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This week, I was at a meeting where someone was going to be presenting. It had been a long day, I was tired and I happened to be seated directly beneath a fluorescent ceiling light that was bothering my eyes. I was lost in thought about how I was going to make it through the next hour with every signal of my sensory system urging me to flee. I did not want to be there.

I did not find out until I was nearly 47 years old that I am autistic. All my life I have experienced a keen sense of not fitting in with most people, seemingly constant barriers and struggles regarding communication, and intense responses to environmental stimuli.

As a late-identified autistic person, I know what it’s like to have my everyday, natural traits–-traits that I don’t even consciously think about, scrutinized and reacted to in ways that are strange and sometimes frightening to me.