I was diagnosed as an adult. For the evaluation, the psychologist had me gather information from my parents on how I was as a child. My uncle said that I hated people touching and moving my things when I was a child, so I definitely had issues with people changing up my comfort zone. I would get argumentative and have what were probably meltdowns. Eventually, they stopped doing this, and we didn’t have problems with that anymore.

Later on as a adult before diagnosis, I had a friend that was in a bad relationship while I had recently gotten out of one. I remember that I was telling him the benefits of living alone. One of the benefits I came up with was that I went to the kitchen, got a glass out of the cupboard, and placed it in the very middle of the living. Then, I pointed to the glass and said, “You see that glass? If I don’t touch that glass for 2 weeks, that glass will be there in 2 weeks.” My friend looked at me like I was silly, I guess because that was more of an autistic thing than an allistic thing, but the point is that I really don’t like people moving my things without my consent. It’s like my mind has learned to survive by creating an inventory and map of where all my things are, so when the inventory and map are altered without me knowing, that survival mechanism is disrupted and I feel something like danger, vulnerable, exposed, unprepared, etc. I think it’s a normal autistic trait in how we function.