@HelenaP, welcome!
Masking/camouflaging one's autism is both difficult to do, and not do. As one might say,
"Damned if you do, and damned if you don't". If you are in a lifestyle where you don't have to hide who your are, that would be best for your mental health. Unfortunately, most people have to deal with other people in some capacity, so often times being "yourself" is a delicate balancing act. "Do this, not that" mental discussions with your inner monologue can be mentally exhausting over the course of a day, but it also creates these little "processing delays" that can be detected subconsciously by other people. Throw in our natural tendency to think "outside the box" with sometimes unconventional ideas. Throw in our sometimes odd sense of humor, our voice inflection may be odd, our body language may be subtly odd, etc. They sense "something is off", not really able to pinpoint exactly what it is, the amygdala (fear center) in their brain gets a bit "tickled" and the next thing you know they are backing away from you with a polite smile on their face. Sometimes being pleasant, respectful, and a genuinely good person is not enough if the other person is sensing "something not right" even at a subconscious level.
Many of us also have some degree of "mind-blindness" where we might not pick up on all the subtle emotional cues, voice modulation, facial micro expressions, body language, etc. and as a result, we might not understand fully what is being expressed during an interaction with another person. Many of us also have some degree of alexithymia, a condition where there is a mind-body disconnection with various emotional states. We may sense that an interaction is not going well, we may have some physical sensations in our body to tell us "something is off", but it may be minutes, hours, even days before we can sort out what emotions were being expressed. Then, we have the epiphany of what really went down, and then we find ourselves revisiting, reanalyzing, and often in a position where we need to apologize to the other person, mainly because we were clueless or misinterpreted, and the conversation degraded to something it was never intended.
Be cautious with whom you "out yourself". If you have family members that have "cemented a moral diagnosis" of you, an Asperger's/ASD-1 diagnosis might actually push them further away from you. If you are meeting someone for the first time, sometimes it may be the best time to discuss autism because then they will put your behaviors within a different context, and not some personality disorder that they fear.
We can talk on and on about this.