Undiagnosed but pretty sure

Hi everyone,

I'm Lester (not my real name), I'm 55 and live in the east of England.

Last week, for whatever reason, videos on autism popped up in my feed on Youtube. I didn't think I was autistic at the time but my nephew is and I really enjoyed the A-word on BBC, so I clicked on one to find out more. Then I clicked on another one and another one. The more I watched, the more I identified with what was being said. It was being said by autistic people who looked perfectly normal to me.

Slowly it dawned on me that I might be autistic. I don't have all of the traits but some of them bring out very strong emotions in me when described, in particular:

• trouble with small talk
• difficulty in building lasting friendships/relationships
• not making a lot of eye contact in conversation

So at the age of 55 I found out that most people, when they see someone they know or just someone they want to talk to, they go up to them, use all the right body language and some nice words just come out of their mouths like magic, they don't have to think about it.

This doesn't happen for me. The same situation is like when you go on holiday somewhere that a foreign language is spoken, say Italy. You go to the restaurant for dinner but beforehand you've thought about what you're going to say. You've got the phrase for 'steak and chips please' perfectly practised in you head so that when the waiter looks at you with his notepad, you'll master the situation, which, of course you do. Then the inevitable happens. The waiter asks how you want your steak, you don't understand a word he's saying, your mind is a blank, you look a fool.

That's how small talk feels for me a lot of the time. Unless the conversation happens to land in the area of maths, chemistry or some other nerdy topic I'm into, I frequently draw a blank when trying to contribute.

The realisation process was a tough time for me last week but after the struggle of telling my wife on Friday (she was very supportive), I called the GP to try to get a diagnosis. They are doing phone consultations initially but I set out my traits to the doctor and thankfully he was convinced enough to send me for a diagnosis. It will be 4-6 weeks before I hear anything, so I'm in this period where I think I am but can't be sure.

If I am autistic though, it will explain a long list of things that have happened in my life. At times I've thought I was the guy in The Truman Show, where everybody else knows the big secret but the guy at the centre of it all isn't in on the joke.

That's about all I can say about myself for the moment but I'm going to be looking around the community boards here and learning as much as I can, it would be nice to make some friends.

Lester