Difficulty dealing with diagnosis

I’ve been having a really hard time getting my head around my diagnoses. I partially wonder if it’s right or not. As when they are assessing you as an adult they can’t really see what you were like as a child.

When I read through other people’s stories about their late diagnoses, their early childhood stories always seem to be similar; Shy and awkward children who didn’t have many friends etc. But for me I always had friends and as far as I was aware I wasn’t an awkward child, in fact I was relatively sociable when comfortable. I was very shy when it came to being in unfamiliar environments with lots of people I didn’t know, as I did not find it easy to talk to people I didn’t know, but once I was comfortable in the environment and a few people had spoke to me, I was usually fine. I always had friends I played with outside of school, had sleepovers etc.

I do look back at some things and wonder, because with the friends I was very comfortable around I could be very bossy when we played games, but then if I was with someone who was more domineering I found it very difficult to be myself and I would be the opposite, I also copied my friends a lot and always wanted the same things as them etc, I was a very quiet child at school, mainly because I found authority figures scary as I didn’t want to be told off or have any expectations put on me but sometimes I didn’t help myself because I had a hard time focusing and tended to talk when I should have been doing my work. My interests were also pretty typical of my age, but I do recall my friends not being as into dolls as I was, they just didn’t seem to be as intense as me. I have one really vivid memory from year 3, my friends and I were pretending we were S Club 7 and I remember having the best time because I knew so much about S Club 7 and this was something loved, I very rarely enjoyed group games but I had such an amazing lunchtime and was so sad the day was over as I was going to America the next day and was afraid I would miss out. I can’t figure out whether I was just really good at masking and copying others so nothing ever really stood out for me in these years.

Overall my younger years of my childhood were actually really lovely, it was just my behaviour at home that wasn’t, as I was much more defiant and stroppy when at home, it wasn’t until I hit preteen/teen age that I started to feel different to my peers and became really preoccupied with my friendships. I don’t know whether it’s because friendships become more sophisticated and navigating my way around that was overwhelming but despite this I still managed to always have friends.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? I just don’t know whether they are wrong about the diagnosis.