Thank you for this post! I came from Reddit just today and in those forums they forbade every comment I made which resembled yours. I wholheartedly agree with you, especially your last sentence. I think there is a wisdom in recognizing when to stop wasting time amd energy with BS. I like myself too and now that I am older, I find myself defiantly and strongly being myself. I socialize very little, engage in the activities which I enjoy by myself quite contentedly. I think, if being honest, most folks are even a bit envious and resentful that I have the courage and ability to do this. BTW, I was diagnosed as a child but my parents wisely chose to send me through gifted classes and not focus on the autism. Only when I got worse in my teens did that label play any role, mostly negative. I acquired learned helplessness and began to doubt my abilities. I got extremely anxious and depressed. I was on various pharmaceuticals for many years which thankfully seem to not have cause irreversible harm. It has taken many years to pull out of that and now I take no pharmaceuticals and have completely rejected Western medicine and their labelling and drugs. I am the most free and happy I have ever been. The key was getting out of the medicalization apparatus altogether. I do not play in their field, I do not acknowledge their system at all. I act autonomously outside of it. Now I am a successful artist, fulltime student living alone in a nice place with a few quality friends and my Buddhist sangha and groups like this are my support network. I do not lead with or even mention the autism unless I have known the person for awhile and even then I am trying to not have it be definitive of me at all. I do this partly because I found I was using the autism as a kind of crutch and excuse to not live to my potential. This is the most difficult thing for me at this point-seeing if I will be accepted or rejected as just me without the autism label. Like I just entered an art call for people with disabilities that also accepts people without. I entered as without by not mentioning the autism. That means they will judge the artwork more stringently than if they knew about the autism. But it is tricky because if I mention it I could be an advocate for others with that issue. Still, I no longer want to believe in the labels, period so I am taking more chances now just being me, no definition. Works for me.