Greetings! My name is Randy Lovin. At age 40, after a lifetime of seemingly disjointed “quirks,” I was identified as neurodivergent—specifically Autistic Spectrum Disorder Level 1. It came as no surprise. Instead of feeling ashamed or distraught at the identification, I felt surprising relief. First, it was a better conclusion than the one I was expectation—depression. Most importantly, it added great clarity to my life—those quirky traits and my constant feeling of being an outsider. I now had a clear picture of what the scattered puzzle pieces of my life represented and could assemble the puzzle for the first time.
Through the discovery, I also learned some other traits that help explain myself and some of the challenges I’ve encountered over the years:
- Aromantic: An orientation by a complete absence of romantic attraction.
- Asexual (Ace): An umbrella term describing an individual who experiences low, conditional, or untraditional sexual attraction.
- Pragmatic: An operational philosophy that prioritizes practical efficiency, measurable logic, and functional utility over social traditions, emotional scripts, or arbitrary norms.
With these new understandings of myself, I started reflecting and analyzing my life. Suddenly everything made sense. Those disjoint quirks had reason behind them, and were interwoven together in a way I didn’t recognize before.
I decided to start blogging and detailing my journey of discovery. Unlike similar efforts, however, my story is not about trauma or tragedy or a struggle to fit in. It’s more about understanding myself and how a lifetime of unconscious social masking impacted my life and continues to.
