Am I autistic, gay or lost?

I spent a lot of my life struggling with my sexuality and thought coming out as gay would give me the answers I needed as to why I always felt different. But 5 years on after coming out as gay and being in a happy relationship, I still feel I find daily life hard. Over the past few months I have discovered I may be autistic and feel a diagnosis would literally validate my life, however when I’ve asked close people to me whether they think I could be autistic they have said no not at all, so I’m very confused. I’ve listed below just a small number of significant things I’ve realised could make me autistic.

Childhood traits which felt “normal” and fine to me at the time:

• In primary school preferring to either play with much younger children or spend time on my own or I enjoyed walking around the playground by myself making up imaginary stories in my head.
• Other children would make fun at me for staring at them but I didn’t realise I was doing this.

Teenage traits:

• Although I had a group of friends I would sometimes prefer to spend my lunch break in the computer room researching topics of interest.
• Huge interest in train timetables. I collected these and knew all the local routes.
• I studied obsessively other groups of friends and their relationships between each other.

Adult traits:

• Shoulder twitch that appears as a tick.
• I prefer to be late for work to avoid previous shift handover and prefer to process this information in an email rather than face to face.
• I don’t understand comedy or find things funny that the majority of people do.
• If I am doing something “different” the next morning such as going swimming I will spend hours thinking and planning my morning routine.
• To cook tea I have to read the recipe multiple times throughout the day and spend a long time preparing the steps in my head.
• I smile at innapropiate moments or when accused or lying which makes me look guilty.
• Very very very nostalgic. Find a lot of comfort in familiar places.
• Tasks such as clearing mess from my desk are extremely overwhelming.

However, I also have a lot of non-typical autistic traits which very much confuse me. Examples of these are I love socialising and I am not very direct in communicating whatsoever, Infact the complete opposite and struggle to be honest and direct.

Thank you for anybody who has read this entire post. I don’t feel I can talk about this with anybody so writing down has helped.