Hi, midlife aspie.
I was diagnosed as adult in Feb, '07, so like you I am new to all of this.
Lots of this with this.
I have felt mind slaying, paralysis making guilt about who/how I am.
I cannot get that time or those precious emotional/identity/cognitive resources back and spent them on reducing my perception about my worth as a person and ability as a student/professional.
I've been face-planted in front of the alter,
Gone glutton free,
Worked hard in therapy,
Cried a forest of tissue...
Though at the time I did not know, I am on the spectrum.
I tried not to be different with the hyper-focused perseveration of the Asperger Profile.
If I knew how to find a cure, experience a conversion of cognitive type miraculously, gestalted an insight so Freud it would have Skinnered Piaget, I would have done it.
If I believed that were possible, I'd still be on my face, eating beets, showing up on time and being transparent in session.
I did not find a cure.
I ate a lot of beans.
As naked as I was born, it is transparently measured and assessed I am on the spectrum.
Oh, I cried
and
keened.
If I can spare you one minute of time or unnecessary resource allotment, I beg you hear my sincerity.
I choose to abstain from feeling guilty about who I am.
I mean like AA, I am in the program, working the steps, gonna pick up chips one day at a time one anniversary at a time, because feeling guilty about who I am/how I am was excruciating, slow, barbaric, self-cannibalism.
And I STILL don't eat meat.
You are who you are.
I believe you are who you are for a reason that is important.
Be you.
Find your reason that is important and do that.