For much of my life, I’ve seen myself as a
schlemiel: the endearing Yiddish word for a socially inept person living a life patched by blunders and awkwardness.
From my teenage years through college, I believed what I saw as my incompetence and lack of grace were residues of a bad personality. As it turns out, there was an underlying explanation for these behaviors. My fluctuations between being “on” and “off” were not merely character flaws. They were attributes of autism.
The idea that I might be autistic was one I had blithely dismissed when it came up in conversation during high school and college.