I wasn’t in any special programs or got special counseling at school.

I didn't think so either. I was told that my grandma and I periodically saw a "doctor" to check in on things by talking to him^1^, rode the little bus because the main bus was full^2^, that I got leniency with conduct grades because they knew I was a good kid^3^, and got placed in advanced classes because I was really smart^4^.

1: I was seeing a psychologist/psychiatrist 2: It was the literal short bus for special kids 3: Let me slide because they knew I had mental things going on, especially ADHD. I didn't do things that hurts others, but I couldn't stay still or stay focused. 4: I was put in gifted even though I couldn't figure out how to do most things other kids could do naturally, needed very specific instructions, needed to know why for everything, and was quite developmentally delayed with a lot of main milestones

Most of the support by the teachers that liked me was basically behind the scenes, putting a word in for me in conferences and stuff like that. I barely scraped by 10th grade without repeating, by having just enough excelling courses to counteract the ones I was failing (latin and physical education in my case).

Me too! I couldn't read fiction. I loved reading encyclopedias, science books, Nintendo Power, and even comics, but I could not read fiction. It was like I was reading words, but they meant absolutely nothing. Yet, other students would read them and understand the story. My father would even drop me off at a library for hours with a book to read, and I would end up walking around and entertaining myself, figuring out their systems. I couldn't sit down and read. The only book I naturally did that with was Animal Farm. That was the only fiction book I read until I got to college. Anyway, they let me slide a lot in English/Language Arts until high school when I had to start taking summer school and night classes to make up for failing the regular term.

I’d expect people taking that as a clear sign that “that kid can’t be autistic”.

I still encounter this as an adult. If I start paying attention for it, I can tell some people test to see if I am or not as if I was purposely pretending to be autistic for some selfish reason, whatever that may be. How stupid, lol. Yeah, I want to make my life harder and upset people out of selfishness 🙄

while I was seeing psychologists a lot and was in a psychiatric clinic as a teenager for a while, I never got any special programs suited for autistic people, which over here and back then were extremely rare to begin with.

That sucks! But I'm happy you finally found out and can now make adjustments. Good luck to you, and I'll hopefully keep seeing you around here 🙂