avirse

I know what you mean, I had the same contradictory feelings (diagnosed two years ago aged 29) but the assessment label doesn't actually change anything about you, or much about life. If you have autism you've always had it. If you don't, you can still use strategies that help with autistic sensitivities/limitations, a lot of the techniques for mental limitations will help pretty much anyone.

I guess that's where I draw a line between "illness" and "disability", at least mentally (i.e. mental illness can get better, mental disability can't). I know some conditions have a very blurred boundary between "curable" and "incurable", depression being a notable example, but my gut feeling is that disabilities are permanent while illnesses either get better or worse (without treatment, I mean, for those that are kept in stasis by treatment).

I've not given this a huge amount of thought, though, so that game of semantics is probably full of holes.

I assumed something was fundamentally wrong with me that I needed to fix. I never considered it a disability. You can’t unblind somebody, or un-autism or un-ADHD someone.

To have considered it a disability would mean there was not something wrong with me. I don’t think that blind person has something wrong with them. They are just blind.

This really resonates with me. For decades I thought my problem depression, more recently I thought it was an anxiety disorder. Mental illnesses that need fixing and are therefore my fault for struggling with.

Then last month an autism professional suggested that the anxiety could be due to masking, not doing anything to manage sensory sensitivities, and having "neurotypical" expectations of myself. I then had a long holiday where I barely felt anxious at all, but it all came back the second I got home, and oh, maybe I'm not actually mentally ill...

I prefer to plan for the most likely "bad" scenarios. E.g. wearing shoes that are comfortable enough I could walk home if there were no buses, having enough spare money to pay for a taxi/buy a lunch if need be, keeping my phone charged (which I can do with the laptop chargers at work thanks to standardised USB-C, for other trips I may bring a powerbank) so I can call someone/search online if I need help. The odds of anything happening for which that's not enough preparation are so remote that it's not worth having to lug all the gear around all the time.

I'm a bus commuter, though only go in for half a day at a time, so all I take is my work laptop, an umbrella, hand sanitiser, and a little clutch that I move from bag to bag and has my bare essentials (phone, cash/cards, keys, facemasks, tissues, earplugs). My office is in the town centre and provides drinks, so there's nothing extra I need to be "prepared" for.

I've read that it tends to happen in areas with hard water - I can't use shampoo bars for that reason.