expertise if anyone is a something.

I don’t understand autism and neither do you.

What I do know is that we’re all special neurodiverse poppets. But we’re not all special neurodivergent ones. Only the chosen few are wired in such a way as to make them atypical. Listen, my genetically related kin, we can’t all be a ‘bit autistic’ any more than we can all be a bit dead. So no, I don’t have a touch of the ‘tism despite your opinion—which is viewed through a non-’tism lens. Your worldview is inaccurate. It’s a pastiche of what you think it is to be autistic. All you see are ‘textbook’ traits of autism, sadly, sharing a few of those traits doesn’t get me in the club.