I think it’s more that she doesn’t see the value in putting a label on it, but I would not be surprised if it was something. Practically speaking, I’m not sure any formal diagnosis would help her. She was fortunately always able to live independently, which is not true for everyone, but for that reason I’m not sure how fruitful it would be to pursue.

She has not expressed an interest in exploring her uniqueness in a professional setting.

No it was more niche, but we have both contributed there. I really liked her writing voice. I commented on many of her posts, eventually becoming the one to ask her first if we could work on something together. We partnered up on a few stories and observed that we have a lot in common in how we think and see the world through the challenges our characters faced in the story. We kept open a Chatzy and sometimes Skype (it was the fashion of the time!) for collaboration, and we ended up spending a lot of time just hanging out virtually and not actively focused on the writing. We became friends over about three months and the authorship context slowly became less and less important to our friendship, even though we still write today.

I was in a toxic romantic relationship on the side at that time that came to an abrupt end, and we had the talk about how we seem really compatible. Surely we could have a better relationship than the one I was leaving. I joked with her like: hey, you wanna have a couple of kids for me? And she was like: sure! That makes a lot of sense to me and would be great character development for you.